I don't know if this is going to be really obvious and/or boring for everyone else, but I was just in the shower and thinking about an interesting cultural difference between - I don't know if it's Western vs. Eastern Europe or Germany vs Eastern Europe - me/my culture vs. the ideas that my Polish and Russian-speaking friends have about marriage.
I remember that Saturday night I said something about my "in-laws". I have no idea what it was, but one of the Ukrainians stopped me, looked at my fingers and was like
"Wait, you're married?!"
"um, no. Ok, 'my boyfriend's parents', but first of all that's really long and secondly I lived with them and I talk to them more than to my own parents, they're not just some guys parents. Besides, I don't even know if I want to get married. I want kids and my hero isn't into the idea of children out of wedlock, so I guess we're getting married eventually."
Which earned me a lot of weird looks.
But here's the thing: Marriage has a very different value and status where I come from and where they come from.
It becomes obvious already when you have a look into these woman/housewife-magazines, especially in the advice columns. In the Polish ones it's all "my husband this" "You and your husband that", "7 ways to rescue your marriage" etc. in the German ones you get the occasional husband, but it's usually "partner" and "relationship" not marriage.. Having children out of wedlock isn't considered weird or inappropriate. I actually think I read a statistic somewhere, where the average age where women in Germany have their first child is lower than the average age at which we first get married. Which I know doesn't necessarily mean people have kids before getting married, but it could.
If you're very interested in the statisics, here's Germany, Poland and UA. (Interesting fact: UA has the biggest difference in life expectancy between men and women in Europe, mainly because of alcoholism *sigh*)
Anyway, in Germany, as far as I can see it, it's pretty common to refer to the parents of your long-ish term SO as "in-laws" (or what would be the German word for it anyway). No one ever assumes I'm married when I do that, or maybe they do or don't, but it doesn't really make a difference either way. Because, after all, I've known my in-laws/boyfriend's parents longer,know them better and are closer to them, than some married people (are to) their spouse's parents.
We're invited to three weddings this year, two are my boyfriend's friends and one is my friend/ex-roommate/"sister" from Ukraine. They're all the same age as we and it's not considered early, which it definitely would where I'm from. NONE of my friends from highschool has gotten married or even engaged so far, and getting married before 25 would definitely be considered very early. We have friends here (not very close) that got married at 21/22, which I would consider extreme (I'm not judging, it is just extremely young considering the average is above 30 for both sexes in Germany).
I also remember that when I first lived in Poland six years ago, I had a friend, also from Germany, who worked in place for disabled people and who was very popular among the women who worked there. They constantly told him to get a Polish girlfriend. When he would say that he already had a girlfriend, they always told him "But you're not married/engaged! It doesn't count!" and it's not only them. I've encountered that mindset quite often over here. I don't get it AT ALL. Why would a relationship be worth less just because you didn't sign a paper? It could very well last longer and people can be more committed than some people are in a marriage.
I know that noticing cultural differences isn't actually inventing the wheel and we all know they exist, but what's probably surprising me so much is that... there are such big differences between countries right next to each other from the same general culture.
The end.
PS: I do want to have a wedding. Celebrating that we love each other, that we're committed to each other and want to be/are each other's closest family is a very good, if not the best reason to throw a huge party. Marriage makes a lot of things easier, but I realise it's not everyone's goal and I just don't think it makes a relationship more valid or important.
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Dziubka started a blog post Marriage / Cultural DifferencesMarriage / Cultural Differences
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My friends are actually doing pretty well for the circumstances - they all have steady jobs, higher than average salaries, quite a few of them own their flats, so they're settled relatively comfortably. (It's worth noting that this is the situation now in our 30s, when we were in our 20s the money situation was somewhat different for a lot of us, so your point makes a lot of sense in that way.)
I'm inclined to believe it also has a lot to do with 'windows' of when people get married. A big batch of people get married off in their mid 20s straight after uni. The rest had different priorities at the time or simply different circumstances. I too was in a committed relationship all throughout my 20s, but neither I or the relationship were mature enough for us to get married and/or have kids. We broke it off when I was 27, after 8 years of dating. By chance I met my current SO soon after and it turned out to be serious. But a lot of my friends with similar stories didn't. So for single-ish women in their 30 dating options are scarce until there's a divorce wave among those of our generation who got married/settled down in their 20s - which should be in a few years, by my estimate. As most women I know don't want to have children if they're not in a committed relationship (at least), this influences their child bearing choices as well.
I'm going off on a tangent here a bit. But I think this may also be one of the reasons for this phenomenon. Maybe in a progressive society you don't get a big surge of people marrying off straight after school so the ones who don't do it then are left with much more limited options that usually take them longer to get there. Maybe it happens more gradually. I feel like in our mostly traditionalist society there's more of a pressure to get married/have kids by a certain age, so a big number of people is programmed to do it when it's 'proper' while the rest of us are left to resist it for maybe longer than we'd necessarily choose to.