How long is it suitable for two people to be married? A British survey agency conducted a survey of 1,000 couples and found that for couples with a harmonious marriage relationship, the average length of love before marriage is 3 years. “Long-term love and not getting married” may be due to practical reasons, or it may be because in the long-distance love race, the matter of getting married has gradually become less important.
The story is about three people who have been in love for more than ten years but have not entered into marriage. The reason behind of the “Long-term love and not getting married”:

I can’t accept open marriage and choose not to marry!
The reason why my boyfriend and I are not married is me, I am a firm “non-marital person”.
I met him when I went to study in the UK at the age of 23. He moved his family to the UK when he was in junior high school. He is a Chinese with a relatively high degree of westernization.
My thoughts have experienced a relatively big change after going abroad, and ten years ago, I never thought about not getting married or something. Of course, an objective factor is: The sky is high, the emperor is far away, people are abroad, and they are gradually weakened by the influence of domestic traditional concepts. Before the age of 30, the family has been urging marriage, and even came all the way to the United Kingdom to “investigate” my boyfriend.
After crossing the hurdle of being 30 years old, they have been “indifferent” a lot. It may seem that I have lived well abroad, of course, because I can’t get involved.
The reason why I didn’t want to get married was not because of feeling. We only had one time relationship crisis for the past ten years. At that time, it was because my company transfer me to Europe for work study. I was a little distracted by the foreign state. To be precise, I met another person who crushed me briefly. Although nothing happened in the end, it prompted me to reflect on the intimate relationship.
It is certainly a good thing to end from the beginning, but I dare say that it is difficult for most adults to really like only one person from start to finish, although people with a sense of morality know how to stop in action. I personally think that “open relationship” has its rationality, but I don’t recognize “open marriage”. Some people play their own after marriage, but marriage is only an economic bond. I don’t understand what is necessary to maintain this kind of dead marriage.
Similarly, a stable intimate relationship does not need to rely on a wedding certificate to prove anything. Whether I am with this person depends only on whether our relationship is in tune and whether we can support each other’s lives. I have lived with my boyfriend for six years, and I have experienced it together, whether it is daily chores or the larger changes in my life. To be honest, it is no different from married couples.
Recently, because of the impact of the epidemic, our relationship has become closer. Before, we were busy working, and the time to stay together every day is limited. Now we work from home, but we have more time to explore more common hobbies. I heard friends in China say that there was a wave of “divorce” after living in isolation, which further verified my previous view: there is no inevitable connection between a good relationship and whether to marry, and marriage is not the inevitable direction of an intimate relationship.
It can be expected that at my current age, if I still live in the country, I must be gossiped by people around me, even not just me, my family may also suffer. But in the UK, examples like me abound. No one will take us “seriously “. The boyfriend’s family asked us about getting married once “side by side” two years ago, and after receiving no positive answer, they closed their mouths very tacitly.
Later, I would still go to his house for dinner on larger festivals. We live in harmony like relatives. Is it a wife or a girlfriend? Is identity so important?

After 13 years of being together, i “pretended to break up” with my boyfriend in front of my family.
I started to be with my boyfriend when I was 16 years old. This relationship has accompanied me through the purest campus time. Regrettably, I should not be married.
The reason is quite vulgar due both of us are in a different walk of life or so-called ”social match“, and it is impossible to reconcile, but I’m not willing to give up this relationship for more than ten years.
Before graduating from college, our feelings were always in an “underground state”. My family didn’t ask me, and I didn’t say anything. I thought that after one or two years of stable work, I would also be able to have a perfect wedding “from school uniform to wedding dress”. Who knows, this relationship has just surfaced, and it was unanimously opposed by the whole family.
My boyfriend’s family situation is not very good, he is born in the countryside. Although he is very strong himself, it does not change the personality of the “Phoenix man” or so-called “self-made man” in the eyes of my parents. Twenty years have passed in the twenty-first century. My family still believes very much in the “social match” set of things, and this matter is not only opposed by my parents ‘ generation, even the old people at home come out to do my ideological work.
One thing that makes me cry and laugh is that one of the examples given by my grandmother is that my mother just found the “Phoenix man (self-made man)” —– my dad made himself so hard, so I must not let me go back to my mother’s old way. My heart says that my dad has been hard for so many years, and as the economic pillar of the family, he must be secretly despised by them.
The old man was too old, even if he was upset, he couldn’t openly contradict him, so under their strong request, I pretended to have “broken up” with my boyfriend. I only vaguely revealed part of the pressure at home to my boyfriend. He also knows that we want to gain a foothold in Shanghai. At present, we can’t do it by ourselves (the down payment of the house cannot be helped at all at home, and my house is frozen again.), I said that when the two of us are capable, it’s not too late to talk about marriage. At this stage, seeing the parents can only be ashamed.
But as I grew older every year, I sometimes played drums in my own heart. Watching the little sisters around me get married one by one, my “love vanguard” lagged the big army. On the other hand, I really envy those people with similar families who don’t need to worry about these things, even if some of them seem to me to have only met through blind dates, and the feelings between the two are not so deep.
When I was adolescent, I also dreamed of that kind of dreamy wedding. Only after I got older did I realize how many realistic tests must be experienced behind that solemn sense of presence. Houses, cars, deposits, wedding gifts………………a marriage without material security is like a mansion with a weak foundation. I can’t imagine the scene after entering it.
Perhaps as the old saying goes,falling in love is a matter of two people, and marriage is a matter of two families. I have also heard of couples who broke up during the marriage phase, not to mention the problems of supporting the elderly and raising children after marriage, so let’s wait until we have enough confidence to face these things.
When I returned to my family as “single” in name, my mother also offered me a target, but in an attitude of being responsible to my boyfriend, I rejected all of them. I will explain the reason privately if the other person is a little more understanding, and I will blacken the people who are not good at talking.
I have never told my boyfriend about these things. Although I am tired of “acting” on both sides, the pressure of life is already so great that I don’t want to add unnecessary troubles to him anymore.

After being in love for 10 years, we became a couple whose marriage failed.
I was 18 years old with my current girlfriend, and two days is a full ten years.
To be precise, we are a couple who failed to get married.
When I was almost 25 years old, that is, three years ago, my girlfriend and I tried to marry once, because the two of us really got along well. At that time, there was no idea about marriage. Her family had been urging the marriage, and my family was also urging the marriage. We both discussed it and decided to get married.
At that time, I felt that marriage should have no effect on our love, at best it would be more ritual. Our family relationships are more harmonious, and our parents are also young, so we thought that getting married is a more formal relationship.
After the day was set, we started to handle it. My parents played with our enthusiasm for getting married, and immediately acted as the shopkeeper after the tinkering, and went on a trip together. Leaving my girlfriend and I watched the wedding day approaching day by day, they were busy day by day and anxious day by day.
During the three months of preparing to get married, our seven-year relationship almost collapsed. Basically, we ended up arguing for seven years together.
25 years old is the age of struggle at work, and my girlfriend and I are very aggressive. We put a lot of energy on our work, and suddenly we must divide up part of our amateur energy for the wedding, they really give us a terrible headache.
It’s not just a wedding, you must put it on the agenda before you get married to buy a house. The two parents were only concerned about giving orders remotely. My girlfriend and I could only do it, staring at the house, looking for a wedding planner company, and both of us were totally unprepared.
This is when the contradiction arises. Originally, I was going to try on clothes that night(only have time in the evening), but I was suddenly notified that I was going to work overtime. I feel very tired and annoying, It had been postponed twice. I called my girlfriend to inform but who know she was directly on fire, saying that this is not her wedding alone, and asked if I could put more heart on the wedding preparation.
I quarreled with her in the stairwell of the company for more than half an hour. We both complained to each other about how hard and tired we were recently. At the end of the quarrel, she cried and said that if we can’t get along well, then “break up”.
I was stunned at the time, and felt that our relationship for so many years had not broken up no matter how many things. When we quarreled before, we didn’t talk about breaking up with each other, but this time we shook our relationship so easily for a little thing.
Marriage scared me, it started from that moment.
That was the first time I missed work, and I hurried back home to find a crying girlfriend. The two of us carefully analyzed and discussed all night, and came to the conclusion that our relationship itself is okay, and all the problems are the impact of “marriage” on our living conditions.
The two of us were already very busy. The time we needed to be considerate and caring for each other in our relationship was mostly taken away by the trivial matters of the wedding.
Fortunately, we were reconciled in the end, and of course the wedding was over (cancel the marriage event). After explaining to both parents for a long time, they gradually chose to respect our decision.
After experiencing this, I found that not everyone needs marriage as an advancement or bond of relationship. As long as two people are comfortable and can be loyal and love each other, the responsibilities and constraints brought about by marriage become less important.
I have been in love with my girlfriend for ten years, and it is still like our “first love”. We don’t know when we will get married, but I know that it must be the “right time” or “right timing” and it will give us enough time to prepare for the next step.
Marriage is not only about the right person, the right time, but also the right feeling.