This week’s “Spill It” question on Party’s Over sounds simple on the surface, but I think it touches on something many people quietly struggle with in modern relationships.
The viewer wrote that she believes in marriage, but the man she’s dating says he does not. He says he loves her and wants to stay together, but he doesn’t believe in getting married. Her question was direct: am I hoping for something that’s never going to happen?
As soon as we started discussing it, I realized this is one of those relationship conversations where there probably isn’t one universal answer. Different people define commitment differently. Some people genuinely do not care about legal marriage but still build deeply loving, stable, long-term partnerships. Others feel emotionally unsafe without the clarity and commitment that marriage represents to them.
Neither person is automatically wrong.
What matters is whether both people are actually honest about what they need.
Veida brought up Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell during the conversation, which I thought was a perfect example. They’ve spent decades together without legally marrying, and by all appearances they’ve built a loving, committed relationship. Clearly marriage certificates are not the only thing holding people together.
But I think where these situations become emotionally dangerous is when two people want fundamentally different things and hope the other person will eventually change.
That’s where resentment quietly begins.
Sometimes people convince themselves they are “fine” without marriage because they’re afraid of losing the relationship. Other times, someone who says they never want marriage slowly changes their mind over time because the relationship deepens naturally. Both things happen. Human beings are complicated.
But I do think it’s important to listen carefully when someone tells you who they are.
If one person views marriage as emotionally important and the other rejects not only marriage itself but any meaningful form of commitment, eventually that disconnect usually catches up with the relationship. Love alone doesn’t always erase differences in values, expectations, or emotional needs.
What Veida and I kept returning to during the conversation was the idea of commitment itself.
Because honestly, the issue may not even be the legal institution of marriage. The deeper issue is often emotional security.
Do both people feel chosen? Do they feel emotionally safe? Do they feel the relationship has a future? Are they building something together intentionally?
Those questions matter much more than whether someone had a wedding.
At the same time, I also think people sometimes minimize their own desires because they’re afraid of sounding “old-fashioned,” needy, or unrealistic. Wanting marriage does not make someone clingy. Wanting commitment does not make someone unreasonable. People are allowed to want different things.
The key is compatibility.
One of the hardest truths in relationships is that love and compatibility are not always identical. You can genuinely love someone and still discover that your visions for the future don’t align. That realization can be painful, especially when neither person is necessarily bad or dishonest. But avoiding the conversation rarely solves the problem.
In fact, I think many people stay in emotional limbo for years because they are afraid to ask direct questions or afraid to accept direct answers. They hope time itself will somehow solve the conflict. Usually it doesn’t.
One thing I appreciated about this “Spill It” conversation was that it avoided easy clichés. Veida and I weren’t trying to tell people they must get married or must reject marriage. We were talking about honesty, emotional clarity, and alignment.
If two people truly agree on what commitment means to them, wonderful. But if one person is waiting for a future the other person has already quietly ruled out, that’s a very painful place to live emotionally. And eventually, someone usually gets hurt.
Relationships become much healthier when people stop negotiating against themselves. If marriage matters deeply to you, it’s okay to say that honestly. If you genuinely don’t want marriage, it’s okay to say that honestly too.
What matters is whether two people can meet each other in the same emotional reality.
And sometimes the most loving thing people can do is stop pretending they want the same future when they don’t.
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And if you haven’t yet, check out my book From BS to Botox, where I talk honestly about relationships, confidence, reinvention, healing, and learning to trust yourself again.