The love of a lifetime

I would take you, with all of your faults and strengths, as I offer myself to you with my faults and strengths. I will help you when you need help, and will turn to you when I need help. I will encourage you to achieve all of your goals, grow with you in mind and spirit, and always be open and honest with you. I choose you as the person with whom I would spend my life. I will cherish our friendship and love you today, tomorrow, and forever. I will trust you and honor you. I will laugh with you and cry with you. I will love you faithfully through the best and the worst, through the difficult and the easy. What may come, I will always be there. As I have given you my hands to hold, so I give you my life and my heart to keep. Entreat me not to leave you, or to return from following after you. For where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. And where you die, I will die and there I will be buried. May the Gods do what they will with me and more if anything but death parts you from me.

Those were meant to be wedding vows, once. Mine, as a matter of fact. The love of a lifetime, something that could last a lifetime. Something I rarely talk about, because it's considered out of character for me to a great many people who know me, is the fact that I am not on the marriage bandwagon. I'm not completely opposed to marriage, in fact. It's not that at all.

My opposition from marriage actually is a much quieter problem, one that I don't often speak about. My problem is divorce. And this is strictly *for me*. So I don't want for anyone to think that what I'm saying here is that divorce is wrong for them, or that I judge anyone harshly based on decisions they make for themselves, or that I oppose anyone for something they've done. That isn't the case, and I'd never say that it is.

For me, personally, I know that I'm not built in a way that would allow me to get a divorce, under any circumstances. I know myself well, and that wouldn't be an option for me. I have moral issues with it, among other things. In much the same way that I don't cheat on my partners, and wouldn't even if I could, I don't believe in divorce. What other people do? That doesn't affect me, and I don't care about others. But for me, divorce isn't an option. And that makes taking the plunge, and being willing to be married very...frightening.

Because I know that no matter what? I would stay. And that's scary. And the simple truth is that in order to love someone so much that you'd be willing to stay with that person, knowing they could cheat on you, abuse you, do any number of things...and you would stay? That's very frightening.

And for me, that's part of the hitch about me, and being loyal. Marriage is about loyalty, it's a commitment. You agree to be with that person, no matter what, for the rest of your lives. There are no loopholes, this is who you're going to be with, and you're going to make it work. And inside of me, that's how I feel about it. No loopholes, no convenient excuses. There is no "out".

I wrote the above vows, because for a short time, I could see myself making a lifetime commitment to someone. I could see his flaws, and mine, and I was okay with that. I understood them, and still had respect for his need to be himself. I wasn't trying to change him, and I didn't think I needed to be anyone else but me. And I thought that was enough. It was the first time in my life that I felt the possibility of wanting to be committed to someone, because of how I feel about a lifetime commitment.

Sure, I think about that mythical perfect mate, and that's a neat daydream. But honestly, someone who I can talk to, share a meal with. Someone who shares my interests, and can spend time with me. Someone who doesn't bore me to tears, and who can make me laugh, and make me feel complete? Those things mean a lot to me. Someone who can't keep their hands off of me, and who makes me happy, as I make them happy more often than not. That's a good start. That's what I was looking at, looking for. I guess it's still what I'm looking for, sort of. Someone who could be the love of a lifetime, not someone to settle for...