Why Bother Getting Married or Being in a Committed Relationship

My first marriage was a compromise I made to escape the hell I was in. In hindsight, it was an unconscious choice. From getting burnt I learned that any unconscious decision will have you jumping out of the pan into fire. How long was I going to keep escaping my hells?

At some point, my choice did lead me to waking up to myself. These “wakeup calls” take a while and they repeat themselves until we get the lesson. We learn things through repetition. Getting slapped in the face by life is a part of human evolution.

It’s the same with unlearning the things that don’t serve us. The time that is spent in unlearning is extremely painful. But it is an important to the process of growth nonetheless.

This is what “purification requires heat” means. So those who escape at the first sign of conflict in a relationship are the ones who would:

• choose to remain single
• be afraid of commitment and hence wear the “busyness” badge of honor
• keep chasing illusions of perfection
• not (be willing to) have uncomfortable conversations
• blame anything or anyone so as to stay in their comfort zone

I could go on and on. In my case, my only experiences in relationships had been dysfunctional, which brought up a lot of anger and resentment for me.

I realized I had to become conscious to the beliefs I picked up about myself from my past experiences in relationships and question if they were still true. I had to find me.

Sitting there meditating, I noticed the tightness in my belly and chest, my blood boiling, and how I allowed anger to damage my body. It felt uncomfortable to accept the wrong that was done to me. But without embracing it as a part of my life, how could I move on? How could I make peace and still love and be loved? How could I be in the type of relationship I wanted to be?

So I sat in this heat because I wanted to be in a normal, beautiful relationship for once. For once I wanted to know what it felt liked to be loved as me and share all the love I had.

Now that I’m in the type of relationship I envisioned, I’m more open to having those uncomfortable conversations, because what I value is growth. I lived a limited life for many years and I knew that wasn’t for me. Sitting through the heat helped me understand and make peace with my past and leave it where it belonged. I was:

• ready to be in a relationship
• committed to myself, and unafraid of committing to someone for the long term
• clear on what I was bringing to my relationship
• willing to have uncomfortable conversations without running away
• done blaming others for the failures in my life

What does it means when you take someone’s hand (in holy matrimony) and commit yourself to be with them for the rest of your life?

You take someone just as useless and horrible as you are and you shackle yourself to them, and then you say “We’re not running away no matter what happens.” — Jordan Peterson

The thing is, if you can run away, you can’t tell each other the truth, i.e., have uncomfortable conversations. When you see pictures of couples holding hands, it looks appealing or romantic. But for a moment if you can think and the many meanings behind “holding hands with someone” it means much more than what meets the eye.

Being truthful and honest to myself was very uncomfortable. But the pain of not being in a relationship was what motivated me to face the hard truth. Now when my husband reflects an unconscious part of me that I need to embrace in order for our relationships to be better, I choose to change. I don’t want to run away anywhere because I know where that lead to in my past marriage. I’d be fooling myself again if I thought I could escape if I told myself “Oh, there’s someone better out there”. There is no escaping this heat.

When I made a conscious decision to spend the rest of my life with my life partner, the commitment wasn’t for him. It was for me. It was a promise I made to myself for better or worse. Wanting to be in this relationship is my conscious choice to grow — to face the heat of purification in order for me to evolve as a person, achieve my potential and our vision together.

You might enjoy these stories below in which I dive further into the process of purification and commitment.

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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.

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