Why I Changed My Mind About Marriage

When I first met my now-husband, I was clear: marriage wasn’t for me. It came up casually, during a group activity on a journalism trip in Malawi. We were sharing songs that influenced us, and I mentioned Billy Idol’s *“White Wedding.”* I half-jokingly explained that seeing the music video as a child had put me off marriage forever. But that wasn’t really the whole truth.

Growing up in my 20s, my aversion to marriage wasn’t just because of a music video, but because of the feminist ideas I believed in. I wasn’t against marriage as a whole, but I questioned how so many women around me seemed to treat it as inevitable, like a milestone they *had* to reach in life. I saw people sliding into marriage as if it was the final step to becoming a responsible adult, and that made me uncomfortable.

Even in progressive cities like New York, where I spent most of my early adulthood, there was still this invisible deadline hanging over women. Sure, we prided ourselves on rejecting traditional norms—dating freely, focusing on careers, and building strong female friendships—but by the time we hit our early 30s, it was almost expected that we’d start evaluating men for marriage potential. There wasn’t any overt pressure, but it was there, in the background, nudging us to find a “good man” by a certain age.

I watched as many women around me made safe choices, picking partners who were kind, responsible, and met their goals for a traditional life, even if their relationships lacked the passion and spark they once dreamed of. Often, they settled for men who would make good fathers and reliable partners. They didn’t necessarily find great love, but they found stability—and usually, a baby followed soon after.

Those marriages terrified me.

Like many girls raised in middle-class families, I was always taught to make smart, sensible decisions. Get good grades, go to college, get a solid job—check, check, check. But by my mid-20s, I found myself deeply unsatisfied with my path. I had become a lawyer, a job that left me physically and mentally drained. Eventually, I decided to quit law and take the plunge into writing, even though it was a career filled with uncertainty and financial instability. I barely scraped by with freelance work, but that reckless decision turned out to be one of the best choices I ever made.

Once I broke free from the “sensible” life decisions I’d been making, I felt empowered to rethink my stance on relationships, too. In my mind, marriage had always seemed incompatible with feminist ideals. How could I commit to an institution that had historically reduced women to property? Although the legal system had evolved, allowing women to maintain their own identities, I saw too many women still giving up a part of themselves, symbolized by taking their husband’s last name.

I also saw the professional and social consequences marriage could have on women. In the workforce, particularly in male-dominated fields, women who got married were often treated as though they were just a step away from leaving their jobs. It wasn’t an unfair assumption either—many women did slow down or drop out entirely once they had children, sometimes because they had to, given the lack of support for working mothers.

For men, though, marriage rarely seemed to change anything. Their lives continued on the same track, while women’s lives became more focused inward, on home and family. That wasn’t the life I wanted. So, in my mid-20s, I decided to take marriage off the table altogether. I wanted to date without constantly weighing whether someone was “marriage material.” It made dating more enjoyable and gave me permission to walk away from relationships that didn’t fulfill me, even if the men I dated were perfectly kind and decent.

You can probably guess where this story is going. I ended up getting married two weeks ago.

I met my husband on a work trip, and our connection was immediate. At first, I didn’t expect anything long-term—after all, I wasn’t looking for marriage. We spent time together without the usual pressure of “where is this going?” and that allowed our relationship to grow naturally. Before I knew it, we were moving in together, and after a few months, we started talking about marriage.

At first, I wasn’t sure. I didn’t doubt my love for him or our future together, but marriage? That was a different story. I had spent years believing marriage would limit me, pulling me back into a traditional life I didn’t want. We spent months discussing what marriage would mean for us—could we create a partnership that reflected our shared values? Could we avoid the traps of traditional gender roles? Ultimately, I realized that while marriage as an institution has its flaws, it could also be what we made of it.

For us, marriage wasn’t about completing each other or achieving a life goal. It was about choosing to build a life together, not just for now, but for the long haul. We didn’t get married to follow a script; we got married because we wanted to create our own story.

In the end, I’m still a feminist, and I still see the ways marriage can be limiting, especially for women. But I also believe that we don’t have to reject something just because it doesn’t fit perfectly within our ideals. Sometimes, living a happy and fulfilling life means making compromises, not with others, but with ourselves. Marriage, for us, wasn’t about living up to anyone else’s expectations—it was about choosing each other, flaws and all, and embracing the journey ahead.

And honestly? I couldn’t be happier.

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