Hello,
Do you think that getting married is becoming old-fashioned? Or is it the other way round and we will be seeing more and more ‘same sex marriages’? In the story below you will find out what a ‘G.O.M’ is how this abbreviation relates to the tradition of tying the knot.
Do people still get married?
[size=75]http://www.english-test.net/stories/43/index.html[/size]
So, what is your take?
Alan
Good question, Alan. Nowadays it’s considered modern to live together without being married, of course. This tendency is getting involved in my country but the majority of couples are officially married. I’m happy to realize that. I have a neutral position towards civil marriage. From the one hand it has many advantages. In their together life couples without registration their relationship can experience whether they match each other. If not they can easily scatter without usual routine caused by divorce. From the other hand legally they have no duties to each other, no rights, requirements as if they are quite strange people. My treatment to marriage is sacred and I regard it as a great responsiblility. I’m a supporter of wedlock.
Hi,
I really don’t know what may be now on top about marriage/divorce affairs in Poland.
I guess something very similar to the rest of Europe or maybe some Polish local mutation.
I only know that girls whose I knew were mostly very, very serious about their own weddings/marriages and if they were talking different it was profoundly just the game.
It is probably a main difference between us :lol:
Regards
Jan
Gentlemen ,You don’t need to envy Sailor Jan
Sailor Jan is married and kept on very short stick. :lol:
I am living with my boyfriend but we are not married. I hope one day we will be. I want to be married, I want to have a real family.
Here in Bulgaria many people just live together, have children but really I want to get married. 
Hi
Just to add a post about Russia.
There are quite many Russian marriages in which spouses decide not to change their (sur)names. For some reasons. They can happily live together for dozens of years keeping ther ‘maiden’ names.
There are marriages in which husband decidedly takes the maiden name of his wife 
For some reason. Rare, but not very rare. Equality (Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite :)…you know :lol: )
My grandmother and granddad got married officially after 7 years of living in sin When they gave birth to their second child. For that period of time (1930s-40s) it was quite usual, even in university environment :). Children were normally registered with parents who have no marriage certificate and were not offended as bastards
After the World War II the special government decree were adopted to raise ‘birth rate’; in accordance with it men were relieved of ANY responsibilities (aliments, etc) for their out-of-marriage offspring,
Now… Russia is a too large country to answer. Tourists’ Moscow and St. Petersburg are, in fact, European cities (almost :)) – but it’s not true Russia. But as I myself had also never lived in a small town or villages, I can’t be a representative
As I know from my relatives and friends, young Russians prefers to have a try before – to live together for a while - and then get married. With that bridle veils, of course :). Marriage is popular.
But actually I don’t know the current statistics of divorces.
I can only say that almost all youngsters with whom I talked about marriage, took the traditional formula ‘Till death do us part. In grief and in joy, in illness and in health, …’ - rather with the irony.
For them it’s just the partnership, indeed.
Tamara
Hi
Married? In my country, it’s always important for the couples to get married, registering a marriage certificate. If not, the couples will be just stared at everywhere they go. And when they have children, theirs are considered “bastards”(sorry). In my religion also, living together without marriage means a sin so people who, i guess, have fuddy-duddy ideas hate couples who don’t get married. But the world here seems to change a bit. They can become boyfriend and girlfriend first without serious phisical contact. Then after they have found out about each other for a long time, they can decide to marry.
I’m married, but non of my friends is.
I got married at the Niagara falls, since then that’s my favorite place in the world.We’re planning to have two more weddings just to make sure.
In Hungary people don’t worry about things like marriage 'cause there are more impotant things, like mortgage. About ten years ago people didn’t like those couples who had a child but had no rings on their figers,
it has changed.
Everybody respects the others who has the courage to have a child at this difficult time in Hungary.
People think twice before they spend a lot of money on a wedding.
Spencer
Dear Alen,
In this topic my country has also different point of view. We always registered before any link each other. We have to marry before keep the sexual relation. In our society it is big sin if you are living together without marriage.our society does not allow any person who are living without marriage. It is the values of our society. If you want to live together you have to show any relation like marriage.as I have already mentioned that 99.99 people likes marriage and do not like any relation with wife and husband.
There are two way for marriage in our society. Arrange marriage and other is love marriage both ways comes in to the marriage.
Arrange marriage means parents decide to marry he/she and their decision have to obey he or she with the respect of parents. Here you can conflict may be
why he and she obey the parents order.here I wanted to know it is mutual understanding both side.
Secondly love marriage you know very well. Parents follow their love and change the arrange marriage. Here both boys and girls always repect their parents.
So here in pakistan it is big sin if you are living without marriage in the society.
Regards
Khan
Hello,
Here in my country, living in sin is as impossible as finding grammar mistakes in alan’s essays. (Alan, I am giving you the same chance Hobson had {Hobson’s choice} to leave your trace in the English lanaguage 
)
In my country there was a big tendency in the late 1960s and 1970s for better-educated people to live together without being married, and this trickled down through the society as a whole.
However, living together without benefit of marriage has a lot of disadvantages, especially for the woman, so now better-educated people may live together for a little while, but eventually they get married. More and more Americans are doing it the old way and marrying first. This is one more reason why Europeans seem to us to have their brains stuck back in the 1960s.
Most Americans think a woman is stupid to live together with a man for very long (or at all) before demanding marriage – and most of them think she’s even stupider to have children in that situation.
On the other hand, our social welfare system won’t give poor people assistance if there is an able-bodied father in the house. This has resulted in a situation where many poor women (often starting as teenagers) just have children by various men in order to get more government money, but they never have any intention of marrying any of the fathers of any of their children. We say that these women “marry the state”. The laws were written when living together was unusual, so the politicians never expected this situation to arise. Now that the genie is out of the bottle, they’re having trouble putting it back in.
The result is a society in which the middle and upper classes get married (whether right a way or after living together for a little while), while huge numbers of people in the lower classes never get married.
I think that a lot of people live together first because they think that getting married requires an expensive “dream wedding”, so they live together for a long time after they should already have been married, because they are “getting ready for their wedding” – for years!
Many men prefer to live with the woman without marrying her, because, as the saying goes, “Why buy the cow, when the milk is free?”
Statistics are now available for the results of these live-in relationships, and they don’t look good. Couples who live together before they marry have a much higher divorce rate than couples who move in together AFTER they marry. The reason is that evidently people who live together, and take a long time to make a lifelong commitment before getting married, also aren’t good at maintaining a lifelong commitment AFTER they marry.
will i can’t say thing because all friends above it is said everthing but i say good question
Dear Alen,
What is your opinion about this topic do you think women should live with men without marriage and secondly what do the effect after doing this act in the society.
Please do no mind, I need your opinion only two or three line.
Regards
Shafqat
Dear Alen,
I am Shafqat from Pakistan. What is your opinion about this topic do you think women should live with men without marriage and secondly what do the effect after doing this act in the society.
Please do no mind, this is not grammer question I need your opinion only two or three line.
Regards
Shafqat
The above opinions are not enough?
Dear friend,
you can share your thought about this topic because we have same aim and same target for improving the english.
please also share email address
thanks
khan
Hello Alan!
The trend in my country is the same that you related on this story, but there a lot of people that prefer to get married. Some of them, because of the religion, others because they dream with this day (mainly women).
Presonally, I prefer the tendency of these days. I think, we live the same way married or not, we have to study, to work etc, but with more freedom and it is easier to spilt up when love finishes. We have to take care when we have children…
Well, I have some doubts:
I have one more doubt that is a sentence I found in a book:
“We “GOT TALKING” to some students” (again participles)
May you help me?
Thank you very much for all.
Sandra Brasil
Personally I see no inconveniences in getting married. Of course if you in the very beginning do not have plans to divorce.
In my country it’s getting popular to “just live together”. It’s not a family - it’s partnership, Alan is right. Very often I hear different reasons for not getting married yet: not enough money is the most brilliant one. As if money can ever be enough :-D.
People who want family in my country just get married.
My thought is that people ought to get married if they really love one another.
Marriage is a commitment to be true to each other and to share life’s ups and downs.
If you are not sufficiently committed to do this then marriage is a definite no-no.
If you do decide to just live together, then for heavens sake forget about having children. It is not fair for them to have to go through life being called a bastard.
As regards being married in a church in a white gown.
If you are not a virgin then you are betraying all that the white gown is supposed to signify.
These are my views. You don’t have to agree with me. This is only what I believe.
Kitos.
it is essential that people do marry for a more stronger and more realiable relationship however if some countries allow thier young ones to to have a taste of it before marriage to see if the intended marriage would prove fruitful then there is no problem in it.
I am from Bulgaria.A lot of people do not get married.The statistics show but 51% from children was born in family without marriage.