How did you know marriage was for you after not wanting it initially?

9 comments

1. I always thought I wasn’t for marriage. I had no plans to marry, I didn’t see the point, it just seemed old fashioned and unnecessary.

   Then I met my husband. Might be completely cliché, but I just wanted to marry him. I can’t explain the change of heart because prior to that I’d been almost scathing about the concept of marriage. But as soon as I knew he was my person, I also knew I wanted to get married.

   I guess marriage was for me, though I still completely respect people who choose not to marry, I’d never hit anyone with the “you just haven’t met the right person yet” bullshit, I know it’s not for everyone.

2. I didn’t like the idea, I didn’t prioritize finding a spouse. We’d been together for a long time and while we felt the relationship was serious and likely permanent we weren’t in a rush to sign the paperwork or anything.
   Then we both had a series of medical problems, the bills related to all that. We realized marriage does allow a lot of legal protection of the relationship that would benefit us significantly more than not.
   We don’t feel that the legal aspect changed how we feel about each other or function as a couple. Just made a lot of random legalities easier.

3. 100% because of my husband. He wanted to get married some day, I’d always been against it. When my stance on getting married shifted even a little bit I knew it was the right choice.

4. I never wanted to. I was always adamant about being just having a LTR after being engaged young and the trauma associated with that event. I hit my 30s and realized I hadn’t had a serious loving relationship in years

   Took time to work on myself, gave myself a deadline at 35 and boom. Met my partner at 33, engaged at 36 and will be married at 37. I knew after 6 months he was it and he too had the same process about marriage. Kind of a meeting of the kinds

5. I met the right person and realized I didn’t want to spend my life without them.

   I could have just dated them forever, but the idea of being married, having the same names, wearing rings, and calling her my wife as opposed to girlfriend was appealing to me. We also wanted kids and is being married would give them more protection.

6. It’s hard to say exactly but at some point in my late twenties the switch flipped and I wanted to get married. I think part of it was that I didn’t want to date anymore – I really wanted to find one person and build a life with them, have my new experiences (sexual and otherwise) with one stable presence in my life. I did end up dating again but with the intention of finding “my person” and not casually.

7. I honestly wish I knew. I have always been against marriage for myself due to my past. I just didn’t think I could handle the concept. It made me anxious and ill. I was dating a guy and I knew that he wanted to marry, but he said he was content with a LTR and would just leave it up to me. One day a few years into our relationship, we were standing in an electronics store, and he was messing with a camera, mumbling to himself and pressing buttons while I stood around waiting for him. For absolutely no reason whatsoever, I looked at him and realized he was my husband. I don’t know why, there was nothing particularly romantic about any of it, even my realization. It was just that everything about the scene could have been the rest of my life, and for the first time, I felt no fear or negativity about the concept of ‘forever.’ This ridiculous guy kept pressing the wrong button for the zoom feature of a camera, and it was the most peaceful and correct thing in the universe. I have no idea if I lost my fear of marriage beforehand and didn’t know it, or I lost it at that moment, but I pressed the correct button on the camera and said, “let’s get married.”

8. 1000 percent placing a ring on him.

9. I learned more about the legalities, rights, protections, opportunities, benefits, obligations, and responsibilities it provided, and I wanted to take those on as part of my commitment to my partner. If I had not meet my partner, I’d have been fine remaining single, but as part of a serious, lifetime commitment to my partner, I wanted to provide our relationship and my partner with the protections and benefits of marriage.