Uthe, an entrepreneur, said the risk of divorce made her worried about the future of her business.
I met Eric on Bumble more than six years ago after I moved to Salt Lake City from the Midwest. It took us about a year to officially get together; we were both dating around for a while.
Eric, who's 13 years older than me, proposed a few months into our dating, which completely took me by surprise. He'd gone through a difficult divorce, both financially and emotionally, and told me he was very hesitant about ever marrying again. He said I was the only one he was willing to take that risk for. I said yes.
A few years later, we ended our engagement -- but we're still together. While we both respect marriage, we ultimately decided it wasn't for us. The risk of divorce was legally and financially too much. Even though we get jokes and questions sometimes, we're happy just being together without the paperwork.
We have an age-gap relationship, and we each had fully independent careers and accomplishments before we started dating.
I've always been about business, and I feel like I was put on this earth to build things. I own three companies, including a PR firm I founded. I've worked so hard and been so careful to get where I am as an entrepreneur. Eric, meanwhile, is a financial speaker and instructor who's traveled all over the world.
Beyond the emotional benefits of getting married, we didn't see any clear upsides from a business perspective because we're both self-employed. While marriage comes with some tax benefits and can protect assets for some people if they separate, divorce can also get very complicated when you own your own businesses like we do.
Disentangling our lives, if it ever came to that, would be costly and energy-draining.
While we wanted to merge our worlds, what was most important to us was safeguarding what we'd each built and keeping it secure on both sides.
After talking it over, we decided to end our engagement and keep our finances 100% separate while still remaining together.
We're pretty nontraditional; even if we were to get married, we'd do something casual like a Las Vegas ceremony. Eric, who was raised in Utah, got married around 20 because it was the norm. Now that we're older, he and I are more concerned with doing what feels right for us.
In the time we've been together, we've seen multiple close friends navigate divorce. It's made us firmer in our decision to stay together without marriage; we don't believe in pushing ourselves toward something we don't want.
We tell people we're like Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell, who've been together for more than 40 years but never married. Their reasons for not marrying are just like ours: They never want to deal with an ugly divorce.
Introducing each other always feels tricky. "Fiancée" isn't accurate, but "girlfriend" doesn't cut it, either.
Eric had two sons in his previous marriage; one of them has lived with him full time. I helped parent him and act as his stepmother, even though I'm legally not. He even calls me his stepmom. I feel like I've earned more of a title than "girlfriend," but I also know it's just a word.
Our connection feels stronger than a piece of paper. We wake up each day and choose each other not out of obligation but because we genuinely want to.