How To Know Who To Marry

“So it won’t be easy. It’s going to be really hard; We have to work at it every day, but I want to do this because I want you. I want you all, forever, every day. You and I… every day.” – Nicholas Sparks, The Notebook

Ever since I was little I had a plan for my life. I would go out and have fun in my early twenties, probably travel a lot around the world. At twenty-five I would start thinking about settling down and at twenty-seven/twenty-eight I would get married. We waited a year to start having babies and then I had three or four, preferably before I was thirty-five. And of course I will adopt one too.

I’m 30 now, unmarried and with no prospect of children anytime soon. Obviously, life doesn’t go the way we plan.

Still, I haven’t given up hope. In fact, I’m a lot more hopeful than I’ve been in years past, possibly because I’m a lot healthier. I may not be married yet, but it’s still something I want and believe it will happen for me at some point.

My parents were never married. My father got my mother pregnant and they had me when they were twenty and twenty-one. It wasn’t the start of a happy or successful relationship. It ended up being very messy when my father ended up marrying another woman. Despite their bumpy, unhappy, and tragic relationship, however, I envisioned marriage at a young age.

My goal of marriage had many internal setbacks, from the moment a therapist told me it would be difficult for me to find someone at my intellectual level (should that be a compliment?) to the moment when a personality test similar to mine told me it would be very hard for me to find someone. Looking again at my personality type, I learned that INFPs rank second highest among people who are marital dissatisfied.

During my dating years, I’ve been told by dates, friends, and my dad that I’m too idealistic and that my standards are too high. After my last breakup, my father shared this wisdom with me: “I know I set a really high standard for being this perfect, but maybe you should accept that you will never find anyone as perfect as I am. “

Yes, it’s all his fault.

But seriously, I know I’m an idealist. I know I’ve imagined this perfect person for ages. And to be perfectly honest, I found this guy once, but it didn’t work out. Our lives have taken us our separate ways and I accept that. But because I found it once, I always believed that I could find it again. Whenever I’ve been on a date and told myself the guy I want doesn’t exist, I’d always be like, “But he did.”

Am I the only one who thinks lowering their standards is a terrible idea? I hope not.

I think others think I have this incredibly long, unrealistic list of traits and qualities that someone needs to fulfil. I’m not going to lie – that list is in the back of my mind somewhere, but the truth is I only have two. Two very important requirements that each of my parents inadvertently taught me about who I should marry. And I believe both of these requirements can be applied to anyone looking for someone to marry.

Before I lay out these two very important requirements, I want to start with the foundation. Even if you find those two requirements, if the foundation of the relationship isn’t solid, then those two requirements don’t matter.

Foundation, endowment

The foundation is simply a healthy relationship that is in no way abusive and constantly working on communication, compromise and understanding. This is what any type of relationship, be it romantic or not, needs to have in order to be successful. Without that, a relationship cannot thrive.

Now for the two lessons my parents taught me.

Requirement #1 What my mother taught me

When I was in high school and wondering if I was in love, I asked my mom, “How do you know you’re in love?”

She said to me, “If you can’t imagine that person being with someone else.”

She asked me to imagine the guy I thought I loved kissing someone else, holding someone else, doing all the things he did for me but for someone else. I was devastated at the thought. My eyes started watering immediately because I couldn’t bear to think about all those things. That’s how I learned that I’m in love.

Loving someone seems like the most obvious requirement for getting married, but this lesson helped me at another critical time in my life. The same person who was my first love, well I held on to that love for a very long time hoping that one day we would find each other again. And years later we did.

He and his longtime girlfriend had broken up, and he immediately sought out a friendship with me. It had been years since we met in each other’s lives and I was afraid of my feelings for him and the fact that he had loved someone else for so long. At the end of a week of trying to be friends again, his ex wanted him back but he wanted to stay friends with both of us.

This was the guy I once thought was perfect. This was the guy I secretly hoped to see and marry again one day. This was also the guy I thought secretly loved me for all the years we were apart. So eventually I asked him if we should continue to be friends and I started dating other people, how would he feel about that? He said he was happy for me and I heard in his voice that he was serious.

He would be happy at the thought that I was dating someone else, but I knew it still pained me to think of him getting back with his ex or with another girl. At that point I learned and accepted that he didn’t love me. And if he didn’t love me, then he wasn’t the one for me.

My mother didn’t teach me that love is important, she taught me how to recognize it. How to tell when I’ve loved or not loved someone, and just as importantly, when someone hasn’t loved me. Without mutual love there is no future.

Requirement #2 What my father taught me

Now that we’ve got past the more obvious requirement, let’s get to what my father taught me. I’m very sure my dad doesn’t know he ever taught me that lesson, but many years ago when I was a worse version of myself and unhealthily dating, he did.

A combination of idealism and low self-esteem led me to spend a few years dating a lot of the wrong guys for the wrong reasons. I wanted to feel better, so I dated men for the attention and affection, but then I quickly realized that they weren’t the ones I wanted to be with for long. So I pushed a lot of guys away very, very quickly. At my worst, guys lasted anywhere from two weeks to a month on average.

My father is a “tough” guy. He is neither emotional nor does he know what to do with emotions when presented to him. Despite that, he’s still the most stable and consistent man in my life, so I try to avoid yelling at him about my love life whenever I can, but sometimes I just want my dad.

When I cried to him once, I told him everything I felt about myself. I told him I thought there was something wrong with me and I wondered why no one would ever stay knowing I was the one pushing them away. My father didn’t have much to say, but he did say something that I will always remember. He told me, “The right one won’t be that easy to push away.”

Those few words changed everything for me. If someone was easy to push away and walked just as easily, then that wasn’t the person for me. I learned how important this lesson was in both short-term and long-term dating.

I especially like that he said they wouldn’t leave so easily, not that they would never leave. That still put the responsibility of not being my worst on me because there are times when people should walk away.

When you’ve been with someone for a long time and either see a future with them or are already living your future together, you don’t want someone who can walk away so easily during difficult times. You want someone to stay and work things out with you. You want someone who will fight for you and the relationship because they value it.

As I continued to date, I kept those words to myself whenever someone left me, whether I urged them or not. Once when I dated a guy who gave me more hope than I had in a long time, I was devastated when he decided out of the blue that he didn’t want to date me anymore. Nothing had happened. I didn’t push him away and we had a great time together. It seemed like we were on our way to really liking each other.

I’ve never been good at letting go and this was a good guy I really wanted to hold on to. And maybe I would have if I hadn’t had my father’s words. It was very easy for this guy to leave, and he left while nothing was going wrong. So what would have happened later if we had dated longer and things had actually gotten difficult? The fact that he went so easily helped me not to hold on to him.

I may be idealistic, but I don’t think these requirements or standards are too high. My parents were never married and they never taught me anything explicitly about marriage, but they both gave me these invaluable lessons that will continue to be important to me. Whoever I end up marrying, I’ll know it’s right when I can’t picture them dating anyone else (and vice versa), and when neither of us find it easy to leave.

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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.

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