Marriage may not happen for various reasons. Some of these may be within your control, while others may not. For instance, I was searching for someone who shared my commitment to meditation, yet I never found a match. Meditation for me was a path that led to embracing integrity. It lead me to sustainability—living without plastics, reducing needs and waste, not eating after 12 noon, giving up non-vegetarian food, and striving for truthfulness in all areas, even at work. This journey meant leaving jobs and enduring years of financial hardship.
Now, at 42, I work for Google, but I prioritized ethics and integrity over career advancement or personal gain. So, it took a lot longer to reach here. It took time to align my life fully with integrity, as I gradually learned that genuine, honest work is what truly brings lasting success. I wasn't aligned with integrity deep down and it was a constant internal war and it sapped a lot of energy, for years and decades.
To find someone ethical and successful, applying teaching successfully in daily life was truly difficult. In my years of struggle internally and externally I lived alone, was broke, introverted, spending most of my time meditating so there was very little social interaction and means of finding someone to marry or get a proposal.
Basically, my logic was if I don't find someone with the same thirst for truth, I won't share my time and energy. Also, I had a lot of stuff I was working through.
Even though I end up alone, I place very high value in marriage. Find a noble friend to learn and lean on and also to raise family and live a good, happy life full of love. Uprooting desire is a long path and it is good to find space in a committed relationship. You can agree to be alone in a relationship.
In my case I had to go through extreme difficulties of loneliness, but the path is the same, uprooting desire by watching sensations that come up. Being alone, the work just got intensified. Path is the same, more or less.
When you are coming closer to jhanas, it is somewhat important to be 'alone'. For some people, a long vipassana course gives enough time to do that. Some need longer time. I took ten years and still just beginning to understand the periphery of first jhana, some helping factors. Ten years of relentless single minded effort.
