Sunday 30 December 2018

Why I Won't Get Married (Yet!)


Probably around the time that one of my best friends got engaged earlier this year, I began to notice my Instagram feed changing. Maybe it was my own doing- I’d attended bridal shows with her (as tracked by my linked Facebook) and began following different wedding gown and planning accounts to help her get an idea of what she was looking for. Unfortunately, Instagram thought it was what I was looking for, and began marketing marriage to me incessantly.

Quickly, my explore page began showing me dresses, venues, altars; brides, grooms, and rings rings rings. Each time I tagged my friend in a bridal post, or sent her an image of a bridesmaids dress, I found my own accounts further swamped in wedding/lifestyle advertising that seemed specifically marketed to my own preferences for all things literary or vintage. I saw lists like, “How to Have the Perfect Bookworm Reception”, and I remember handing my phone to my boyfriend in disbelief one night showing him the rows and rows of so-called “ethical engagement rings” that Facebook had adorned all over my home page.

It didn’t make sense to me, and it was, frankly, a bit annoying. After all, I have a wonderfully imperfect relationship with an equally wonderful, imperfect man, who co-parents with my ex-husband and I, loves my daughters, and who has shown time and again to be equally supportive and committed.

But after a while, insidiously, all that advertising got in a little. I wasn’t consciously aware of the change, all I noticed was that one day I started looking at wedding dresses with less bridesmaid objectivity and more personal longing. And after weeks, or perhaps months of this, I became less and less satisfied with our situation, and began questioning both the value of my relationship, and my own personal value as well.  Even though I’m a full-time student and full-time mom, and my boyfriend has a very demanding job, coupled with the fact that this year we completed an enormous renovation and then sold our house, I still felt like it wasn’t enough that by being unmarried, we were somehow falling short. Like our life, and our love, was somehow less valid because it had not yet been publicly declared in a well-photographed legal ceremony. I allowed those ads to get so far under my skin that I worked myself up to the point of mentally loosening so much of our progress and commitment, focusing most of my attention on what we didn’t have versus what we actually did.
  
The worst was when− entirely single-handedly− I gave those ads enough power to chip away at my self-esteem, as I questioned whether or not I was worth marrying in my partner’s eyes, or if to him I was damaged goods because of my past divorce. In the process, I created problems where there had previously been none; I distrusted my boyfriend, distrusted myself, and lost faith in our connection because I felt sure that we’d never exchange those all-important vows.

It took me nearly driving that car off the cliff to take a good, hard look at exactly where I was headed. Then, in a moment of crisis, I briefly separated Instagram and Facebook from the equation, and asked myself: would I still want to get married right now if I knew the pictures would never get posted online? If I knew I would never update it on a social media account? Would I, in this moment, take the opportunity to transform my relationship into a marriage if no one except us would even know it had occurred?

And the answer came back unwaveringly: I wouldn’t. In fact, I wasn’t nearly ready.
  
And as though social media had been the dam holding back all the tides of clarity, the removal of them allowed my truth, and all the lessons I’d learned since my divorce to rush in. Like how being married is not the same as being boyfriend and girlfriend that marriage is a living, breathing organism with its own set of rules and expectations, and you’d better be sure before you invite it into your life. Or how easy it is once you’re married to lean on that status instead of do the work, once you've stopped working towards a wedding. The way that when you’re married you can gradually stop choosing each other, because it’s easy to forget that you still have to. To me, that commitment shouldn’t be embarked on lightly because it comes with so many unique challenges I know I’m not yet ready to face again; in fact I'm not sure I ever could, unless I'd spent enough time away from social media to trust that it was really what I wanted, not what I thought I needed in order to feel socially adequate.

As I came to my senses, I remembered then too how much I enjoy my relationship right now exactly as it is. We haven’t yet settled into rings, roles, or complacency our very unattachment brings a level of excitement and risk that means we’re still surprising each other. And we’ve both admitted that while we’ve grown a lot, we have more to do before we enter that particular arena if we plan on being successful. So while most of our friends are married (or nearly there) our plans for the immediate future are personal goals, trips, and other adventures; we remind ourselves constantly that despite a few silver hairs, we are still so young, and that even though Instagram would have us think otherwise, we don’t actually have to do anything we don’t want to. Truthfully we will only have this period as boyfriend and girlfriend for a set amount of time; all stages are fleeting eventually, and as we head into the new year it serves us to really treasure this one.