The first time or the second time? 
Ooh, this!
After about 3 dates, both of us were like, okay, so we’ve found each other, let’s just start enjoying our life together. Marriage was just the logical progression of that. No stress was involved (well, maybe in the wedding part of it) and certainly no doubts.
Maybe it helped that I was nearing the end of my 20s and was really looking for stability. Maybe it was the fact that the thought of spending the rest of my life with this one person was actually more appealing than horrifying. Maybe it was because he was my best friend and I could see myself being cosy with him into our dotage.
I can’t imagine going into a marriage without feeling these things, but I imagine that there will be people out there who started out on a less certain footing and ended up with a solid marriage. For me, though, there was just this certainty. Can’t really explain it more than that.
Dunno. It just seemed really obvious at the time.
And I only regret it when he’s a bozo!
While we aren’t legally married, after 16 years, we certainly have the equivalent.
For me, it was the first time I closed my eyes and tried to imagine life without him around. What hit me was a wall of grief. Not grief over a death or a seperation, but grief over not having him in my life.
We were nearly 40 when we started dating and we’d built good lives on our own. What it came down to for me is simply that life is better with him than without him, and of all the people I’ve known in my life, I’d rather spend time with him rather than anyone else.
I can’t say there was a time in my life when I was “ready to marrry.” For most of my life I didn’t expect to get married. As for what I considered and when, I started thinking about such things when I realized I could fall in love with him. I liked his character and his wit. He’s independent, competent, and self-sufficient which means he won’t need to be taken care of constantly. He’s also honorable and honor matters to him, as it does to me. This means neither of us will push the other to do something he or she believes is morally wrong.
The last thing I’d strongly urge someone to consider before deciding to get married is how the two of you handle adversity together. It can be something mild, but I would get the other person’s measure in a crisis. Things do go wrong in life, and I wouldn’t want to be married to someone I couldn’t rely on when things got tough, nor would I want to be a person who couldn’t be relied on. If I was going to marry, I wanted to marry someone who could be a partner, an equal, and a friend. I’m glad I found one.
How do you know? How do you know? You try & then you find out.
If its a 40 degree morning at 6AM and the kids are asleep and she looks so sweet from the back as she sleeps on her side…and you want to spoon her & more. How do you know?
Well… you gently throw an arm over her & hug her in her sleep. And if she moans lightly, give the red light to the paratroopers & “Go…!Go…!Go…!”
When the urge to resolve this out weighs any possible future hook ups, you just Know.
Same as when you’re passing a kidney stone, btw…
We had never lived closer than 600 miles apart in the five years we knew each other. For the first year we visited often, then we broke up. We got involved with other people, but we’d keep in touch every so often. We got uninvolved. Then, when Amtrak killed my hamster (long story) she was the only one I could think to call. We started talking again more frequently, and I sensed (in one of my very rare instances of actually getting it) that the time was right. So, I invited her to help me move from Illinois to Louisiana (how romantic) and I asked her. I assumed we’d get married after she got her PhD, but she had already decided that research was not for her, so we were engaged for 10 months. I think basically we both figured out that we couldn’t stop talking to each other, and being married would save on our phone bills.
I wasn’t exactly sure I was ready for marriage when I woke up one morning and realized that I’d found my best friend in the world. I couldn’t imagine life without him, and when he saw me throught several really bad times and never backed away once, I knew I had a keeper.
This, except change “US” government for “Australian”.
Well yes, but sometimes the things you want at 23 aren’t the same things you want at 27 or 28… And what might have seemed like a brilliant match for a serious relationship at 23/24 suddenly turns out to be rather incompatible as what you both want out of life evolve/change… And then you have to make certain decisions.
Ooops. S/b “long-distance romance.”
I just did. After one date, I knew he was really special. After 3 1/2 weeks, I knew I was in love with him. After 7 1/2 weeks, he proposed, and I said yes. We waited another year and a half to get married, just to make sure we weren’t rushing into anything. Seven years later, I know I made the right choice for me.
Both times if you like, or even the fifth. This poll is open to everyone, not just married-once, still-married dopers (although that seems to be who its attracted.) Thanks to everyone who’s responded so far.
I am in the camp that says “we just knew.” But one time, I had to put it in words for my sister-in-law who was doing some project in high school on love or relationships. I related it to having this program that constantly runs in my head, it’s like a search engine. In every relationship before the one with my wife, that program would run and eventually it would find something that I knew would ultimately end the relationship. Then, that reason would be in the back of my head. And sure enough, those relationships ended. And one of them was a 4 1/2 year relationship that was pretty good for a while, but somewhere deep down inside, I knew it was going to end and not go on to marriage. I knew that the program had kicked out “religious differences” and that it would never work out. However, when I met my wife, that program never found anything that would indicate to me that our relationship would end. And it’s not like I am actively searching for something to break us up or anything. It’s just that I think most people “know” when it’s not going to work out and “relationship momentum” is the only thing keeping it going. Then there are the times when you find what you are looking for and it works out really well. Also, I know that if an issue DOES come up with me and my wife, it will be something we’ll work to resolve and not something that is going to end the relationship.
Here’s what I would ask myself before ever getting married again:
Is this person kind to you? Are they kind to other people? If they’re bad to other people, they’ll probably be bad to you eventually too.
Can you tolerate their family?
Are your views on religion and raising children at least somewhat compatible?
Do you share at least some of the same passions and interests, or if not can you both be happy living together but not doing things together?
Do they have good self-esteem? If they don’t love themselves, they won’t be pleasant to be around.
And…is the sex good?
Keep it coming… I think I’ll print out this thread and tape it to the fridge to help my man make up his mind…
(I’m kidding, but this is fun to read. I like happy stories!)
I’d suggest cohabitation first and foremost to see if it’s for you. Marriage isn’t much different than cohabitation, in my experience.
It used to be that I didn’t believe in that “you just know” crap.
Then I knew. I can pinpoint the exact moment it dawned on me that this is the person. And we had only been dating for four months. And I was far too young to be contemplating marriage. And I believed in it.
After nine years of marriage, I still believe that if you have to ask yourself if this is the right person, then it’s not the right person. I can’t explain it, and the cynic in my head sometimes mocks me, but there it is.
Although oddly enough there are some studies showing that people who live together before marriage are actually more likely to later divorce, for us it was a very good and useful experience. You learn things about someone when you’re living with her day in and day out that you just don’t from dating, even over a long time period. Living together taught my future bride and I that we could, and did, enjoy being together a lot more. Eighteen years later, it’s easy to see it was the right thing to do.
I’ve seen those statistics. I wonder if it has anything to do with the reasons people stay married versus the type of people who will live together.