Someone Asks Men Why They Don't Want To Get Married, Gets 30 Honest Answers

To learn more about why tying the knot might not be for everyone, we reached out to marriage therapist and creator of Save the Marriage, Dr. Lee Baucom. According to Dr. Baucom, sometimes marriage is not right for an individual, but it also might just not be the right time or the right partner for them.

“Here are some pretty good reasons for not marrying right now: You are only doing it because it seems to be the ‘next step’ in a relationship.  Not for love, or because you are ready to commit. But because it seems like the time,” the expert shared. 

Another reason may be because “you are hoping that your future spouse is going to make you happy. Not their job, not their capacity," Dr. Baucom says.

Dr. Baucom also noted that it’s not wise to marry if you feel pressured into it by that person, family, friends, faith, or some other external reason. “Those ‘pushes’ won’t last past the wedding. They are usually replaced by resentment,” he explained.

And if you’re not ready to commit, don’t jump into a marriage. “It just isn’t fair to another person to step into a lifelong commitment when you aren’t fully ready, for whatever reason,” Dr. Baucom added.

We also asked Dr. Baucom if some couples might be better off simply staying together but never actually getting married. “There are some psychological shifts that just can’t happen when you are living together,” he noted. “But some don’t want to really step into that. If a couple is happy with the level of commitment and the boundaries of living together, they certainly should not step into a further commitment of marriage.”

“The real issue and conflict is when one wants to move toward marriage and the other does not,” Dr. Baucom says. “The friction that comes from that often destabilizes the relationship. The solution, though, isn’t marriage, but finding out why they feel differently about the future path of their marriage. Getting married should be two enthusiastic ‘Yes’ votes. If they aren’t both at ‘Yes,’ then it is a ‘No, not at this time.’”

We were also curious if men tend to be more reluctant to get married than women. “I think there is still a stronger cultural pressure on women to see a wedding and marriage as their future,” Dr. Baucom shared. “Familial and cultural expectations for women are about the wedding and life as a married couple. Men don’t have quite the same pressures (not to say they are absent — just less pronounced). We are in something of a historic transition, though, where people are waiting longer and longer to get married. Or they simply don’t see it as their future.”

But if marriage is something that you and your partner are ready for, you shouldn’t be afraid of it. “Divorce rates are slightly lower than they once were,” Dr. Baucom noted. “This is partly because people are taking the commitment seriously. So, they wait on marriage longer.”

“Others have changed their expectations of marriage, creating new rules and roles within marriage. This is partly due to the fact that many now in the midst of marriage grew up watching the old expectations and the new possibilities of leaving a marriage without shame, lead to broken marriages,” the expert says. “They watched their parents and friends’ parents go through painful marriages. And in their attempts to avoid that pain, they either avoid marriage or take it more seriously and thoughtfully.”

“I believe the next decade will reveal a shift toward how people go into marriage, and what they do when they hit the inevitable tough points of marriage,” the expert added.

If you’d like to hear more wise words from Dr. Lee Baucom about marriage in general or your own relationship, be sure to check out Save the Marriage!