My fiance and I have been together for 3.5 years plus a few months. I know this because I was asked to marry him on our 3.5 year anniversary and it's been a few months since then.
For years I was so consumed with him asking to marry me and felt it was imperative that we marry. It got to the point where I asked him if he even wanted to marry me. He was taking so long I was afraid he felt he had dug himself into such a hole that he couldn't get himself out of it and wouldn't put me through the pain of breaking it off after spending so many years with me.
I sat him down and actually said flat out "Do you even want to marry me? I ask this because I don't want you to feel that you need to stay in this relationship if it is not what you want. Please just tell me flat out and we can handle it like adults and go our own ways peacefully." I did not say this because I wanted out, I said this because I wanted him to be happy and I wanted to be happy, if not being with me any more would make him happy I would give that to him. He is the best man I know and I would give him the moon if it was within my power.
A few weeks later he asked me to marry him. I felt a small pang of guilt as I stood there looking at him asking him "Really!?" as he laughed nervously ( he laughs when he doesn't know what else to do). I eventually said "Yeah...I could do that", as if I was doing him a favour by saying yes and not the other way around. He did me the favour of choosing me to spend his life with me. This pang of guilt continued into the next day as I felt like I had taken something from him, stolen his thunder. So I asked him if he only asked me to marry him because of the conversation we has previously had. He assured me that was not the case he was just waiting for the right moment, and had known how he was going to ask me for 2 years, and has even told a bunch of people at the wedding of a friend of ours how he planned to ask me one day.
The night he asked I bought myself 4 bridal magazines and began rifling through them with intense fervor. I was going to be a bride...FINALLY!! However as the days went on I also began to realize...I was also going to be a wife...and that thought stuck with me even more than the idea being a bride.
I began to think about what it means to be a wife. My mother has been married 3 times as has my grandmother. I in no way criticize those decisions, they made them the women they are and they were part of their journey, however for myself, the idea of divorce in my current life..is not acceptable. I find the idea of getting married and getting divorced at the first sign that you might have to be unhappy for a little while completely ridiculous. There are plenty of reasons couples get divorced; infidelity, abuse, someone just up and leaves you. All plausible reasons if you think on them hard enough, but for me after seeing my parents go through 5 marriages between the two of them. I almost feel like I have something to prove, so I waited until I found a man who I could see going the distance with me. He comes from a family with strong marriages, his parents are still together, both sets of grandparents were together. He is a man who also believes you stick things out. You get married and stay married. This could very well be a terrible way of looking at marriage and divorce, I in no way am an expert, this is just how I see things.
That is not to say I am not excited to be a bride. There was some small drama surrounding the planning of my wedding and I only realized a few days ago that I am far too attached to the idea of the wedding and perhaps not attached enough to the idea of a Marriage. So I am going to approach my wedding with gladness and as much Zen as I can muster, and just be happy with how the day turns out.
During all of this contemplation I picked up a book called "Committed" by Elizabeth Gilbert and just finished it and thought it was completely brilliant. It was a study on marriage from the perspective of a person who did not ever intend to marry again and the peace she made with it. She needed to define marriage in her own way and find what it meant to her and I think more people should look at marriage that way. What does marriage mean to you?
The more I think on it the more I realize I need to not only plan my wedding, and enjoy that for what it is but I need to also begin to think about what it is to be married, to be a wife and what it will mean to build a life with the man I love.
As a child of divorce, along with what ninety-five percent of the rest of the world? I find that this work of figuring out what it is to have a marriage and what it is to be a wife is incredibly important. I love my mother to ends of the earth, she is why I am the person that I am. Her strength is my biggest inspiration, but I do not want to follow in her marital footsteps.
I am sure once I am married I will begin to think about what it will mean to be a wife and also a mother while still maintaining who I am, Jessica, and how I can bring who I am to being that wife and mother. Some might say I think too much, but I spent many years of my life afraid I was missing something, that I never really lived it. This is my time to live and it's an incredible feeling, knowing you can have all you ever wanted and still find there is more to have, things you never thought you were worthy of having.
-Jess
