Knowing Me, Knowing You: Should You Marry The One You Love?

Breathe in. Breathe out. Smile. Strike a pose for the camera. 

Snap. Post. Your second dinnertime selfie lights the World Wide Web like a kinky Friday night revelation from Amber Rose. Being happily stuck in twenty-something mode a la Bonang and AKA well before the big three oh or birthday number forty dawns on you is immeasurably joyful. You left high school and college life behind you and left family and friends and pesky haters and a big chunk of life in the only place you have ever called home.

You completed an internship and experienced an appalling period of soul-searching idleness after that. So you began part-time studies at university. You quit sugar and candy-coated snacks and caffeinated coffee for social and health reasons and experimented with carbohydrate-free diets and ultra light cigarettes and marijuana - while pursuing muscular perfection in the gym with laborious zeal for a couple of months - but slowed down when a freshly-toned appearance never materialised.

You made new acquaintances once again and met somebody that you could confide in and lean on for love and support at a raucous house party. But that budding relationship did not last very and neither did it end well. Love (or call it loving lust) is somewhat complicated right now. You are a busybody who has no time for long-lasting relationships. You are hungry for professional recognition and Cassper Nyovest-like money and status. So you remain enthusiastically rebellious and considerably hopeful you will land that fancy corner-office job or make big money long before love and family come along.

Life is simple and love can be so irrational and emotional and undesirable it can make a grown man and woman cry in despair for days and months. You want to love and be loved but doubt love can be authentic because deep-seated romantic feelings are commonly rare phenomena in the unmarried life and remain temporary sensations that disturb the evergreen ebb and flow of single hood. Why would anyone swap bachelorhood and spinsterhood for the bland bondage and ceaseless familiarity of marital entanglement? That is the million dollar matrimonial question.

You could find that special him or her this Saturday or next Christmas but will you abandon random self-actualisation and self-renewal and wild moments of calculated and chaotic romantic pleasure altogether? Could you ever replace an uncontrolled and colourful modus operandi with marital monotony and remain faithfully bound to a formal union forever because you have found love and fallen in love with the idea that love is real and someone who is sweet and tender actually loves you?

Is lifelong marriage about love nonetheless? Do you love the person you tie the knot with or rather marry the person you love? Your partner could be breathtakingly beautiful but boring and dominant and much too talkative and overly negative much of the time. So she cannot possibly be the special one - right? Yes, no? Your boyfriend might be handsome and well groomed and perfectly well mannered and charming but hopelessly unfaithful and unemployable and not resourceful: he cannot hold down a proper job for long and is not the entrepreneurial kind of lover either. So he probably could not ever be the one - right? Or could he be all right for you? Can love be that blind to immense imperfection and improbable incompatibility it trumps everything else?

Is love simply a state of mind and close reflection and alignment of potential realities and long term considerations and not a permanent romantic fixation? The real practicalities of building and raising a family require more than passionate romance and teary-eyed early morning snuggles and admirable admissions and commendable commitments to one another. Love can be so unromantic and painstakingly mechanical in reality many long term associations might never really evolve into profoundly perfect and happy unions.

Love and marriage are probably more about sharing life together. That includes sharing the bills. Sharing the bed. Sharing the happiness of structured romance and blissful highs and terrible lows of adulthood. Sometimes the worrisome need to shoulder the inconsolable burden of illicit sexual liaisons will arise. You will also share tiny things like the last slice of French toast and glass of milk at the breakfast table. Change will slowly undo an entire lifetime spent shaping individual characters and identities in separate spaces. Time will become a precious and shared commodity. You will have to make time for hectic lovemaking sessions and candid conversations about work and shopping and loud-mouthed friends and colleagues.

You will have to visit the gynaecologist as a couple and hold hands in the delivery room when another lovely soul is born. Without much fanfare you will be closer to thirty and forty years of age before you know it. Time will move quickly. You can ask Lil Wayne about that. Nothing lasts forever. Before long a toothless baby-faced little one (or two or three little ones) will join the family. You will love and care for them. So much so you will want the good times to last forever and ever. You will look at your baby and realize she is the future: you have had your teens and twenty-something years. Still, you will wonder: can this beautiful life stay like this forever?