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    Getting Married Phase 2: Why Am I Doing This?

    Filed Under gender, heteropatriarchy, life changes, love, questions, quotes 

    All this talk about the theology of marriage has me thinking about my own impending (is this the right word?) marriage.

    Why get married? I could easily answer that: Michael and I love each other, and want to, as he put it, “Walk on the path of life together.” Of course, we could do that without being wedded. Marriage is a way of saying to our friends and family, “Hey ya’ll, we’re serious about this thing! You don’t have to worry about us anymore!”

    But I think the real reasons we’re getting married are

    I never wrote the entry about Phase 1 of Getting Married (subtitled I’m Gonna Be Bona-Fide), but if I had it would have reflected on how the (much appreciated) post-proposal kudos and congratulations I received made me feel, the barrage of questions about the wedding, and how Michael started opening serious discussions about our relationship with, “Now that we’re going to be married, we really need to work on ….”

    But we’re already on to Phase 2, so I’ll stick with that for the moment. Now that I know the reasons we’re getting married, what does that mean? Does why a couple gets married have any bearing on the marriage (to be distinguished from the wedding) at all? Will we be doing anything differently day-to-day than what we’re doing now?

    A year ago if you’d ask me if I’d live together with a man before marrying him I’d have said “Uhh, NO!” But here we are. Part of the reason I was so adamant against the notion of living with my future husband before the wedding was because I wanted a clear marker between “not being married” and “being married.” To me, “being married” meant things like moving in together, sharing finances, planning for the future together, etc. So much for that. Yesterday we were at the bank, opening up joint checking and savings accounts so that I can put us on a “budget.”

    Without those kind of clear differences, it’s hard to anticipate what will change. Given that our relationship is getting progressively stronger, it seems likely that our public vows will bring us closer together, just as the engagement and getting our own place has done.

    In his thoughtful article, How We Confuse Symbols & Things P. Lutus writes,

    Marriage was originally conceived (no pun intended) as a way to signal the presence of a special bond between two people. At that time, marriage had no special significance itself, it was merely a social signaling device, and to some extent it also represented a contract with mutual obligations . In those times marriage stood as a mere symbol for something of actual substance — a relationship between people that would have existed whether or not the symbol of marriage was also present.

    For my part, I feel very comfortable with this notion of marriage. I want to avoid seeing marriage as a status, even as I try to avoid feeling “engaged” is some sort of status. It just feels wrong, especially as most of my friends are neither engaged nor married. This can be hard, though, especially when that perception comes from other people. It’s also confused by the fact that I’m an older young adult who feels apprehension about “outgrowing” certain things. Is getting married and “settling down” going to mean isolation from my friends? Do I have to go out and find “couple friends” now? *sigh* These kinds of questions are thankfully already being addressed by other women, such as at indiebride.com, which was suggested to me by a long-distance UU friend.

    I guess, to wrap this up (rather weakly), I would say that I want my marriage to be a continuation of what Michael and I already started. Michael half jokes that he needs the marriage to feel secure that I won’t leave him (!), and I guess I intend to use the fact that we’re married as an inverted force field for when the going gets rough. But even then, the power in marriage is in what it symbolizes. We, the people who will be getting married, get to decide what it actually is.

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    4 Responses to “Getting Married Phase 2: Why Am I Doing This?”

    1. claire on July 18th, 2007 4:52 pm

      i could go on about this subject for quite some time, but i will try and keep it brief.

      i had no problem moving in with jonah, and even told myself i wanted to move in with somebody before i married them. i also told myself that i would not move in with anybody i couldn’t see myself with long-term (aka marriage material). once we lived together and there was no reason either to get married or not get married i tried to tell myself i’d be fine in a forever-type cohabitation, but i was still insecure (along the lines of michael feeling more secure about not being left now that you’re engaged). as much as i knew jonah was in it for the long haul, it was still theoretically possible for him to just take off.

      now that we’ve tied the knot, and even before, i definitely see & feel our bond growing stronger. our situation is a strange one, since we moved in with another couple as soon as we got married, but i’ve gotten used to *being* married and talking about myself that way.

      i’m similar to you in that most of my friends aren’t married either, so sometimes i feel kind of weird and special. i have a single friend who has mostly married friends and feels that she has not *won the prize* of this lifetime partnership, that it’s her ultimate goal in life. i never thought of marriage as a goal of mine until i realized that it was, in large part because i want to have kids.

      anyway, i’d love to talk/hear more about your ruminations on the subject!

    2. chutney on July 19th, 2007 11:12 am

      For me, marriage is a symbolic and public commitment between me and my wife, but also our family and friends. At the wedding we ask them to acknowledge our commitment and support it. It moves the relationship from private to public.

    3. David on July 19th, 2007 5:32 pm

      Following up on your previous question: If divorce has to happen, what’s best for the kids?

      The answer depends enormously on the reasons the divorce ‘had to happen.’ As I said, there are calamaties that divorce—even when kids are involved. Severe violence, mental illness, substance abuse, adultry (and a few other misc. categories.) ‘We didn’t communicate well’, ‘we have grown apart’, ‘I just don’t love him anymore’ – these do not justify divorce.

      So we suppose a divorce ‘had to happen’ due to calamaty. The thinking about ‘what is best for the kids’ starts with the calamaty. No general answer spans the both cases of ‘Daddy is in prison and we’re all releived’ vs ‘Mommy is now living with her new boyfriend.’

      But maybe you mean the divorce ‘had to happen’ because your spouse initiated a unilateral divoce in order to follow his bliss. But he’s otherwise being reasonable. You’re hoping you can salvage a ‘good divorce’ for the kids sake. What works?

      I don’t think the answer is out there in the literature. Certain things seem common sense – don’t badmouth your ex in front of the kids, etc. But we don’t really know how much of a differnce those things make. The good studies aren’t there.

      One might think that remarriage would help – it relieves single-parenthood poverty; it provides two sets of eyes to watch the kids. But the results on the whole, prove otherwise. (See the Daly’s The Truth About Cinderella for why.)

    4. hafidha sofia on July 23rd, 2007 12:48 pm

      Claire, thanks - as always - for your thoughts. This is definitely an issue weighing on my mind and heart, and I’ll be posting more in the future. I’d like to read a few of the books recommended at indiebride, too. Part of me wonders if we shouldn’t just wait until we absolutely want to have kids. I also met a woman recently who’s got three kids with her husband, and even uses his last name sometimes, but they aren’t actually legally married. They had a ceremony and everything, but never signed the papers.

      So I don’t know …. *sigh* At least the wedding is a year away; plenty of time to change things or whatever.

      Chutney: yes, I see it as a public announcement, asking our support structures to activate and give us their blessings. It doesn’t completely answer whether we should be legal about it, though.

      David - I wouldn’t be surprised if remarriage didn’t work out so great if the causes of the first marriage’s “failure” were never quite addressed. Even a widower might want to delay remarrying if their first marriage was not so good - and especially if they were the reason the first spouse died). ;)

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