Marriage

When I received word from the First Presidency that I could not go on a mission, both my stake president and bishop told me that I should start thinking about marriage--that dating should become more serious. They told me to start looking for women that could be potential wives. This is great and all and at the moment I was ready to jump on the marriage bandwagon. Then all of the sudden, I hit a brick wall. What was I thinking? I am nowhere near marriage and I am not even sure if I want to marry someone. My life has the possibility of being easier if I never marry. What am I supposed to do? The answer is that I do not know. I kept putting off thinking about marriage because I was going on a mission and I did not need to think about it at the moment. Well things have changed drastically and my life is completely different than it was three months ago.

Now that my mind has cleared a little bit, I realize that I am not ready for marriage even if I find someone who would be good for me to marry. I want to say that I twenty years old. In my mind, I am way too young to get married. I still have a lot of life to live and quite frankly, I am still making a lot of mistakes that I do not want to put on a wife. I think a good age to get married is around twenty-five. That way I have experienced life and I have my hormones semi-under control. I also think that twenty year olds cannot make a very good decision on who they are supposed to spend the rest of their lives with. Hormones are too controlling and I know first hand how certain desires can control your thoughts and actions.

The other question is if I even want to marry. I have done a lot of thinking on this topic. It would be great to have someone to spend the rest of my life with--to hold, kiss, cuddle, share feelings, have sex, to have my own children with, and enjoy life with. Then at the same time, I have been finding a lot of fulfillment in my friends lately. I have enjoyed hanging out with them and being close to them. I could see myself not having someone there as long as I have a good friends around me. This probably would not be too hard for me because a lot of people call me a social butterfly and I seem to always have people around me. I am not sure which route to take. I see great benefits to both.

The one downside for marrying though is the difficulty that comes with a Mixed Orientation Marriage (MOM). I realize that marriage is hard in general, but a MOM is going to be much more difficult. There are a lot of issues that can come up because of it and it can be very painful on both me and my wife. Then there is always the possibility of me screwing up and hurting her really bad (I know for a fact right now that if I got married I would probably screw up and hurt somebody really bad).

With these thoughts, where does this leave me? The answer is still I do not know. I guess that I am still going to keep dating, but not take it too seriously. I am going to go out for fun like I have always done in the past. I will get to know people and become friends with them. If something starts to get serious, I will continue to date but not really look at marriage as an option until I am older. I kind of feel like I am putting off my decision about this, but I have to because I am only twenty. I cannot give a strong yes or no on the topic because of my age. I still have a lot of living to do. I will still have hope, yet at the same time, I am going to be realistic and realize that it may never happen. I might end up being the cool, rich, attractive, bachelor doctor that everybody loves.