I listened to the intro to Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage by Elizabeth Gilbert on audiobook at work a few days ago. Elizabeth talks about how she'd been a "men's writer" and she'd been told she "writes like a man" and it was meant as a compliment. She wrote a book called Eat, Pray, Love, which was about her divorce. A best seller, she was then a "chicklit" writer and it was "not a compliment."
I've been reading wedding books a lot recently, having been fool enough to be railroaded into an engagement late last year. Don't misunderstand, I love the man, but I despise the institution of marriage. My mother has been married 4 and a half times, the half being a several year engagement which she had an on/off feeling for and the final marriage being to the same patient man. My father has been married twice with two serious engagements which never finalized. My mother's parents married once and stayed that way. My father's father was a multiple divorcee and something of a playboy and my father's mother married once and gave it a rest. My husband's parents, I thought, would understand my trepidations, having witnessed all the lingering pain and damage these legal wars have wrought upon my family. His adopted father has been divorced once and his mother claims one marriage, but multiple not-marriages, resulting in her two children. I was gravely mistaken.
My husband (we are now legally bonded) and I have known each other for a while. Kinda. Five years my senior, we were never in the same classes, often not even the same schools, but we tended to live near one another during the same periods of time. When my mother decided she was going to sell everything and move to Florida the summer before my third grade year, and moving us to my grandmother's house near Lake Thunderbird for six months while she did long distance interviews and eventually gave up, my future husband was living off of 36th street and Alameda. When I was living in Live Oak apartments near the Frisbee golf course a few years later, he was living in the "project" housing which backed up to the park. When I was in high school, we met at the local comic book store, though I don't think we said much. In late August of 2008, he sends me a message on a social networking site. I'd just been dumped by my fiancé, was recovering from a concussion, was canceling my plans to move to Colorado to be with said ex, was thinking I might move to Nebraska, was definitely not looking for another engagement. We go on one tentative date and his mother tells me to marry him.
She's not going to cause any trouble at all. Neither am I. Fat chance.
He proposes sometime in August of 2009, though we've been talking about our wedding for several months already. I want a long engagement. I want him to finish his degree. I want to have my back surgery. I want us to have ten grand in savings when we go on the honeymoon so in case our cruise boat crashes off the coast of Chile, we can have a nice backpacking tour or something and not scramble for money. I sign the marriage license in October of 09 because we know we're getting married anyway and the wedding's going to be in another state and this just makes it easier. He gets laid off in November, a week before Thanksgiving, and we've been fighting with Unemployment ever since. His sister decides she's sick of being badgered by his mom too and declares her wedding date in December. Their aunt takes charge and tramples on everything Sis wanted and somehow manages to spend more than ten grand. They pick dresses that ignore the weather and shoes that I swear were sown with barbed wire. We spend money we don't have on the damn things. We go, it's pretty, the reception is supposed to be high formal I guess but ends up alienating most of the audience and most of us leave as soon as cake is served, and no one gets their "thanks for participating in the wedding party" gifts. And I think, "Dear god I don't want my wedding to be like that."
For three months, one fiscal quarter, I've been a wife. I'm still planning a wedding. I still get outrageous ads from bridal boutiques and emails from local DJ's. I haven't and refuse to change my name, much to the confusion of his family, sorry, his side of the family. Hardly matters anyway since they don't spell my first name right and still call me by his last name. For one and a half months, my husband has been a stay at home hubby. I get up early for work and come home in the early afternoon and am continually disappointed in the housework, the groceries, and his hygiene. I'm looking for a second job. I've got the education and experience and why on Earth did we think I could stop working in a few months to get that surgery and things would be ok?
Since Sis's wedding, I've marveled at their choice of Bible verses. Each verse highlights the purpose of marriage to create an independent family, beholden to neither side's parents. Since hubby's discharge date, I've marveled...and I'm trying not to criticize here...much...at the unapologetic lack of fiscal principle displayed by my new family. With their encouragement, we now have new debt which could have bought my car. Or financed a small movie. And I wonder if my hubby realizes that the credit cards are at an end and we still have bills that will need paying next month. More now, in fact. I've shown him our budget many times. He knows how little my paychecks are. Sure, some of that was necessary- our car tags, the vet bills, groceries, and gas (even though the last two are generally "no no's" in my book). Comic books, movies, "stupid wedding stuff," Christmas gifts, eating out, and I don't even know what else...It's not a good start.
I've heard other stories like this and they don't end well either.
