photobooth friday - marriage week edition

(Me and Adam on the left, Summer and James on the right)

Tomorrow is the big day.

James and Summer are getting married tomorrow. Adam is getting a little nervous about his officiating role, but we have a long car ride ahead of us today, during which he is going to run through all his “lines” and work out the kinks.

Adam and I had a long conversation last night about an issue we had some disagreement about. It reminded me of all the work that marriage is... but of how rewarding it can be when you've worked things out. The discussion was a growing experience. He and I decided early on that the “mission” of our relationship is to help each other grow. If we aren't doing that, we aren't doing each other any good being together.

And what a growing experience this wedding has been for us! We're not even the ones getting married, yet we've both been forced to really think sincerely about what marriage means to us. Adam and I have actually suggested/chosen the words Summer and James are using to make their vows to each other. Since we're not married, it's given us a chance to really reflect on what we think marriage should be.

But yesterday, when the four of us went to the mall to get these pictures taken two days before the wedding, it wasn't about the social construct of marriage. It was just about four friends who've helped each other through the transitions from college to adulthood (or, in my case, adulthood to college). Two couples who've been unsure of themselves at times, but who've pulled through all those difficulties and, when it comes down to it, just have fun together.

From the photos, it may not appear that we've acclimated to adulthood all that well. But I'm ok with that.

Many thanks to Andrea for thinking up photobooth friday. I wouldn't have thought to visit the photobooth right before their wedding without it, and we all had such a fun and memorable time.

More about photobooth friday here and here.

- marriage week - day 3

(Photo was taken a year after I got married by a friend who was studying photography.
She is now, incidentally, dating my ex.)

Marriage is a decision. A commitment.

I used to believe that marriage is about love, but I no longer believe that to be necessarily true.

I shared this thought with Adam yesterday, and he thought it sounded cold and depressing... and I agreed. But when you get down to it, that's what marriage is. An agreement. A decision. A commitment.

There are two funny myths about marriage.

Myth #1: Once you get married, everything changes.

Myth #2: Once you get married, nothing changes.

Does a soirée involving a white dress, some rings, and a cake change everything? Of course not. Once married, you are still the same two people, the same couple. But what often changes are expectations, both from the two lovers and from the rest of the world. Suddenly, you are expected to get joint bank accounts, to file your taxes together (happy belated tax day, by the way!), to spend holidays together, to not attend family gatherings partnerless, to have children, to agree on stuff.

And sometimes, one of you holds expectations about the roles you both should play-- sometimes without realizing that you hold that expectation. She expects that he will always have a job. He expects that she won't have a social life without him. Or about characteristics based on your parents' relationship: he expects that she will nag him, she expects that he won't respect her freedom.

The key, I think, is to be clear on what this commitment means to both of you before entering into it, what meanings you attach to the idea of "marriage", from day to day behavior to the role this person plays in the grand scheme of your life... and to realize that some of those meanings or expectations may be unrealistic.

The relationship that makes up a marriage and the marriage itself are really, if you think about it, two entirely separate entities. I have seen married couples who don't have much of a relationship by my standards, yet their marriage is going strong. And I have seen couples with a strong and powerful relationship whose marriages don't work out, or don't even exist.

Perhaps it is important to understand this, to really think about how marriage relates to your relationship, and to honestly rank one as a priority over the other. To my ex, and initially to me, marriage was more important that our relationship. He would have rather stayed married in an unhappy relationship than be close but no longer married. But I came to want a healthy relationship more than an strong marriage. And I think he, too, now values that we still have a friendship more than resents the fact that we got divorced.

I am sure there are people who disagree, but I at least think it is an interesting idea. Which is more important to you? A happy relationship, or a lifelong marriage? If you had to choose one without the other, which would it be?

– marriage week – day 2

What to me is an ideal marriage?

1. It adapts to fit both our lives. It changes with the times and the years and circumstances.

How terribly Gen X does that make me sound? Expecting that the timeless institution of MARRIAGE should change to fit my life? How selfish does it make me to expect that in committing my life to a partner, that partner should adapt to my needs...

But no, wait. That isn't what I'm saying. I'm not saying that the other person is supposed to conform to whatever are my wants and desires. I'm saying that the relationship should reflect us as we both change and grow.

Let's say I'm married, and there is a time when we both have great opportunities to work in jobs that are in different cities. Maybe one of us feels that the opportunity is not worth being apart. But maybe we both want to see what we can learn from the experiences, so one of us moves, and the other stays, and we see how it works. But we still love each other, and we're still committed to each other, and we still want to be together in the long run.

2. We want to be together. We enjoy spending time together. We can be sitting in a car together, talking or not talking, and still enjoying each other's company. We can be working through painful or difficult problems, but we're working through them because afterward, we want to come out stronger and closer.

3. We respect each other. We don't habitually make jokes at the other's expense, to friends, family, or to each other. We are both willing to do our share of work, and willing to take on extra when the other is stressed. But we communicate when we need help, rather than being passive aggressive, or trying to take on too much.

4. We can seek counseling together if things are going wrong, rather than letting things deteriorate. We act on this before it is too late. In times of extreme difficulty, we would both make fixing the problems in our marriage our first priority, with equal effort on both sides. We are be able to forgive each other.

5. We respect each other's interests. I will have interests that my partner doesn't share, but he shouldn't resent or make fun of those interests, rather he should delight in my enthusiasm for things that add variety to both our lives. Likewise, my partner will have interests that I don't share, but he must have the space to enjoy them, and I should support him and appreciate that he is a different person from me. Also, we would pursue some interests together.

6. We find the balance between freedom and commitment. We encourage each other to be individuals, to have alone time, to have social time with other friends. But we don't neglect to spend quality time together regularly.

7. We travel regularly together.

8. It is a timeless friendship, full of laughter, good memories, and closeness. We are a comfort to each other. We appreciate each other, and communicate openly. We learn each other.

9. We are very attracted to each other, making sure to let each other know this openly. We enjoy both quiet physical closeness and crazyintensewildfabulouspassion, depending on our mood.

10. We do things for each other to make everyday life more fun, like leaving notes for each other, surprising each other, and being playful.

oops

almost forgot.



happy easter.

bridal explosion

Adam's roommates, James and Summer, are getting married next weekend. He and I are somewhat centrally involved in the festivities, as Adam is officiating the ceremony and I am helping coordinate many details (I have both been to and been involved in many weddings in the past, including, of course, my own). I will write more about the details of that later.

Right now I am thinking about what exactly marriage is. I have quite the love/hate sort of relationship with weddings. I think weddings are beautiful. I love the idea of planning a big party for two people who love each other, and celebrating who they are together that they wouldn't be on their own. But I also fear the life after that, the potential stagnancy, the inflexibility of a bond that is so differently defined any given year by any given couple, yet expected to be so consistent.

This is kind of a big issue in my life, for a couple reasons. First, I used to be married, and am now divorced. The promise I made, in front of God and my family and friends, to love and be with my husband no matter what he did or said, no matter if he was sick or healthy, no matter if we were rich or poor...I chose to break it.

What happened that I didn't account for was not so much how he changed, but how I changed. I was 18 when I committed my 30-year-old and 40-year-old and 65-year-old selves to that marriage, and by the time I had become just my 23-year-old self, I could see that I had fooled myself. At 18, I believed I had reached my full potential, I knew all I needed to know about myself and about the world and about relationships. I knew what my parents had done wrong with me, and why I was the way I was. And to be fair, I probably knew myself better than the average 18-year-old knows themselves. But I thought I had reached the end. I thought I was as good as I was going to get.

Obviously, my illusion slowly shattered. As I experienced the intense personal questioning that comes on during what is most people's college years, I kept finding my mind blocked because I was in a bond that was too small for me and that couldn't grow or change. I agonized over the decision for over a year, but eventually, the five year marriage came to an end, and a wonderful (and much more natural-feeling) friendship with my ex has blossomed in its place.

The second reason I often try to make sense of marriage is that I am now in love, and ponder perhaps getting married in the future. But I waver back and forth on what this would mean, what would be my motives, what difference marriage would make.

Therefore, I hereby proclaim this to be – Marriage Week – here at borrowedmuse. My blogging during this week leading up to James & Summer's wedding shall be committed to the topic of marriage, in an attempt to discover what exactly it all means. I encourage those of you who read but don't comment (because I know you're there) to take this opportunity to comment often. Your thoughts will be quite welcome.

photobooth friday

One of my best friends in junior high was Nat. Nat was actually her middle name. She's from Thailand, and her full name I wouldn't do justice trying to spell. Her first and last name were each four syllables long, so telling people her name was 'Nat' was much easier than trying to get them to pronounce her full name correctly.

We haven't talked in many years. We lost touch a while after she went on vacation with my family for a week. When we returned from the trip, her mom picked her up at our house and informed her they had moved while we were gone. She went to a new school that was a little more "ghetto" than the one we'd been going to together.

Shortly after she moved, one of our mutual friends (who, for the sake of this story I'll call Stacy) began talking badly about Nat behind her back, joking that Nat was turning into a slut, was going to get pregnant, etc. One day, I abruptly stopped talking to Stacy, because I didn't like her saying mean things about someone we were both friends with, then pretending to be friends with her to her face. Nat seemed to think Stacy was a good friend, and didn't understand why I stopped talking to her. I never told Nat why I did it, because it would have required me to tell her the things Stacy was saying about her. Looking back on this, I think I did the right thing, though I always felt bad about it. I think this misunderstanding led to Nat becoming close friends with Stacy, and me losing touch with both of them. Ahhh, teen drama.

This picture was taken on Nat's 13th birthday, July 2, 1992, when she and I went with another friend to the Americana Amusement Park. There are also pictures of the three of us, but I'll save those for another time.

Please note my fantastically crooked teeth. What wonderfully awkward days those were.

More stories captured in photobooths by the wonderful hulaseventy and others, found here!

sunshine

Life has been a little rough lately. Not for me so much as for people close to me.

This is just to spread some sunshine.