Open thread, 21-27 April 2014

Metus

If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

Thread started before the end of the last thread to ecourage Monday as first day.

If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

Thread started before the end of the last thread to ecourage Monday as first day.

How do I decide whether to get married?

My girlfriend of four years and I are both graduating college.
I haven't found employment yet, and she's returning home for work.
As near as I can tell, we're very compatible.

Pros

We are very fond of each other, get a lot of value out of each other's time.
We've been able to talk about the subject sanely.
Status
We agree on religion and politics.
Married guys make more on average, but the arrow of causality could point in either direction or come from something else.
Financial benefits

Cons

Negative Status associated with marrying young?
No jobs yet, no clear home or area to live in.
She sometimes gets mad at me for things I'm "just supposed to know" to do, not do, say, or not say. I'm not sure if she's right and I'm a jerk.

She has said that she doesn't want to marry me if she's just my female best friend that I sleep with. But I don't know how to evaluate what she's asking. There are a number of possibilities. Maybe I don't feel the requisite feelings and thus she wouldn't want to be married. Maybe I do have the feelings and I have no way to evaluate whether I do or not. Maybe I'm not ever going to feel some extra undetected thing X, ever, and so I should just go through the motions saying that I do, and our marriage prospects are entirely unchanged. Maybe this is just some signalling ritual we have to go through.

We both are concerned that I've not really had a relationship not with her, so there are no points of comparison for me to make.

Married guys make more on average, but the arrow of causality could point in either direction or come from something else.

And married women make less, so even assuming the arrow of causality is entirely from marital status to income it's not clear to me what would happen to your combined income.

9Shmi12y

What are her feelings about you? Are you "just" her "male best friend that she sleeps with"? Your post comes across as rather asymmetric. [...] Aren't you "both concerned" that she had too many relationships and so may decide that you are not for her precisely because she has these "points of comparison"? I suspect that she is the dominant partner in this relationship, possibly because she is more mentally mature, and this is often a warning flag. [...] Do you get mad at her for things she is just supposed to know to do, say or not say? Anyway. DO NOT GET MARRIED YET until you figure out how to be an equal in this relationship (and if you think that you are, then you are fooling yourself).