A younger colleague recently asked me how I knew I wanted to marry my husband. My initial answer was that I didn’t at first. My next answer was that at some point I just decided I wanted to.
Movies and books make us think that most of us will “just know” when the right person is there. This is especially true for women and young girls. Movies tell us that we are supposed to experience love at first sight or a feeling in our stomach or heart that we found our soulmate. This may be true for some people (I know a few) but most of us don’t have that experience.
At the end, it doesn’t matter whether you knew within the first 5 minutes of meeting your partner or you figured it out 5 years into it. You shouldn’t feel bad if you don’t know right away or if you broke up once or more and then got back together. I don’t think anyone needs permission to let go of any of the unrealistic expectations of how you fall in love with your partner but if you do, I am giving it to you!
The most important question to ask here is how do you decide. I will share my how I did it and hope it helps any of you in the process of dating. It can also be applied to your current relationship regardless of status if you are having some doubts about what is going on.
- Decide by yourself. The decision that you want to marry someone should be made by each person unilaterally (hopefully at some point you agree together). You are taking a risk any time you fall in love with someone. This decision should not be made by you only because the other person said they want to marry you or after you “were convinced” by your partner. Yes, it is scary to decide but once you do, you will show up in a much better way. Ideally, the person you are dating feels the same and then you can have the conversation about what a future together looks like.
- Have your back. I spend zero time wondering whether I married my soulmate or if there are better people out there for me. It is not a very useful exercise considering I can never meet everyone that could possibly be a good match for me and I don’t really need to. I know I made the best decision with the information I have and that is good enough for me.
- Accept your partner for who they are. Do not think that getting engaged or married will somehow make the qualities that you don’t like about your partner disappear. It is important to be realistic and know that there will be things about each other that you won’t like. This is ok because it is how life works. Be sure to accept those things and not marry someone hoping those will go away over time. In general, it is the opposite! I am not saying people don’t ever change but it is best to not count on your partner changing political parties or all of a sudden becoming a city person when they have always enjoyed the suburbs. If there are things about your partner that you absolutely cannot stand, then that person may not be the one for you.
- Communicate. Most (if not all) of the couples I have seen get divorces through the years had a communication problem. Before I married my husband, I sat down with him and had some non-sexy but highly important conversations, such as whether we would have kids, what kinds of names we would choose, where we would live, how we would handle having different religious backgrounds, and anything that I thought could become a non-negotiable situation once we were married. Things can always change of course but it was extremely helpful for us to have those conversations ahead of time.
- Respect. This goes both ways. You shouldn’t marry someone you don’t respect or who doesn’t respect you. How can you tell? Do you feel supported by this person? Do they bring out the best in you or make you want to be a better person? There are so many definitions of respect if you look this up but my 5 year old recently told me it means you are kind to others, which I loved. Whatever respect means to you, make sure you have it for your partner and vice versa or there will be feelings of resentment and unhappiness over time.
- Put in the work. This is a before and after piece of advice. It is easy to be happy and get along when everything is nice and easy. Life is not always nice and easy and a lot of the time it can be quite hard. It is important to remember that a relationship needs to be maintained and worked on. It shouldn’t be the hardest thing you do all day and it is probably a big, red flag if you dread coming home from work before you are even married (hopefully this is a rare thing in general). But you definitely have to take the time to grow and maintain the goodness that you have.
Some other red flags that should give you some pause and possibly lead you to marriage counseling before getting married or ending the relationship all together: you argue all the time, you dread alone time with the person, you have completely different goals for the future (someone wants kids and someone doesn’t, someone wants to live in the city and someone in the suburbs, someone wants to travel the world and the other person hates planes), or your partner expects you to know why they are upset with you without saying anything
I wanted to wish everyone a happy Valentine’s Day if you celebrate and as always remind people that this is a made up holiday anyway, so only take note of it if it serves you, otherwise, happy Tuesday!