With reference to romantic relationships, for the longest time I’ve been saying that love is not enough. You can be deeply in love, but love alone is not going to keep you together. Pragmatically, there are all sorts of variables that come into play: whether you have kids and/or your partner has kids; if so, the ages of those kids; the influence of an ex; religious considerations; financial realities; and arguably most important, values. In my mind, the list goes on and on.

Then, on Sunday the 14th of December, while out on a morning run on the Cliff Path in Hermanus, Tony slowed down when we reached bench number six and popped the question. Of course, my answer was yes — as long as we finished our run. Jokes aside, on the way back home I asked him, “So what’s the plan now?” And he admitted that he hadn’t thought beyond asking me to marry him.

Since then, I’ve been thinking a lot about why one would even get married. The thing I told him on Sunday is that I’m not marrying him for a “happily ever after.” I’m marrying him because it feels organic to move into the next stage of our lives. No butterflies. No fireworks. Just vibes — and a partner to drink G&Ts with.

My pondering continued. Why does anyone get married? And more specifically, why would Tony and I? In true academic form, I want to propose a theoretical framework — five or six factors, or lenses, through which to understand my own motivations. Ostensibly, people get married for one or two or more of five reasons. Sometimes a few, but at least one.

The first, and most common in my part of society, is to raise or support a family unit. This is so pervasive that many people simply assume this is why everyone gets married. Well-meaning, perhaps, but deeply ignorant when applied universally — especially in my situation. Tony is a dad with three relatively young children. I am a woman who, by my own account, has successfully raised two children. So surely it makes sense that we should get married for that reason, right? No. Wrong. That’s simply not what I want.

I encounter this constantly… the surprise, the shock, even the horror, when I tell people I’m not interested in being heavily invested in raising Tony’s children. I’m quite happy to be an aunty. For many people, this is deeply unsettling to hear. The reactions have ranged from people offering to ‘take the kids’ themselves, to reassuring me that ‘things might change in the future.’ The bias is extraordinary.

The second reason people get married is for financial security. Together they can be building an empire. Or one stays home to look after kids while the other financially provides. Or it’s just financially viable for whatever reason for both partners. That’s also not the case for Tony and me. I’m not going to support him financially. I don’t need to, and I won’t. I have two children whom I would rather enrich. That feels like my duty and responsibility. My now-adult children were there long before Tony, and that’s simply the reality of meeting your partner later in life, once you’re already established. And I certainly don’t need any financial support from Tony. So that’s another box ticked as irrelevant.

The third reason on my list is social status. Royal families have done this for centuries, and many cultures, Indian families, for example, engage in this quite openly. In my own social context, it exists too. People admire and respect those who marry celebrities or prominent figures. On a micro level, most of us do this early on: we date the popular kid, the good-looking kid, or the kid with some special talent, and by association, our own social standing rises.

Now, Tony has a PhD. He’s incredibly funny, social, and popular at work and among friends. A local celebrity in the Department of Food Science and Technology, I call him. I’m not as funny as he is, but I’m respected and socially secure in my own right. I’ve built my own social capital. So this isn’t it for us either. Another irrelevant tick box.

The fourth reason I could think of is religious fulfilment. Anyone who knows Tony and me knows that this is definitely not our reason. We’ve been quite comfortably ‘living in sin’ for the past four years. 😱

The fifth reason people get married is simply that they enjoy being together. In Tony’s and my case, we genuinely do. He is kind to me, and he says I’m kind to him ….most of the time. We have our ups and downs, but we talk. And we talk. And we talk some more. We speak hard truths and soft truths. The good, the bad, the ugly, and the funny. There’s a level of respect that grows into admiration, which then turns into physical ease around one another.

This made me wonder whether there might be a sixth reason people get married: physical intimacy. But in Tony’s and my case, without communication there would be no physical intimacy. So we’re certainly not getting married for that. Which leads me to ask: at its most basic level, is what I’m describing simply called love?

Am I saying that we won’t stay together to raise a family, or build wealth, or enhance social status, or fulfil religious expectations, or even for sex? We’ve spoken about all of this. In doing so, we made our expectations and boundaries explicit. We’ve come to an agreement that none of these I’ve just mentioned, are strong enough bonds for us… reasons for us to stay together. Instead, we will stay together simply because we love each other.

Ultimately, then, love is enough.

And then, so like because wow, here I am, rewriting my old narrative — proverbially flipping the script. I’ve always said that love is not enough. But now I see that love can be enough. Love is enough, if you have courage too. Courage to speak about what matters to you. Courage to name your non-negotiables. And the grace to accept certain truths about your partner, with the expectation that your partner extends the same grace to you. This builds trust, which in turn yields more courage to keep doing the same. Day by day, week by week, month, year…

And yet… oh darn it. Love is not enough!