As God is my witness, I don't understand how you can be with the woman you want to spend your life with for five whole years and not be married to her. Where do you find the restraint? I knew I was going to marry my wife the day I met her. It took me three months to convince her (fool her) that I was worth it, and then another six months before the priest would let us marry. Most of my married children knew their spouses for about a year before they married. I had one son who dated his girl for three years before proposing. I said to my wife that I didn't really think he wanted to marry her or he'd have proposed two years ago. Darned if they didn't break up right after sending out the invitations. He eventually went on to marry a girl he knew five months before proposing.
Everybody's different, but good gravy, you've got some willpower, son.
So a lot of discussion about whether it made sense for people from different cultures and nationalities and languages to be together (she's Polish), but finally decided that we didn't care about that -- quite frankly we have the same conservative views, are strongly Catholic and fiscally responsible. So the compatibility won over the other objections.
Women will pretend to be EXACTLY what you were looking for until payday. Then they'll take your money and live the “cougar” lifestyle. I see it ALL THE TIME and every guy they used thought the woman was incredible. Many of these fools were getting married within 6-12 months.
Maybe they don't all start out with that intention but our courts enable the temptation to “grab and run” when things get a little hard. There is too much incentive for a woman to dissolve her marriage.
I probably would never get married unless I know for a fact the woman is much wealthier than I am or she shows complete devotion to me for maybe 10 years without a single incident. Living together before that is also a no-no because it can qualify as a common law marriage.