Seth Adam Smith has done something most people can only hope for – he’s had a blog post go viral.
His post, “Marriage Isn’t For You” outlines the reasons he got married to his wife, and begins with him admitting that after a year and a half of marriage, he has determined that marriage isn’t for him. He goes on to explain that prior to proposing to his now-wife, he had a lot of anxieties and reservations about the situation, but eventually he decided to go through with it when he realized that marriage wasn’t about himself, it was about the other person.
He says in the post,
… I knew that Kim was the right person to marry. I realized that I wanted to make her happy; to see her smile every day, to make her laugh every day. I wanted to be a part of her family, and my family wanted her to be a part of ours. And thinking back on all the times I had seen her play with my nieces, I knew that she was the one with whom I wanted to build our own family.
The first time I read this article, I had the same reaction that most people did: “Aw, this man is so selfless and loving. A modern day Prince Charming!”
But then I realized that no, I do not want someone to marry me just because they want me to be happy, and they’re doing it entirely for me.
I understand the point of his post – he’s trying to convey the message that when you truly love someone, you put your own happiness or fears aside because you’re much more concerned with theirs. You begin to consider their emotions above all else, including your own. I get that, I do.
But at the end of the day, I want someone to want to marry me because they’re being selfish – because they can’t live without me, and because they love me so much that they know that being with me will make them happy for the rest of their life. I want someone to want to marry me because they know that we will both make each other happy. And that being together only has one outcome: making our lives better and fuller.
My fear for the man who wrote the post – the man who says marriage isn’t for him and that he only married his wife to make her happy – is that, at some point, he could end up resenting her. After all, he didn’t want to get married – he just did it to make her happy.
Photos courtesy of Millzero Photography via photopin cc.