This year I got engaged. It wasn’t a surprise as it came about after countless dialogues while driving between mountains and feasting spots, while plodding along trails below tree line, while standing next to rivers, and while gazing out at the horizon from mountain tops. Like most aspects of my fiancé and my relationship, the timing of engagement was mutually agreed upon and, once decided, a joint undertaking of finding rings, figuring out the legality of things, and planning a wedding unfolded.

It’s funny to me that I’m planning my wedding as I also undertake my third year of medical school. I am a person of action, but usually my time is spent on professional endeavors. I’ve only chosen careers that are consuming, where even when the day is done the puzzles of work linger, tossing and turning in my mind as I go about the rest of my life. I’ve never considered relationships beyond friendship as required or even goals. I’ve always seen marriage as something I’d consider only if someone fell into my life who made me think of it. “Fell” being the key word. I’ve known for many years that happiness and loneliness come from within. The loneliest years of my life I was in a long-term relationship. My happiest times correlate only with my internal state. I fought hard on many occasions when I was single to be allowed to go about my business as I saw fit. And as I think about marriage, the annoyance of having to explain that I am whole without a partner remains somewhere in my skin. But, yet, as I undertake one of the hardest years of becoming a doctor, I am also signing away singleness.

My fiancé and I have discussed marriage and dreamed about growing old together since months after we started dating. There are people who bring out your happiness, who make you laugh more than most, and who force you to think about the world differently. My fiancé is that person for me. And in our short time together, we’ve weathered many storms. There was the first years of medical school – torturous as the hours of study dragged to the future. There was COVID. There were those times when we could have died in the mountains. Where we literally talked each down the cliffs, teetering on an all-to-real edge. There is this current stretch of doing the “long distance relationship thing.” There were the times we shared with family and friends, where it was so easy to feel connected. How seamlessly he fit in with my people (including when my sister and her partner lived with us for a month starting days after he and I moved in together) and how his people made me feel like family from the beginning (starting with the Thanksgiving dinner where I met his parents and everyone in the extended family all at once).

I knew it was time for us to finally start planning our wedding for two reasons. First, since our first marriage conversation we’ve wanted to get married before he follows me to residency and the clock is ticking until that time comes. Second, the realization popped into my head that I couldn’t imagine being happier with another person.

Engagement is neat in the sense that it brings people together. Our families and friends have offered advice and help as my fiancé and I embark on wedding planning. It’s such a fun thing to have a joyous project to work on. Engagement is as odd as it is neat. There are many norms about engagement and marriage which have stood out to me because I rejected them. I didn’t want an engagement ring. My wedding dress will be red. I prefer small, intimate gatherings. My ceremony must be outside. There will be no registry. There will be no escorting down an aisle.

And as I often do for my career, I’ve spent some time reflecting on marriage. I like to ponder why things are important and worth doing. My younger self often thought marriage was giving up something of yourself for someone else. I’m glad to report that that isn’t the case. Marriage is about two very different people taking on a shared adventure, where there are lots of side adventures together and apart. Marriage is just a formal way of saying “I trust you and want you to be my life-long co-hiker no matter how boggy the trail or how craggy the mountainside.”

And as he said when I read him this post, “’Fiancé’ is a weird word, let’s get married already.”