Marriage for "Convenience"?

I spent Christmas with my family in San Diego. While there my uncle tried to convince me that I should "just go ahead and get married." Um, excuse me? This coming from the same uncle who gets up early every Sunday morning to go to mass, who serves as an usher at church, donates his time to rehab others home, and serves as a role model of living a christian wants me to get married... "just because." What the?

Call me old fashioned, but I'd like to hope when I get married it'll be for a reason more than just convenience.  Love would be the ideal reason. A desire to live in the union of partnership to make the world a better place could work. Throw in that person sharing my passion to participate in the adventure of life and we've hit pay dirt. To all that, mix in this other old fashioned notion that I'd like to get married before God, in a church, in front of friends and family. That in doing so, I'd be making a commitment (a promise*) to be with this person through thick and thin, and have the strength of my community and faith supporting me in that commitment -- I sure as heck don't want to make that kind of promise on a whim.

Don't get me wrong. I've witnessed a few marriages of convenience work out. Initially getting married because they wanted to "do right by the kids," helping out someone to stay in the country legally, and getting married just cause they didn't want to be alone. In my view, the odds are against these couples and being a calculated risk taker, that kind of risk doesn't add up. Instead, I'd rather know that we both went into the marriage with our eyes wide open, knew the pros and cons, and decided that all things considered it was a good idea to move ahead.

Then last night, I watched Tough Love 2, involving women who sabotage their relationships. I saw a few elements of past incarnations of me in them: a woman who requires a lot of emotional support, the "career professional," co-dependency, being "the perfectionist," etc. The elements didn't co-exist in me, but each on their own did make it incredibly difficult for me to be happy in a relationship. And in that show last night, I watched those women see the consequences of their lifestyles --> being be old, lonely ladies. Bummer!

Somewhere in the middle of these two extremes (convenience marriage & sabotaging relationships) is a happy medium. Eventually, I'm sure, I'll find that happy medium, settle down, and share my life with a partner who loves me as much as I love him. And how cool will that be?

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* Promise: Anyone who knows me, will know when I make a promise I will do all in my power to follow through. Thus, I will often say that I will "try" to get something done, will be "working towards" an action, but will rarely promise. So, as a little secret about me, if you want to make sure that I will follow through come hell or high water, see if you can get me to promise.