I have always been afraid of commitment and was never interested in getting married. Whenever someone asked my partner Sam and I when we were planning to get married, I would blush bright red and change the subject. We both come from families where our parents are still happily married after over 50 years, but it just wasn’t something I had in mind or that was important to me.
Then, in 2014, I became pregnant unexpectedly. When I saw the two lines on the pregnancy test, I was terrified of what was to come. Having a child was a lifelong commitment – something I had always shied away from.
Pregnancy changed my attitude towards obligations
At this point, Sam and I had been together for eight years. One evening we were sitting on the sofa in our two-bedroom apartment from the 1950s when Sam casually asked me if I was thinking about getting married. To my surprise, I said yes. I loved Sam and knew he was the right man for me. I also wanted the same surname as our baby.
A few weeks later, Sam told me to be ready by 5:30 p.m. He wanted to go out to dinner with me. When he got home from work, he seemed a little nervous, but I didn’t put two and two together.
We were driving along the coast in Black Rock, Melbourne, where we lived at the time, when Sam cleared his throat. “Hey, we’re a little early for dinner and I’ve been wanting to show you something,” he said. “Someone told me about this place called Poet’s Corner where the locals leave poems. Let’s go and check it out.”
Sam is not really the type to read poetry, so I became a little suspicious at this point. We parked and started Walk along the beach path towards the Half Moon Bay lookout point, my high heels digging into the sand, the salty wind whipping through my hair.
I could tell Sam was nervous, and suddenly my heart started beating faster in my chest. “Here it is,” he said. Next to a picnic table overlooking the stormy Port Phillip Bay was a black leather bag with the word “poetry” written on it. “Why don’t you take a look inside?” he said.
I smiled and opened the bag. At the top of the pile was a pink-bordered envelope with a card inside. I recognized Sam’s shaky handwriting immediately. He had written me a poem telling me how much he loved me and somehow slipped it into the bag, waiting for me.
Melissa Noble’s husband proposed to her at Poet’s Corner. Courtesy of Melissa Noble
We have been married for almost 10 years now
At the very end it said: “You are the girl of my dreams. Will you be my wife?” When I turned around, Sam knelt down and held a sparkling diamond ringHis eyes shone with tears.
“Yes, I will,” I said, bursting into tears and throwing my arms around him. In that moment, my fear of commitment disappeared forever and I felt only happiness at having found the special person in this world with whom I would spend the rest of my life.
Later that evening we went out for a fantastic dinner and called our family and friends to share the good news. They all joked that it had been a long time coming.
Three months later we got married on a vineyard on the Gold Coast. I will never forget waking up that first morning after the wedding and said, “Good morning, husband.” It felt surreal and weird, in a good way.
Pregnancy changed my outlook on marriage and made me think about the future differently. I had feared that marriage would change Sam’s feelings for each other or cause the relationship to fade prematurely, but the opposite was true. Those vows cemented our feelings and made us stronger as a couple. The formality of marriage made a difference and even after almost 10 years we still get along well.
