Even before we got married, I knew H wasn’t “the one,” (we are opposites/incompatible in many ways) but I married him anyway. 29 years later we are still together. If I had been in a different place, and met someone else, I would have a different life.
I told part of this story on a recent thread–H and I were in Peace Corps. The first time I had a long conversation with H, after he left, I said to myself “There’s SOMETHING about that guy. . .” I almost passed out. I had to sit down.
We “dated” (visited and talked) for a couple months. At some point, H told me a funny story about a prank he pulled as a kid on the first day of school, which involved convincing his teacher that his name was “Frank Spavlik.”
After about two months, we traveled to a conference for those leaving service. We had to get on the train at a small village depot at night and wanted to get a sleeping compartment. At that time/place you could not stay in a sleeping compartment with a person of the opposite sex who wasn’t your spouse. H lived near the station and said he would take care of the train tickets. When we were getting on the train (we were the only ones at the depot) the conductor called out “Mr. and Mrs. Spavlik?” We got into a really nice compartment (must’ve been first class–I remember it had a polished metal sink and wood paneling). As soon as we closed the door we laughed so hard. “Mrs. Spavlik,” indeed. (Remember the last scene of North by Northwest? 
--well, it wasn’t exactly like that, but H and I always wink at each other when we see that.) We got engaged a couple weeks later. We never fought before we were engaged, but in all those other phases, yeah, we fought. Probably when we were newly married, before kids, and when oldest kids were little (before they knew what was going on) were our worst fights. We still fight. We’re just quieter now. We don’t want to be a bad example to the kids. OTOH, they can see that we disagree, we fight, but we forgive, we stay.