noodle

Not married... happily not married.
I think marriage is wonderful for a lot of people and something of a rite of passage or something required of them for others. A lot of our friends have gotten married because their family or friend or one of the partners thought that they should. Most are not that happy.
I'm not sure that marriage would really benefit us at this point. And I know that S does not want my loans linked to him. I really don't see it as beneficial or not... it's fairly evenly weighted at this point in our lives.
I don't think that marriage is necessary to get the emotional, health, etc. benefits of the long-term monogamous relationship, except in some economic areas. For example, Florida voters freaked out about the possibility of same-sex marriage and voted down the proposition that also included legal rights for domestic partnerships and common-law marriages. So, in this respect, S and I can never be on each other's health insurance unless it is a special provision (mine refuses this) and if we didn't have wills and health care surrogate information, there's no security, everything would revert to our next of kin (parents in our case), so there was some incredible emotional turmoil and stress that affected a lot of quality of life last year with S's health crisis and surgery. But in regards to most of the other issues, no, I don't think it's required.
People most definitely look at us differently. We are Heterosexual Life Partners, when we're humorous. We've referred to each other as spouses when it served us (e.g. with the salesman in buy cars, "this is my wife, Noodle," not on paper) or as fiance/finacee, and boy/girl friend at other times. A lot of times I'll laughingly say "my... well, what do you call them after 7 years? My man, S___" to avoid the conversation altogether.

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