Legal unions: the "should", "are", and "when" of entering them

Hi holmes,That's helpful.There's one point that you kind of addressed, but I'd be interested for you to address more: See, now maybe this is my "idealistic" side, but to me the big difference between a commitment and "civil union" or "marriage" is that you don't think about this kind of thing. A choice to enter one of these is supposed to mean "for life." Commitment to me means, "we stick together until we really both feel it would be better for us to be apart than together."And don't get me wrong--I know there's times that you feel you'd be better off apart than together. I'm all about having buffer periods, extended periods over which you have to think so (on the order of months).So... to me, the big difference between a committed relationship and some kind of civil union is that the marriage says, "we're so confident about this thing, we commit to being together for the rest of our lives... now." wheras in a committed relationship, there's always the choice to end it if it turns out you didn't forsee something, and it turns out the two of you would be better off going separate ways.But I guess as a scientific thinker, I am well aware of the limits of my own knowledge and am always trying to make only "tentative conclusions." So it seems strange to me to... in my eyes, overstate knowledge. But maybe that's just because I've become less emotional with age and experience.Anyway, thanks for the thoughts.Ben

I would hope that even in a commited relationship the people involved feel as if it will last forever. That's sort of the sign that one is in a good relationship (and this is apart from whether it is multi partner, or open in a sexual sense to others). When one is feeling good and comfortable the idea that it might end is generally odious.However, history and experience tend to show that that is the nature of the experience... it is a feeling of eternal sustainability, which may not have anything to do with cold hard reality.Thus it is always important (to my mind) to move beyond the feeling and rationally assess what any legal procedure will mean at the end of a relationship.For exampe, even for those not averse to marriage, the harder time (and more costly procedure) with divorce in Netherlands, might make a couple opt for a civil union instead.Maybe a way to think about it is that when one gets on a boat one does so with the full intention of it not sinking (especially if it is one's boat that a lot of time, money, and love has gone into), but one still makes sure to have life vests and other emergency equipment.If thinking about that makes one not want to go out on the boat, maybe a boat outing is not a good idea.

---

holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

When it clicks...

Fair enough.