Sunday, September 28, 2008

I love you. Marry me or I'm leaving you....

I just heard the most ridiculous statement. I somehow started to watch the beginning the Amazing Race. The show is about couples that go on this race around the globe and find clues and blah blah and stuff. The couples can be anybody. There was a mother and son, best friends, a couple that just started dating, a couple that was separated, two frat boys and a couple that had been dating four years. There were more, but my blog is boring me and I dont want to go further with the descriptions, I want to get to the meat.

I'm listening to these people and where they are from and why they are there. This is notable about the couple that had been dating four years. She was narrating that they were there in order so strengthen their relationship. She says, If he doesnt ask me to marry him soon, then I am going to have to move on! What is she talking about?

Let me understand this. She is with him, because, she loves him. She has probably created a life with him, knows and loves his family and he, hers. She is announcing that she wants to MARRY him, which is supposed to be the ultimate love for another. Yet, if he doesnt marry her she is leaving him. I'm outta here. The problem I have with this is, it is a complete contradiction in itself.

Im going to break it down now:

Loving someone means you should get married? Being married means you love that person, you are a team, 'til death do you part. for better or for worse and all the rest of the same crap that no one actually does 'forever'. How do you declare this Love if you are so willing to leave? How does this make any sense?

I have been married twice. Engaged three times. In my younger more naive days, I suppose I felt that after so many years we should be moving forward, living together, planning our future, naming our perfect unborn children. Somewhere in there, we buy a house and work our asses off, stop having sex (with each other), fight about the kids, stress over money, want more, put on weight, resent the other for not being smarter, taller, richer, funnier, and home all the time to tell me how fucking wonderful I am.

Does any one know anyone that has been married and it didnt end in divorce? My sister was married over twenty years and it ended in divorce. My parents marriage ended in the death of my father, but my parents werent the people that taught me how to have a good relationship. No one taught me. Because no one knows how to stay in a relationship and not lose yourself or resent the other or look for something to blame the relationships failure on.

If you love some one SOOOO much, why are you leaving them for not marrying you? Is he good to you? Respectful? Loving? Honest? A hard worker? Strong character? Dependable? Marriage has a bad reputation. Why? Not because of marriage, it's because of divorce. Divorce hurts everyone. It is the end of a relationship between family and life is never the same again.

Usually, it's the woman that has a time frame of when the relationship should move forward. The whole, exclusiveness. The moving in together, the marriage, the house the baby(s). We put these crazy ultimatums and insane time frames on the man. Now that is psycho. If he is there loving you then why change it? Men can be pretty simple. Love them, feed them, fuck them, seriously, most men can be pretty, pretty happy with that. If they love you all is good for them. If you love them, they are even happier. Then we start with the clock. Tick tock, give me a ring, because that is love., Marry me and plan this event to show our friends how much you love me, and the whole bridezilla comes out. Not always but mostly.

Here is my answer. Plan your relationship. Plan who you are and what you are going to do to be the best you can be. Plan on doing and growing and bringing goodness to yourself and your partner and keeping it alive and interesting. Be clear, be honest and be real as well as realistic. Agree on what you are going to do with your life together and agree to change and grow. Plan on disagreeing and plan on not liking that person every second of every day. Plan on never cheating and plan on and demand communication and resolution. Plan on loving your partner and being true to them and yourself. Plan on picking up the slack when they need it and be willing to give it back. Getting married is so much more then just that wedding day. It is easy to lose sight of what a marriage is.

Since I decided to never get married again, and the bf and I agreed on this early on, our relationship has been allowed to grow. We dont have time frames or pressure. We are just loving each other and planning our life and mostly LIVING. We have agreed to be the best we can to ourselves and each other and when it isnt working we try to compromise until it works. We have wanted to give up but we know that the other may not be perfect but perfect for us. The realtionship is going to be there, with or without the marriage pressure. Just be love, one love.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

It ended in a great big fight and when it's done......nobody right nobody wrong.

Anonymous said...

i have this same argument within myself actually... i think most girls grow up with this idea of marriage so ingrained in their heads that its hard NOT to want the ring, the party, the dress, the big day. after seeing a few friends go through all of the work and spend all of the money, it just looks like too much for me. i guess eventually if i get married, i hope to just have an intimate, low-key thing... best of both worlds. but i don't even know if or when that day will ever come... i cant and WONT propose to myself! we'll see if the boyfriend ever decides to do it. sometimes i catch myself feeling like i would be so much more... assured if he did. it kind of feels like until then, there's always that small part hanging by a thread.. that possibility that maybe we're not right for each other after all, and until he's 200% sure he will never do it. but how can you really ever be sure? as much as we'd like to think marriage "cements" things, it doesn't.

i don't think that marriage is completely necessary either. i've seen plenty of long term relationships work fabulously without it - look at peg & jim, they just got married after being together 18 years!

BUT most people that i know who have been married have also been divorced. my dad's been married four times. my sister got divorced at age 22. i just don't have a lot of faith in it anymore, either. i swear sometimes getting married ruins relationships... things will be going great until people decide to change everything and get married. kind of crazy.

NicePeace said...

Heather,
I understand the feeling of being assured, however, communtication and actions are the only real assurance anyone can count on.

I really believe every person comes into our lives to teach us something about ourselves. Most of us miss the message. We would rather blame and accuse other people of what they are doing wrong, instead of what we can do better. Think about it.....