I Don’t Think I’ll Ever Get Married And I’m Totally Fine With That

I’ve never been the kind of girl to lie awake at night dreaming about my wedding day. In fact, marriage never even crossed my mind very much, and now that I’m 27, I still don’t really care if I ever walk down the aisle. Here’s why:

  1. Weddings are all for show anyway. Marriage is obviously tied to weddings, which I happen to find incredibly materialistic and kinda pointless. I feel like one of the main reasons people get married in the first place is the wedding. I mean, it sounds so exciting, doesn’t it? All of your friends and family will get to congratulate you, they’ll see you happy and you’ll finally feel like you’re doing something right. People don’t get married just for the love part— they also do it for acceptance from their peers, and I just don’t need that kind of validation.
  2. The divorce rate has never been higher. The divorce rate is now at 50 percent, meaning for every married person out there, there’s also one that’s divorced. As a child of divorce, there’s no way in hell I’m going through another one of those. Once you get married, it’s pretty hard to turn back. Plus, if you also had a wedding, it would be all the more embarrassing to have to tell your friends that you couldn’t even make it past a year. I’m not even gonna go there.
  3. It’s actually more normal nowadays to NOT want to get married. When I ask my friends if they want to get married, pretty much every single one of them scrunch up their noses and shrug their shoulders as if to say, “Meh, probably not.” I’m convinced that our generation’s rejection of marriage definitely has to do with the divorce boom of the 1980s. Most of our parents are divorced, so marriage to us is not something we’re super excited about, myself included.
  4. It doesn’t fit into my lifestyle. I live what you would call an “alternative lifestyle” and honestly, I don’t want some husband to be cramping my style. When you get married, you become a unit, and that’s not the way I like to live my life. I like doing things my way, and even though I’d like to find a life partner, I don’t need that extra reminder that we legally belong to each other.
  5. I would only be doing it to please my family. If I ever were to say “I do,” it would be solely to please my mother. The only part of me that has a desire to get married is that same part that wants to impress my parents. All I want is for them to love me and I feel like if I got married, I’d earn their ultimate approval. It’s pretty sad, really.
  6. I don’t need a piece of paper to prove my love to someone. When I love, I love hard and I don’t need a piece of paper to prove it. I’d get way more satisfaction out of my relationship knowing that my partner and I are together because we chose to be, not because we promised to be in front of a bunch of people. If I want to build a life with someone, it should happen naturally.
  7. The whole experience would be totally embarrassing. The idea of saying “I do” in front of all of my friends and family doesn’t sound exciting to me at all. I can barely stand it when people sing “Happy Birthday” to me. I don’t like having attention put on me and I often feel like people getting married is just an excuse to have a big party in honor of themselves. It wouldn’t be fun for me—it would be an actual nightmare.
  8. I’d rather spend all that money on something I’ll actually enjoy. Why get married and have a family when I can travel the world or get a personal trainer, you know, stuff that I actually want and need? I don’t need a husband, and as long as my boyfriend and I are happy in the moment, that’s all that matters.
  9. Saying you’ll be with someone forever is a little unrealistic. You could say that I’m a commitment-phobe, and to me, marriage is the ULTIMATE commitment. Seriously, I can’t think of one other thing that’s a bigger commitment than marriage. Also, marriage tends to lead to other commitments like having kids and buying a house. These are all things that can’t be changed, or can be changed but not without creating a huge mess. I’d really rather not.
  10. It’s a false accomplishment. Finding someone who loves me and marrying them should not be considered an “accomplishment.” It’s so weird to me when people congratulate someone on getting married when all they had to do was make the decision. There are other people out there who’ve been together longer and who aren’t married, but why aren’t we congratulating them? It makes no sense.
Jennifer is a playwright, dancer, and theatre nerd living in the big city of Toronto, Canada. She studied Creative Writing at Concordia University and works as a lifestyle writer who focuses on Health, B2B, Tech, Psychology, Science, Food Trends and Millennial Life. She's also a coreographer, playwright, and lyricist, with choreography credits for McMaster University’s “Spring Awakening,” “Roxanne” for the Guelph Contemporary Dance Festival, and “The Beaver Den” for The LOT, among others.

You can see more of her work on her Contently page and follow her on Instagram @jenniferenchin.
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