Why I’m Getting Married When I Could Do Anything Else
Imagine that you’ve just received the contract for your dream job at your dream company, doing exactly what you love. Eagerly, you skim the most pertinent details and realise that the contract period is set at 50 years.
But you love this job! Don’t you? It’s only natural that you’d agree, upfront, to do what you love for the rest of your life.
If that scenario sounds absurd to you, I invite you to consider the most improbable scenario of them all: The Institution of Marriage.
Marriage is the only promise in life that demands a contractual period of forever. A notion that I’ve always seen as fairly disconcerting.
What about a two-year, four-year, or even a 10-year contract with the option to renew? If couples could choose terms that resonated with them, maybe marriage would boast a better success rate than 50 per cent.
Yet, having said that, here I am. I’m engaged to the love of my life and looking forward to singing the eternal contract.
I used to think that marriage was an undesirable commitment. Relationships run their course, and most courses don’t span a lifetime.
People change and then they move on. Or they become bored with their lover, as I am wont to do.
I never foresaw meeting someone whom I’d want to spend the rest of my life with. But I did, and now I am. I am happy to get married.
Marriage is not going to make sense for everybody. It only recently started making sense to me.
But in the interest of reminding my future self why I chose this path instead of any other, here are four specific reasons why I am planning to get married:
My Relationship is My Greatest Achievement to Date
If I could list my current relationship on an updated version of my resume, I would. It’s helped me develop indispensable communication skills, and seen me lead initiatives and collaborate effectively.
I could write a book about all the ways that I’ve evolved during this relationship, but instead, some salient points:
- I can act and reflect on my actions in stressful situations. For example, once, I had to engage in a very confusing but enlightening argument about angels in the middle of Washington D.C.
- I am a dedicated team player. I’ve had a disdain for group work since I was born. I prefer to do almost everything on own whether the results are good or bad. Now, I’ve learned to accept help both personally and professionally. Sometimes, I even ask for it.
- I turn failures into successes and tragedies into silver-linings. I’ve found the courage to fail. I accept situations for what they are instead of focusing too much on what they could be. Instead of whining about living in a different time zone, I view our distance as the sixth love language. When we are apart we get to engage in focused communication. There’s an incentive to say exactly what we feel because time and space allows for more reflection and intentionality with words.
- I am learning the skills of non-violent communication: I know when to say, “I disagree, but I commit.” Even if I don’t say it in those words. Even if I forgo saying it aloud.
I’m aware that it’s a bold statement to say that my relationship has been my greatest success to date.
Yet, I’m not asserting that my life is complete because of my relationship. And my relationship has not made me whole.
Four years ago, moving to a new country was my greatest achievement up until that point. It taught me lessons about myself that I could not have learned in any other way and set me up for momentous growth.
In this stage of my life, my relationship has been the major catalyst for growth and improvement.
It has taught me lessons that I might have still learned otherwise. But who knows if I would have had quite as much fun?
We Get to Date Many Different People
My marriage will be monogamous, but my husband won’t remain the same.
I’m choosing to marry one man but I’ll get to meet many versions of him throughout our lives. How exciting that I’ve found a passionate friendship. A safe place to change and evolve. How exciting that I get to try and impress different versions of the same person for the next 50 years.
I have been many people in my short life, and so has my partner. One day I’ll inhabit the postpartum version of my body, and he might decide to do something as extreme as giving birth to a child.
Whoever we become and whatever we choose to do, if our core values remain the same, we’ll show up for each other.
My Love is Sufficient
Perfect, unconditional love can seem scary to most people because we live by the rules of a material world.
In such a realm, there are only so many cheap flights to Cancun. If we try to order our favourite meal at our favourite restaurant only to find that they’ve already sold out of it.
The material world has finite possibilities. But nature renews and replenishes itself in the service of others.
As humans, we belong to the natural world — a cycle that favours abundance.
I no longer see relationships in terms of scarcity. Love runs its course, but that does not have to mean that people grow apart. It doesn’t mean that passion has to fade.
When we argue in favour of our limitations, we feel an impulse to be withholding, because we believe that there isn’t enough love.
There’s never enough time, enough love, enough passion or enough feelings. We see love and compassion as finite resources and believe that if we don’t reserve the lion’s share for ourselves, we’ll end up at a loss.
But I am convinced that my love is abundant. I can love myself unconditionally while fiercely loving my partner.
I believe that if we allow love to flow freely, long-term commitment can be the structure that gives it form.
My Life Vision is Built Around Intimate Partnership
Those who know me very well will describe me as being independent. Those who have only observed me from afar might say that I’m standoffish.
I am not a pack animal. There are very few things more valuable to me than solitude. So choosing to be interdependent with someone else is not a decision I take lightly.
I love telling my partner that he improves upon my solitude. I don’t know if he recognises the weight of that statement, but its one that weighs a tonne. His presence makes such a positive impact on my wellbeing that when I envision my ideal life, our partnership is at the centre of it.
It’s not that my partner and I want all the same things, or even that we’re very much alike. Sure, we have shared aspirations and desires, but at night when we close our eyes to sleep, we dream on our own.
In our partnership, it’s like we’re on the same road. We have the same roadmap, and we’re travelling to the same destination. But we’re each in the driver’s seat of separate cars, driving in separate lanes at our own pace. If one of us needs to stop for gas, the other can use the opportunity to buy snacks at the petrol station. If one person gets a flat tire, the other will pull over too, to give a helping hand.
We are each other’s complement. I add something special and unique to his life, and he adds something special and unique to mine. And neither of us could have generated that little bit of specialness on our own, no matter how hard we tried.
Conclusion
Marriage may not be right for you, and it wasn’t always right for me.
Marriage demands that humans make a commitment upfront to love one person forever. But most of the time, we can’t even decide what to order for dinner, or what show to watch on Netflix.
The human brain is hard-wired for novelty and adventure. And at first glance marriage seems to be the antithesis of novelty.
But what if marriage is quite a valid and dependable source of newness, excitement and unfamiliarity? One wherein the simple pleasure of growing and changing with your best friend, lover and life partner becomes increasingly thrilling the more you get to do it.
Marriage can be many things to many different people. But I am predicting that for me it will be a safe and liberating space created by two delightfully flawed, yet complementary personalities. A place where change and challenges are always expected and openly embraced.
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