I Won’t Marry You Because I Love You

At first glance perhaps this could be about not wanting to ever get married, or maybe it’s because the love that is felt isn’t the marrying kind. But in reality, neither of these supposed truths are accurate.

I never thought that I would utter these words; after all, I am a romantic at heart and that means that a big part of me thinks that love is simply all there is. But I think I’m learning that love can masquerade as many things, so it’s not so much if love is felt but perhaps why it’s felt that determines whether relationships actually last forever or not.

In reality, I don’t truly need to get married at this point in my life in order to know love will last forever, but if I were going to do it again, there’s no one else that I could stand next to and actually mean the vows that would pass my hopeful lips.

But even so, love is not why I would ever marry you. Because I’m not marrying for love.

See, I began to think recently about just what it means to love you. I’m not talking about the fuzzy oxytocin-like haze that I find myself dizzy from when I’m wrapped up in your arms with your lips staining my skin.

What I’m talking about is the challenges, the life, and the purpose of our love. It’s not what our love feels like, but rather, what our love could accomplish that would really be the reason why I would marry again.

So, the truth is I would never marry you just because I loved you, but rather because of what we could build together.

I don’t think this life thing is as hard as we make it out to be, or maybe it’s just that I’m done chasing all the wrong things so that I’ve had enough time to let the good things catch up. But regardless, I’ve learned that who we have next to us in this life makes more of a difference than anything else.

When we choose someone to share this life with, the perspective from which we do it makes all the difference.

And the thing is while I do love you deeper than any other man, I also know that there is a purpose to our love — something deeper and more sustainable than to just reproduce, or fit into a certain way of life.

Neither of us will ever settle for the status quo and we’ve both come too far to actually go back to the people that we were, but we also aren’t at the finish line yet either. Not because we have yet to begin but because a big part of our “Why” and “What” is one another and what will become possible because of our love and the relationship we share.

I’d marry you tomorrow, not because of how my heart still races when I’m next to you, although it does, because of the way that you challenge and motivate me to keep me pushing towards my dreams.

Our lives become richer when we feel we share a purpose with another, and I look at us and feel energized knowing that there are such great things ahead of us. Because we aren’t just building something for us, but for our children, our families, and all of those that we care about.

We are together not to play house, but to make life better somehow because we have chosen to be on the same team. Maybe at one point, I would have said that it was only love that I felt for you, but in looking at all of those aspects about us that I value the most, I see now that it’s how we push one another to become our best possible selves that really pushes our love from ordinary into extraordinary.

I don’t ever want to be with someone just to be with someone, and the reality is without a shared purpose love might not be enough to keep us going on our hardest days. But if we have a mission, a desire to help one another, a shared ambition, and a sense of accomplishment, every single day we will keep building.

Even when every day isn’t perfect — the kind of day where I might be fighting an old demon or maybe you’ll be wondering if it’s worth it — we will still be growing, moving, and building, not just life together but a legacy because we will be doing it together.

Maybe one day money won’t be something we’ll have to concern ourselves with, but even if that day never comes, it doesn’t mean that our legacy will be of any less value. The thing is that it’s not what we have, but how we use it that determines our success and, ultimately, our net worth. It’s how we can help others and how we can make a difference in this world using your hands and mine.

It’s about how our love can actually improve this world that would be why I’d dress in white and meet you at the altar.

Because there’s a reason we call our significant other our partner — it’s because we share the responsibility of building a life, a legacy, a history and a purpose for being together. A partner is someone who encourages, believes, supports, keeps it real, and never ever gives up hope. They show us who we could be if we stopped holding ourselves back, and they’re there on our worst days reminding us to never give up.

I’d marry you to become that partner for you, and you for me. I’d take our vows as the stairs to build the next level, the place where our dreams collide with the hopes we were too afraid to speak and the ambition we could never forget.

I love you and that means I don’t just want to marry you. I want to build with you and invest in you because there is no greater purpose than the one we share together.