Luke warm

So...I just read some articles from USA Today that talked about how people more and more date indefinitely, either never getting married or marrying after several years of courtship.

Now I may not be ready for marriage, but I have to say that I think I have instinctively always known that cohabitation is not for me. Nevermind my thoughts on it overall (bad idea), but I just know that would drive me crazy. To me the idea of moving in together without being married does not seem like this grand, romantic adventure, like moving into the dorms for the first time, or spending a year in Italy, or even, I don't know, dating?

Yes I have a desire to get married and to live with my husband, but for me it's not one or the other.

Is anyone else with me on this? Moral opinions of the whole idea aside, does anyone else feel just downright bored at the idea of living with your significant other, without having a ring on your finger?

You know how you go to the doctor, and you sit in the waiting room, and you fill out the paperwork, and you pick up the most interesting magazine in the pile (usually not much better than an issue of Parents), move on down the pile until you're so bored and are finally left reading Golf Digest? And then they call your name. And you get excited! But they take you to another room where you must continue to wait.

Jerry Seinfeld has an old stand-up routine and describes this as something along the lines of: now you're in the smaller waiting room, and you don't have your magazine.

Point being, anti-climactic, yes? You still have no guarantee of when you'll see the doctor exactly, how the appointment will go, if he or she will have an effective prescription for you, etc. Yet you continue to hang out with the blood pressure cuff, with only a vague word from the nurse about when the doctor will "be right with you" to guide you in your patience.

I once sat in a doctor's office (the little room, not the big waiting room) for almost an hour, and I was so happy to have The New York Times with me, but it wasn't a thrilling hour of my life.

For me this is how I view cohabitation. Now this is not to imply that I have fairy tale ideas of engagement and marriage, either. Absolutely not. No riding off in the sunset, we're-married-now-so-nothing-will-ever-go-wrong-and-we-will-never-fight delusions in my head. But I guess I feel that cohabiting is like riding off into the sunset and then getting lost in the desert. No sign of a watering hole, no saloon to grab a bite and a brewski to refresh yourselves; just very unclear, or no, direction. I have to ask myself, "What's next? Are we ever going to get off this horse and agree that we're in this for the long haul?"

Believe me, it is a big time fear for this realist mind of mine that I will never have that "I just knew he was the one" feeling, and an even bigger fear the possibility of my marriage ending because we get tired of each other. So I guess that when someone puts a ring on my hand, I want to know that he's willing (and I'm willing) to embark on the cohabitation adventure together, without some "unless you snore too loudly" clause in the agreement. Again, I am not ready for marriage, but it just seems less than courageous to cohabit without marrying first. Is that too harsh a judgment? Maybe, but I'm not sure I really care, and I'm not cohabiting or married, so I think I'm safe to give my opinion.

I should probably go to bed now before I offend any more people, and before I make Mike crazy over my public relationship musings. ;)