(I Think) I Don’t Want to Get Married (Yet)
You would think that the longer you spend in a stable relationship, the easier the decision to get married becomes. I mean, maybe that’s how it is for a lot of people, but in my case, it was the complete opposite. It was right when I started thinking about proposing that I began asking myself the questions that actually matter.
I realized we still had a lot to work on. On my end, there were a couple of things I needed to talk about and a few boundaries I needed to set before even thinking about what kind of ring would look good on the woman I love.
For many years, I’ve pretended—not about everything, but about a lot of things. I’m not talking about faking my affection or hiding some unforgivable secret; in fact, I’m talking about something as simple as sometimes pretending to be someone I’m not to make her feel better, or at least to avoid making her feel bad, or simply to avoid creating conflict because I didn’t want to come across as toxic.
And if we’re going to vow to love each other forever in front of an altar, I can’t, and I won’t, keep pretending to be someone I’m not.
Because this goes beyond trying to be more sociable, knowing that a lot of the time I hate leaving my house. Or letting her family cross certain boundaries just because she wasn’t able to set them. It even goes beyond ignoring my burnout and overworking myself even when my body was on the verge of collapse.
It’s something I owe myself. It’s my responsibility for having been afraid that I wouldn’t be loved for who I was. If I lose you, it’ll be because of how much I love myself; because of my decision to choose myself over anything else, for the first time in my life.
The hardest part of this stage has been accepting the idea that no matter how much I love her, love is only one of the many things that, for me, will allow our relationship to thrive through time and adversity.
I can’t imagine being with someone I can’t completely be myself with. And right now, that means asking the uncomfortable questions and having dozens of conversations we probably should’ve had before—but better to have them now, before saying “I do.”