Opinion piece: Barbara Lee
Five years into a relationship, something shifts. At least it did for me. I started thinking about marriage — not obsessively, not with a checklist — but with a quiet, growing certainty that this was what I wanted. If I'm honest, I've thought about it from the very beginning. From the moment I met my partner, I knew he was the person I'd want to call my husband. Not because of the party or the dress or the photos, but because marriage, to me, represents a shared decision about the future — a mutual "yes" that says: we're taking this seriously, together.
My partner doesn't see it that way
And he never really has. He didn't grow up thinking of marriage as a life goal, and while he hasn't ruled it out entirely, he's never pictured himself standing at an altar. He tells me he wants to be with me, that he wants to build his life with me — but that marriage, in his eyes, is more of an empty gesture than a meaningful one. His argument: people promise each other things they can't actually guarantee. Nobody knows how they'll feel in ten or twenty years. So to him, a wedding is a symbolic act, not a real foundation for anything.
There's a part of me that genuinely understands this. Sometimes I even agree with it. No piece of paper, no spoken vow, can stop two people from changing. Life is unpredictable, and every relationship carries within it the possibility of transformation.
In that sense, marriage really isn't a guarantee of anything.
And yet — there's another part of me that feels something harder to logic away. It's not proof I'm looking for. It's a sense of security. Not the certainty that things will never change, but the feeling of saying out loud: right now, we mean this. For me, that's not just a formality. It's an emotional anchor.
But lately I've been asking myself harder questions
Am I chasing something that doesn't actually exist? Am I searching for a certainty that can only ever be approached, never truly held? Because if I'm really honest with myself, no marriage can give me what I most deeply want — the guarantee that he'll always feel the same, and that I will too.
And this is where something quietly shifts in me. While I'm looking for a future-facing confirmation, I might be missing what's happening right now. My partner isn't uncertain about us. He's not saying he doesn't want to be with me. He's saying this relationship is enough for him, exactly as it is. And maybe I'm the one fixating on the absence of a symbolic gesture that isn't actually a condition for loving each other.
So slowly, my dilemma has stopped being about whether there will be a wedding. It's become something deeper: what matters more to me — the form of a promise about the future, or the everyday certainty I already have?
Maybe the real question isn't about marriage at all
Perhaps my desire for marriage isn't really about the future. Maybe it's about wanting to know, without doubt, that what we feel right now is significant. But maybe that kind of knowing doesn't come from a "yes" spoken at an altar. Maybe it comes from the way we show up for each other on an ordinary Tuesday.
If that's true, then perhaps the real question isn't can I expect marriage from him. The real question is whether I can let go of the illusion that there's a form, a ceremony, a document — something out there that could feel more reassuring than what we're already living.
And I'm not sure I have the answer yet. But I think that's where I need to start.
