Validity
by truthsoftaylor
*disclaimer* This blog is not intended to bash on anyone. This is an outlet for me to share how I am feeling. Please do not judge. Please do not assume anything. Feel free to leave comments not criticisms.
I don’t even know where to start. I love Nick more that I ever thought I could love someone. He has shown me a new world. I could not imagine my life without him. He is the glue that holds me together. It didn’t take me long to figure out that my relationship with Nick was going to be permanent. Marriage has been a regular discussion in our household recently. I am sure I am just driving Nick crazy. More so, I am driving myself insane! Everyday that passes that we are not married eats at me. I have been here before. Nick is NOTHING like my ex, but my past is haunting me. I don’t want to be the live in girlfriend anymore. I don’t want to me THAT girl that settles for the forever girlfriend who is always hoping to get married. I want to be Nick’s wife. Every time this conversation is brought up with Nick, I just know he doesn’t understand what is going on in my soul. I don’t just want to get married to get married. It’s not just the next thing in my timeline. It’s much more than that. I need validity. I need to know that our love is permanent. A lot of people will argue with me about this. “You don’t need a piece of paper to prove your love.” True. But marriage is more that a piece of paper. It is an eternal vow. Marriage is acknowledging that it is no longer a solo adventure. Marriage is the beginning of a life outside yourself. Marriage is knowing that you will never be alone ever again. This is what I believe and this is what I want to share with Nick more than anything. I want him to know that He will always be my priority, I will always be his number one supporter, and I will take care of him to the best of my ability until the day I die. I want to take his name proudly and begin a family with him. I have never wanted anything more.
Why the hurry? My reply is why not? Why would I NOT want to share my life with Nick in a way that only two people who have made that commitment can? I have never been more sure that He is the one I want to share my life with.
Well then what the problem? I don’t know. Perhaps that society has put this huge pressure on people that getting married isn’t just committing yourself wholly ’til death to another but that it has to be this elaborate ceremony with all the bells and whistles and a ring to show off to the world and that you need to share that with a ton of people who don’t even know anything about you. Pride. Finances. Bleh Bleh. I let my fantasies of this take over the actual dream. And now Nick has those fantasies stuck in his head or at least that is what I think. My dream is to be Nick’s wife…and I don’t care how that happens. I am over all the hype. I don’t need to run up to all my friends and family and show off a glitzy piece of jewelry. In no way will the size of my ring represent how much love Nick has for me, there is not a ring begin enough. I just wish he could see that. I wish he could see that I would run away to the courthouse with nothing on my finger if that meant that I could be with him for eternity. I don’t need the world, I just need him.
Then my insecurities start showing up. Everyday I try and figure out why we aren’t married yet. I ignore the most likely reasons and create ones out of nothing. Maybe if I lost 20lbs, Maybe if I wore better clothes, Maybe if I did the house chores in a timely matter. I start to beat myself up and think that it is because of ME that we aren’t married, that Nick doesn’t want to marry me. These are far from the truth. But in my brain all you need is love to get married, and since we are not married I guess that means there is a lack of love… CRAZY, right? That’s what Nick said.
Why do I need this? I don’t know. I don’t know why I need the validity. I just do. I want to feel secure. I want to feel like an honest women. Does it matter? I love Nick, I want to be with him forever, I want to be his wife. End of Story. I don’t think there is a better reason to get married than that.
truthsoftaylor 
No criticisms here! Everyone has different thoughts and insecurities about marriage and I think the best thing you can do is express it and be honest with yourself and everyone else about it. With that being said, I think sometimes it helps to hear other people’s stories. It could be enlightening and it could be useless, but maybe this will give you some insight to Nick’s thought process, and hopefully encourage him as well.
Cody and I were together three years before we got engaged. I had a lot of issues with marriage and the concept of eternal love. It’s not that I didn’t believe that I would love Cody for the rest of my life, because I knew I would, but more so that I didn’t know how he could love me his entire life. I can only guarantee and make promises to myself and for myself, and I didn’t want to have someone else make me a promise that could be broken. My parents have been together for 25 years and married for 19. When I was little, I believed wholeheartedly that they were soul mates and madly in love. When I got older, I learned it’s not that simple. There was constant talk of divorce, fighting, yelling, separating the whole shebang, and how could an easily influenced teenager not begin to plan doubts in their mind? So that’s what I did. On top of that, unfortunately, most people do not believe in love anymore. They’re constantly criticizing and doubting, and it’s really difficult to hear such a negativity about such a beautiful thing. So then, I was 18 years old and met Cody and fell in love. Madly, deeply, can’t live without you kind of love. All the while having people doubt us, discourage us, and not believe in us. We rebelled and fought against it and believed in each other enough that other people didn’t matter. And then, three years later Cody proposed, and I started to wonder, were they right? Ten years down the road will we be different people? Will he resent me for getting married so young? Will he think the life we’ve built isn’t good enough? Will he wish that he was single in a bachelor pad instead of married with a wife? Will he decide that loving me was a mistake? And on and on it went.
Then, we moved to North Carolina and the struggle drastically increased. We struggled with choices we made and with who we were together and apart. We struggled with making ourselves happy and not everyone else happy. And it finally dawned on both of us that that’s what we had to do. I struggled so much the first 6 months of living in NC. I was alone a lot, it wasn’t what I thought it would be, and I worried Cody would decide it wasn’t worth it, that I wasn’t worth it, and that thought terrified me. Instead, all he did was prove his love for me every.single.day. He never doubted me, blamed me, or ridiculed me but inspired me and encouraged me. He believed in me and us enough for the both of us. When I was filled with doubts and insecurities he was headstrong and determined to prove that what he have is real, and that we can make anything work. So, we eloped. I cannot tell you enough how amazing that decision was. I know people were disappointed, and it was probably one of the hardest decisions we have ever made as a couple. Who doesn’t want the beautiful wedding with all of their friends and family there to celebrate? No one. Really, no one does, despite what they say. But marrying Cody, for our reasons and no one else’s, was the best thing we ever did. It wasn’t this elaborate, elegant event, but a small ceremony with just Cody and I admitting our love and our devotion to one another. We stopped worrying about what everyone else thought and started living for each other.
My point is that everyone has doubts and insecurities. That’s what marriage is: faith in each other. Faith that you’re willing to be the strong one when someone else may be weak. That you’re willing to compromise and fight and do whatever it takes to make the other one happy, because it’s worth it. I don’t know if Nick is having the same insecurities and doubts that I had, or maybe they’re the same ones that Cody had. He was worried about the life he could provide for me, the struggles we would face financially and emotionally, if he would be a good dad someday, etc. All I can say is this: be the strength to Nick’s weakness right now and prove every single day that you love him and will continue to love him for the rest of your lives, and he’ll get there. It may take longer than you hope, but he loves you and you love him, and I think that’s always enough.
Shelby, Thank you! A lot of times you only see a portion of someone else’s love story and you just assume. I always look at you and Cody and Matt and NIcole and envy because all I see is what is shared through social media and conversation. Never would I have imagined the struggles that both you of you deal with on a daily basis. It was refreshing to hear this side.The real side. The struggles that make loving more beautiful. So Thank you for sharing that. I love you and Cody so much and now even more.