September 19, 2013

To Marry or Not To Marry

Everyone around me seems to be getting married or engaged; I’m just getting more awesome! No, I really am.
I found out the other day that someone that knows someone that knows someone that I know got married after 5 months of dating. That is good for them but I was sceptical. Do you really know someone well enough to want to spend the rest of your life with them after just five months? In my opinion that’s the honeymoon period, the period where you blog about this man saying he’s perfect; you’re seeing them through rose tinted glasses *ahem, coughs* 10 Signs That I Like You *coughs* so it’s really hard to tell if you can live with this person for the rest of your life or if you’re just infatuated. Is it possible to be in love after five months or is that infatuation?

I have fallen in infatuation quite a few times, I have, yeah. I'm not ashamed, I'm a sucker for love dammit and I will stand there and say yes I have been infatuated but love? Only once but does this make me cynical to the fact that if you get married too soon you’ll be marrying blindly? Hell no! I think that when you are dating someone within the first few months you can see part of their character, you can assess if their personal traits, characteristics, beliefs are something that you can live with for the rest of your life but not everything comes out within that time and because of infatuation you don’t realise how much some of those traits will annoy you a year or two down the line unless you are spending every day together then the honeymoon has a shorter life-span.

Is it an age thing that makes people panic and marry sooner than they previously would have had they been younger. I am talking about when you are dating in your early twenties; many of these tend to go on for about three/four years but had you been married you probably could have stretched it a bit longer. Which makes me think; does the absence of marriage allow relationships to break easily?  If I had gotten married to my first love when I was 18 would we have broken up two years later? Or because we would have been in it for the long haul we would have been more enduring and willing to work through our problems?
At 26, I have met men who I have seen some husband qualities in and thought of them as potential husbands but had they asked me to marry them would I have said yes? The love junkie in me wouldn't have allowed me because I can only marry if I'm in love. Look at it this way, I have only been in love once and that’s when I was 18. I have since had 2 other serious relationships which lasted about 2/3 years which at the time thought I was in love but I wasn't. Had I married either of these two men with the hopes that love will come because I would have seen qualities in them that I would have admired I would have lived in regret or divorce. Divorce not being an option for me means I would live in regret and grow to love this man because I’d never have fallen in love. I would still chase that high, that floating feeling, that tightness in your stomach and that sigh (you know the sigh I'm talking about) that I had had the first time round.

Do I think people should get married once they fall in love? Absolutely! So what happens if they fall in love within three months of their relationship? I say wait. Wait to see if this is real love or infatuation. Wait to see if you can tolerate this person’s anger, their stubbornness, sloth or their farting in bed. Long term relationships leave too much room to leave (when I say long term I'm talking about 2 years+) If you both hold the same values in life and marriage then why the delay? Chances are if you stay in a monogamous (or polygamous whatever works for ya) relationship a bit further down the line if you come across difficult times you’re going to want to leave because there is nothing tying to that person BUT if you are married, have the no-divorce policy and are committed to your marriage and to each other then you will work it out.

When people get married so soon it makes me wonder if they actually grasp what marriage entails.  That commitment is now being taken too lightly. It’s so easy to get into a marriage and to get out of it. I don’t know if the vows “for better or for worse, til death do us part” mean anything any more. Unless we are beating each other up like Ike and Tina, I ain't leaving. We said til death do us part and that’s how I intend to leave; you gonna have to kill me! I'm staying! So I need to get to know you as much as I can before I say “I do.” If we get married within five months and then I find out something in the sixth month about you that I really couldn't deal with because I was so lost in the honeymoon period; I am forced to work through that. Had we waited a while longer until the rose tinted glasses had gotten clearer and we decided that we don’t want to work through this thing; we both would have walked away and no one takes half. When the going gets tough and the tough gets going and the man I'm marrying he decides he doesn't want to be with me any more and has a divorce policy but I didn't know about this because we hadn't known each other long enough he’s going to take half. I don’t want him touching my half. Half of what I hear you say. Half of my millions of course! *cue crickets and tumble weed* What?

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