When I was growing up, I always believed that marriage was something people struggled with. I thought everyone fought or argued, and sometimes they would need a break. I didn't know at the time, but I thought everyone else's marriage was just like my parents' marriage. But it wasn't.

Marriage is different for everyone. There are people who find the person they truly love and their marriage has minor speed bumps, but otherwise, compromise and communication are easy for them. It's almost sickeningly sweet, but they don't care. The only person they see is their wife/husband. It's the closest thing to a fairy tale.

Others, however, will think they're in love but discover too late that the person they married is not the person they were before. They may change with stress or over time they become desensitized to their wife/husband's problems or concerns and they begin to resent one another.

I've seen both.

A few years ago, I began believing I was never going to get married and I was going to spend the rest of my life alone with nothing but my career and a bottle of wine to keep me warm. There's nothing wrong with that, but I was nervous of being lonely. I have a love/hate relationship with being alone. Sometimes it's all I want, others it's furthest from what I want.

When I met my fiance, I didn't think it would turn into something so genuine, so real, so beautiful, but it did and I wasn't expecting anything more to come out of it. But we both realized that this was more than just casual dating.

I also used to think that no one would ever want to go through with marrying me. I once dated a boy that had mentioned marriage and I was genuinely excited, but also extremely anxious. I was scared he would bail on me in the last moment and I'd be left at the altar. So things with him didn't exactly work out.

Today, I'm engaged, I'm getting married very soon, and I'm not nervous at all.

We know how important compromise and communication is. We never stop surprising each other, and we can predict future memories of new places, different opportunities, and each other. I'm not scared because I trust him more than I've ever trusted anyone. I'm not scared because I can feel how much he cares about and loves me.

I'm getting married, and I'm not scared. I'm excited.