I thought I was in love the first time, but I think I was just lonely and horny. After a few years I knew it was a mistake but stuck with it for quite awhile. My second go-round was the real deal though, and we’re still together 30 years later.
I’m a very strange sort of person when it comes to making decisions - no matter how sure I am of what I want, I’m anxious and worried I’m making a mistake until I’ve actually done it. So I was both sure and terrified of making a mistake , right up until the vows were done.
I felt the same way, so we waited until after the Supreme Court decision that made same sex marriage legal in all states. I figured that was as good as it was going to get. We got married in Hawaii because it seemed like there was less red tape there than here in California (for marriage in general, not just same sex marriage), and we were going there anyway.
Enh, she wanted to get married and I was okay with it — there weren’t any strong This Is The Right Thing To Do feelings. Once children entered the picture then marriage felt like the Right Thing. It provided a more stable environment for raising our daughter, complete with vows of fidelity and some legal inducements for us to stay together.
Now that we’re older, uglier, more flakey and out-of-touch with modern society, the bonds of matrimony are very comforting.
I was young and dumb. For purely practical reasons we were going to move in together. Her mother told me she’d be more comfortable if we were married. It didn’t seem like that big a deal (I was young and dumb), so we got married.
I was sure, though we weren’t really a couple and never lived closer than 600 miles from each other. After we broke up we couldn’t stop from maintaining contact, and I’d visit some times. We started talking more frequently when Amtrak killed my hamster, I invited her to help me move from Illinois to Louisiana, and I asked her then.
She was a lot less sure. Her parents even less so, being they had only met me once. But its been 46 years and going strong.
this has to be the weirdest how-we-got-together story I’ve ever encountered. Kudos.
(For the record, I’m picturing corporate spies breaking into your apartment, or a hamster that just loved to play down by the railroad tracks, rather than the more likely botched pet transport.)
This is exactly what I’m asking about in the thread - I’ve known quite a few people who got married despite having severe reservations/doubts about it.
I was a little uncertain. After all, I had met her only 6 1/2 months ago. That was over 60 years ago and I have no further doubts.
I assumed it was some kind of euphemism; I just haven’t figured out for what, yet.
Honestly, I’ve only ever known one person who didn’t insist they were absolutely sure they were in true love that would last forever. I was in college, and it was a grad student, engaged to another grad student. He kept justifying his decision to marry, but it sounded like he was talking himself into it. He ended with, “and anyway, we can always get divorced if it doesn’t work.”
They lasted three months.
Oh, pretty damn sure. We were “a couple” for ten months before getting married. Never a doubt in our minds. Just observed our 54th wedding anniversary in June. Looks like it just might work.
Nevermind.
It is a get back together story, not a get together story.
And literally true. I was visiting my parents in LA from Illinois over Christmas 1976. When I transferred at St. Louis TWA made me buy an immense dog kennel to put my hamster in. So, to come home that January, I decided to take the train to Chicago, and then the train to Champaign. They said I was to put the hamster in the mail car, where it would be nice and warm. But there was bad weather, we got to Chicago hours late, running out of food, and toilets in a lot of compartments froze up. (Not mine, at least.) When I got to Chicago they handed me a frozen stiff hamster. I did go to the baggage compartment and got $25 in compensation. Then I rode to Champain with a dead hamster in his cage in the baggage rack.
Who to call with this tale of woe? My ex-girlfriend, of course. So we started talking again, and it worked.
I don’t do anything normally.
The first time I knew it was a mistake. Nice party though.
The second time (different wife, no party) worked out.
Met my Dolly in early December 1979, we married in late January 1980. I was 19 and a half she was 20 and a half.
And no, she wasn’t preggo. We just knew. We were both 100% sure.
Still together today. 
Met my wife at a work meeting. I was certain I wanted to marry her by the end of the second meeting. The proposal a year later seemed rather a formality. And I was 100% sure on the wedding day for sure.
25 years in and we just entered the empty nest years. Never been a day of doubt or even fleeting regret in my mind.
It reminded me of the “Torgo Ate My Hamster” meme from MST3K.
I was in a vortex of crazy when I got married.
Abbreviated narrative:
I was 24. Fresh out of Orlando, Florida Navy boot camp and Meridian, Mississippi personnel school.
It was January and I was posted to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Had never heard of the place and was in a mighty funk. Refused to take off my winter coat for a few hours. Did not want to acknowledge my presence in this foreign place. State of mind could be described as non compos mentis.
That evening I loaded up my sun dress pockets with cans of 25 cent beer from the vending machine. Headed for the ferry to the other side of the island to meet some guy I met on the plane.
Ended up in a car with 2 Marines who had their own stash of beer.
Five months later I married one of them. Took leave from Cuba to go to Toledo, Ohio where his family lived. We got married by a magistrate. The “honeymoon” was a complete debacle involving law enforcement.
Anyways I went back to Cuba after the marriage and he went to California.
I wondered what I had actually done once I returned.
I used to lay in my bunk every night speculating various versions of “What hath God wrought?”
I managed to get a medical discharge form the Navy and found my way to California 6 months later.
We lasted 10 years.
So - no I was not sure and it was a colossal blunder.
I knew I was making a huge mistake but didn’t feel like I could back out. I was 19, he was 20. My parents had paid for most of the wedding and I didn’t want to make them mad by backing out because they’d lose the money they spent. Dumb, right? So I tried to make it work but he didn’t think the “forsaking all others” part of the marriage vows applied to him. We split up about four years later.