Despite my persistent reticence to go anywhere during winter holidays, I received an invitation to attend a cousin’s wedding in California, and, after talking it through with my husband, decided to go. I hadn’t seen these cousins for nearly 30 years. I also found out that my two sisters planned to attend, and the three of us haven’t been in the same place at the same time since at least 2002. At this point in my life, I’m an experienced traveler, so that part was easy. The rest? Not so much. Today I want to talk about some things I experienced and reflect on what marriage has come to mean to me. So if you are usually just here for the awesome accessibility advice, feel free to skip today.

Going back…sorta

Attending this wedding meant going back to where it all started…sorta. The wedding was in a different city than I grew up in, but it was still in a church and still a christian-esque service. Many people in attendance were also people I knew growing up. Some people I only knew from social media. But the coolest part was that my sisters were there, too.

We hung out at our hotel the night before the wedding and that was probably the most special time of the weekend for me. We just…caught up. We talked about our lives now and just sort of talked about anything and everything in general. It’s hard to put it into words; if you know you know, and if you don’t know, it won’t be very interesting to know about. The feeling of being around people you love fiercely, haven’t seen in years, and are instantly connected to again…that best describes that night.

A wedding service

The wedding itself was sort of what I would expect for a wedding; cute children in the wedding party, lovely bridesmaids dresses, and my cousin looked beautiful in her wedding dress. The building itself looked like some sort of Methodist (or similar) church. Stained glass windows, wood benches and lots of candles at the front. They were married by her grandfather. It was all very beautiful and sweet. It was thoughtful and a lot of love and time was spent to create this day.

I think the cue to how the service was about to go, however, should have been in the first sentence… “Who gives this woman to be married to this man?”

I beg your pardon?

We’re in 2024, yes? We’re still doing this shit?? Let me be super clear: women are not possessions that can be given away. A person makes the choice to freely join in a partnership. That is it. Don’t even include those fucking words in the ceremony. Why was this ever okay? It’s especially not been okay for a long fucking time. WOW did that make me see red.

Next up, reading of a scripture with some commentary. He went to Genesis and really that should have been my first cue. When he started talking, I was devastated, and then absolutely furious. He read the part in the bible about how god told Adam to name all of the other creations/animals and while he was doing that, see if one of them would be a good helpmate. But then he couldn’t find one after he did all the naming (insert “naming things is hard” joke here). So god was like, cool, let me take one of your ribs and make someone like you who isn’t you but would be like a good helpmate to you.

Comedic pause for some…questions

I had a couple of amusing thoughts here, because humor is my coping mechanism when I am trapped in a room where it would be rude to just leave.

  1. Why didn’t god just do that whole “creating a partner” thing from the start? If I was Adam and I’d just done all that NAMING EVERYTHING work, TBQH I’d be pissed.
  2. I wonder who the runners up were? Was Adam like, “I have a shortlist that could maybe work but I really just didn’t find one that I think would be perfect.”
  3. Has anyone ever gotten up and screamed as loud as they could during one of these things?
  4. Did anyone else also have the overwhelming urge to scream in protest?

Just some questions that came to mind. Anyway.

The scripture/commentary part of it was really just repeating the message that I’d heard my whole childhood: women are lesser. Women aren’t meant to be first. Women are intended to be helpers, not leaders. I could have screamed. I wanted to scream. It’s everything I have spent my life PROVING OTHERWISE.

I did the emotional labor to stay focused on my cousin’s special day, but as the service went on, my heart just broke; not just for her but for every woman who has ever bought into this fallacy. Her laundry list of promises made me concerned for her mental health; “I promise to make you laugh every day” just isn’t realistic. I’m assuming that the underlying promises included the non-verbal clause of “I promise I’ll try” but, on face value? I’d be worried about anyone who made unrealistic promises and called them vows. Vows are a serious thing, it’s not like the word literally where we used it wrong for so long that now it has no meaning.

The thing is, no matter who we are, we all deserve to be loved. We all deserve to find our person. We all deserve a partnership that is equitable, and where we learn how to give and take in that partnership. We learn how two individuals, over time, work to create this singular thing, a marriage.

Reflections

It got me thinking about my own marriage. Both of them, I guess. My very short first marriage and my ongoing marriage.

What didn’t work the first time

The first time around, I had really bought into the idea that you were a nobody until you were married, so I was just really mostly in a hurry to get married. When I was in the military, I married someone after knowing them for four months. Yeah that was a huge mistake. I walked away from that when I realized, “if this is what marriage is, I don’t want it.”

What works now

My husband and I just celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary, and we dated for 7-8 years before that. I’d settled into a place where I did not think we would get married, we would just be committed to each other and our lives for as long as it worked, and it would be what it was. So the day he asked me “will you marry me…tomorrow?” definitely took me by surprise. I said, “how about the day after that?”

So yeah, we started with a compromise. We got married in the morning at a courthouse and we were both back at work in the afternoon. It’s what we wanted for ourselves, and it was exactly that.

There’s this “happiest day of your life” thing that’s said about one’s wedding day. Even when I first heard the phrase, when I didn’t know the things I know now, it was worrisome to me. If getting married was the happiest day of your life, isn’t that setting the rest of your life up for less happiness? What makes us say something like that, anyway? Who expects to have a great time when you’ve already had the happiest day of your life? For me, I want the possibility that tomorrow could be the happiest day of my life. That someday in the future will also bring me happiest.

I was very clear up front that I was not going to be lesser in a marriage, and I wasn’t interested in being married at all if that’s what it meant. I married a man who was okay with it then, and is increasingly insistent on it now. We are partners. We make decisions together when we can, and when we can’t? We trust the other one to make the best decision for our life together. I do not have to be in control of everything, and neither does he. We have a decision framework, and we have both agreed to try.

This is our only promise to each other, too! We promise to try. That’s it. Because in that, comes everything else. We each give as much as we can for that day. Some days that is a lot! Other days, it looks more like spending the day in bed and watching anime in our PJs. Both kinds of days exist.

We can also apologize to one another without some higher power being involved. I’ll tell you this for free, if a higher power has to be involved for you to apologize, something is very wrong with your life. The stuff of the every day is kind of messy. Every day is dishes, and laundry, and work work, and parenting work, and “oh wow the cats made a huge mess today” work. You’re both balancing living in the now, with preparing for the future.

Maybe I’m lucky that we like each other first, and love grew from that. But I also think that’s a pretty reasonable approach. We like doing things together, even if we have a list of things we do when we’re apart.

A message for anyone considering marriage

The thing is, you do you. Unless you doing you means giving up all of your personhood to this idea of being a man’s helpmate. Then quit that shit. Open your eyes and free yourself. You are not a slave, you’ve never been a slave, and there is no eternal damnation for setting up emotional boundaries.

Otherwise for real, you do you.

Women, perhaps more than men, are sold this idea of the “perfect”. The perfect proposal. The perfect ring. The perfect photos. The perfect dress. The perfect wedding. So much perfect.

But it’s not reality.

I grew up in the fantasy, but reality hit me hard and fast. And it’s work to leave that mindset. When you are raised being told that there’s a fairy tale, that there’s this perfect thing, that if some man loves you enough he will propose and it will be perfect, and then he will buy you a big house and you will live happily ever after…finding out that it’s all a lie means that there’s a certain amount of grieving that comes with understanding that life is not like that. Fundamentally understanding that the perfect does not exist, can be really sad! But embracing that sadness and letting it become a part of your reality is so much better than just pretending. I promise.

Accepting what is real, and rejecting what is not, has helped shape the fortitude I have today. There’s a deep peace that comes with that.

Honestly, an Instagram feed is about as perfect as any life actually gets. And even then, that only looks pretty great because there are filters, and music, and because I don’t have to show the laundry piled up on my dresser in front of my picture-perfect view of the city. I can just crop out the mess and show my picture-perfect view of the city. Maybe I’ll put the laundry away, but then again, maybe I won’t. Real life is not Instagram.

If I can inspire anyone to live their own real, that would be my hope. I want my own life to be proof that you can say “fuck off” to norms and craft your own path. You are allowed to set your own expectations. You are allowed to insist that they be met.

The thing is, you may need to adjust those expectations, or even change them entirely, but you are not subject to the terms and conditions of ancient times. Marriage gets to be about love, not the exchange of property. And if you get that, then don’t use the same words that were used to exchange property.

Until next time. -M