I must say that in today's world a civil marriage is still quite rare is a complete alternative to the traditional wedding. Much more people are living together a year and a half, and then still decide to sign. Civil marriage is for them - a kind of rehearsal, check for compatibility. And if it was successful, people will recognize that you have found a soul mate, are "unit of society."
Cohabitation can be considered good practice to check the viability of the future family. Very often couples divorce on the grounds that they did not get to live together. Financial planning, life - all this is real life, which has nothing to do with the airy feeling that can overwhelm people, but only so long as they do not collide with the conduct of a joint life.
But if you lived together for a long time, with a life all right, but the man still does not want to register the relationship, the most common reason for this is that he does not want to give up freedom because something else is looking for. When a woman does not think about the registration, the situation is usually different: either it is so trusted partner that does not need a formalization of the union, or vice versa, so much did not trust him, he did not want to sign.
Opponents of civil relations argue that the lack of registration humiliates a woman that a man has no respect for your partner, otherwise he would have married her. But such a statement has little to do with reality. As a general rule, if the relationship is serious, and one of the partners wants to legalize them, the second is always going forward. If a man does not want to marry categorically, that here we can talk about how important to him a woman.
Also, sometimes you can hear allegations that the informal living together - it's casual attitude to the institution of marriage. Although the reality is that those who are not in a hurry to marry, to be much more careful and balanced approach to this issue, especially if the people at least once were divorced. This is the stress that they do not want to experience again, so they prefer to live for a while without registration, to "check" the person to find exactly the person with whom you can formalize relations without the prospect of divorce.
Another reason for the hasty conclusion of marriage - the birth of children. But today it is not a barrier to civil relations, as children born out of wedlock are not considered in the modern world worse than others, "official".
Register relationship or not - to a much greater extent, this choice is determined by the limits of your psychological comfort. Someone brought up so that family for him is a fundamental value in life, and it's not just cohabitation, but a real alliance with the stamp in the passport. Another well and so they do not think about the registration, as necessary.