After this whole garter toss situation, I had a bit of a panic. If he is pro-ring pillow AND pro-garter toss, who knows that other “traditional” wedding stuff he thinks is important? Eeeeek! So I asked him, if we did get married, he doesn’t want me to change my name, does he? He does not. Wheww. I totally understand sharing the same last name, but right now I feel like I came in to the world with this one and I’m going out with it, too.
Category: marriage
On what a wedding should accomplish, really
If the wedding does what it is supposed to do, at the end of the event two people will end up married. That’s pretty much it. But let’s face it, that can’t be it, or people would just go off and do it and people wouldn’t be spending cars of money on this one event.
So what else are we trying to do, really? We are obviously trying to include people. And we say vows, and we eat, and we dance—at least semi-traditionally. There is a celebration. There is some joining: legal, social joining. Joining of the two of you, joining of a community of married people, or of families in general. You want them—family, friends, the world—to see you two, formally and finally, as a couple.
That all is important. But I wonder if there is something else going on, too. Perhaps a wedding is also an opportunity to invite friends and family into your relationship; perhaps it is also a rare moment of inclusion and transparency.
Because that’s what moves me at a wedding; that’s why I feel privileged when I attend one: because they are sharing their relationship with me. For a night we are all part of the same family and tribe. Relationships, and marriages especially, are so mysterious—who knows what is going on in there, exactly? You can speculate, but—let’s face it—you probably have no idea. You are not there to see how they smile at each other across the table, what they talk about when they are alone, what their hopes and dreams are for the future. But on their wedding day, you are.
I think I am going to think of my (imaginary) wedding this way: one night where we are all in it, together.
For Richer or Poorer, in Sickness and in Health
Am I the only one who thinks marriage is scary? Most of the fictional examples of marriages you see around don’t look so good—one particularly brutal episode of Mad Men and I am under the bed. And when I look at real marriages around me, I also get worried. Perhaps this is because married friends tend to talk to you when things aren’t going so well, and when things are really good, you don’t see them that often.
And then there is life, you know? The older you get, the more likelihood of illness, and tragedy, of lost jobs, of miscarriages, of sick parents. I try and think about births, and joy, and new jobs, and love, and support, but sometimes I worry. Does any one have any really wonderful stories of happy marriages and lives made oh so much better? Today I could really use them.
“The marriage was over before the salad went bad” and why recently married people suddenly get divorced
I feel bad every time I post something that involves divorce. I feel like it is a marriage reality that most of us (myself included) would like to ignore in the hopes that it will go away forever–or at least not happen to us. But it does happen sometimes. And it did happen to me. And maybe, if I talk about it, it won’t happen to me again and maybe somehow it will help you avoid this happening to you…
My ex and I dated for 6 years before we were married. We saw each other through jobs, grad school, films, apartments, and many other hard things for years. Why then did we end our relationship a year after the wedding? I cannot say for sure, but for us there were a lot of things I thought were circumstantial that were not. I thought as soon we get a bigger place, better job, more money, things will be better. They were better, but we were not. It turns out that a lot of our trouble was not circumstantial, a lot of it has to do with who we were and who we were together. As soon as the dust settled on our lifetime commitment, it was clear that some things that weren’t working before still weren’t working and were probably never going to work, and that wasn’t ok. Do I wish we had realized this before? You bet. But a lot of couple learning got sacrificed to jobs and the stress of life. A lot of it is on me. I just wanted to move forward together, but it turns out that what our marriage revealed was that we needed to move forward apart.
The happiest day of your life?
Back when I was in school, I had a very eye-opening conversation with a friend whose wedding I had been in. Someone asked her about her wedding pictures, and there was a short silence. Suddenly, she blurted out that she couldn’t look at them. She said, Can I just confess that my wedding day was not the happiest day of my life? Another friend immediately agreed. It turns out her wedding was not so happy, either. Really!
I never expected my wedding day to be the happiest day in my life, but I certainly was hoping to avoid the trauma that my friends had experienced. (FYI, my friend wedding-scarred friend is very happily married. So a stressful wedding does not equal a stressful marriage.)
Before I got married at city hall, I got ready at a friends house by myself. I still remember how I felt, and it wasn’t good. It wasn’t awful–I loved my ex. But I just wasn’t (how terrible it is to say this) happy—and on the day I was supposed to marry him. At the time, I figured it was just nerves. After all, I had never been married before—what did I know about how it was supposed to feel? That’s why, if I do get married again, I really hope I feel joy.
On wedding traditions
Ah, charming wedding traditions: click here.
How unfortunate that so many of them involve the bride being kidnapped, bought, or mastered!
I do like the origins of the bridal shower. I have an image of large and pointy gifts raining down on a modern day bride. Ka-pow! First toaster or jar of lotion and she’s out.
Photo via Weddingbellsblog
On the History of Marriage
When I was in grad school, I took a law and literature class on the legal history of marriage. We read books like Bleak House—it was cool. However, the legal history of marriage scared the pants off me. You may be familiar with the ideal of ladies being married off to join together two families, or the dowry as a bridal incentive, but ever heard of the legal concept of coverture?
The most disturbing part? It’s not fiction. As I discovered, the seemingly modern social concern about women losing their identity in marriage stems from the fact that women legally did lose their identity in marriage.
Luckily, if there is one thing other thing that I learned in grad school, the meaning of a word is not absolute; words, and by extension institutions, evolve over time and are redefined by cultures and context. What fascinates me, though, is how much wedding language and wedding traditions still carry the echo of this history.
On letting him propose
The man I love is from the Midwest. This means a lot of wonderful things, as far as I’m concerned. I had originally thought that I needed another free spirit artist type in my life. I do not. Based on my current experience, I now think that I need someone with traditional values and an incredible strong work ethic. Of course, these values can be found in all parts of the country and world, but people with Midwest experience, you know what I mean. There is a reason they call it the heartland.
I would like to be modern and propose myself. But I believe that would be cheating the man I love—and me—from an experience that I believe means something to us both.
Me: I figured that being from the Midwest if you wanted to marry me, you’d let me know.
He says nothing.
Me: I mean, should I worry about that? I’d love to let you take care of all that–
Him: Let me take care of all that.
Just what this girl wants to hear.
Why I wanted to start this particular blog
This is a bit hard to say, but I have been married before. And, yes, it didn’t work. I got divorced, something that I was hoping never to do. I am very lucky, in that my ex-husband is still a friend and still family. I love him. But we failed to sustain our marriage. No reason to get into all the details, but they were big ones related to fundamental incompatibilities that we were sort of ignoring until we couldn’t anymore. We did try very hard to save our marriage, but we did not succeed. Did I love him? Very much. Did think I was going to spend the rest of my life with him? I certainly did, or I never would have married him in the first place. Even with the best of intentions, and a lot of love, we failed.
So the result of all this is, when I contemplate all this marriage stuff—which is a bit hard and complicated to begin with—I have to ask myself the question, how will it be different this time?