Dear Prudence,
My girlfriend’s family doesn’t get along in general on either side, and both autism and serious OCD run on both sides, and there’s a lot of conflict. Maybe as part of this, very few people in her family on either side form long-term romantic attachments or get married. Even fewer have kids. This extends up to many of her uncles and aunts (now in their 50s) and her great uncles and great aunts (aged in 70s through 90s!) who remained single for life on both sides. (It doesn’t seem like it is in a closeted way either, although obviously I can’t know for sure.) She has no cousins: Her parents were the only people from their respective nuclear families to have kids.
My extended family is more average around connection: Everyone talks to each other, and most people form romantic connections and marry. Many people have kids. I’m absolutely not pushing my girlfriend for marriage besides stating that it’s a long-term goal of mine, one she’s said she also wants. But after going to my brother’s wedding this winter and meeting my family, she complains they’re “obsessed with marriage.” She’s asked me multiple times why “everyone” in my family marries. I see marriage as a way to mark a very serious long-term commitment with tax benefits and legal protections, one that is extra special because it wasn’t always available to us as lesbians. I also believe in divorce but I hope not to need it.
How do I respond to her when she makes these complaints? I don’t bring up marriage, it’s way too soon. And no one else in my family is either, I’ve asked around to see if there’s pressure somewhere. I think our families just look different, so “obsessed” is just “90 percent of people over 30 are married and a couple cousins are divorced.” She complains about this a lot, so it means something.
—I’m Missing Something