How Do You Know If You Love Someone Enough to Marry Them?

“A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person.” – Mignon McLaughlin

How do you know if you love someone enough to marry them? I’ve seen this question float around the Internet several times over the years, often from lovestruck, possibly naive anonymities posting on social media sites.

You may have seen this sort of dilemma in romantic comedies, sitcoms, and telenovelas. It is a question you most obviously ask yourself when your relationship has so ripened that a next step is required.

Oddly enough, I never asked myself this question.

Which is why the advice I give most people - wisdom gained over years of experience, trials, and failed relationships - is this: You just know.

Quite the anticlimactic response from someone who is supposedly a dating coach and expert on love.

But hear me out.

How do you know you’re ready to buy a house?

One’s readiness to marry can often be compared to one’s own readiness to purchase a new home. This may seem odd - apples to oranges, you may argue - but think about it for a moment.

Marriage is more often than not a calculated decision, not some light, spur-of-the-moment resolution boldly declared by the male protagonist as so often portrayed on television.

House-hunting begins with one thing: You either WANT to buy a house, or you either NEED a house. And sometimes, those two happen simultaneously.

It just happens. You wake up one day with that realization, that desire. You just know.

When you want things, you just know.

But what if you need a new house, yet aren’t entirely convinced that you do? That doesn’t matter. No one can convince you but yourself. I can point out the creaking floors, the leaking roof, or the termite-infested walls. But unless you realize for yourself that a new house is in order, a decision can never happen.

The analogy doesn’t end here, so read on.

Marriage as a calculated decision

Marriage being a calculated decision requires the first step: The immediate realization that it is what you want and it is what you need.

This sort of realization needs to occur in the hearts and minds of both partners so you know what to do next - because one has to propose, and one has to say yes.

Marriage covers a lot more ground than simply just love. It involves tangible things like money, a place to live, raising children, and many more.

When you buy a house, you naturally consider the ability to pay your mortgage. Why should it be any different from deciding your ability to raise a family and put food on the table?

Some couples marry young - so young in fact that they have barely started their careers. Some begin with nothing more than the promise of work. But at the very least, the realization that one or both individuals have to work for money as part of sustaining the marriage is an absolute prerequisite.

So let’s think about this for a moment and ask ourselves a few basic things:

1. Do you or your partner have jobs or businesses?
2. Do you have aspirations for your jobs or careers?
3. Can your combined income support a family and children?
4. Will you have the time and energy to raise your children well?
5. Do you have emergency funds?
6. If I am in a situation of debt, can my marriage handle it?

You may not have a perfect yes to these questions. But they are relevant, so always keep them at the back of your mind.

So what about the LOVE part?

Isn’t love alone enough to keep a marriage alive? Well, yes and no.

You may be motivated to marry someone because of love - which in this case is a surge of hormones or chemicals in your brain telling you you want to be with that person forever.

In other words, you feel that you’re in love with your partner.

While this feeling is needed, you ask yourself another question: Do you choose to be with your partner?

Because I, and every person who has ever been involved in a meaningful marriage, can tell you that this love you are feeling may begin as infatuation, but it has to evolve to something more.

Because you can’t feel love for a person every single day. There will be days when you will probably want to throw them over a bridge. And there will be days they will want to drop you off in the middle of some unknown desert.

Then love becomes less of a feeling, but more of a choice.

Just like buying a house (I told you we aren’t done here), you have to take responsibility for that choice, and work on it every single day moving forward.

So you KNOW you want to marry them, now what?

Here we come to the final piece of the puzzle. Okay, so I know I want to marry my partner, what comes next? How do I make sure?

The answer may be a little tricky, but it may make sense.

When you buy a house, more often than not, you are assuming a great financial burden. And in the end, after all your analyzing and studying, you just close your eyes and make the jump. You are never truly ready to jump. You make a decision and stick to it.

When you jump, there can be no hesitation.

The same can be said for marriage.

Someone will have to propose, someone will have to say yes.

Decide to propose without hesitation. Say yes with full commitment.

Decide to commit, commit to decide

You can’t measure your love of someone enough to marry them. Because if you want to marry someone, you should never have to question your love for each other.

If you hesitate in any way about your feelings for your partner, marriage may not be the right decision, at least for now.

Be honest with yourself enough to realize that marriage needs full commitment. You have to be so comfortable with the thought of marrying someone, because the difficulties that come with married life, while worth overcoming, are much more difficult.

But if you can say, with no hesitation in your heart, that that is the person you want to spend the rest of your life with, then close your eyes and take the plunge.