(updating from the past: Spring break)
But I’ll write on happier topics…the steadiness of my day’s events, even lacking routine…is comforting.
After I got back from the doctor’s office (pumping gas for the first time as I was running on fumes on the way there)…Mom and I went to Leny’s. Leny is a Filipino hairdresser that my mom has been going to for the past 5 or 6 years. Today, it was my hair that she cut. 2 inches off…closer to three. She did trim a lot of my split ends. Perhaps if I ate a little better, my hair will be healthier. Anyway…she was a sweet little old lady. She’s been running a saloon out of her garage for the past 25 years…you have to appreciate that kind of dedication.
Aunt Annie called when we were on our way back. She’ll be at our house before 2 pm. Mom and I hurried through the grocery shopping…and came back just in time for Annie. She brought Olivia, and their next-door neighbor…Matthew as well. The kids played, while Annie, Mom and I discussed Annie’s latest dating situation.
She’s still with Dave, though there are obviously problems between them. The communication is forced…and Dave is always on business trips. He’s lacking in the romance department-and generosity as well (according to Annie). She was most displeased with the gifts that he brought from his month-long business trips. When I heard her descriptions, I have to agree as well. Yet Annie isn’t planning on giving up on this relationship. She says that they seem compatible so far…and that’s what important to her. When I asked her if she loved him, she steered the subject away…she told me that they get along, and that’s all that really matters.
What matters to her? After abandoning her college love for a chance to emigrate to America, after one failed marriage and 2 failed relationships after that…Annie simply wants security. She wants to marry a man who can provide for her, whom she can “put up with.” Love? She’s too cynical to believe in love.
Or maybe I’m just too naïve.
I realized something: I don’t know anyone in my family who is happily married…It’s not to say that everyone is on the brink of a divorce (Annie is the one exception) or even unhappy in their marriage…it’s just that no one seems to be in love with their spouses after a few years…if they were every in love to begin with. They stay together out of duty to their children, or by the strength of tradition and societal expectations, or out of financial considerations…or for some, after many years of semi-content marriage, out of habit. Yet for so many of the friends and family that I know…they’re not together because they truly, truly want to be with each other. Being with the other person isn’t the end in itself…it’s the goal to an end, whether the true end be for the kids, for security, or having regular home-cooked meals. But love…there’s almost an assumption in my household that love is like infatuation: something one outgrows with time and maturity…that is truly need and responsibility that keeps a family together.
Geeh, no wonder I have such a hard time with commitment.
I’m still a romantic at heart, with a pretty thick cynical shell. I want to marry for love. I want to make my commitments out of love rather than expectation. I want, in 30 years, to look back on the person that I married and know that I love him even more than I did on our wedding day. I want to believe that love doesn’t die with the first financial crises, or the first child, or slowly seep away with the ordinariness of communal living.
Yet when I look at the marriages around me, when I look back at my own “relationship record”…my romantic ideals seems to fade to the substance of faerie tales. Wishing for love that endures-isn’t that rather like wishing for some guy to sweep me off my feet on his gallant white stallion? Hell-how many guys nowadays can ride? I know of one, and he’s most definitely gay: my dormmate from Earlham. (Besides, if “my knight” ever showed up, I bet that damn horse will buck him off and I’d spend the next few hours chasing down the “gallant steed”).
Ever marriage that I know of…where I can peer beneath the smoothly polite surface…shows me that even those who marry for love eventually stays married for some other reason. In my family, I’m the reason-my parents have told me repeated that it’s only because of me that they stay together. They “get along” most of the time…I’ve gotten used to the fights (besides, these occur a lot less nowadays)…but they’ve given up on each other. For the most part, they pursue their own individual lives…they’re strangers who happen to share a house and a daughter together. It’s not as depressing as I’m making it out to be…my parents are often happy in their own right, but they don’t make each other happy.
My grandparent’s marriage…my uncle Tom’s marriage…Auntie Annie…it’s a similar story. Love is an afterthought…and often fades as quickly. Practicality, compatibility, and security: that’s what marriage is all about.
I refuse.
I’ll take up stripping before marrying a guy for his bank account-it’s essentially the same thing, except that I’m not morally obligated to sleep with the guy. No pretense of love…we both know that my affections would be an illusion.
But I’m getting a bit ahead of myself. I don’t have a guy, much less a guy to refuse to marry for his bank account :) Though I’m being critical of my family’s marriages…my own record for relationships is hardly outstanding. Even aside from the two “mistakes”…I’ve screwed up so many times with great guys…
I can’t help but wonder what’s wrong with me. Some of them were really great guys. One of them, at least, I deliberately pushed away because he knew me too well…and it terrified me that he still accepted me.
I don’t trust myself. I don’t trust my ability to live up to my commitments…I don’t trust my capacity to love. I don’t trust myself to make the right decisions…
And so I make no binding decisions, no commitments, and refuse to love.
I know that this will eventually get me nowhere. If I keep turning away anyone that I might have a chance of loving in a “more than platonic” way, I’ll being one of those “cat ladies” who keeps a highly illegal number of pets-and spends more money on them then most people do on a vanload of kids. The way things are now…I reach out towards the people who intrigue me, people that-given time and experience-I might grow to love…and I tuck them safely in my “friend” category: close, but untouchable.
Maybe that’s why it’s so easy to care for my friends…
After I got back from the doctor’s office (pumping gas for the first time as I was running on fumes on the way there)…Mom and I went to Leny’s. Leny is a Filipino hairdresser that my mom has been going to for the past 5 or 6 years. Today, it was my hair that she cut. 2 inches off…closer to three. She did trim a lot of my split ends. Perhaps if I ate a little better, my hair will be healthier. Anyway…she was a sweet little old lady. She’s been running a saloon out of her garage for the past 25 years…you have to appreciate that kind of dedication.
Aunt Annie called when we were on our way back. She’ll be at our house before 2 pm. Mom and I hurried through the grocery shopping…and came back just in time for Annie. She brought Olivia, and their next-door neighbor…Matthew as well. The kids played, while Annie, Mom and I discussed Annie’s latest dating situation.
She’s still with Dave, though there are obviously problems between them. The communication is forced…and Dave is always on business trips. He’s lacking in the romance department-and generosity as well (according to Annie). She was most displeased with the gifts that he brought from his month-long business trips. When I heard her descriptions, I have to agree as well. Yet Annie isn’t planning on giving up on this relationship. She says that they seem compatible so far…and that’s what important to her. When I asked her if she loved him, she steered the subject away…she told me that they get along, and that’s all that really matters.
What matters to her? After abandoning her college love for a chance to emigrate to America, after one failed marriage and 2 failed relationships after that…Annie simply wants security. She wants to marry a man who can provide for her, whom she can “put up with.” Love? She’s too cynical to believe in love.
Or maybe I’m just too naïve.
I realized something: I don’t know anyone in my family who is happily married…It’s not to say that everyone is on the brink of a divorce (Annie is the one exception) or even unhappy in their marriage…it’s just that no one seems to be in love with their spouses after a few years…if they were every in love to begin with. They stay together out of duty to their children, or by the strength of tradition and societal expectations, or out of financial considerations…or for some, after many years of semi-content marriage, out of habit. Yet for so many of the friends and family that I know…they’re not together because they truly, truly want to be with each other. Being with the other person isn’t the end in itself…it’s the goal to an end, whether the true end be for the kids, for security, or having regular home-cooked meals. But love…there’s almost an assumption in my household that love is like infatuation: something one outgrows with time and maturity…that is truly need and responsibility that keeps a family together.
Geeh, no wonder I have such a hard time with commitment.
I’m still a romantic at heart, with a pretty thick cynical shell. I want to marry for love. I want to make my commitments out of love rather than expectation. I want, in 30 years, to look back on the person that I married and know that I love him even more than I did on our wedding day. I want to believe that love doesn’t die with the first financial crises, or the first child, or slowly seep away with the ordinariness of communal living.
Yet when I look at the marriages around me, when I look back at my own “relationship record”…my romantic ideals seems to fade to the substance of faerie tales. Wishing for love that endures-isn’t that rather like wishing for some guy to sweep me off my feet on his gallant white stallion? Hell-how many guys nowadays can ride? I know of one, and he’s most definitely gay: my dormmate from Earlham. (Besides, if “my knight” ever showed up, I bet that damn horse will buck him off and I’d spend the next few hours chasing down the “gallant steed”).
Ever marriage that I know of…where I can peer beneath the smoothly polite surface…shows me that even those who marry for love eventually stays married for some other reason. In my family, I’m the reason-my parents have told me repeated that it’s only because of me that they stay together. They “get along” most of the time…I’ve gotten used to the fights (besides, these occur a lot less nowadays)…but they’ve given up on each other. For the most part, they pursue their own individual lives…they’re strangers who happen to share a house and a daughter together. It’s not as depressing as I’m making it out to be…my parents are often happy in their own right, but they don’t make each other happy.
My grandparent’s marriage…my uncle Tom’s marriage…Auntie Annie…it’s a similar story. Love is an afterthought…and often fades as quickly. Practicality, compatibility, and security: that’s what marriage is all about.
I refuse.
I’ll take up stripping before marrying a guy for his bank account-it’s essentially the same thing, except that I’m not morally obligated to sleep with the guy. No pretense of love…we both know that my affections would be an illusion.
But I’m getting a bit ahead of myself. I don’t have a guy, much less a guy to refuse to marry for his bank account :) Though I’m being critical of my family’s marriages…my own record for relationships is hardly outstanding. Even aside from the two “mistakes”…I’ve screwed up so many times with great guys…
I can’t help but wonder what’s wrong with me. Some of them were really great guys. One of them, at least, I deliberately pushed away because he knew me too well…and it terrified me that he still accepted me.
I don’t trust myself. I don’t trust my ability to live up to my commitments…I don’t trust my capacity to love. I don’t trust myself to make the right decisions…
And so I make no binding decisions, no commitments, and refuse to love.
I know that this will eventually get me nowhere. If I keep turning away anyone that I might have a chance of loving in a “more than platonic” way, I’ll being one of those “cat ladies” who keeps a highly illegal number of pets-and spends more money on them then most people do on a vanload of kids. The way things are now…I reach out towards the people who intrigue me, people that-given time and experience-I might grow to love…and I tuck them safely in my “friend” category: close, but untouchable.
Maybe that’s why it’s so easy to care for my friends…