When Did Wanting to Marry Become Embarrassing?

Santiago Molina

1 day ago

5 min read

For a very long time, I thought the vision I once had of marrying three times was actually going to happen. Now, looking back at it, if I even marry once, once will be enough. On building our lives around our jobs and our friends as a response to the dating world, plus not having a belief system.

I was recently described by one of my friends as a “trophy wife who’s a star”. I wondered what that meant. I’ve made jokes in the past about being a trophy wife, even though all my friends know I would never. “You’re in love with love,”my friends say to me. I’m almost twenty-three years old and have never had a serious relationship that has made it through the talking stage. That, and a lot of “imagionantionships”.

It hasn’t been the “lack” of options; there are actually way too many in big cities, which is what drives us, most of the time, to think there might be someone better out there than the person we’re seeing. It’s that I couldn’t picture a future next to most of them.

I woke up this morning to a clip of Carrie Coon’s monologue in The White Lotus: “But I had this epiphany today. I don’t need religion or God to give my life meaning because time gives it meaning. We… we started this life together. I mean, we’re going through it apart, but we’re still together, and I… I look at you guys, and it feels meaningful.” And all of a sudden, I realised I don’t really have a belief system, and I’ve spent all of my life waiting for someone to come and give me one.

Morphing Myself Into Someone’s Life

It was only recently that I began dating with intention. I deleted all dating apps, and so my “looking for long-term, open to short-term” is no longer available to the online world. I realised I wouldn’t find what I was looking for there.

When I first moved to New York, I realised two things dating-wise: there are too many options, and everyone is busy. But it’s the same in Paris and Barcelona. And so, I spent a big chunk of my own life trying to organise my life situation and future to fit the life they wanted, except for plastic surgery, and even then, they didn’t actively choose me. Probably what you would call a beggar for love.

My parents are still married; they have been for the past thirty years. I’ve seen how my dad makes my mum laugh even when she’s angry at him. They come from the generation that believes you ‘marry till death do us part’; then my sister’s divorce taught them they should stop believing in that.

We No Longer Marry ‘Till Death Do Us Part’, but Until It Stops Being Healthy

I’m not promoting any trad wife ideology, nor am I saying to marry young and stop pursuing your dreams. I’m actively pursuing mine, but I do know that one of my biggest dreams in life is to have a family someday. I also know that to be a good father, I should be somewhat satisfied with what I’ve done with my life by the time that happens.

Jean-Paul Sartre stated that “we are condemned to be free.” We are defined by our choices, and so we will always end up regretting something. Sylvia Plath talked about it with her fig tree analogy. Here’s the thing, which I saw on TikTok: the choice you didn’t make will always seem more interesting, and we become scared to commit. People are dating, but not with intention. I also saw this straight dude asking: when did we stop courting?

My hot take is that people who switch boyfriends/girlfriends like they switch their underwear are not dating to marry, and that is okay. But it’s not for me.

Dating for fun is also fun. Until it stops being fun and you understand that it doesn’t serve you right now.

“Do I carry so much emotional baggage that if they were to weigh it at the airport, it would be an extra fee?” This is the question I’ve asked myself as I’ve compared my own dating life to my friends’, especially back in high school, when I was a gay man with no active dating life while my girlfriends were already on their fourth boyfriend, and the number kept going up.

Now, I look at their relationships, and no shade, but I wouldn’t envy any of them. It also happened in college. It wasn’t until my last month in Paris that I found myself surrounded by married lesbian couples, and for the first time in my life, my Pinterest board was a reality that my friends were actually living.

According to my astrology-lover friends, it’s all because I am a Libra and Libra is ruled by Venus, the planet of love and beauty; I get too attached to potential. So, let’s blame it on astrology.

“If you imagine a future next to them right away, you are denying the universe the chance to give you that future,” said my childhood best friend to me the other day as I was ranting to her about how single I was.

Is Being Too Independent Now Our Enemy?

Most of us had to learn how to be with ourselves. How can you be with someone if you cannot be with yourself? is something I probably read in one of those self-help books when I was 19 and already thinking about one of my three weddings.

If there’s something I’ve copied from the men I’ve met, it’s to build my life around my friends and my work, to decentralise love. Sounds easier than it is, I know. But it’s a double-edged sword. All my girlfriends love their single lives, their friends have become the loves of their lives, and so dating feels like an intruder will come in and disrupt the peace that has been built. Dating stops being a priority.

It wasn’t until this year that Dolly Alderton’s book Everything I Know About Love made sense. I had lived with one of my best friends in New York and cried in the airport after leaving my sister in Barcelona to move to Paris. Then today, I saw Carrie Coon’s monologue, and I realised that time will bring meaning, but my friends will always be there.

Get Microbangs and Forget About Romantic Love

I think my friends are putting together an intervention regarding my addiction to love. “Let it go, it really happens when you forget about it,” is what all of them say during our support group phone calls. During one of those phone calls, my friend said she believed you could stop loving someone. I disagreed; love never disappears, it’s just transferred, and I know because all the love I had in me to give someone, I am now ready to give it all to my friends.

But the question remains: if our friends have become the loves of our lives, is there really space for the love of our lives in our lives?

I think there is. Perhaps as we grow, the amount of love grows with us. But we also have to make space for new love in our lives. We will choose our partner from a place of want, and not of need. Romantic love won’t be something we needto give our lives meaning, but something we choose to give once we have found meaning in our own lives.