Love and Marriage

Love and marriage. All you need it love. The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return. From birth we’re bombarded with images of happy couples, and how love is this great thing that we can only hope to achieve. I’m a senior at a small midwestern college, and have witnessed friends and classmates get engaged, married, and even have children. Me? I’m going to grad school. Moving to the big city. I’ve learned that nothing good comes from love, at least not anything good for me.

These couples that get married right out of high school or right out of college, do they really believe that they’ve found “the one” or are they scared that nothing better will come along? Are you head over heals, can’t live with out you in love, or do you want to get married, do you want to have that wedding? Do you realize that you’re agreeing to spend the rest of your life with this person? You don’t just get the ring and the dress, you get the good and the bad of that person, too.

Am I less of a person because I refuse to settle? I want the world, I want someone to give it to me. I want Tiffany. I want a giant house. I want several occasions to wear a formal gown. I want the life I didn’t have growing up. I know I can do it myself, why should I wait on someone else to do it for me?

I would like to think that I’ll be revered for my choices. The more and more I learn about wedding planning (the money, the arrangements, the people) the less I want a wedding. Not that I don’t wish to get married, I would love to find that special person and spend the rest of my life with them. I just don’t want a wedding. I don’t want all the hoopla.

I don’t think the beginning of a marriage is something to celebrate. Ten years, fifteen, twenty… those are reasons to celebrate. Anyone can put on a big white dress and walk down and aisle and promise someone something. It’s following through with that promise that should be celebrated.

I don’t want a wedding, I want a marriage. I don’t want a lover, I want a great love. I’ve made it this far without settling. I think I can make it several more years at this point.