How should I know if I should get married?

A few years ago I was with a buddy of mine and our conversation turned to the relationship that he was in. He had been dating this girl for some time and I was curious to how things were going.  "Are you crazy about her bro?"
"I mean I love her."
"Yeah but are you crazy about her?"
"I think I could be crazy about her."
The way that he said it told me that he would never be crazy about her. A month later they had broken up.

My Dad gave me a piece of advice a long time ago. I'm sure I have shared it on here but I'm going to share it again. He told me not to get married unless I had to. I looked at him surprised this went against everything that he had taught me up to that point, but then he finished his thought. "You have to marry that person because you can't live without them.

I don't take much life advice from Hollywood, but there is one scene in the movie End of Watch that when I saw spoke to me. Skip to the 2:20 mark in this clip. There are plenty of bad words before this part that I don't vouch for.


 Whenever I dated girls in college my mom and I would have talks when I was on break. She would ask me about how I felt about the particular girl that I was dating at the time. My answer was usually something like "She's great, she comes from a great family, we get along pretty good, she loves God, she is super smart, I think I really like her." The next time I was dating a different girl my mom would ask me the same question and my reply would go something like "She's great, she comes from a great family, we get along pretty good, she loves God, she is super smart, I think I really like her." When I started dating the girl that I ended up marrying my mom did not ask me how I felt about her. It would have been the stupidest question in the world. It was obvious to everyone that I had ever met in my life that I was head over heels about this girl. It took about 20 minutes after we started hanging out for me to realize this.

Not everyone has that kind of story, but if you do not arrive at "crazy" territory after dating someone for a good amount (I say 8 months) of time than I think that you might be short-changing your self. I hear people say that love is a choice. I get where they are coming from. One day you might get up for breakfast and if you are married to someone like me your spouse will not be a vision to behold first thing in the day. On that day you might have to say that love is a choice. But when you are beginning to know each other it isn't a choice. They call it "falling in love" for a reason. I've never heard it called "choosing in love." We can fall in love with anyone. It's a dangerous thing. That's why it's called falling.

There are three types of relationship statuses. Single, in a great relationship, and anything else. You want to be in either of the first two. If you find yourself in the last one than it's time to move on. You owe it to that person to be crazy about them. You owe it to yourself to be crazy about them if you are planning on spending the rest of your life with them.

How do you know if you should get married? It will be obvious to you that life will not be able to go on without that person. The question won't be if you should get married but when.