The Merger of a Lifetime: Why Marriage Makes Sense Now
There comes a time in every man’s life when he realizes he’d like to settle down, start a family, fall in love. For me, that moment came suddenly—four years ago, at the beginning of a Georgia summer. The emotion struck me with such intensity, I didn’trealize I’d found my wife until much later. I’m known for being careful, strategic, and professional, so when Mirabelle Peters pierced me through my soul, I approached the relationship in the way I approach most things. Carefully. Strategically. Professionally. I kept my distance for years, taking precise record before getting closer, one cautious step at a time. Now I find myself at the end of a long road of calculated moves, on the precipice of the event of a lifetime: marrying the woman I love. I love Mirabelle Peters. I have confirmed this fact by means of rigorous study and a strict attention to detail. I have cataloged the minutest of character traits, habits, and tendencies. Marriage makes sense now because there is no reason to wait. I am committed to being a faithful and dedicated husband, dead set on filling my wife’s life with joy, peace, and stability. Mirabelle Peters desires to get married, and I desire to give her everything her heart longs for. There is never going to be another woman in my life who completes me in the way that she does. To that end, I refuse to take advantage of her or pass up this opportunity to claim her forever.
It is clear, given my status, that I possess the means with which to make Mirabelle Peters infinitely comfortable, but I do not make this oath of being a dedicated and faithful husband on matters of money alone. Should I lose everything, I would continue to provide for my wife and my family. No matter what happens in the uncertain future, Mirabelle Peters will be my priority. I will never allow another man to love her more than I do, because I will daily become better for her, listen to her, and strive to communicate effectively in whatever way best exhibits love to her. Many treat marriage like the final destination at the end of a long sprint or like the beginning of an endless marathon with few moments to rest; I intend to treat it as the birth of a new era. Each morning, I wish to wake beside my wife and face the day as a team. I seek to unravel mysteries with her and continue learning her as we both change together. From moment to moment, day to day, and year to year, I will never take the blessing that is Mirabelle Peters for granted.
Furthermore, I have known for a short time that Mirabelle Peters wishes to get married and has been actively searching for a life partner. That she has notsettled down in spite of my slow approach to courting her leaves me overwhelmed with gratitude. Logically, I understand my feelings have had more time to refine. I understand the hesitation that surrounds trusting someone who is—in many ways—not forthright. I understand the risks and the change associated with marrying me specifically, but the fact stands that Mirabelle Peters wishes for a partnership. She wants to be seen and heard and loved, and I wish to see and hear and love her. I am not perfect; I know this. I am as certain of my ability to make mistakes as I am certain they will not be the end. While I have grown up in a world that has left me guarded, I remain sincere and not without a disposition for effort. I have found this reflected in the way that Mirabelle Peters carries herself. Her desire to wed is not in question. At this point, the decision to be together—the decision for her to choose to marryme—is just that: a choice. If made, I am confident it will evolve into a beautiful cohabitation where neither party gives up on the other as both yearn for perpetual closeness. What I am offering isn’t just paperwork that claims a legal binding has transpired. It is the opportunity to rely onsomeone else. It is the gift of a partnership in every sense of the word. It is the knowledge that whenever Mirabelle Peters looks in her husband’s eyes she will see a constant, firm statement that she is everything that is right in his world. Because she is.
In all my years of travel and business, I have come across countless women, many interested in me for various reasons. I cannot express how deeply I have come to understand the difference betweenawoman andthewoman I want to marry. No one compares to Mirabelle Peters. No one holds a candle to the way a single look from her can begin or end me. My atoms shiver in her presence. My heart fills. My mind…eases. There is something so profound about who she is that it settles warm within my body. Sitting in the silence with her feels like home. I can breathe. The world melts away, and there’s comfort. I trust her completely. I marvel at all the ways she perceives life. My heart aches whenever I learn that someone hasn’t valued her as deeply as they should. To me, there are so few people who can begin to be half so beautiful. Being allowed near her in any capacity is an honor. I long for the days when I might abuse my privilege tobe near her in order that we might justbetogether. I want to be with her and her alone. There is no future in which this changes. From the moment I first saw her, I felt the tectonic plates of my heart shift. The resulting earthquake left me scrambling for purchase, so I challenged myself time and again to be sure the event was not coincidence. I have concluded, through severe testing, that there is no other person capable of redefining everything that I am in the way that she has. My geography was altered. She unknowingly wrote herself into my flesh, and there is nothing more I can do about it. Either I build a future with Mirabelle Peters now, or I face this life alone, praying that she finds me in the next merely by the scars not having her in this one will have left behind.
In conclusion, Mirabelle Peters and I should seek to marry June of next year because I so dearly love her, I do not wish to live in a world without her, and I will do everything in my power to care for her. For better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health. So long as we both shall live.
A tear falls onto my essay, so I gasp, jerking the papers away from the splash zone as a sniffle rocks me.
Despondent, Damion murmurs, “You can tell I went roughly a hundred words over. I’m sorry. I cut down pages more…but…I couldn’t find it in myself to shave off anything else. If ever you’re interested in the unabridged version, though…” He stands, heads to his desk, and retrieves a thick leatherbound journal before returning to his seat and dropping it on the coffee table before me.
“What…”
“My records.”
I lift my apron to dab at my cheeks. “Your…records?”
“Research. Notes. Observations. Manic episodes.”
Manic episodes? I glance at the book. It’s…massive. So massive, in fact, it looks large besidehim. Somewhat intimidated, I peek inside at the middle pages. Filled lines. I move ahead. More. More. Finally, around the three-fourths mark, I reach the end of what he’s written.
“I love you,” he says, and my heart lurches as I snap my fingers back from the book and let the pages fall. “I compel myself to be sure of most things before I take action, but there is nothing I am more sure of. Multi-million dollar business deals have seen less scrutiny.”
Lips parting, I whisper, “Less scrutiny…than…me?”
Firm, he nods. “I cannot express how serious I am about you, Mirabelle. If you don’t trust me yet, I’m not sure how else I may possibly be able to convince you. I never anticipated sharing this with anyone, not even you. But. If it might bring you some comfort to see me at my rawest… If having access to pieces of me that no one else has ever seen and no one else can ever take away helps you decide whether or not you’d like to explore a future with me, take it. All of it. Everything that I am. It has been yours for years.”
I don’t know how to handle this. The essay alone has brought me to tears. Now, he’s saying this entire book is about me? Theme through his eyes. Over the course of years and then weeks. Brief snatches as he fell in love, concluding in the whirlwind that the past month and a half has been.
Heart squeezing, I glance at my phone, recall the most recent article and the ones that have come before it. Then I reach toward the book. “I…will need to review this before giving you an answer.”
“Naturally,” he says, voice soft.
“It’s a huge decision.”
“Yes.”
I swallow, wet my lips, heft the giant book into my arms. “Did you go through this before deciding to give it to me?”
He shakes his head. “It’s the raw truth. I didn’t want to take the chance that I might convince myself it’d be too embarrassing to share. Sometimes, when I wasn’t even here, I’d just write about you. Wonder what you were doing. Panic that maybe you’d found someone else. It’s everything I have to give. From what I remember, please expect swearing and bouts of near-drunk adulation. Any and all poetry in regard to how sexy I find you should be approached with caution.”
S-sexy? I have never beensexybefore in my life.
Gulping, I whisper, “Exactly how uncomfortable might this make me?”
He lifts his broad shoulders and pushes up his sleeves, revealing the ink all over his skin. “I don’t know. All I know is that it’s the most honesty I can offer you. And if that’s what it takes for you to trust me enough to make a decision on whether or not you’d like to marry me, then it is yours.”
He’s dead serious about this.
A man as busy as Damion Anders can’t have, in the past few days, written this entire book.
I am holding his honesty. Unfiltered. Uncensored. Given freely.
“What about the accusations that we’re fake dating?” I ask.
