In a rush to get married?

I fell in love with my husband in high school, and my dream was to marry him by my sophomore year of college.

We talked about it; I brought it up often; I kept asking. He proposed when I was 23, and we got married seven months later.

We have a friend now, who's girlfriend is 22 and wants to marry him. He's not ready for it, but she is going to start pressuring him. It's what most girls do when they're convinced they're with the guy that they want to marry.

What women don't often consider is whether their man is ready to get married. There's a difference between wanting to get married someday, wanting to marry you and ready to get married to you.

My husband purchased my engagement ring two years before he proposed, and he asked my parents for permission to marry me then. However, he wasn't quit ready to pop the question. Just because he knew he wanted to marry me didn't mean he was ready to get married.

I thought that was stupid. I thought if he knew he wanted to marry me, why didn't we just get married?

Now that we're married, as frustrating as that time was for me, I'm glad that he waited until he was ready.

I told him the other night that he has changed since we started dating, and he didn't think so. I said he was much less selfish than he used to be, and he said that wasn't necessarily true either. When he got married, he just knew that he had to sometimes sacrifice his own desires for me, or for us. He had to start making decisions that were good for us as a couple instead of good for himself.

It really showed one morning when he got home and waited for me to unlock the door for him. We don't have a key for the door, and he calls me when he gets home so that I can unlock the door for him.

One day, I was asleep, and I didn't realize that my phone had died. Upstairs, I couldn't hear him knocking or the doorbell ringing. He stood outside in the winter's cold for a half hour, until he banged loudly enough on the house that I woke up.

I expected an angry husband. I would have been extremely upset. He wasn't angry at all.

He said when it happened, he made a conscious decision that he wasn't going to get mad, because that would not be helpful to our relationship. It was a selfless decision to do what was best for us instead of go with how he felt at the time.

If I could go back, I would tell myself to be patient when I was younger. I want to tell other young women to not rush their men. I am blessed to have a strong man that didn't give into my begging and pleading to get married. Other men might get married before they are ready just to please their women or to not lose them to an ultimatum.

However, even if you get your man to marry you, if it's before he's ready, you're in for a world of hurt. He won't be ready to make selfless decisions. You'll probably be hurting when he doesn't put you first.

God can still make these relationships work, but it sure is nice to be married to a man who was completely ready to take that step. I am blessed daily by this man and the responsible decisions he makes for me, for us.