The Hmong OGs are right...so quit trying to pass off -

[Believe_N_Me]

- these situationships as something blissfully equal to a traditional couple who are still in their first marriage.

There is a reason why the older you get, the more marriages you've been in, and the more long-term boyfriend/girlfriend situationships you've had will result in higher divorce/breakup rates and the likelihood of permanent singledom.

Two people living together and playing house is actually very toxic but it might work for some people because it's purely a convenient transaction.

There is a point in life when you're too old, have had too much experience, carry too much emotional and physical baggage, and you can't be bothered to go through the dating process. Therefore, you start to accept whoever is available and decent, that is willing to have a convenient transactional situationship with you.

Why parade these situationships as a model for the young people to aspire to? I'll say it again, couples like Kurt and Goldie are in a situationship. It only works for them because they've given up. I don't even blame them.

Goldie had two kids. What were the chances that she's going to find a great catch who wanted to marry that? A lot of blended marriages end in divorce. Why would Goldie want to go through that again with children in tow?

Kurt didn't want to father children and he didn't want legal marriage again.

But they still both wanted companionship and some benefits of a married life. This was the better option for them, but it's not anything to look up to. It's a good solution for older, broken people who know the traditional route is no longer accessible to them.

[Believe_N_Me]

I noticed that when a married couple stays together for a long time, nobody is going to judge their relationship even if it was mostly toxic. The point is that they have security. They have a life together. They will be taken care of, especially when it comes to their funerals.

This is mainly why Hmong wives stay with their reckless husbands after a certain age and a certain number of children.

It doesn't work in their favor to try to start over again.

Unless the husband was so severely abusive that it was a hazard to her life, it really doesn't go well for her if she drops his clan.

There are many older divorcees who threw away their marriage because their husband was flirtatious or made some financial blunders. Unfortunately, the men available to them in their dating pool aren't much better than the ex-husband. In fact, it might be a little worse because they have their own baggage. Sometimes that baggage is worse than what the ex-husband carried. You have to remember that these are older men have accumulated a lot of history like, exes, money problems, addictions, bad habits, etc. At least with the ex-husband, if you were each other's first then he didn't have a trail of trauma that left him broken for you to pick up the pieces. Also, no debt or child support.

Thus why Hmong women end up staying with the husband because after a certain age, it's all transactional anyways. Nobody cares. Otherwise, you could end up like the divorcees who thought life was going to be better only to end up as a second wife or cheating with a married man. Now you're trying to steal another woman's husband when you should've just stayed with your own.

OR

This story scared the bejesus out of me.

A married Hmong woman abandoned her husband and two young children to run off with a Mev. After some time, that Mev didn't want her so then she found herself in one loveless situationship after another. A situationship is when people play house and the man won't put a real label on it. Anyways, in her final situationship she moved to Oregon with a divorced guy. She didn't know anybody there nor did she have any family. That guy moved there because he had friends doing marijuana farms. Well, as situationship goes, the man is never fully committed so he went as he pleased. It happened that he went to Laos with friends for a month and obviously never checked in. During that time, the woman died and her rotting corpse alerted the neighbors. By the time the cops came into the apartment, she had partly melted into the carpet. It was a dreadful sight to behold.

Now because they weren't married, the dude didn't feel it was his responsibility to arrange her funeral. Her clan didn't want to do it either because she had been estranged from them ever since she abandoned her marriage. They actually didn't know her whereabouts.

In the end, the dude gave her a very cheap funeral and then left Oregon.

According to her daughter, who was grown by then, she kept haunting her two grown children because she was looking for food. 

[Believe_N_Me]

Another similar story.

A guy who abandoned his marriage found himself in one situationship after another. After decades of wandering around aimlessly, he finally fled to Florida with a younger divorcee who couldn't have children. While living in Florida, the divorcee got cancer and died. This dude also didn't feel that it was his responsibility to do the funeral but her parents demanded that he arrange it. The divorcee had life insurance so he took some of that to do a very quick and cheap funeral so that her parents could pay their respects. She listed her mom as the beneficiary so the dude didn't get any of the money. After the funeral he left the state of Florida and became a long-haul truck driver. 

[Believe_N_Me]

The point of these stories and this thread is that sometimes people don't have good options. Some people find themselves in a circumstance that they didn't create, but some are there because of their own poor choices and carelessness. Nonetheless, they get into situationships that fit their stage in life BUT we shouldn't use their situationship as a model NOR even praise it. I don't know why people like theking argue for it like he's going to win a prize or something. 

I sure as heck wouldn't tell my children to follow these paths.

In the first story, at least the woman had children and they'll make the effort to visit her gravesite in Oregon. But the last lady didn't have any children and that guy abandoned her in Florida. She'll just be forgotten.

[Dok_Champa]

I don't believe in relationship like Golden Hawn and Kurt Russel, claiming to be married w/out the marriage license or "it's just a piece of paper."

 If you are married in every other way, why not get the piece of paper? It should be pretty easy to get right... so why not get it? Ladies, do not fall into a guy's lies when he said "it's just a piece of paper." but look when he finds the lady he wants to claim as his own, he will make it legit, find a way to make it legit, whatever it takes to make it legit and leave you behind.  That's the truth. 

When you are the one for him, he will want to claim you, make it legit and if he's not doing that, he has a reason and that reason is you're not the one for him.  Yeah, he enjoys the free milk until she comes along and in the meantime will play mind games with you,"its just a piece of paper.."

Yeah right.

[Believe_N_Me]

I don't believe in those situationships either. Goldie is just a very broken woman who has given up. She may believe that this is the best she can get from a man.

I don't know if any of you go read entries on FB Anonymous, but there are so many women writing in who allowed their boyfriend to move in with them. They dated for 10-15-20 years. Some of them even have children with these men. Anyways, none of them are happy. There was a recent entry where the boyfriend kept saying that he wasn't ready for marriage and didn't want to have a baby. The girlfriend decided to stop taking the pill and the moment she did that, he started wearing a condom. Needless to say, they were arguing frequently and finally broke up. During the first week of the breakup, he hooked up with a younger woman. About a month later, that woman was pregnant and her parents demanded that he marry her.

Guess what? Yep. Dude is going to marry that girl. However, he went back to the old gf and said that he would still see her, too. She basically wanted the readers to tell her it's okay if she can't give him up.