Most people marry the wrong person for the wrong reasons and spend the rest of their lives telling themselves how right they were. Some end up seeing the light and separate while others go fully into the darkness as they head down the aisle, eyes not wide shut but horrifyingly clear sighted and aware of the incredible mistake they are making as it happens.
I find myself at that awkward age where friends I saw get married are now getting divorced, friends who should get divorced are desperately fighting to stay married, and the rest are either panic-proposing or considering downloading Hinge for the seventh time pretending this round will be different. Since I'm in the grown-up position of not offering my opinions on anyone's spouses and you can usually find me at the buffet line or in a corner eating (I am so serious when I say most photos of me at events involve food, I am an equal opportunity eater), I've had extensive time to observe this whole tragicomedy while feasting on canapés and champagne. Which is why I have some thoughts.
I make no claims at being an expert. God knows I've destroyed enough relationships or potential along the way. But I've built this theory from observation and discussion with others, and I think it holds up to scrutiny. It's certainly not popular nor the fun way to do it, but that's also because most people don't want to think about who the person sleeping next to them is going to be when they get the worst phone call of their lives.
From what I've observed, most people marry out of three impulses:
- They have met someone who meets certain checkboxes at a certain time in their life.
- They feel pressure from society, family, social circles, the media, gossipy aunts, gross uncles, whatever, and they meet someone with which they can settle to remedy that ache.
- They are just plain afraid to be alone.
Sometimes it can be all three at once really, a perfect storm of bad reasoning dressed up in white and in blooming flowers with church hall music streaming in. But here is the problem - the person you meet today may not be the person you are with in a few years, much less in 5, 10, 15, or 20 - and the person you are expecting to grow or to change may surprise you along the way in ways good, bad, and ugly. What is in front of you and what is possible is not a guarantee of someone's character when the going gets tough.
As for reasons 2 and 3, well, I'll gloss over them, but it is fairly obvious - you have a problem, you think this is a solution because you come across another person, but actually, this is a horrible way to go about it. Do you remember group projects in school when you were assigned a mandatory partner to find? Sometimes it worked if you ended up clicking, but most of the time, it was not enjoyable nor an experience worth repeating. But you did it only because you thought you had to because of an authority, right? Same applies here.
As for people who can't be alone, well, I'll spare them the indignity of being told there's only so much running one can do - and how painful it must be to be someone in a relationship but lonelier than ever before.
You are probably marrying the wrong person. You may have married the wrong person already. Let me back up.
The person you want to marry is not the person in front of you today. It is not the person they will be tomorrow. It is not the person who is the smartest or hottest or wealthiest or whatever-liest. It is not about their potential, it is not about their possibility, it is not about their psychology even. It is not about who they are, what they do, or where they are going. Those are all elements to consider along with the broader decision. They are not the finalizing factors that make or break a lifetime's commitment.
The person you should marry is the 2am person. You know what I mean when I say 2am, but in case it isn't clear, let me cut to the chase: I want you to imagine the worst possible phone call you will ever get in your life. That is the 2am call.
That's the moment you pick up the phone, you hear something said to you, and there's your life before and your life after the call. That is your 2am moment. Now I want you to think about who is going to support you through what happens after you get that phone call.
Your 2am person is the person you marry. Your 2am person is the person who will be your partner, who understands high highs and low lows and everything in between, the person who at 2am has your back even if you weren't the best person you could be in that moment (which is, of course, a nuanced thing and not something that gives anyone a carte blanche to do whatever they want however. My point is the 2am person will be the person who sits with you or deals with it to support you instead of making it a burden or worse in the ways and forms that takes on specific to you.)
Is the hottest person going to be your 2am person? Maybe, maybe not. The smartest? Maybe, maybe not. The funniest? Maybe, maybe not. But your 2am person is someone who transcends the description to be the partner who is there and willing, supportive, and ready to do so. The 2am person understands that life ebbs and flows, but being a partner means showing up without flinching to give something a fair and honest shot without it crumbling. Of course, it takes two to achieve that.
But think about it deeply - do you know who the person is next to you at 2am and how they'd react if and when you get that call?
The last time someone really broke my heart, I was weeping on the street very publicly in Amsterdam. This is a huge, huge faux pas in Dutch culture. If you want to make the Dutch uncomfortable, just start crying in public (massive alpha move in there somewhere). Years later I look back at that moment and realize how grateful I am for the fact that someone I could have potentially built a life with was so incapable of handling strain that he balked completely. I was unmoored, unbecoming, unfiltered, unhinged, un-everything but deeply under duress because of what was my 2am moment. And he revealed exactly who he was. The person in front of me that day was no guarantee for the person he'd be when it mattered. For better or for worse, in sickness and in health, these are all nice poetic things and extremities to consider, but the reality of them eludes us until it colors the day to day we cannot escape but need to endure somehow at best, if not find our way out of.
I don't think many people know how to love properly, and I think the vast amount of unhappy relationships indicates where we go wrong. We optimize for the wrong things. We perform instead of participating in our lives properly when we choose people who look good on paper, who photograph well at weddings, who our mothers approve of, who check the boxes we were handed by someone else's idea of what a life should look like, we perform instead of participating and only realize it when we wake up next to a person we don't know at all (if we even know ourselves to begin with). When we perform, we do not choose people who can sit with us in the wreckage of everything falling apart. You cannot expect the performative partner to do much more than meet the criteria you selected them to act out with you instead of engaging with them as a person warts and all.
The 2am test is not romantic. It's not fun. Nobody wants to think about the car accident, the diagnosis, the death, the loss, the moment everything falls apart. But that moment is coming for all of us. There is no eluding it, tragedy will find you, and if it doesn't, fuck off (happy for you, I guess, if I'm being upfront). Nonetheless. Nonetheless tragedy of whatever size of proportion when life also fucks you over - the question is only who will be standing next to you when it does, and what they will do when they see you at your lowest, most unbecoming, most human all too human.
I think about all the people I've loved, and I don't know them anymore. That's a good thing. It's a beautiful thing, really. It means they weren't my person and I wasn't theirs. The ones who left when things got hard did me a favor. The ones I left when I couldn't be their 2am person, I did them a favor too.
So before you propose, before you say yes, before you walk down any aisle, ask yourself: is this my 2am person? When the call comes, when the world splits in two, when I am weeping on a street in a foreign city making strangers deeply uncomfortable, will this person stay?
If the answer is no, or if you don't know, you have your answer.
If the answer is yes, you might just be one of the lucky ones.
Reader note: For comments or consulting inquiries, reach me at ani@anibruna.com.
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