2005-07-21 - 10:58 a.m.
honeymoon
When I read this it nearly broke my heart.
I�ve been thinking about it long after I read it.
At nearly every bridal shower I�ve attended (including my own) there is some activity where all the attendees write down advice for the bride-to-be, usually to be read aloud. Generally there are a few racy comments for everyone to titter over. On the rare occasion, there will be someone witty who writes something genuinely clever. Most of the advice, however, is of the generic, �Agree to disagree,� �Don�t go to bed angry,� and �Marriage is hard work,� variety.
One woman I worked with gave me the unsolicited advice that marriage changes people because both people go into a marriage with perceptions that they may not even be aware they had. Their expectations change their relationship. I thought this was absurd since no one talks through things like me and the Hub. I in particular, being wary of the marriage thing, had analyzed the hell out of it.
What I had not considered was the other people. I had naively thought that marriage was about the people actually doing the marrying, that we were the ones making the calls about what our marriage was going to be. In that first year or so, I did not have difficulties with my perception of marriage, or my husband�s perception of marriage, but the rest of the world�s perception of marriage.
That first year was hard to learn to deal with other people not liking that I did not change my name or that my husband and I were now a family unto ourselves and we deserved to make our own decisions and have our own unity. It took that first year to learn to not give a damn about everyone else and focus only on us. It took that year and then some to learn that a marriage has to be a priority that comes before work and school and other family and everything else, and to not be complacent. Sometimes I am still not very good at it.
I think that Erin�s take on marriage is the most honest and valuable thing I�ve ever read on the subject. Certainly a downer at a shower, sure, but it�s filled with hope and honesty. It doesn�t offer the false hope of external expectations, the fairy tales and sitcoms and debutante expectations of marriage, but rather the expectation of the real thing, warts and all, which is far more valuable.
