onnawufei:

f1nn1ck:

i think the idea of marriage is sort of weird.. i mean if you really love each other i dont think theyre should really be a need to prove it by having your names on a piece of paper or something like that. i guess i would get married to the person i love but i dont think it would really change any feeling for me when i woke up the next morning. idk its just hard to explain

I totally get this.  Honestly I couldn’t tell you why my husband and I got married.  We’d been together for 7 or 8 years, had lived together for all but one of those years and owned a house together so it just seemed like the thing to do. The only thing it changed was my last name, which incidentally was a huge pain in the ass.

It took me entirely too long to write all that because I kept getting transfixed by the gif.  XD

I like the idea of marriage. It won’t make me feel differently about my spouse-to-be, but I can tell you why it’s a goddamn good thing and why, even though you may think it’s ‘weird’, I would never consider it to just be a piece of paper or wonder ‘why’ I will get married. Know why?

Married couples have so many more rights than couples who are common-law or only in civil partnerships. Marriage grants you benefits and privileges to each other’s health, wealth and security.

Married couples are entitled to things like bereavement leave, insurance and tax breaks, medical decisions on behalf of one another, sick leave to care for your partner, hospital and prison visitations, social security survivor benefits, child custody, burial determination, inheritance, housing lease transfers, pension assumptions, divorce protection, adoption and foster care benefits, joint bankruptcy, joint parenting, some property rights, wrongful death benefits, crime victim recovery benefits, and veteran’s benefits. Just to name a few.

Perhaps marriage seems silly to some people because they think it’s just a government ploy or some piece of paper and that it won’t change how much you love someone, so why would you bother? Perhaps you think of it that way - or however you think of it - because you take for granted your privilege to marry someone and automatically gain all of those benefits.

However, to those of us who literally were not allowed to marry the person we love until a few years ago - and for those who still cannot - I can tell you that I do NOT take marriage for granted. It is not a ‘weird’ thing for me. It is something that I will do with the person I love so that we may protect our future together.

You can think it’s foolish and silly and weird all you like. But we live in a world where marital status literally changes how you are allowed to live your life with someone and that is something I would never take for granted.