My Thoughts on Marriage

I had this obsession with wedding magazines. At 5 years old I had this huge collection of whatever the popular wedding magazines were in the 90s. I remember the popular dress was an extremely tight fitted gown with a mermaid style poof at the bottom. Most were strapless and I'm sure the hair was curly and glamorous and now super outdated. I was obsessed with wedding dresses, and honeymoons. I suppose I really only wanted the magazines to look at the dresses, which means I really only had my mom buy me the magazines for the ads. I don't ever remember reading the articles. I also remember at the end of the magazine would be ads for the perfect honeymoon-tanned, bronzed, fit couples on some white sandy beach laughing and looking all in love. At 5 years old I wanted that. I wanted to wear a beautiful dress and I wanted to lay on a white sandy beach. I also told everyone that would listen that when I got married I would wear the tight dress and have the curly hair! I wasn't thinking about a man, or love, or a party (I was 5), but I was thinking about the dress, OH THE DRESS! and a destination I've never been to, it just sounded so glamorous!

Now about 25 years later I don't know if I want to get married.

Chris and I will have been together 9 years this year. Five years into our relationship I wanted to get married. I thought, we've hit five years. Now is a good time to commit. Five years passed and we're not married. Seven years into our relationship I wanted to get married. Seven years passed and we're still not married but we're committed. Now we're approaching nine years and I think we both decided we don't want to get married. A lot of times marriage and commitment is synonymous. I used to think if Chris and I were married that meant we were in it for life, that there was no one else that would get in our way and we'd be partners forever. But, you see, we've already decided to be life partners. We've made that commitment, on our couch, while watching episodes of True Detective, Girls, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia...you get the picture. We talk about our future goals (buying a house, starting a family, saving for future vacations) and our love for each other. We do sometimes talk about marriage from time to time but realize we're there- if you look at us, talk to us, and get to know us we're pretty much married. The only difference is the government doesn't recognize our unity, I don't have his last name and right now we don't have a tax break. I like it this way. He likes it this way. We're doing our thing and we're really proud of what our thing is. We get asked a lot when we're going to get 'married' because in society that's the next step to cement a relationship, right? To be engaged, to wedding plan and to get civilized as one in front of the people you love the most. Our relationship is pretty cemented; there's no fancy ring, there's no 'Will you Marry Me...', there's just us. But, my fantasy still runs deep- I want to wear a fancy dress and go to a fancy destination. So, one day the plan is to have a really big party and celebrate our love and then go somewhere really exotic and amazing while keeping our last names and just celebrating the fact that we want to continue doing life together.