I have never believed in finding “the one.” It’s not that I don’t believe we have soulmates. I do. At least, I think I do. But I have never actually thought that one single person would be “the one” for me. I mean, think about those odds. It just seems a little too simple that everyone can find “the one” in their city. If there were really only one person for us, we’d be searching the globe. “The one” could be in Italy, Thailand, or South Africa. It seems too fortunate that I may find my one in Chicago, and someone else can find theirs in Seattle, or San Francisco, Boston, or Hoboken. It seems too great of a confluence of events that some greater power is working to put me and a future spouse in the same city at the same place at the same time. So I never really bought this whole concept of “the one.” I thought picking a “soulmate” was sort of like picking a college. You can be happy at/with any number of them.

But now that I’m with you, I’ve realized what makes you “the one.” It isn’t a magic confluence of events that allowed us to meet at some precise time. It isn’t coincidence. It didn’t come from searching the globe for each other, or finding each other on the streets of New York like Every Rom Com Ever led me to believe. It is choice. That is how you became “the one” for me. And ultimately, choice is something I trust, more than fate, and more than any supposed forces that make love happen in the world.

Choice is what brings you from someone I love to someone I choose to be with for a very long time. It is what makes you my “the one.” And it doesn’t mean fate brought us together. It doesn’t mean that we traveled through other loves and space and time and adversity to find each other. It doesn’t mean we were “meant to be.” It means we choose to be. And isn’t that better? Doesn’t it bring so much more to our relationship if we did not just “happen,” but we chose each other on purpose.

I choose you on purpose. I want to be with you on purpose. Every time we have to make decisions or we face challenges or we challenge each other, I choose to be with you. I choose to grow with you, to make you stronger, to allow you to make me stronger.

I do not want to leave love up to chance. And to me, finding “the one” always left it up to chance. But we didn’t wait for “the one” to come knocking on our door. You and I went looking for someone we loved, and we were lucky enough to find it. And we made the decision to evolve that love into something we chose to prioritize. Into something we would fight for. We both knew our love was what we wanted, and we weren’t scared to say so. (Or even if we were, the other person gave us the strength and courage to say so.)

And that is why I have no doubts with you. Because I don’t think our love was fateful. I think we chose it and chased it down, and that shows me that we want our love to succeed more than anything else. We yearn for each other’s love, even though we know we already have it. In short, we love each other so much that we chose each other, deliberately. And that is how I know you’re “the one” for me.