Nice philosophical expressions here, but I'll give you two, short takes. My wife and I happily lived together before marriage, and discovered that there are a

Nice philosophical expressions here, but I'll give you two, short takes. My wife and I happily lived together before marriage, and discovered that there are a number of legal advantages to just getting a civil marriage that are doable with a bunch of paperwork, but largely untested in court. I won't go into the details, but it particularly convoluted if you want to have children. The legal issues are an exercise left to the reader. Hint: They all hinge on whether you want your significant other at the helm if something bad happens to you, or your family. If your answer there is "my family" you have other issues to think about. I was born and raised on a family that went to church. As was my wife. I grew up with a bunch of doubts that only increased. Same with my wife. We are atheists now, and have been for some time. We raised our kids as atheists. We don't feel any shame in that, even though some people think we should. My kids are completely comfortable in that as young adults. We talked about it regularly as they grew up, we didn't want to be quite about it. There, I just talked about it. And not for the first time. And likely not for the last.