When you date someone for a long time, most often it’s not necessarily the best way to know if that person is for you. It might sound odd, and many people can create their own arguments to why dating for many, many years is preferable. However, in my opinion, I don’t think there is anything wrong with dating someone for a year to marry them. Here are my reasons why:

1. When you date for a long time, you might be waiting for a change to occur.

When you’re in love with someone to the point where you would like to marry them, it’s not a good idea to convince yourself that the person will change. If you are waiting for change to occur, you aren’t in love with them and their flaws like you should be.

2. You don’t have to live together before getting married.

I’ve heard that many people fall apart after years of being in a relationship when they thought they should get married. The truth is, if the first point is fulfilled and you are mutually in love with each other, flaws and all, and see a future together, you don’t have to move in before marriage to experience the challenges. In reality, I think it’s not a bad idea to get married first before living together because everyone will experience up and downs in their relationship. It’s all about if you are willing to uphold your wedding vows to work on it together. You should already know enough about the person to know if you can and want to live with each other until death not.

3. Dating for a long time can drag on out, and if you live together before marriage there’s not much to look forward to because you’re already living like you’re married (except you’re not).

It’s different for every person, however, you don’t have to be in a relationship for three years before deciding you want to spend the rest of your life with them. Once you realize that they are the one, put a ring on it before moving in. If you decide to live together before making thing official, you are giving time to find reasons to break up. Instead of working on improving things together, you are just waiting for things to go wrong within the relationship. No relationship will be perfect, so it’s only normal for problems to come up. It’s just if you and your partner vow to go through them together, understanding that it is the ebb and flow of life.

Understanding your partner and accepting them completely is so important for a relationship to last. Just because you’re in a relationship with them for a long time doesn’t mean that it’s any better than a shorter one. These are the reasons why it doesn’t necessarily matter about the length, but rather the quality of your mutual happiness.