Musings back to my wedding and marriage days
Some anonymous person made a comment in a recent entry of mine (in which I mused about Mary & Casey's wedding & party). I'm making it a separate post here, since I kinda took the question and ran with it, musing back on stuff I haven't mused about for a while.
Anonymous 2006-07-19 05:13am writes:Wow.
You had more emotions at someone else's wedding than your own?
Your husband is one lucky dude.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Make that ex-husband! Divorced in '88 (after 5 years of marriage).
Anyway, I've always emotionally separated almost everything about the following:
(1) Deciding on and making a marriage-level commitment
(2) Wedding or Commitment Ceremony or Whatever
(3) Whether or not there are "legal" ties made
(4) Celebrating and cherishing the decision and the commitment itself
(4a) Including the idea of a honeymoon for personal celebration and basking.
So, the fact that (2) and (4) were not related for me is not surprising. Didn't (and still doesn't) bother me.
I had lots of lovely happy mushy emotions around (1) and (4) and (4a), just not (2) or (3). Is that so surprising?
As a young 'girl' (tomboy, really), I was never the sort who fantasized about weddings. Never was attracted to the ceremony, the ostentatiousness, the excesses of money thrown at them, the formality, the obligatory traditions, etc. I was always very cynical about them in general, never found any that I'd seen or heard about to be appealing. Marriage -- romantic, weddings -- not.
In specific, I found that my wedding still attracted too many "shoulds" for my comfort. Mom requires this bunch of things, Dad requires that bunch of things, etc. Though I managed to keep the size and complication and expense of the thing quite low, and delegated almost all those "shoulds" to the should-er, it still wasn't my style whatsoever. Except for the cake -- I picked that out and loved it!
So I felt rather removed from getting excited about the actual ceremony itself. We just used the canned vows from the guy who performed the service[*], so I didn't feel particularly connected to them. What I was personally promising was so much more important to me than that stuff. Didn't help that it was a mildly religious ceremony, since religion is something I really don't connect to at all. And I was wearing a dress (something I never did), with a goddamn train! And my Mom and sister held me down and put makeup on me! Aaaagh, the final insult!
Anyway, what I saw Mary and Casey do was hold a ceremony their way, all the way. With vows that were personally meaningful to them -- VERY meaningful. They didn't seem to be following mindlessly through any "shoulds", there didn't seem to be any nasty financial or bizarre wedding excesses. Just an extremely beautiful and inspiring public declaration of love and commitment. Mmmmm, *sigh*. More weddings should be like that!
[*] The coolest thing about the minister (the head of the Caltech Y), was that he agreed to perform the service only if we agreed to 4 (I think it was 4) sessions of premarital counselling! I thought that was the coolest thing! We thought we had it all figured out. But I knew it was wonderful to be put through the exercise of making sure.
Turns out we flew through the counselling with the greatest of ease (as I remember it). We had it all figured out, knew what we wanted, had thought out much of the important decisions that our lives would revolve around. So the guy married us, no problems.
In hindsight, I know how he missed our fundamental incompatibilities. We were quite compatible back then. We were both students at Caltech, in our junior year, living on campus, both enmeshed in the high-pressure firehose of learning and the eccentric social situation. That gave us lots in common; the situation forced us into very similar lifestyles with compatible interests.
However, after we graduated, and moved out into the "real world", our values turned out to be different. My husband became a tie-wearing workaholic, adding extra consulting to his over-40-hours primary job, determined to "find out what he was worth". Me, I would never let a job define my "worth", a concept I'm not even sure that I agree exists. Our styles and preferences diverged dramatically. Of course there was more, but I think that was the most fundamental part of our mismatch, and why we didn't catch it sooner.
Ah well, at least I learned tons from that marriage. I think back on it as a time where I grew up a lot, in the relationship sense. I'm glad I did it, got through it, moved on, so I could learn those lessons.
BTW, that marriage end had nothing to do with polyamory. As a young teen, I'd fantasized about polyamory, but in my early dating years in late high school and college, I had decided polyamory was just my idealistic childish dreaming, and I oughtta get practical and dig into monogamy. Later, after my marriage ended, I remembered those old fantasies, and discovered I'd developed a strong enough independent streak to try to act on those desires. After a while of thinking I was one of what had to be a tiny group of freaks trying nonmonogamy, I found the group alt.polyamory (right back when it was founded), and thus learned that it was called "polyamory" and there were lotsa folks doing it. So glad I did! :)
Anonymous 2006-07-19 05:13am writes:Wow.
You had more emotions at someone else's wedding than your own?
Your husband is one lucky dude.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Make that ex-husband! Divorced in '88 (after 5 years of marriage).
Anyway, I've always emotionally separated almost everything about the following:
(1) Deciding on and making a marriage-level commitment
(2) Wedding or Commitment Ceremony or Whatever
(3) Whether or not there are "legal" ties made
(4) Celebrating and cherishing the decision and the commitment itself
(4a) Including the idea of a honeymoon for personal celebration and basking.
So, the fact that (2) and (4) were not related for me is not surprising. Didn't (and still doesn't) bother me.
I had lots of lovely happy mushy emotions around (1) and (4) and (4a), just not (2) or (3). Is that so surprising?
As a young 'girl' (tomboy, really), I was never the sort who fantasized about weddings. Never was attracted to the ceremony, the ostentatiousness, the excesses of money thrown at them, the formality, the obligatory traditions, etc. I was always very cynical about them in general, never found any that I'd seen or heard about to be appealing. Marriage -- romantic, weddings -- not.
In specific, I found that my wedding still attracted too many "shoulds" for my comfort. Mom requires this bunch of things, Dad requires that bunch of things, etc. Though I managed to keep the size and complication and expense of the thing quite low, and delegated almost all those "shoulds" to the should-er, it still wasn't my style whatsoever. Except for the cake -- I picked that out and loved it!
So I felt rather removed from getting excited about the actual ceremony itself. We just used the canned vows from the guy who performed the service[*], so I didn't feel particularly connected to them. What I was personally promising was so much more important to me than that stuff. Didn't help that it was a mildly religious ceremony, since religion is something I really don't connect to at all. And I was wearing a dress (something I never did), with a goddamn train! And my Mom and sister held me down and put makeup on me! Aaaagh, the final insult!
Anyway, what I saw Mary and Casey do was hold a ceremony their way, all the way. With vows that were personally meaningful to them -- VERY meaningful. They didn't seem to be following mindlessly through any "shoulds", there didn't seem to be any nasty financial or bizarre wedding excesses. Just an extremely beautiful and inspiring public declaration of love and commitment. Mmmmm, *sigh*. More weddings should be like that!
[*] The coolest thing about the minister (the head of the Caltech Y), was that he agreed to perform the service only if we agreed to 4 (I think it was 4) sessions of premarital counselling! I thought that was the coolest thing! We thought we had it all figured out. But I knew it was wonderful to be put through the exercise of making sure.
Turns out we flew through the counselling with the greatest of ease (as I remember it). We had it all figured out, knew what we wanted, had thought out much of the important decisions that our lives would revolve around. So the guy married us, no problems.
In hindsight, I know how he missed our fundamental incompatibilities. We were quite compatible back then. We were both students at Caltech, in our junior year, living on campus, both enmeshed in the high-pressure firehose of learning and the eccentric social situation. That gave us lots in common; the situation forced us into very similar lifestyles with compatible interests.
However, after we graduated, and moved out into the "real world", our values turned out to be different. My husband became a tie-wearing workaholic, adding extra consulting to his over-40-hours primary job, determined to "find out what he was worth". Me, I would never let a job define my "worth", a concept I'm not even sure that I agree exists. Our styles and preferences diverged dramatically. Of course there was more, but I think that was the most fundamental part of our mismatch, and why we didn't catch it sooner.
Ah well, at least I learned tons from that marriage. I think back on it as a time where I grew up a lot, in the relationship sense. I'm glad I did it, got through it, moved on, so I could learn those lessons.
BTW, that marriage end had nothing to do with polyamory. As a young teen, I'd fantasized about polyamory, but in my early dating years in late high school and college, I had decided polyamory was just my idealistic childish dreaming, and I oughtta get practical and dig into monogamy. Later, after my marriage ended, I remembered those old fantasies, and discovered I'd developed a strong enough independent streak to try to act on those desires. After a while of thinking I was one of what had to be a tiny group of freaks trying nonmonogamy, I found the group alt.polyamory (right back when it was founded), and thus learned that it was called "polyamory" and there were lotsa folks doing it. So glad I did! :)