The path to see your friend getting married all starts off with meeting.
Whether it’s through school or events. You learn about them and you grow up with them.
Sooner or later, they become more than just people you’ve met, but people you know. You know about their life and they know about yours.
The two of you share these crazy experiences together and can always refer back to it for a good laugh or a great story.
But something strange starts happening as you enter your mid-20’s. Everyone around you starts getting engaged left and right. Heck, some are even getting married.
It’s fun to think about but it makes you realize something.
We’re growing up.
Our friends that we grew up with, the ones we played basketball with, went swimming with, ran around the park with. They’re growing up.
Games and sports became cars and jobs.
In the blink of an eye, friends that you used to have crazy nights with are now celebrating their new engagement.
It makes you think back on your life.
What does it mean when people are getting married?
As much as we don’t want to have to face it, I think when people get married it means a new stage in life.
It means that we are becoming adults. The fun things that used to make sense to us as kids, or even adults are fading away.
Growing up means learning. It means evolving and becoming more mature.
We’re becoming the people that we always were afraid of becoming. Adults.
Once rebellious teenagers are now becoming responsible for things like bills, mortgages, children.
It’s crazy to think that your best friend who stayed out with you past 2am 4 years ago is now someone’s mom.
I think of it as accepting a new normal for your life. You will now be sharing your life with another person all the time.
It means you’re ready for something new, something that requires even more commitment and effort. Something that requires maturity and emotional stability.
But it does make you think
It reminds you of your history. Your life.
You’re reminded of your time spent with these people.
You start to remember your life in university, or high school. The people you met along the way are now entering a completely new stage in their lives. The life of family and home.
It used to seem like it was so far away, but in the blink of an eye, it’s right in front of us.
We’re faced with newer challenges. Challenges that, throughout our life, we’ve learned how to deal with.
Getting married is entering into one of the last stages of your friendship
If meeting each other is the beginning of your friendship with someone else, then getting married is almost like the last stage.
It’s the part where you see each other less and less, if at all. As you continue to grow, you have kids. You see each other even less, until eventually you realize they became that friend from university or your best friend in high school.
We’re growing up every single day, whether we like it or not.
Eventually we all become new people, and the kids we were when we met our friends become what we hold on to.
When I think back, I think of all the fun times my friends and I had. I think of travelling together, living together, laughing together.
Looking back, it’s those moments that really impacted me and made me the person I am today.
One day I’ll be the one getting married. I’ll be the friend that gets married, and maybe one of my friends will have a similar reaction I’m having.
Until then, I wish things would slow down a bit so I can still feel like I’m in my youth.
If you’d like, you can check out my most recent article on how first dates can be scary, like interviews.
I also write for Medium and a publication called P.S. I Love You.
Thank you so much for reading.
Love always,
Alex
[…] If you’d like, you can check out my most recent article on the ‘getting married’ zone. […]