There's a huge amount of social pressure to get married, often placed on you by people who don't even know your partner and may not know you. There are also many more people these days who deliberately choose not to marry. If you would prefer not to marry, then don't! You can always marry later if you change your mind, but doing that the other way around is much harder and much, much more expensive.

If getting married is a deal breaker for you, than you have to ask if you can live without him and be happy. If your living together than its not any different getting married. Its just a legal piece of paper and to a lot of people its a big deal.
Does he bring it up a lot? Is this a deal breaker for him, or will he be happy with the way things are?

I never wanted to get married and was in a couple fairly happy relationships prior to dating my husband. Then I met my husband and when we started talking marriage, I actually wanted to get married. It was an odd switch and I would also say that I just thought I was anti-marriage. I wasn't, it just didn't feel like the right thing with the previous guys I dated.

I have a friend who had parents who behaved so badly in their marriage that it has turned her off it. Yet she lives with her 2 kids and her common-law spouse just fine.

My spouse and I creep up on almost 20 years together. We met when I was 18 and I'm 36 now. I cannot imagine life without him -- and it is interesting to look at a relationship in terms of years. That was a good year... that was an ok year, that was a rough year. Life throws things at you and you ride it out as a couple.

But I remember I was anxious when I married him because of the way our society is. I was worried about losing my individual identity to that of the couple. Or that I'd be pushed to his shadow -- "the little mrs." or something.

I got over it when I realized "Wait a minute here... WE decide how we want our relationship to be. Not other people." I also realized that the name of my internal newspaper is still "Astrophe" -- all the life events including marraige are the stories within. But the me I am is still the me I am and the name on the masthead!

If you do not want to be married right now, don't sweat it. If you do, go with it. Only you can answer if this is the right time, right reason, right person. Your reason(s) do NOT have to be the same as other people's and what makes is "right" is you deciding it is.

The right time/person for YOU.

GL!
A.

carol2208: I am looking into it - thanks for the tip!

indiblue: I wish we lived closer to each other! I think we'd be great friends! You've explained, like, exactly how I am!

I think one thing easy to overlook is: if I don't have a visa, I go home ASAP. My boyfriend and I both share this fear and want to make things more permanent. If the visa issue wasn't there, neither of us would be in a hurry because life is great just as it is.

Actually, I tend to fit in better with the Europeans than the Americans when it comes to marriage - I think couples "date" an average of 5 years here before they get married. My boyfriend's buddies are all in relationships - 10-15 years - they never got married! I'm actually quite shocked that he wants to marry at all, he is sort of going against the grain in Northern Europe!

The more I think about it (and thanks for the helpful comments), I am excited to continue spending my life with my boyfriend (with or with no certificate).

What really freaks me out are all of the terrible divorce stories. I am a bit of a hypochondriac in real life - I literally can no longer watch medical dramas on television because I fear I have everything (and the fear is legitimate at the time).

More generally stated, I have a fear of bad outcomes and failures. As indiblu said, I like to calculate everything. I will just always be a scaredy cat.