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So you didn't get engaged to this girl for her internet did you?

Nah, congratulations, I wish you all the best!

Congratulations, and um... if I might ask, exactly how long have you been seeing this girl?

cheers,

-avatar!

Congratulations!

Congratulation!

That was out of the blue. Nice work, friend! Marriage is NUTZ.

Ramza

Congratulations! ^_^

Just out of curiosity, is she from Colorado?  Utah?  Someplace else entirely?  I'm just wondering how this played out based on your previous musings of where to live.

Congrats dude!

Congratulations!  Lots of people I know getting engaged lately.  O_o  May everything work out even better than you can imagine! 

A bit belated, but an enthusiastic congratulations on finding your special someone. I feel I'll pretty much be a lifelong bachelor but I wonder about the other half from time to time. Let us know how it goes for ya.

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I'm not going to be awesome, but you should read this anyway for your own good.

Do NOT get married so fast.  It doesn't matter how much you think you love this girl or how much you think she loves you.  You two simply have not known each other long enough to make such a weighty decision.  You have no idea how serious a LEGAL and, more importantly, FINANCIAL, committment marriage is.

If you want to fool around and be in love, I'm all for that; go nuts, buddy.  But don't jeopardize your future so readily.  Give it time.  Hell, you can even be engaged if you want to be (though it's way too soon for that too, but it's easily reversible, so no worries).  Just don't rush marriage.  You can still be together and enjoy each other in every way that you could while married, but without the risk.  Take your time.

I'm enclined to agree with Xlord.

Have you guys moved in with each other yet, McCall?

NEVER get married without living together for awhile first.

Yes, I agree with XLord007 100 percent! In fact, even though it may appear as if we're being jerks, I feel that we would be bad friends if we didn't tell you to slow down!! Rushing into things, especially something like marriage is a horrible idea. Of course, I'm not in your shoes, but my honest suggestion is to postpone the marriage and date her (you can still be engaged if you'd like) for at least one more year.  She could move in with you, or you could move in with her, but jumping the gun on something like this can have serious life-long consequences.

We all wish you the best of course,

-avatar!

There are definitely gigantic risks in what the two of you are doing. I recently watched a friend of mine get married to a woman he only knew for a few months. Against my expectations, it seemed to work out (and she's pregnant) but in my experience, that's not the norm. Of course, it's also worth noting that the latter example was heavily religiously motivated.

If I were you, I'd wait at least a year before getting hitched. But of course, I'm not you and you have to do what you feel is right.

NEVER get married without living together for awhile first.

WORD.

I'm also engaged, but I'm taking my time with it. I don't need to get married (no one does), but, for me, this is a logical decision. We've decided to wait at least a year before doing anything about it (just in case).

I disagree with the notion of living together before marriage. If a man and woman are married, then that means they've made the commitment to stick together. Cohabitation would not have negative effects on people that understand commitment. In fact, it annoys me when couples live together that aren't married. I have no understanding of such situations. I think that many people fear commitment, yet have no fear of activities that may force commitment.

My grandparents only knew each other for three weeks before they got married. Since they got married on April 1st, everyone thought it was an elaborate practical joke. Heck if I know what they were thinking, but I guess it worked out all right.

That said, I still think it's a lousy model to follow. See, when a man and a woman like each other very much, there are these chemicals in their brains that distort judgment and perception. This can lead to making bad (or at least poorly thought-through) decisions. Said chemicals start to wear off after several months, so it's best not to make any irrevocable decisions before that.

I wouldn't even consider marrying a woman without having known her for at least a year unless there was something forcing my hand (e.g., visa issues), and even then, I'd be very, very careful about it. If there's no urgent reason you have to get married right away, why rush? You can always get married later, but once you've taken that step, there's no taking it back.

Also, you should never let a girl stay in your home for an extended period of time until she's gotten over her compulsion to spend every waking moment in direct physical contact with you. Yeah, you'd think it would be nice to have a pretty girl come over and sit in your lap for no particular reason, and it is, but it starts to wear a bit thin when she does it fifteen times a day.

Wanderer:
If they got married only recently, then it hasn't worked out yet.

Jodo:
Congratulations! I have to admit that I'm very curious about her, since you're just about the strangest person I (kind of) know.

Annoys you, yet you don't understand it?

I guess we fear what we don't understand sometimes and that might lead to frustration.

Or maybe sometimes we don't fear certain things because we haven't truly grasped the severity of the situation. Like a child who wants to hug a tiger.

You claim to understand commitment without knowing what it is like to live each and every day with a partner? I just can't get that child hugging a tiger image out of my head. Good luck with that.

Marriage can be a big deal or not. If it's a big deal to you, if you truly value that commitment (there's that word again), then you won't go into it without having all of the information and given time for your true selves to be revealed to each other. You won't need to rush into it. You could be lucky - you could be 100% suited to someone for ever. But you can't know that early on (some might say you can't ever really know that). You also don't need to know that early on. There are so many fantastic stages in relationships to enjoy. So much to find out! It's exciting times.

If you're not that lucky you'll find one of two things happen: 1)Turns out commitment wasn't as important as being happy and you make the break 2)You stick to your guns and live the rest of your life in a loveless marriage. We know the figures for 1 are very high. The figures for 2 are harder to measure but I'll guess they aren't that low.

But I hope you're one of the lucky ones.

If you do find someone who is truly perfect for you, spend the time to get to know them, be with them, let the dust settle and, importantly, let them know you and everything is still great, then a huge 'good luck' to you from me because you're on a great journey! Marriage (in both it's traditional form and all the other varieties and offshoots) is a great union and two people becoming a team and a new family unit is a wonderful thing. So good luck, McCall! Sounds like things are going really well and I hope everything works out brilliantly.

Funny story: I worked a couple summers at a production plant and I knew this guy named Billy. At the start of the summer, Billy was a bachelor without a girlfriend. By the end of the summer, Billy had met a girlfriend over the internet, met her in real life (it was local), dated for about two weeks, fell in love and MARRIED her, and divorced her within a month over a silly issue involving her kids. When I came there the next summer, he had filed bankruptcy because of the money involved (including various lawyer fees and IIRC, her "share" of everything). Nice guy and all, easy to work with, but he always got himself into the worst situations. Mind you, that's an extreme case (and I believe you're a lot more intelligent than that idiot), but I use it as my own personal model as far as taking things slowly and not jumping the gun.

And no, I'm not making that up. I only wish I were...

Best of luck if things work out though.

Hey Goldfish, I wouldn't call that funny at all! Poor guy. Also, I think it's important for Conn to realize that if he has any kids, for whatever reason (accidental or not), he's going to be paying alimony if the marriage doesn't work out. Every month, until the child turns 18, Conn will have to send a check, even if the x-wife marries a millionaire and Conn is utterly broke, he will still have to pay (unless he runs away and lives in Mexico, and people do actually leave the country so that they can avoid paying alimony)! Anyway, I hope people heed these cautionary tales, and of course good night, and good luck.

-avatar!

On the flip side - maybe she's rich? And old?

If so, it could turn out to be very good indeed. If a little gross. Unless you're into that sort of thing.

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That's more than likely very true. You have to do what's right for you based on your situation and experiences and I very much hope everything goes really well for you. Good luck with it all!

Alimony and child support are not the same.  What you are describing above is child support.  Alimony has more to do with helping a former spouse with less means retain a standard of living close to what he/she experienced in the marriage.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alimony <-- more hilarious than I expected, but you can get the drift

Honestly, if you're not mature enough to make these decisions for yourselves, you really shouldn't be getting married yet.  Follow your own beliefs.

I understand that you are risking your future.  Isn't that enough?  Of course, it's your future to risk; I know people need to make their own mistakes so that they can learn, but I've seen this go bad so many times.  What I'm arguing here is that by taking your time, you will give up so little and gain so much.

Ah, if I had a dime for every time I heard that...

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Ahaha.. some of the replies here are amusing.

I'm happy to hear all this, McCall. It's so difficult to find someone : ) Best of luck.

Well, she's poor and a weirdo. I don't know why she's so attracted to me and she doesn't know why either, but she has commented that she's never met someone like me and won't let go. This, of course, got the better of my curiosity. I have a mystery to solve. I tried to dissuade her, but she maintained an interest. Normally, women have no interest in me, since they lack the patience necessary to figure me out. If one does show an interest, then that violates the norm and I must take precautions; an effort must be carried out to determine truth. Logic would dictate that she's interested in me because I could bring her to the U.S., which would allow her to escape poverty. But I've already approached her with that concern and I was wrong. She appears genuine, so until I discover something wrong, I'm going to stay committed.

  I actually enjoy living alone, so the heaviest question on my mind is, "Do I really want another person here?"

  It's possible my decision to commit was rash, but the one year buffer should produce cleaner thoughts.

  Oh, I've known her since June of 2006. She lives in the Philippines. After dealing with local women for several years, I decided to look elsewhere. Since I was studying Korean, I decided to talk to Korean women. Boring. Very boring. The language itself is more interesting than the women. So I decided my limit was the Earth, any country, anywhere.
(My Dad spent several months in South Korea and told me they were a bunch of robots, which didn't surprise me.)

The image produced by your imagination is warranted. I know what I'm dealing with, thus I am being very careful and asking a lot of questions. I have yet to trip her up. This type of relationship fits my personality, since there is a lot to figure out. I don't know whether that's good or bad.

If it's working for you then I'd say it's probably good.

The great thing about life is that, when things are right, they're right. And if things go very wrong at some point, that doesn't nullify the times when things were right. So you can enjoy it when you have it.

I guess that's why, for all the advice, warnings, well-wishing and whatnot, each of us just have to do what is right for us at any given moment. That's all we can do. I can't ever say I know McCall's situation. I can't ever say I know yours.

So good luck to us all!

Out of curiosity, what happens when you figure everything out?  Are there enough other reasons for you to stay in the relationship once you become able to predict her behavior and the intellectual challenge is gone?

I haven't considered the possibility of a resolution. The fact that she's a woman is enough to keep me guessing, since they have their own agenda. But she's also foreign, so the combination of being a woman and foreign is quite a thing. She might occupy the majority of my time; it is a concern. Of course, reality and my brain's perception of reality are two different things.

Can you ever really figure everything out? We grow. We're in a constant state of change. By the time you have her figured out, she'll have changed and there will be much more to find out.

Jodo, you are a fascinating individual. I'll give you that.