My mom will swear up and down that it's the MAN who loses interest in sex after marriage...
When has a woman ever lost half her assets? Try when she's raising a kid, meanwhile the father only has to pay what he can afford! Never mind if she can ill-afford the rest--she's the custodial parent!
Heh, yeah, I've been married "in my heart" too. Funny how quick a guy's heart forgets when he's got a new set of big boobies to play with! Sorry, give me traditional marriage any day. Maybe if we'd been married everyone around us wouldn't've been so okay with his behavior and would've understood why I was so hurt.
Plus marriage has pre-nups and all sorts of laws to protect one in case it DOES break up.
I'm going to be moving in with my boyfriend soon. Going to have to insist that we buy all living necessities separately (i.e. no buying a vacuum together--one person buys it) and keep track of who brought what so when the relationship splits up, there's no fighting about who gets what.
The ex and I had some joint property--luckily just small stuff. Guess who got all that stuff? I was lucky to get my stuff back at all! (we'd been planning on moving in together too as soon as I got a job near him, so a good amount of my stuff was at his place--pretty much I'd moved my stuff out of my dorm room to his apartment, we didn't see a point in moving it back to my mom's house. He dumped me, gave me back my stuff--or at least most of it except a couple small things--but he sure got to keep all the stuff we had jointly because all he had to give back was what he wanted me to have! He was being such a dick after we split up that he was making up all this bullshit about "I'm not coming to your house to bring you your stuff, we'll meet in a public place" or "I'll just leave it outside" --right, to get stolen or ruined in the weather?? Piece of shit made it sound like I was going to shoot his ass or something. After what he did I would've liked to, but that's beside the point)
Get married? Hell yeah, I gotta protect myself! I want all those laws that say I get to keep half of what we built TOGETHER and such...and as I don't want to spend my entire life keeping a list of who bought what and making sure we do it separately with our own money, I'll take the piece of paper and pre-nups that protect me instead.
Frankly, if the boi and I ever get married we'll be a piece of work. He wants, when he gets married, to keep the finances separate so she can't clean him out. That's his brand of mistrust. I want the finances to be combined so there's no bullshit going on behind my back--spending on other chicks, etc. That's MY brand of mistrust. Hrm. (I think I told him once, "if you don't want to get cleaned out, don't do anything to deserve it." I'm not sure I'd do that to a guy if he fucked me over, but it'd sure be a temptation and I can see why people do it. Somebody fucks you, get them back where it hurts--since obviously they don't give a shit for your feelings, maybe you gotta hit 'em in the wallet)
I read "The Rules" once, just out of curiosity. I couldn't believe it, it was like a joke of a book. I've never known anyone who would try any of that bullshit!! Are there actually people who do??
I don't have sex right away in a relationship, but that's because that's what's right for me. If someone wants to see it as playing games and playing hard to get, they can go right on ahead. Anyone worth their salt will understand my reasons.