60% had atleast one child when they were founding their first company, but that doesnt tell if they were still happily married after a few stressfull years of running their companies.
That being said, i started my first real company when i was 6 years into a strong relationship. 2 years later the relationship is gone and the company failed to catch on. I dont regret it and am still motivated to start new things, if anything this only made me stronger but it was very tough going through it!
I'm not married - but my partner and I have been together for more than 17 years now. I don't think I'd have started our first company without her support and pushing. I definitely wouldn't have started my second after our first one crashed and burned!
Stress happens in all relationships. For me anyway the stress of starting two businesses, and having one fail horribly, doesn't get into the top three most stressful events of the last 17 years. It barely makes the top five ;-)
This is not a criticism/flame/whatever, just curious.
Many reasons ;-)
* We're both atheists - so we don't think any god(s) are going to be annoyed
* We live in the UK so, at this point, living together without being married isn't frowned upon socially - not by anybody we care about anyway. There's also the slightly weird thing that at this point people just assume we are married unless the topic is brought up specifically.
* Neither of us are particular fans of getting up in front of large groups of people so the whole "wedding day" concept isn't much of an attraction. Quite the opposite if anything.
* No kids (by choice) so don't need to factor in that as an issue.
* The whole needing state/peer approval for a relationship seems slightly weird to both of us. Our commitment is personal and private and doesn't need any external validation thank-you-very-much.
* Personally we see staying together without marriage as a more positive statement about the state of our relationship. We're together because we want to be together - not because a divorce is too much effort.
The only hassles have been around stuff related to medical care for relatives and each other (a few idiots are a little too strict about the definitions of family and need paperwork), along with a mild tax hit since we don't get the married couples allowance. At some point soonish we'll have to sort out some of the legal stuff around investments/wills, etc. - but most of that's already been dealt with with.
If the UK's Civil Partnership arrangement was available to straight couples we might have gone for that - just to make the legal stuff simpler, but is isn't so we didn't.
TL;DR - Why should we? ;-)
I'm not familiar with UK law, but in the U.S. the main advantage is that the legal system is predisposed to offer spouses a whole raft of rights and powers that, absent marriage, need to be individually constructed via some complex legal maneuvering.
You don't need to tell anyone you're married. Just schedule time at city hall and grab a couple of bystanders (or close friends) as witnesses.
1) It goes against stuff we both believe in - so no.
2) We've got a handle on the legal stuff. In the UK anyway it's not that big a deal for the way we live our lives (see http://www.adviceguide.org.uk/england/relationships_e/relati... if you're curious)
3) Dude! I've been with a fantastic sexy woman I love for more than 17 years! She presumably quite likes me too. If you think for a second that I'm going to do anything that has the slightest chance of messing that up you are sadly mistaken ;-)
I don't really think that you should get married. My default on these sorts of personal issues is always "you should do whatever you want and believe in." :-)
Thanks for the link; I'll take a look. In the U.S. there are some legal rights that are only available to spouses. (Which is why the fight for the legal recognition of same-sex marriage is so important.)
I am not asking anyone to explain themselves, I tried to make that clear and certainly did not mean to offend anyone(sorry if I have). I was just asking out of curiosity, the way you would inquire about anything which is out of the ordinary with respect to your every day experiences(and in the society I grew up in, this is very much out of the ordinary -- That doesn't mean I'm making any kind of value judgement, it's just a fact).
[citation needed]
The other one is cited in this book (I read it there first) http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1857883292/ref=as_li_ss_tl?...
Here is a not so scientific national poll about this http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2135843/Children-liv...
The discussion on moderators on the first study is interesting since it shows that it's not a universal truth - but significantly moderated by age, marital status and sex. For example:
"Finally, age significantly moderated the link between parenthood and life satisfaction. Simple effects analyses revealed that young parents (ages 17-25) were less satisfied with their lives than their childless counterparts (b = -0.39, p < .001); mid-range age parents (ages 26-62) were more satisfied than their childless peers (b = 0.42, p < .001); and older parents (ages 63 and older) did not differ from older non-parents (b = 0.16, p = .29)."
The discussion on recall bias is interesting to - nice to see that mentioned.
US only population too. Would be interested to see how that goes across cultures.