I have so many questions that flicker at the edges of my mind when I’m close to sleep.

The latest one is my wonder that so many people are focused on getting married without the slightest idea of the damage they are getting ready to perpetrate on the love that is lighting them up from the inside.

It isn’t really that I don’t believe in marriage, although it’s not for me. It’s that so few of us know what the hell to do with it when we decide to lock ourselves in.

Let me be truly honest with you. I believe in love. I believe in the kind of love that moves mountains, mows down anything in the way of reaching the beloved and inspires the willingness to fight by whatever means necessary to preserve the happiness of the one who owns the heart.

I believe in fighting like a junk yard dog to protect a loved one. I believe in giving until I’m empty and exhausted to keep them safe and well. I believe in setting myself aside and listening when that need is there. I believe in loving someone enough to give them the space to grow and become more than I’ve known before.

When I love someone, I am not threatened by their success or growth or change. I am fiercely supportive. I am proud. I am made more by the love I have for them at that moment.

I believe in complete honesty, no matter how painful. I believe that love in the form of sexual expression should be with each wide open to the needs of the other so that no one else may tread or tempt there in that sacred place.

This is where I differ with the concept of marriage as I’ve lived it, and seen it played out in the lives of those around me.

In my experience, and in my observation of the lives of most (not all) of those around me, marriage is some kind of death knell for whole-hearted devotion. The marriage occurs, everyone sends gifts, experience the happiness and then it’s game over.

Because of a lack of insight, heart or awareness the relationship changes. Because one or both feel that the fish is caught so why continue to cast? Why continue to try when marriage has been achieved? Now is the time of contentment, then settling and finally, an insidious disregard for anything special that made us love in the first place.

What. The. Hell.

This is what I see and feel all around me. I am horrified by the witnessing of it’s painful, inevitable demise.

Most are clueless to the work required to have the kind of love that becomes legendary. The kind of love that epic poems are written about, the kind of love that will sacrifice whatever is needed to ensure the happiness of the other.

It’s all “you do the dishes, cook the dinner, do the laundry, keep the bills paid, listen when there’s complaining to be heard and be ready to have sex at a moment’s notice”.  This is not a gender specific comment. This is a statement of reality when someone, somewhere thinks they’ve reached a point where they’ve achieved their “goal” and don’t have to think or try or put in any effort anymore. Male or female.

Disclaimer: This is my opinion.

I know for a fact that a legal document does not ensure love. It does not guarantee that I’ll be held when I cry, listened to when I hurt or understood when I grieve. Being married doesn’t always mean that someone will support me when I need it, or wipe my tears when I cry without telling me to stop. It doesn’t promise that the other will be there for me when I am sick, frightened or feeling scared and alone.

For a very few, rare couples…all of this does happen. Most of the time. And that is more than enough in this universal rat race we live in.

For the rest of the world, not so much.

I’ve learned that familiarity does indeed breed contempt. I’m all about separate places and personal spaces. I believe that I should be missed, because I’m not always there. I believe in bringing something fresh into conversation because of not living in the pocket of another.

I will not agree to be taken for granted. I will not agree to love in a quiet, socially acceptable way. I will not agree that a legal piece of paper dictates who I stand beside; or determines who I fight for.

I submit that I can live here, and you there. That in doing so, my love will remain fresh and interesting to you. My conversation will be new because we are not in the other’s pocket. Never let it be said that my commitment, devotion or rabid defense of you be any less because there is not a piece of paper saying I must do so.

If anything, you will have more of me than anyone ever has. Because I will be dogged in my preservation of the love that lights my heart. I will allow no one or no thing to dim the fire that burns in my heart. I will be the irresistible force and the immovable object, the wall, the quiet power that holds you steady when your heart is weak and quivering.

And you will do the same for me.

This has nothing to do with a legal document, and everything to do with love.

I have so many questions. Why we kill love with neglect is the most horrifying. Negligence is such an insult to a loving heart. Ignorance is no excuse.

So many questions when I’m close to sleep…