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Love and Marriage Do Not Have to Be Mutually Inclusive

The sooner you learn this, the happier you'll be

By EmariPublished 3 years ago 4 min read
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Here’s the thing about life. It’s complex. And here’s the thing about love. It’s complicated and often misunderstood.

I mean, I get it. All those stories about unicorns and Prince Charming on a white horse we read as teenagers messed up our priorities real good. But hey, we can unlearn the crap and relearn the true meanings of words, feelings, and emotions, yeah? After all, that’s what it means to be an adult!

So, where do I even begin?

Let’s start with a conversation I overheard at the coffee shop a few blocks down the road from where I live. I say coffee shop to sound all fancy, but it was really just your good old Starbucks from way back when coffee shops were still a thing… about a year and a half ago.

So, there I was, sitting inside a Starbucks, eating a warm butter croissant and sipping at my soy chai latte while trying to finish typing a blog post on SEO or some other topic. That’s when I heard this from across the table.

“Oh, honey! If he loves you, he’ll commit. And if he doesn’t, then he’s a fool. A jerk!”

This was an older woman talking to a younger woman, a daughter, a niece, maybe a friend, I couldn’t tell how they were related, but there it was. A flippant remark straight out of a cheesy 90‘s romance novel. Like those Mills & Boon stories that my friends made me read when I was a middle schooler because they gave you tingles in your panties.

Hot damn! There’s just so much wrong in that statement and the sentiment. Allow me to break them down for you one by one, yeah?

The pronoun “he”

Believe it or not, some women do not wish to commit or get married or have children. I mean, what is this, the middle ages? And yet, somehow, a reluctance to marriage is discussed in great length relating to cisgender, heterosexual men.

As a cisgender heterosexual woman who is undecided on marriage at the age of 30-something and decisively against bearing children, like ever, I take great offense to such unreasonable and sexist pronouncements.

Commitment ≠ marriage

Ever heard of the word “divorce?” Or “cheating,” perhaps?

To be clear, I’m not against marriage. If I met someone I wanted to spend my life with, and the other person felt the same way, and we both wanted to make things official, I’d consider it.

Maybe.

I also recognize that marriage has its perks. When it comes to filing taxes, raising children, getting health insurance, marriage can open up many opportunities.

Now, if you want marriage for any of the reasons mentioned above (or any other reason for that matter), by all means, sit down with your partner and have a heart-to-heart about your expectations. But for heaven’s sake, do not say something as corny and dumb as “if you love me, you must marry me.”

Here’s the truth. Commitment is a state of mind, and it doesn’t require a signature on a piece of paper or even vows. Marriage never stopped people from getting a divorce or cheating on their spouses, did it? It never stopped two people from being insanely unhappy either. So why is it that we continue to preach marriage as the ultimate proof of love?

Not a one-way street

Remember, you’re not the only one in love, and it is definitely not a one-way street.

If satisfying your idea of love is by way of marriage, then the opposite is also true. If your lover does not wish to get married, then maybe you ought to sit down and think about whether you love this person enough to be in a relationship without marriage.

And if you cannot compromise, you shouldn’t blame the other party for not compromising either. Love has no role to play in this skirmish. That’s just the sad reality of life. Sometimes people cannot compromise their values, and they end up separating, breaking up, going their different ways. Nothing’s wrong here, and nobody’s to blame. It’s just how things are. Sometimes you’ve just got to swallow the bitter pill in life and move on.

Empathize

Before you start accusing your lover of not loving you enough, consider these:

Are they at a point in life where commitment by way of marriage is a little too much? Maybe they have a job they hate. Or maybe their life is falling apart in some other way. Were they abused as a child? Parental abuse can make anyone not want to get married. Did they grow up with divorced parents or just unhappy parents in marriage? If so, the chances are high that they won’t want to get into one themselves.

And there can literally be an infinite number of reasons for someone not wanting to tie the knots, other than a lack of love. And trust me, nothing is more hurtful than being accused of not loving someone when you actually do love that person. So, by accusing your lover of not loving you enough, you’re not only unrealistic, arrogant, egotistic, and stupid, but you’re also cruel. Now that doesn’t sound much like love to me at all!

Is it possible that your love interest doesn’t want to marry you because they don’t really love you?

Yes. Yes, of course! That is entirely possible. Or maybe it’s not that at all. Maybe it’s their personality, their values, the misaligned timing of your wants and their needs, or something else entirely.

But before you accuse someone of not loving you back because they wouldn’t sign the papers, think. For God’s sake, just sit down and think! Life is rarely as uncomplicated as “if he loves you, he’ll commit.”

The image above has been licensed from Freepik.

marriage
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About the Creator

Emari

Writer/blogger among other things. I'm multi-passionate and enjoy writing about all that attract my attention and interest.

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