I’ve always held a firm belief that there is no “soulmate” for someone. Rather, it’s up to ourselves to make true love happen. Although “love at first sight” is so easy to believe in, love is compromise, arguments, and acceptance.

As my father has always said, “you can either accept a person’s flaws and love those flaws about them, or you can walk away. Either way, you cannot change a person on your behalf”.

That’s why marriage seems so crazy to me when I see couples getting married at age 22 when they’ve only started to get to know each other. It took me 4 years to realize my high school sweetheart’s true flaws.

Yes, he had bad breath starting on the very first date. However, it was after 3 years I grasped his true, flawful self. I understood how he could lose his temper if I made a mistake. I realized how he always wanted to watch a movie of his choosing, a song of his choosing. But I accepted every inch of it.

I loved how I could calm him down (usually) after a big fight. I loved how easily we could fall in each other’s arms after we got our anger out. And even though I hated his music choices, his music was the perfect background noise on a road trip.

These flaws were something I accepted in a relationship I had in high school. So when I see young people committing to each other for the rest of their life only after a year, there’s a gut feeling in my chest that one doesn't know the other's tendency to be unfaithful, or the other's tendency to be lazy in their commitments.

If we’re spending the rest of our lives with someone else, we should be happy. Yet, we should be happy with a person we know is flawed. We should embrace and accept our flaws before marriage. We shouldn’t be getting married just because we want the perfect image of a happy couple.

When we get married, we should want every part of another’s flaws and quirks. If you can accept them, you’ve found and handcrafted your own soulmate.