Many people have various approaches to achieving and maintaining healthy relationships with their romantic partner.
Lifestyles and beliefs can vary widely from person to person, and sometimes what makes sense to some people doesn’t make sense to others. The way we present our relationships can occasionally ruffle the wrong feathers.
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Couples must figure out what works best for them.
Growing up, many people are engrained with certain ideas as to how romance, dating, and relationships should be handled. However, many of us begin crafting our own rules along the way, which often means working with our partners to see what’s best for us as a pair.
There are people who constantly worry about what others will think or say about them and their relationship. We often desire the approval from others, when in fact for many, it’s their own approval that matters the most.
But it’s okay to be in your own kind of relationship.
Some couples don’t eat dinner together; others like to sleep in separate beds. Honestly, the list goes on. It’s a tough sell at times, but relationships are not monoliths.
It’s important for people to form honest bonds without compromising themselves or their partners for what they think is “normal.”
One couple decided that marriage was not for them.
In a post submitted to the popular subreddit r/AmITheAsshole , the woman explained that 22 years ago, she and her beau decided that they didn’t want to get married, but they still wanted to be together.
They’ve now lived together for 19 years and have three kids. Some people in their lives find it odd that they never tied the knot, but the couple stands their ground every time they’re called out on this.
They still call each other “husband” and “wife.”
While they’ve opted out of legal matrimony, they still enjoy referring to one another with marital terms.
It’s a way for them to show affection and reiterate their their commitment to each other, with or without a marriage certificate.
Not everyone is happy about this couple’s choices.
The woman recently invited her younger brother and sister-in-law over for dinner, but the pleasant gettogether quickly took a turn for the nasty.
Neither couple had seen each other for a while, as they’d been living in separate countries, so the meal was meant to be a sort of reunion. However, the woman’s sister-in-law decided to forgo polite small talk and instead use the gathering as an opportunity to judge the unmarried couple.
It was quite a hostile situation.
After dinner was done, the woman’s SIL approached her and told her it was “extremely disrespectful” of the couple to be using marital terms, despite not being married themselves.
“She claimed that I wanted to take the best parts of marriage without earning them, and that if I wanted to be referred to as a wife or refer to my man as my husband, then perhaps I should get married,” the woman recalled .
Of course, she wasn’t about to just sit there and let her newly-married SIL give her a lesson on marriage etiquette.
“I laughed, and I pointed out that I’ve been with my partner for more 22 years, and that my youngest child was older than her entire relationship,” the woman explained. “The argument immediately escalated, and she ended up storming out with her husband.”
She explained that she loves being called his wife and doesn’t want her partner to stop saying it, so she’s asked the Reddit jury to decide once and for all who the real asshole of this situation is.
Reddit users made a verdict: not the asshole.
The majority of Redditors agreed that the woman’s SIL needs to check herself before shaming anyone for calling their spouse whatever they want.
As one person wrote in the comments, “Girl needs to sit down. [The woman] and her husband earned every right to that, considering how long they’ve been together. Because marriage isn’t about the document but companionship.”
The support was overwhelming.
Someone else added, “Signing a piece of paper (and therefore getting the government involved in your love life) and having a big, expensive and technically unnecessary party just to show off your relationship to everyone around you doesn’t make you more deserving of those titles than staying together for 20 years and raising a kid.”
Another person wrote, “Is common law marriage not a thing there? Here if you live together as a couple for more than a year or two, then you’re considered married in the eyes of the government.”
Looks like this unmarried woman does not need to put a ring on it after all. Let us know what you think in the comments and if you think that the Reddit users were right on this one.
h/t: Reddit
