There are some things in life that remain a great mystery to me. One, is how a person decides to get married.

Recently The Roomate gave me the news that two more college acquaintances were getting ready to tie the knot. In this unspoken amazing race to the altar, it has brought the wedding tolls within my group of friends to a staggering high this year. Since June of last year, I know four couples that have married, and eight more that have gotten engaged. I worry, though, if we/they are all ready for the big leap.

Ok, so first off, I don’t consider myself better or ‘more ready’ or any crap like that. The decision for me to propose to The Fiancé was one of the more odd decisions I’ve ever made in my life. Normally I obsess and toil over everything, including where to go to dinner on a Friday night. You’d think I was choosing which death penalty I wanted. But not with this. After five years of dating at that point, it just hit me. June of last year rolled around and I thought to myself, “you know, maybe you could start looking at rings.” As I waited for my paranoid other-self to kick in and strike down the notion, I was surprised when the kick-back never came. So I looked. And eventually I bought. I never had a “plan” on how I was going to do it. I didn’t want to stress, and I just wanted to pull the proverbial trigger when it felt right. So I did. And no one knows just how numbingly ecstatic I am about getting married.

But when I look at couples that got married straight out of college/law school/med school, for some reason I wonder if they’re ready. Big life changes are a red flag for me, in my personal life, to question motives. All too easily do we try and pass motives by our own judgement, under the disguise of other pretenses.

So when you graduate from college, you’re going out into this scary world. Alone for the first time. No real plan for most people. Adrift on a sea of responsibility and uncertainty, I firmly believe that (at least subconsciously) many people look for something to hold on to. Others see it as a natural progression, as a timeline. “Well, on to the next step in life. Getting married fits in and makes sense.” Here’s where I worry.

When you are more in tune with the timeline of your life, as opposed to the timeline of a relationship, you project one onto the other. It is so easy, when you’re in love, to wish things to be right, to be better than they actually are. You can make yourself think that things are going well, things are healthy, things are moving in a good direction…when everyone else around you is cringing with anticipation of an implosion. When in love, you can be so easily blinded to a rooted, grounded sense of truth and reality. Therefore, it is too simple to think that “it’s time to move to the next step” in a relationship…when really you’re just moving to a new level in life (job, etc).

All of this simply stems from my most sincere worry about some of my friends. Though I don’t question any of their engagements (lest they question mine), I do pause for thought. I pray that no one simply settles, takes the plunge, moves ahead because it makes sense on an intellectual level. If it doesn’t feel right in the heart (and not by means of the head convincing the heart), look out below.