Relationships are a lot like icy road conditions. You go out and take your chance and you hope for the best. I met a woman who was on her third marriage. I couldn’t imagine being married that many times. I know that it happens. But when I listened to her story I started to wonder why this person was even married. Her husband, who was also on his third marriage, didn’t strike me as the type of person who would have made that commitment again. When I knew her prior to her marriage, she was also such a free-spirit. She liked to go into the city and spent time really enjoying life. After more than ten years, she has changed. She lost her spirit and she wasn’t the same person that I had no prior to marriage. Then I started think, maybe there are people out in the world who really are meant to be married. My answer is yes. There are people who can and will be in committed relationships, but that doesn’t mean that marriage must always follow. Some relationships are best left in the condition that they work best in.

I had read once that a person who is more educated and traveled as an individual becomes the less likely they are to enter into a committed relationship. If they do, they are usually well into their thirties or even forties when it does happen. Most often, time is the problem, but in many cases, the difficulty of meeting someone whose knowledge and experience is commensurate with yours is the cause. If this is so, then it could explain the reason for why there are so many people who are single or those that marry later in life. Bottom line, there are people out there that can be honest with themselves that they just aren’t ready. While others may feel that being married means being able to compromise and follow through on you word all day, every day. This way of thinking may make being in a committed relationship nearly impossible because the standards are too high to achieve. Otherwise we go through every few years with the same person and then, somehow, we end up going down a different path looking for someone else.

I think we can be afraid to ‘go against the grain’ when it comes to relationships and instead we play this constant searching game, hoping to find marriage. Maybe we become more frightened as we get older and look to marriage to be that needed security blanket. In any event, whatever makes you happier, single or married the future is filled with uncertainty. We can make promises to each other, but like the woman I spoke about, there is no promise that relationships will stay the same. It’s impossible because even as individuals we are constantly changing, we look to promises to give us the strength and courage to willingly be in a relationship. But more importantly, in order to be and stay in that committed relationship, we have to be willing to accept that as two people, we are either going to grow together or grow apart. It’s something that I think this woman should have thought about saying ‘Do I’ before saying ‘I Do.’