(I Think) I Don’t Want to Get Married (Yet)

You would think that the longer you spend in a stable relationship, the easier the decision to get married becomes. I mean, maybe that’s how it is for a lot of people, but in my case, it was the complete opposite. It was right when I started thinking about proposing that I began asking myself the questions that actually matter. I realized we still had a lot to work on. On my end, there were a couple of things I needed to talk about and a few boundaries I needed to set before even thinking about what kind of ring would look good on the woman I love. For many years, I’ve pretended—not about everything, but about a lot of things. I’m not talking about faking my affection or hiding some unforgivable secret; in fact, I’m talking about something as simple as sometimes pretending to be someone I’m not to make her feel better, or at least to avoid making her feel bad, or simply to avoid creating conflict because I didn’t want to come across as toxic. And if we’re going to vow to love each…