I think I might be able to do this forever

The most common question I’m asked by my single friends is: “How did you know that she was the one?” This is the holy grail of questions when it comes to choosing to settle down with a woman and, not surprisingly, the answer is not so simple. In today’s post I want to talk about some of the things I realized throughout the course of my relationship that helped me to know, with absolute certainty, that the woman I was with was the woman I should be marrying.

There are so many factors that go into determining whether or not the person you’re with is the person you’re meant to spend the rest of your life with. It’s not a decision that should be taken lightly, or that should be done without a considerable about of thought and internal preparation. For me, it boiled down to a number of factors that, overtime, made the next steps of our relationship quite clear. Here are a few of the more important ones.

She Held My Attention

As single person, it was extremely difficult to find a woman who could keep me interested for more than a couple months. I met some really great women in my single years, but, for some reason, no matter what, once I got to the point where I’d learned everything there was to know about that person, I lost interest.  With my wife, even after I’d learned all about all of the different things she’d experienced in her life, after she’d shared all of her memories and all of the different influences she’d had – I still wanted to spend time with her. I wanted to make new experiences and new memories. My inability to shake my interest in her was one of the early signs that she might be the one.

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She Prioritized Me Accurately Throughout Each Stage of Our Relationship

As you all know, I think I’m pretty awesome and as a single guy, I was accustomed to the women I was interested in agreeing with me about my awesomeness. While, I think MrsMost always agreed with me in that regard, she never allowed her interest in me to trump her interest in other things that were of more importance to her. She would not cancel dates with her friends to spend time with me at my whim or put me before anything she had committed to prior to our being together.  With each step in the gradual progression of our relationship – from courting, to dating, to together, to engaged, to married the fact that we both managed to accurately prioritize one another helped me to understand that that this was someone who would know how to prioritize all of the varying needs we’d have throughout the course of our lives together – from being husband and wife, to being parents.

Grandmoms Liked Her

This might sound a little crazy but, I think grandmothers have a sixth sense when it comes to gauging the long term compatibility of the women their grandsons bring home. I think this was especially true with my grandmother since I’d been raised by her and my aunt.  Some guys only bring home the women they think are special. Not me. I used to bring all of the women I dealt with home to meet grandmoms.  My wife was, by far, her favorite. She could sense, even in the earliest stages of the relationship, that this might be it. I’m not usually one who cares about the approval of others, but knowing my grandmother thought my wife was different from all the rest meant a lot.

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The Mental Picture of My Future Changed

As we travel through life we always have a mental picture of what our future will look like. We look out five, ten, fifteen and sometimes even twenty or thirty years into our future and contemplate what our little worlds will look like. When I was single, I’d look out in to my future and see myself single throughout my mid-twenties, married and enjoying life in my late twenties and early 30’s, a parent in my 30’s and a grandparent somewhere in my 60’s. In all that projecting, the person I projected by my side was always some beautiful phantom of a woman whose face I could never quite discern because I had yet to meet her. Somewhere along the line in my relationship with MrsMost that all changed. When I imagined my future life, the face of the beautiful woman standing next to me in both my immediate and long term future was clear.  It was her, and there was nothing I could do to shake that.

I Prayed

Once I really started to contemplate retiring my jersey, I prayed. Every single day from the day I thought about getting the ring, till the day I said “I do” I asked God to take her out of my life if we weren’t supposed to be married. I prayed extra hard while we were engaged because we had the worst arguments we’d ever had to date during that time. Thankfully, he answered my prayers by keeping us together and here we are what seems like a lifetime later.

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So, how do you know when someone is the one? I guess it’s different for everyone. There may not be one particular moment where you just decide that this person is it. I guess it all comes down to the cumulative moments of epiphany you have throughout the course of your time with a person where you realize that what your lives were before won’t be the same as your lives after. SBM readers, where do you guys stand on all of this? Single dudes, have you ever been with a woman and contemplated next steps and turned the other way? What made you realize she wasn’t the one – or, was she the one, and you just got shook? Single ladies, how do you guys go about deciding whether someone might be the one? And for those of you engaged or married – what moments of epiphany lead you down the aisle? As always – feel free to over share in our comments section.

Lastly, Raise your hand if your in DC this weekend (raises hand)!

Stay Low and Keep Firing.