Dear Writer,
Hey, how are you doing? It’s been a while. Are you enjoying the fall weather? The vibrant leaves on the trees? The crisp air? The smell of the neighborhood’s wood fireplaces cranking?
I know I’ve been silent here for a while. I was kind of hoping you wouldn’t notice because your world is full of other shiny things keeping you duly entertained, but if you were wondering… I dropped off the planet for a bit because… well.
I got married.
The first response people typically have to “I got married,” is streamers and confetti and bubbles and congratulations and I’m here for it, I really am, and I thank you for any well wishes you might want to send my way but the reality of it is… the good stuff had already happened way before we got married.
My husband—
we both still giggle whenever we say “my husband” or “my wife” because I think we’re both a little bit like “nothing feels different but everything is different” and it takes a while to get used to it all—
but anyway… my husband and I met some five years ago and became good friends almost immediately. We had similar jobs that few other people have, so we could understand each other’s struggles with things like being self-employed and having fans which always feels weird and being on the internet where strangers will call you names because you expressed an opinion they didn’t agree with. We bonded over these shared experiences and then realized that we had a lot more in common and then eventually we decided to start up a friends with benefits thing because neither one of us was interested in a relationship and then fast forward a couple years and…
Boom.
Married.
I did not see that coming.
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I swore some time ago that I would never be in a relationship again, let alone get married. As a matter of fact, I have that exact conversation recorded, a number of times. Anyone who wants to experience the joy of hearing a person from the past be proved very wrong need only traipse over to Big Strong Yes and give those early episodes a listen.
I had good reason for being so determined about it: I had been married twice, and they Did Not Work Out. Both divorces were incredibly painful, although the second split made the first one look like a carnival ride. The only way to guarantee that another person would never again rip me to shreds like that was to never get back in the arena, so I comforted myself by promising myself, most adamantly, “Never again.”
When Ian and I first started living together, we joked about getting married someday, but he knew what I’d been through, so he wasn’t going to ask me to do something that had been so hugely traumatic. If we ever did get married, I would have to propose to him, because until he heard otherwise, he was going to presume I didn’t want to ever get married. He was happy to just live together, and I was horrified by the very idea of marriage, so… we were fine as we were.
But then earlier this year, I found myself doing a weird thing: watching terrible reality television about marriage. Understand, I didn’t just watch one episode of this show; I watched seasons and seasons of people who had no business getting married ever getting married and eventually I had to stop and ask myself, Why am I watching this?
Writer… it turns out, I had me some shit to sort out.
I realized that being against marriage Because It Is Bad is not any more reasonable than getting married Because It Seems Like The Thing To Do. If I wanted to live with this man and love this man and be with this man for the rest of my life anyway, why didn’t I just marry him?
I’m not going to lie. That was a line of thought that freaked me the fuck out. I had to sit with that for a while.
This man is the most fun I’ve ever had. I didn’t know relationships could be this much fun. We work at it, but he is specifically made to delight me, so even the hard parts aren’t that hard. They are work, but it’s work I’m happy to do because the rest of it is so much damn fun.
But love is one thing, and marriage is quite another. Culturally, we often mix the two together, and we shouldn’t.
Love is love; marriage is business. I put that in my vows. I know it’s not romantic, but I think making a wedding romantic misses the point. Marriage is not romantic; it’s reality. Marriage is about joint checking accounts and emergency contacts and being allowed into the hospital room when shit gets bad.
Love is love; marriage is putting that love on the craps table and saying, “All in on boxcars.”
I have been in love with this man for two years. We’ve been living together for 18 months. It was going great. We didn’t have anything to prove. We did not have to get married.
But as I was wrestling with the idea of marriage and what it meant to me, I came to realize that, when it came down to it, in addition to sleeping next to this man every night, I wanted to be the one who is there when he needs someone. I wanted to be his family, in legal word as well as in daily practice.
So one night, I turned to him and said, “You should marry me.” It took a little while for him to realize that I wasn’t kidding, and when he realized that, he said, “Yeah. Maybe I will.”
And Writer… I got over myself, went all in on boxcars, and married him.
What’s new with you?
Everything,
L
Wishing you both wonderful happy and eternal boxcars!
So delighted for your happiness! Hugs baby!