On Marriage: Recognizing & Cultivating a Love That Can Last a Lifetime

On my first date with the man who is now my husband, as the realization began to form that we might have each found the person with whom we could happily spend years of our lives, we discussed the unlikely possibility that either of us would ever want to get married.

Less than a year later, we were so excited to say our vows at Boston City Hall that we did so without rings, which had yet to arrive in the mail.

I could say that the Chris and Robin of a year ago would be shocked to find out that we’d be married within eleven months of our meeting; but that statement would only be half-true. We both realized early on that we’d met the person we’d spend our life with. Even before our first date was over, we’d each realized that no one else would do now that we knew the other existed—as we’d put it later, “It was either us or no one.” We just didn’t know how quickly that would translate to marriage, our objections to the institution dissolving far more readily than we could have predicted.

After knowing each other for mere weeks, Chris and I had become woven into the fabric of each other’s lives. After the sudden, earth-shattering death of my mother, he packed all of the winter clothing he owned and drove with me to my hometown, ready to stand by my side for as long as I needed him. Throughout the first months of our relationship, we came to share complete faith in our ability to make each other happy throughout all of the seasons of our lives; and a total commitment to doing so.

The only doubt that Chris and I had was that the legal and financial entanglements of marriage were the inevitable answer to the love that we felt for each other.

We were each wary of marriage for separate but not-so-dissimilar reasons: Chris had never seen a successful marriage, and I had experienced the failure of a marriage firsthand. He had never felt the kind of love that would even raise the possibility of spending a lifetime with someone. I had committed too readily to spending my life with someone, assuming that this was synonymous with love.

We tend to think of marriage as the ultimate expression of love; but it’s only very recently in Western society that we’ve chosen to get married purely out of romantic love. What marriage has always represented is a relatively utilitarian decision to unite two separate entities in the eyes of the state.

Nothing reminds us of the true purpose of marriage quite like getting divorced. Though people decide to get divorced for emotional reasons, the legal process of actually ending a marriage is all about the logistics: Can each person financially survive on their own? How will the couple’s joint assets be fairly divided as they become singular entities?

In deciding whether or not to translate our lifelong commitment to each other into marriage, then, Chris and I had to force ourselves to focus on the least romantic aspects of our potential union: What would the implications be for our incomes; our taxes; our health insurance; our retirement accounts; our possessions? Would we open joint bank accounts? Would we change our names? If one of us were to end up in the hospital, would the other have any rights? If the unthinkable happened—as we’d just experienced in my own family—would the other be taken care of?

For me, the question at the heart of these conversations was this: How could we express our commitment to each other without merging our two selves in an unhealthy, unfair, or irreparable way, both emotionally and financially? We were certain of the longevity of our relationship—but would marriage really benefit either of us?

—

The love that I felt for Chris was so different than what I’d experienced in the past. It was the first time that I fell in love with the actual human being sitting in front of me, rather than what they represented—the larger-than-life potential that I saw in them, or the intoxicating feeling of being adored. But even as I experienced a deeper, more honest love than I ever had before, I knew that I needed to keep a promise to myself: to never be so quick to sacrifice my autonomy and chance at fulfillment for a relationship as I had in the past.

When I got married in my early twenties, because my life and my identity as an individual hadn’t had time to crystallize, I didn’t think twice about the consequences of giving up my last name, my income, my time, and my future to a relatively untested relationship. This was how I had always experienced love until that point: a complete surrendering of my identity for the joint identity formed in the relationship.

Up until that point, I had primarily experienced unstable relationships built on short-term passion, believing that the truest form of love was infatuation—the more immediate, intense, and irrational, the better. In direct response to the terrifying uncertainty of my past relationships, where absolutely nothing could be taken for granted, I stepped readily into marriage for the stability and guaranteed love that it promised. 

At that age, in the presence of someone who believed he wanted to spend his life with me, a real chance at stability and lifelong adoration made me feel like I had little to lose and everything to gain. But several years later, as my first marriage teetered toward its ultimate demise, I began to see the things I had always taken for granted as incredibly valuable—in particular, the right to decide how to spend my time and money and energy.

I had come to believe that love was the hard work you put into maintaining a commitment over time; that marriage was a promise to stay loyal to someone, loving them even when you didn’t particularly like them. But in today’s society, where we marry purely out of love, staying married for marriage’s sake is self-defeating. What if the ultimate expression of love in a failing marriage is granting your partner permission to find the kind of happiness that you’re not capable of giving them?

When love consumes so much of our time and energy, and has the potential to bring us so much joy throughout our lives, don’t we all deserve to be recognized and loved unconditionally for exactly the person that we are?

—

In the end, for Chris and me, our decision to get married was less rational than we’d anticipated: After weighing the financial and legal implications that it would have for our lives, we each admitted that we just wanted to be the one to get to be married to the best person we’d ever met.

I proposed to Chris within weeks of realizing we’d both come to the same conclusion on the subject of matrimony; and we ordered rings and booked an appointment at City Hall within days of his (very enthusiastic) response. We got married on an ordinary Monday at the wholly unromantic time of 10:45 A.M. because it was the earliest possible appointment, and we couldn’t wait to be married for one more minute.

We often marry, I realize, because we like the idea of marriage; but when it comes to spending “forever” together, I’ve come to a far more nuanced conclusion as to what that truly means.

I got married at twenty-three because I felt incredibly fortunate to have found someone who wanted to spend their life with me. Now, at twenty-nine, I’m married because I found the only person who makes me believe that it’s possible to spend a lifetime loving someone, and to still not feel as though that was enough time.

The perpetually deepening love that Chris and I feel for each other represents something that neither of us knew was possible before we met. We give each other the unconditional support, trust, and motivation necessary to become the best versions of ourselves as we build a life that’s equally fulfilling to both of us. This is what will keep us striving to love each other better every day for the rest of our lives. And our “eerie compatibility” (as my sister calls it) means that sustaining our relationship over time doesn’t require sacrificing key parts of our identities or our plans for our lives in order to make our relationship work. It’s the love that we each have always yearned for, which we recognized in each other from the very start, and feel incredibly fortunate to have found.

Knowing that this kind of love actually exists makes me wish that I could pass an urgent message to my younger self. It would say: “Trust that being alone is infinitely less difficult than trying to convince the wrong people to love you. Trust that the right person will care about your happiness as much as you care about theirs. Trust that all of the effort you put into improving yourself will bring you the kind of love that you deserve someday. It will feel like a long time coming, but it will come to you as soon as you’re ready to receive it, and not a moment too late.”

And for those of you out there who might need it, here’s my hard-won advice on building a healthy relationship every day (learned from doing it the wrong way many times, and the right way just this once):

• Find someone who is as devoted to becoming the best version of themselves throughout their lifetime as you are—not because your relationship is dependent on either of you changing who you are, but because your love motivates each of you to rise to the occasion.
• Find someone whose vision for their life and how they want to spend their time complements yours.
• Find someone who you can’t get enough of; who you’re excited to get to spend time with every day; who you’re proud to be with; who makes you discover new reasons to love them more and more with every passing day.
• Find someone whose commitment and honesty you never have to question; who doesn’t stoke your insecurities, and whose intentions you implicitly trust.
• Find someone who makes you more you—who treasures your worst jokes and most embarrassing stories, and who makes you feel more confident in who you are even when they’re not around.
• Find someone who is as devoted to the preservation of your relationship as you are; who cares more about your feelings than proving a point, and is humble enough to admit when they’re wrong.
• Find someone who cares deeply about making sure your needs are met; who derives joy from your happiness and well-being; and whose happiness and well-being you feel privileged to protect, now and for decades to come.
• Find someone who feels that being loved by you is the greatest privilege of their life, and who makes you feel just as lucky to get to love them for a lifetime.

Don’t miss an update—follow Feather & Flint on social media:
Instagram | Facebook | Pinterest | Bloglovin’ | Spotify