Never wanted to get married nor have children. But you know, that love thing. Marriage has zero symbolic meaning to me. If I'm with you, I'm with you for a reason and don't plan on leaving...if I do, "marriage" sure as hell isn't gonna prevent it from going awry. My marriage was huge, exorbitant, and outrageously expensive that was footed by my ex-wife's parents cuz they're old-school Portuguese and that's what they do. The entire process was one big cringe. I will admit though that the actual day was one of the most enjoyable days of my life however. Well, I got a majorly kick-ass son out of the deal so I can't say it was a total failure. The marriage thing should have never happened though. It was definitely rushed into. "Only fools..."
My current girlfriend (sounds weird at our age) of 5+years have both been there, done that. We have no desire to get married...unless one day we have to for legal reasons of course. No need to complicate anything.
There's nothing inherently wrong with it, especially if you're a religious person and it has symbolic meaning for ya. I find though that a lot of people do it just because "that's what ya do"/societal pressure, it's some kind of Walt Disney fantasy in their minds, or it's something that is to be strived for and attained as some kind of status symbol. The latter is where people tend to stop trying and phone it in for the rest of the way because they have reached the pinnacle status of the relationship as if they don't have to continually work at it like any other relationship (which involves everything in life...life = relationship) with it's ebbs and flows...it's process/flux.
