This Is What It Means To Decide You Want To Marry Someone, Because It Isn’t All Bouquets And Bachelorette Parties

The person you should marry should be a self-evident thing. You shouldn’t need a sign, a zodiac forecast or the opinion of 12 friends to determine it.

The first thing I learned when I was single and dating is that if someone wants to be with you, they will be. The second is that indecision is a decision. Everything that happens in the grey area is what we muddle to avoid the pain of rejection – and indecision is how we do the muddling.

Love has survived generations, wars, disapproving families, prior commitments… and couples still come out on the other end. Just ask most people you know: the most life-altering relationship of their lives probably came at an inopportune time. People have ended previous marriages, migrated across countries, put their dreams of backpacking through Sweden on hold all because they found someone who made it worth their time to stay in one place.

Because that’s what the right partner does to your whole life: they reorient what you think is possible, they realign your priorities. They make you stronger than you ever thought you could be. It is not a burden to assume you have to plant roots for this, it should feel like an honor.

Do you have to put a ring on someone’s finger and make vows in front of everyone you love to make a relationship legitimate? Nah. Of course not. But if there’s nothing in the world that you want more than to say to the world and each other than: “You are my family,” then you should do it.

The beauty of marriage will mostly elude you until you’ve agreed to it. You start to understand why people are so elated for you, why there is so much celebration. Not because it’s tradition and you need to oblige, but because being one of the founding partners at the head of a new, emerging family is one of the most profound and humbling and awe-inducing things that can happen to you, and until you’re with someone who makes you feel exactly that way, you shouldn’t do it.

Too many people marry the wrong people because their anxiety consumes them and they want to move their lives forward in a way that they think is affirming. That makes sense, but it never ends well.

Getting married means that you’ve found someone who is your best friend as much as they are your romantic partner – that’s what makes someone your soulmate.

This is the person you will take every vacation with, celebrate every holiday and birthday with, be sick with, share success with, spend day-in and day-out with – so they need to be someone who wants it as much as you do.

Because that’s the lynchpin of every relationship: the willingness to be in it. And then, the willingness to stay.