An Optimistic Taking on the Sonnets

In class I am learning that there are far more interpretations of the sonnets than I first expected. I have read many of the sonnets before and I am fully aware that not all of them are happy love poems. However, when recently studying Sonnet 116 and having Doug take a more pessimistic reading than myself, I began to question what Shakespeare was trying to get at. I had always read that sonnet as a description of the truest love and even went as far as to write it down in a card for my dad's wedding. I'd like to believe that true love is steady and guiding and a fact that the narrator is confidant in. But Shakespeare never intended for these poems to be published, so I have to wonder if this poem (and others like it) are about himself which makes a more negative reading more possible considering his love life. Or maybe he was writing poetry in his journal which many people do and therefore he could be writing from any point of view and my optimistic reading could be completely correct. Poems are often used for personal interpretation by the reader and therefore if someone could argue their point with proof it could be correct, even if one poem had enough evidence for opposing sides. However if they were written for no one's particular interpretation other than the author's, then there probably is one or maybe two correct answers. And we will never know what they are. So now we battle with the different meaning and have to decide what Shakespeare was trying to say when he describes love as "an ever fixed mark". I will always try to find the romance of the sonnets because I am a sap, but it is important to consider alternative readings. At the end of it, we get to choose how we read it and make sense of it for ourselves.