Why I Still Believe in Forever After

It’s not fashionable to believe in marriage anymore.

Not the long-haul, ride-or-die, wrinkle-together, end-our-days-on-the-stoep kind.

Marriage today feels like a relic in a culture obsessed with autonomy, reinvention, and the pursuit of self-preservation.
We scroll past messy breakups, listen to the hot tea on affairs and indiscretions, and live in a world where divorce is assumed and commitment is considered naïve.

But I still believe in marriage.

Not because it’s perfect, or easy, or because I bought into a fantasy.
I believe because I’ve lived the kind of love that has been tested...and has held.

I’ve seen what a good marriage looks like in the quiet moments the world doesn’t post about:
Hands held in hospital rooms.
Laughter in the thick of dark seasons.
The sound of steady breathing in bed after burying a parent.
A man cooking dinner after a fight.
A couple slow dancing on a Tuesday.
Two people saying yes again and again without needing a stage or an audience.

My own marriage has been forged across continents, in chaos and calm, in years marked by infertility, loss, joy, COVID, fatigue, and intimacy (and sometimes the aching absence of it).
We’ve stood in the storm together.
We’ve retreated into separate corners and signed tentative truces for the sake of our small family of three.

We’ve built something layered and durable. Something sacred.

It takes courage to love like that.
To choose someone (and keep choosing) when it’s hard, when you’re scared, when it would be easier to drift.

When being spicy means you’re enjoying a good curry rather than trying a new sexual position.
When pleasure is found in a couple’s afternoon nap instead of a great night out.
When love is no longer euphoric but bittersweet, because it’s built on faith and family, not fantasy.

The truth? Sometimes we drive each other mad.
Other times, I miss him when he’s just in the next room.

It’s wild, really, this willingness to stay, to fight, to stitch the frayed edges back together when giving up would be simpler.
It is, at times, entirely unfathomable why we keep putting in the work, the patience, the vulnerability.
Why we choose the good fight over the easy exit.

And yet, here we are. Still in it.
With deeper attachment.
With higher stakes.
With a sharper sense of what’s at stake.

So no, this isn’t a manifesto against freedom or feminism or figuring yourself out.

This is just a reminder that partnership ,true, enduring partnership isn’t failure or compromise.

It’s strength.
It’s clarity.
It’s the radical act of showing up, every day, with your whole heart.

Marriage isn’t dead.It’s just quieter than the noise.

And if you listen closely,
you might hear it, the soft, brave rhythm of two lives still moving in sync.