Have you read the new series at Discovering Dad? It made me think about this whole marriage thing and my back and forth effort/opinion on it.
I grew up with my dad, a single father. Now, going back, I don’t remember a whole lot of friends prior to my teens and what their families were comprised of, but I knew mine was different. I celebrated mother’s day with my grandmother. When people asked if my parents were divorced, I replied in a humbled, embarrassed way that they’d never been married.
I grew up wanting to be a mommy and expecting to do it alone.
I also grew up with this weird power over the boys I let into my world – they would start talking about marrying me within months of meeting me. I expected to get married and still be a single mom.
I got engaged at 18. We were high school sweethearts, rode out wedding plans for nearly two years and then broke up a week before the first date we’d set – the date I kept changing, pushing back. I had no problem arranging food, venue, invite and dresses, but when it came to actually committing to it, instead of just planning to commit to it, I stumbled.
So after a year of pushing random people out of my bed and suggesting they didn’t call me, and then screening when they inevitably did, I met JDawg accidentally. He had that angry, non-committal look that was perfect for my next notch, but he didn’t go away afterwards and I didn’t really want him to, then.
After about two weeks, he told me he loved me. After a month, he admitted his ideal life within five years: he wanted babies and to get married. I started looking at dresses online and showing him rings. He freaked a little.
After four months, he gave me a promise ring on Valentine’s Day – the biggest diamond I would let him buy me. And then we stalled for a bit. After 10 months, we moved in together. After a year, we started smoking pot. And then we went in reverse.
Our first planned pregnancy’s miscarriage really killed the thought of maybe, possibly, doing more than just planning a wedding. My overwhelming grief and his need to move on after a few days didn’t mesh and it was the perfect reason for things to fall apart. And so, we never really considered or talked about marriage again with anything more than a smirk and a “oh, we’re not that stupid.”
Then we broke up and I dated someone else and it hurt him. And I’d never known before that he could hurt like that, since so much of us had been wrapped in a haze of green smoke and playful punches and horrible arguments involving too many words that you should never hear come from someone’s mouth that you kiss.
And we fell out of love at some point, likely far before we broke up, and we loved each other in the same way a kid imagines their family does – it’s a given, but not deep and encompassing. It’s just there and easy to take for granted.
When we spent too much time together and found out Isobel was on the way, we accidentally got back together, but it was just more of the same. Just sans me being high. Maybe the lack of high ruined any further marriage illusions I might have had. I dunno what it really was, except that we were still broke and we weren’t willing to do much more than tell the other to be fixed.
Even if we’d known what was broken in ourselves and us, we weren’t going to actually spend energy doing anything about it cuz fighting and fucking (and eventually colic and breastfeeding) took all of that potentially good energy out of us.
So, it’s a funny feeling I have in my tummy right now.
Because he’s said the things he needs to do and I’ve said the things I need to do; and we’ve said little about what the other needs to do, because the other already admitted to it. We’ve voiced our own weaknesses and what makes us weak as a couple and what also makes us good. I’ve snapped into that happy-to-be-planning-domesticity space I inhabited six years ago. He’s started calling, just because.
And well, this truly does feel like a new beginning. Unconventional, yes, but when have we ever not been?
You just watch. Give me a year, and I’ll be thinking off-lavender, grecian style dresses, all over again. ‘Cept this time, I’ve got an automatic flower girl.
