It's been a long road to find some sort of stability in my life. I've been operating under the believe taht if I held in their long enough eventually we'd come out the other side. And we are. So there's that.

I'll probably get married in the not horribly distant future, and my views on it are less than romantic. Some see that as a problem, I see it as a strength. Being in a relationship is a commitment to me, it may not be a lifetime commitment (which I will still refuse to make), but I don't take any of this lightly. There are a number of people besides myself involved in this, and hurting any one of them is not something I would do without an immense amount of thought and planning. Married or not, it would make no difference. As for a lifetime commitment? It's a silly thing. To me, it doesn't seem horribly different than swearing when I was 10 that I would never ever like mushrooms. And I meant it with every ounce of my soul, but what 10 year old me neglected to take into account is that 20 year old me would have different tastes and views on things entirely. In that same vein, saying at 30 that I will love you and be happy with you for the rest of my life seems just as silly. I might, in the same way that I might have always hated mushrooms, but in this case I ended up growing to love them. I'm not saying it's impossible to be in love and happy with someone for your entire life, I'm just saying that predicting that far into the future is impossible, and I see a danger in sticking with something you're miserable in purely because you made a promise. It's ignoring the fact that we are all evolving, and 40 year old me will not care about the same things as 30 year old me. And same with the man in my life. The only thing we can hope for is that 50 year old him, and 50 year old me have changed in a way that matches each other. That although our priorities have changed from our priorities at 30, they are still in line with each other.

So I hope that makes sense. I'm not anti-monogamy, nor am I anti-marriage, I just feel that being honest with yourself about your changing needs and priorities is an important thing. I also don't want this to be construed as me advocating for ending a relationship when the road gets rough. I aim for relationships that have a deeper love than that. It's very easy to hate someone for a moment, but simultaneously love them. My sister is my best example. We have been through rough times, and she has driven me insane, but at the end of the day I knew I still adored her. Would I ever do anything to jeopardize my relationship with her? Not knowingly. But even with her, I would never promise a life time commitment. It's almost an insult to our relationship to need such a thing.

That turned into a ramble. Sorry. In short, I will get married because it makes sense. And I will promise to love him and to be there for him, but there will be no lifetime commitment to any of my promises. I believe in sincerity, and I could not sincerely promise a lifetime of anything to anyone. The truest relationships in my life have never needed such a promise, to promise that in this relationship would seem out of place.