Why I Got Married Even Though I Never Wanted To (30 Hari Menulis #28)

I was never into marriage.

Picture taken from HuffingtonPost.com

Growing up, my friends often fantasized about their dream weddings - beach weddings, garden weddings, white weddings - but I just couldn't bring myself to care about what kind of dress I wanted to wear or which color scheme I wanted for the decoration. I was much more into other stuff, like actually getting good grades in school.

Nearing my 30's, a lot of my friends were engaged, or married, or pregnant. Me? I was still so focused on my career as a writer and human rights activist. I wasn't envious of them, either, because I couldn't imagine dedicating myself to just one person for the rest of my life. My parents grew wary of my singledom, even trying to introduce me to children of their friends whom they thought were eligible men, but I just shook my head and did my own stuff. Marriage was never for me, I guess.

But then he proposed to me, and I couldn't say yes quick enough.

He came out of nowhere - a representative of a client company that wanted me to write an article about their product on my blog. Turned out we'd met on several occasions on banquets or mutual friends' weddings, and during our work together we realized that we just had so, so, so much more in common than anyone else we'd met in our lives. I can still remember his face when I told him that his favorite books were written by me, back when I still used an alias because I wasn't confident enough as a writer to use my real name on my books. He lit up like the sun.

Love happened very suddenly, took me by force and I was drowning in happiness. It made me anxious, to be honest. I wasn't used to feeling so happy because of another person, and certainly never for such a long period of time. When I told him this, he said that he felt the same, but he couldn't imagine going back to how things were now that he knew what life was like with me. That was two weeks before his proposal, three years after we went on our first date.

It's been ten years now, and every morning I wake up smiling at his sleeping face right next to mine. The peacefulness he radiates reminds me that life can actually be this good, no strings attached. Well, it's not always golden all the time - even now we still find some things we disagree about, or stuff we just tolerate about each other - but this feeling of completeness, of being understood, is definitely worth all the bumps on our road.

I still maintain that you don't need to be married to be happy even today, but if you meet the right person - the person that can make you fall in love with yourself, especially when they're around - marriage isn't such a bad idea. Spending the rest of your life with that person isn't scary - it's something you actually look forward to.