I guess I'm too jaded, but I question getting married. If
you hit the lottery and you become a successful Founder, your wife will own 1/2 of all those aching hours sitting
in front of that screen. If she's the type of chick that
will stick with you when you loose everything and work
the paint booth at HD, by all means marry her, but those
women just don't exist anymore. Women look at men so
differently than we judge them--it's not worth taking a chance.
I seriously hope you consider rethinking this position. There are a tremendous number of incredible women in the world, and most of them are not looking for a sugar daddy. Many women also work hard for their careers, passions, or some combination of both, and understand that both success and failure happen.
I will also say that in many instances, if you have this opinion about women (or any group of persons), it's probably somewhat evident in your interactions with them, and you may not be treated quite as well as you would be otherwise. This can be self-reinforcing, but unfortunately the responsibility lies with you to pull yourself out of it and get some perspective.
If you don't, well, get a strong pre-nup, I guess, or stay single forever.
What advantages would marriage provide over a non-legal partnership? The latter seems to carry all of the benefits of marriage without any of the risks.
If one person is drawing a paycheck and another is supporting them in that role, then the supporter is putting in a ton of resources, but if the marriage ends, the breadwinner owns the entire "career". So the breadwinner reaps the long term benefits of the career, and the supporter loses everything but whatever skills they gained.
For the supporter, the advantage of legal marriage—where the supporter owns half the assets plus some rights to future earnings—is obvious. Smart, capable supporters know this, and won't make that investment without legal protections. Anything else would be reckless.
The advantage to the breadwinner is that this is a way to get a smart, capable supporter. If you're not willing to provide the legal protections, you're just going to get someone who doesn't really understand the situation and doesn't understand the risks. There's some chance you could find someone who was generally capable, but who was naïve on this point, but that's a smaller dating pool. And I'd argue it's ethically wrong, and the unfairness will eventually degrade the quality of the relationship.
People think alimony is just someone sucking someone dry while doing no work, but it's really just a dividend being paid out from a shared venture that you were both equal partners in.
If someone believed that they could attain a smart, capable supporter without offering those legal protections, however, then you agree that it would be rational for them not to provide those protections, right?
Not to mention the sizable portion of men who don't care about the intelligence/capability of their partner, or those who don't believe that wanting a legal upper hand correlates positively with the type of intelligence/capability that they desire.
To name a few: Joint filing of tax returns, Medicare, Social Security, immigration and residency for partners from other countries, sick leave to care for partner.
In your 20s its fine, put off getting married, but the 40 something guy who introduces you to his girlfriend sends a totally different signal than someone who introduces you to his wife (and vice versa if the genders are swapped). It says you're noncommittal, bad at relationships, maybe previously divorced, constantly shopping around, maybe breached partners trust repeatedly, whatever, take your pick. What it never says when someone is judging your book by its cover though is "this is just some guy who's been hedging against marital risk for a couple decades", any other snap judgement requires the person know you better.
The US government will help them take half your property after a breakup even without a marriage license, if they determine you were "acting married" so to speak.
That's a fair question. I think the biggest benefit would be the recognition of commitment, both by the partners, their families, coworkers, etc., zooming out ad infinitum. It can make a lot of things easier, from a practical perspective--for example, in my line of work there are a lot of couples (shared drive and passion, assortative mating), and employers will often create a second job for the spouse of a person they really want to hire. I think that sort of similar things can apply in other situations. If you, say, want to see your partner in the hospital or have certain other rights it's easier if you're legally bound to said partner.
See the recent arguments about same-sex marriage for a fulsome discussion...
I chose marriage, because I was really f'ing excited about calling my partner my wife. Now, I am really proud to call her that. Note that financially, she is far more well-off than me, but we have similar lifetime earnings potential. YMMV.
You couldn't be more wrong. If you don't know any women who treat their spouses as other people, who have ups and downs, women who can't take "for richer or for poorer" seriously, then you're in the wrong social circles.
Hell, my wife has offered to let me quit my job, where I make nearly twice as much as her (her electrical engineering salary would be enough to get us by), just so I can work on art full time, because she knows it will make me happier. I haven't, yet, because I also want her to be happy and I'm not so unhappy with my work yet that I can't earn us some more savings and hopefully make an exit for both of us.
