Making a Commitment

Mr P and I got married over Christmas after a short engagement.  We have been together for a long time, and have talked about marriage a great deal both hypothetically and in specific personal detail.  We finally made the decision to get married and had a wonderful beautiful personal wedding while we were home.  Now though, it seems unreal that we have actually tied our lives together legally.  

One of the reasons we had been putting off getting married was the fact that neither of us could answer one question: how do you know when it will last?  We are in love, our relationship is stable, supportive, and above all fun, but does this mean that it will last a lifetime?  We are both intelligent and well educated and we know that people change and that love in your 20's does not necessarily mean that you will still be compatible and in love in your 60's.  So how do you make the decision to marry?

Obviously, we made the decision as we are now wearing some extra jewellery.  We decided that if you can never know, and as we were already planning 5-10 years in advance we figured that was as good as married anyways.  We therefore committed our lives together.

How do you make these life decisions though?  How can you know what will be best for you 10, 20, 50 years down the road?  I guess the answer is that you can't, you can only do the best you can with what you know now and commit yourself to working on it in the future.  

You also have to come to terms with the fact hat you might truly want different things in the future, and that's alright.  You are allowed to grow and change, and you can change you life as this happens.