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Shani, in response to your post above:
I never said anything about marriage being practical. I said what difference does it make in one's life apart from a mental committment, as in it doesn't, or shouldn't make a difference in practical terms - the normal course of one's everyday life within a meaningful and intimate relationship.
I don't mean to cause offence with those statements, not at all. I'm sorry if you read them that way. You seem to have been very hurt by the suggestion that marriage isn't important to everyone, but I think that it's good that people nowadays can have different views on the subject and that it's not obligatory to be married to someone you have a romantic and sexual relationship with anymore.
When I say that marriage isn't important, I mean that it shouldn't be important - it should never be the be-all and end-all in a relationship, like was referred to in the original ladies' lounge thread. Far from it to say that if you took vows with someone in a celebratory ceremony that I would say that's not an important event in your life. I am also not knocking the "making it public" aspect. I'm saying that isn't so important to me - and that ultimately the commitment you make when you say vows or marry, is between you and your partner utmost, and the public side of it is secondary - IMO. I say this because I know people who have married and have had very much a wedding for the people outside their relationship, and have to cut friends off their guest list to accommodate their parents' friends and things like this. Marriage is a celebration, but you don't need hundreds of guests - just those who matter.
At the end of the day, I have a different opinion to your on marriage - and I'm entitled to that. It could never be something so central in my relationship that I would consider it offensive if my SO didn't propose to me (as opposed to me proposing to him), if he said to me I'd rather not marry because I don't find it important, and I would never give him an ultimatum on it, or leave him for not marrying me.
My relationship with someone will always be about the love, the intimacy, respect and trust, and dedication of said relationship - and though you may think that I'm crude to say that I don't think marriage is important, I'm probably more faithful, dedicated, attentive and caring than many married women you may know.
I don't know what else I can say to make you understand that I mean no harm by what I have said about marriage, it's just how I feel. I can say that maybe one day I will marry. But maybe it'll be a marriage of a different sort, you know? To each his own. And also, let me congratulate you on your wedding to Dave. Congratulations and much happiness to you both.
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Whether we write or speak or do but look
We are ever unapparent. What we are
Cannot be transfused into word or book.
Our soul from us is infinitely far.
However much we give our thoughts the will
To be our soul and gesture it abroad,
Our hearts are incommunicable still.
In what we show ourselves we are ignored.
The abyss from soul to soul cannot be bridged
By any skill of thought or trick of seeming.
Unto our very selves we are abridged
When we would utter to our thought our being.
We are our dreams of ourselves, souls by gleams,
And each to each other dreams of others' dreams.
Fernando Pessoa, 1918
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