If What You Seek Is Not Within You You'll Never Find It Without

People seem to think that they've got this love thing correct when they've found a person to marry and not when they've sorted out how they see love.

I think I have the most objections with the "institution" or "establishment" of marriage when it comes to seeing love as a "prize" to be won. As if love were selective, elusive, hard to see, difficult to catch, picky and something that bestows only The Special. It's a competition to the point of married folk even believing that there's something wrong with unmarried folk and likewise the "burdened" single folk believing that there's something wrong with them.

Just like your typical little girl I wanted to get married in a lavish wedding and live happily ever after. I haven't had the chance to do so, but I have been starting to rethink what exactly I think I'll be achieving.  To think that such standards are placed on a universal energy is ridiculous, yet I'm still inclined to play the fairy tale game. Marriage isn't *necessary* and no one is forcing me into it, but it might be...nice to a have a little shindig to celebrate a partnership of respect, trust and acceptance of each other. Those things don't exactly come in perfection but I dunno the celebration being perhaps that you've found a person you have a great relationship with-not just someone who you can love. But then I guess that would be the trial and error in every relationship.

I'm all for mature relationships, lovers being adults easily being able to take on responsibility and working together with teamwork, however the absence of a ceremonial wedding does not mean that I would be any less loyal or committed to a partner and the presence of a ceremony does not guarantee that I would be the perfect partner.

I hate the idea that people suddenly start being entirely different "just because we're married now" Or the discrepancies between the expectations of the two of them and the sudden higher demands of each other. No wonder people fear commitment. Society and the media make marriage out to be like a huge land mine filled with surprises and fine print.

But maybe it's not all bad? Should it not be a celebration when two people have broken down all of those barriers to intimacy enough to trust and communicate with each other? When they've given up the power struggles and see each other as equal?