The Marriage Project, Reflection 21:"Don’t fall into the trap of thinking there’s only one way to be a feminist, a woman, or a person. It’s not true.” (Katie Haegle)

                   (Image from The Spinsterhood)

Katie Haegle is the mind behind The Lala Theory and the White Blackbirds zines, voices of women who aren’t married and don’t want to be. So taken was I with her project when I found it at Bitch, that I interviewed myself on this blog. Then I thought about how awesome it would be if I could actually have a conversation with her. So I did, and it proved deeply moving, provoking and restorative.

This conversation marks the transition to another part of the Marriage Project, in which we hear from women who don’t want to get married. I’ll be still be posting interviews from married ladies, though, to keep things exciting.

 

Me:  The question of whether we have unmarried role models is so important and powerful. (One of the questions Haegle asked her interviewees was if they had any unmarried role models.) For some reason, I kept reading it as “unmarried female role models,” even though you didn’t specify gender. I have often looked to women I knew who weren’t married as being role models, women I could build a community with based on similar values and world view, and I would inevitably feel let down when they’d end up getting married, adding to my feeling that marriage is inevitable, it just happens to you, you don’t really have a choice, women can only resist the social pressure for so long.

K: I subliminally placed the word “female” in that sentence, so you weren’t imagining things. No but honestly, female role models is what I was thinking of when I asked the question, and everyone I interviewed seemed to interpret it that way. If anyone had interpreted it as a male or other-gendered role model and answered accordingly it would have been just one more educational surprise for me to get out of this exercise.

I know just what you mean about marriage seeming depressingly inevitable. I have felt the same way, that societal life is like this big machine waiting to crunch you up in its gears. I felt this more when I was younger and just starting out on an adult life and always looking to older people for some kind of guidance and inspiration, and so many of them had what looked to me like identical lives. You could almost get the impression that a lot of women eventually just give up, give in to it. But you know what? It happens to men too. Men have traditionally needed a wife in order to make any kind of professional success for themselves, and there is a huge stigma against single men of a certain age. It’s still acceptable to talk about a single middle-aged man as though he is a weirdo for not having a traditional married life. This is no good. These ideas only serve the status quo and they hurt us all as individuals. Fear of being ostracized or made fun of has driven a lot of people into marriages that weren’t right for them or that they weren’t ready for. What’s good about that?

Having people whose choices I admire to look up to has always been important to me. If not as a hero or role model then just an EXAMPLE, proof there are different ways to do things. That’s the reason I did these zines in the way that I did them. As I have worked to sort out my own feelings I have reached out to people who could give me some inspiration, and the dialogues those interviews sparked — like this one with you! — have been really helpful to me.

me: Has this project changed your feelings about marriage for yourself?

K: These women gave such a surprising variety of responses that it helped open up my mind in a number of ways. One of the women I interviewed for the first zine is queer and Catholic and longed to be able to marry in the church, but knew that it “would never grant [her] that,” so she chose to remain unmarried rather than have a marriage that was anything other than the one she wanted. That was very poignant. One woman considers herself an anarchist and said that the institution of marriage conflicts with her ideals pretty directly. A couple of the women were straight but don’t want to marry as long as any other Americans, i.e. gay folks, aren’t able to. One woman didn’t want to marry the boyfriend who had fathered her baby, even though he kept asking and seemed to think she’d come around eventually. Still another woman had been married, found it lacking, and vowed (no pun intended) never to do it again. Stupidly I hadn’t expected such a wide variety of ideas and experiences, and hearing all of them helped bolster my confidence and my own sense of outsiderness in a positive way.

As I worked on my introductory essay for the second edition of the zine I realized I’d come to a conclusion about the subject, finally, and it was one of those irritatingly obvious and simple things: Marriage might be right for some people and not right for others. I now realize that there can be different kinds of marriages too, which the zine didn’t really have room to explore because the framework was simply Will you or won’t you? There’s an invisibility problem with marriage in that way. Legally all married people look the same, which unfortunately obscures the fact that people are living all kinds of different lives within their marriages (and probably always have).

I think part of the reason I was thrashing around with the marriage question for myself — which is what prompted me to do the zine in the first place — was that I was feeling cornered.

As a hetero lady in her late 20s I had all this societal pressure on me to do something that I wasn’t ready to do, and that I suspected I might not want to do at all, ever. Suddenly I was being told that I had to think about this thing I didn’t want to think about — and make a decision about it SOON because TIME WAS RUNNING OUT — and it was a big unwanted intrusion, an eye in the sky constantly judging me. It was very painful. I’d be surprised if there were many straight women my age whose socioeconomic backgrounds resemble mine even a little who haven’t been made to feel the same way. But I toughed it out and eventually something shifted, either in people’s expectations of me as I got a little older or within myself, or both. I don’t have to get married, now or ever. But neither do I have to be married to the idea of never getting married, if you will. In railing against societal pressures I went too far in the other direction for my own comfort, pressuring myself to commit to remaining unmarried forever, as if that were the only respectable response. But actually, it isn’t, and I don’t have to have the whole rest of my life figured out one way or the other or know how I’ll feel in some imagined future. These are complicated, thorny issues, and it’s difficult for all of us, women in particular, to cut through the crap and know what we want when a lot of what we have to do daily is simply answer back to the lies and insults we’re told about ourselves. In any case I don’t need to be angry AT MARRIAGE, but at the idea that I’m worth less as an unmarried woman than I would be as a married one.

In my struggle I think I was trying to purely intellectualize this thing that, yes, is partly ideas and politics but is also about personal circumstance, need, and feelings (fear, desire, happiness, loneliness). I have tended, over the years, to be on my own much more often than I’ve been with a partner, and I think my aloneness, coupled with this intense social pressure to be permanently partnered in a way that freaked me out, had led me to think that I either had to be totally alone for the rest of my life or totally legally partnered up for the rest of my life. But now I have a boyfriend-partner who I would like to stay with for a long time AND I am not married, nor making any plans to get married, and that feels right, to me and him. I’m less interested now in the black-and-white choice — get married or don’t — than I am in the idea of different kinds of relationships and how to conduct them, whatever their legal and social status. It sounds hokey but you’ve really got to put in the time to get to know yourself, then act accordingly. It takes guts but you can do it. I have never felt any real internal, personal drive to find a guy and marry him, and I still don’t, even though I have found a guy I love to be with. That alone doesn’t mean I won’t ever get married, and it doesn’t have to mean that. I intend to continue to honor my own feelings by doing what is right for me at any given time. And you should too, and if you want to get married and the stupid state has decided you’re allowed to you should go for it. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking there’s only one way to be a feminist, a woman, or a person. It’s not true.

So yes, eventually I aged out of the amazing marry-before-30 race. Once I had some space around it I came to realize that part of my strong reaction to the pressure to marry was actually a reaction to the pressure to participate in the consumerist mess that is the contemporary American wedding. Now that I am still angry about. I think a lot of people are buying into this idea that you deserve to have a big expensive special day that is all about you, or that you can express your personality through the things you buy to decorate yourself and your cake and some rented room at a country club. That you can and should behave in a demanding, selfish way toward your family and friends, and possibly go into debt spending money you don’t have. I don’t really enjoy going to weddings and I’ve never wanted one for myself, partly for smaller, more personal reasons (like I don’t like having a roomful of people looking at me and I’m kind of stingy). But more seriously I object to the language and structure that is STILL USED in wedding ceremonies. Some people have done away with the “honor and obey” language but they still wear the virginal white dress and do the ceremony (and I realize at this point it is really only ceremonial) of the father giving away ownership of the bride to the husband. I truly have a hard time believing that this is the direction the culture has gone in. It is such bullshit to me. You can dress up that woman-as-property stuff in a million white roses, I’m not falling for it.

On a lighter note, I’m reminded of a story about my parents, two people who wanted to get married but did not like weddings; they went to a justice of the peace instead. My mother did submit to letting her mother plan a little lunch celebration for them though, to which they invited my dad’s friend Bickley. There are a million Bickley stories and they’re all funny. Bickley had been the witness at the service and now he had to go to this lunch too, it was too much. He showed up with a paperback stuffed in his back pocket and my dad said, “Jeez, Bick, what are you gonna do, sit here and read at my wedding?” And he was like, “Ah, I’m sorry. I was afraid I’d get bored.”

me:  What do you think about the reclamation of these terms “spinster” and “Boston marriage”?

K: Boston marriage was a new one to me! When I read it in Hannah’s (smart, lovely) interview I had to look it up online, and in doing so I found a wonderful essay by good old Pagan Kennedy published in Ms Magazine.  She talks about a Boston Marriage as a committed friendship between two women who love and support each other and live together like family — a romance, even, though in her case not a sexual one. I think it’s traditionally been understood to be code for a lesbian relationship, though.

The word spinster just seems like kind of a hoot, though I know there are still some nasty folks out there, both men and women, who use that word to try to insult or scare women. Come to think of it, it’s not totally silly. I have heard older men refer in an unpleasant way to an “old maid” teacher or neighbor they knew growing up and it really made me wince, so I guess these terms still have some bite. A woman named Raequel responded to the open call I posted to an online zine forum for interviewees for the first edition of the zine; I was excited to see that she lives close to me and we have since become friends. She’s a writer and zinester too, and very funny, and after the interview project she took to referring to us as spinsterific. At around the time of the new year she starting planning monthly brunches for all her single-lady friends and declared the next year The Year of the Spinster. I haven’t adopted the term for myself, but I enjoy it when she says it.

A couple of years ago I went to this thrift store with a different friend of mine, and she found this beautiful book from 1909 called The Spinster Book. It’s lavender and the cover is embossed in goldleaf with a picture of a hand mirror, with the title and author (Myrtle Reed) inside it. The top of my head nearly came off I was so excited to see this thing, but I tried to play it cool since I wasn’t the one who found it. I said, “But you found it, you should keep it if you want it,” and my friend — this is how I remember it anyway — physically recoiled from the book and said something like, “Oh no, I don’t want that in my house.” So great was her fear of remaining single and TURNING INTO a spinster that she couldn’t risk bringing the word into her home.
So, I bought it. Its language is pretty and a bit dense by today’s standards but over time I picked through it, and found that it consisted largely of “wisdom” about men and women and love, and it has a pretty negative take on women who don’t marry.

Why was I surprised? Yet I was. I honestly expected it to be about the pleasures of being a single lady. It’s really interesting to look at, though. My copy was originally a gift from one woman to another — there’s a note in blurry fountain pen, dated June 10 1910, that reads “A few more reasons.” I find this intriguingly ambiguous, and I like to think that she meant reasons to stay unmarried. After all, the final chapter is called “The Consolations of Spinsterhood.”

me: Some folks reflected on the idea of being normal in terms of not wanting to be married-behaving contrary to how little girls should act, wanting to play work as opposed to playing wedding, and feeling that abnormality throughout their lives.

K: Yes, and I could relate to those feelings personally. I never played house or with baby dolls. I never dreamed about a wedding for myself, didn’t play it out with my Barbies or any of that. My sister and I played office, restaurant, grocery store, and non-profit (it was a research institute on whales). I had two possible scenarios for myself as a grown-up: I’d either live in a big house where I wrote novels and had a different pet in every room (hee), or I’d live in an apartment in New York City and write for a newspaper. I never pictured myself as a wife or a mom, I was always on my own in these dreams, and as a kid and as an adult I have been made to feel the pain of being different, wrong, or unacceptable in lots of ways, both big and small. But these days I live a life that is kind of an amalgam of my two old fantasies and I’m proud to be the kind of adult I would have admired as a nine-year-old. Trust your own desires, I say!
I found it interesting that one of the common responses to the first edition of White Blackbirds was that people would like to have seen older women represented in the zine. I wanted to hear from some older people too, and I was really pleased when a couple of women in the 50-60 range participated in the second edition. Their perspectives and experiences were different from the younger women’s; they’d come of age in a different cultural milieu. But I could feel that the reason people wanted to hear from older women is because they believed that some or all of the 20- and 30-somethings who said they didn’t want to get married would change their minds or “come around” when they got older. This frustrated me. We do change as we get older, but I think this attitude comes from sexism as much as anything else. And you know, now that I think about it, isn’t it also a depressing attitude to have toward marriage? Like, if you think it’s normal for young women to not want to do get married, are you admitting that you think marriage is something inherently unappealing but inevitable? Doesn’t that seem grim to you? It doesn’t have to be that way.

The Marriage Project, Reflection 20: “Someone needs to get the attention of little girls and tell them their life is leading to more than a wedding.”

J is a writer living in Boston. She’s been married for 3 years.

Why did you decide to get married?

I had a pretty religious upbringing, so I have always seen marriage as a pretty natural part of everyday life. While I am no longer religious, marriage was one of a few things I decided I liked enough to keep in my world view. But instead of getting married because it was part of some larger plan, or because I was destined for life in a domestic sphere, I would be getting married for love, to someone who enthusiastically accepts me for who I am. While I was on my way to get married, I gave my feelings one big sweep to see if I had any lingering doubts. I thought to myself, if I don’t marry him, where will I be? I couldn’t picture my life without him. Whatever I was doing next, I knew he would be part of it with me. We took the leap together.

What did you think marriage would be like?

My husband and I spent years as platonic friends, and long-distance ones at that. Entering into a romantic relationship with him was so comfortable and natural. We just wanted to be around each other all the time. That’s how I saw marriage– a way to be with my best friend all the time –just us goofing off together for the rest of our lives. Of course we could have just moved in together, but we were that committed to each other, so we made it legally official. We saw marriage as an extension of our dating shenanigans. It felt right.

Where do you think you got your ideas/concept/narrative about marriage?

A lot of my ideas about marriage came from my destructive religious upbringing, which I have had to un-learn. We share all of the domestic chores and duties, but I would still find myself feeling guilty about letting dishes pile up, or cooking something wrong, or things like that. Thankfully he’s there to remind me that none of that is my “job”.  Some other things I picked up very early about marriage come from contemporary fairy tales, which give the overall message that marrying a man is (often literally) the end of a woman’s story.

Growing up my fantasies about marriage always concluded with an adorable wedding and a white dress. It’s so creatively limiting. My wedding was not the happiest day of my life; it was the happiest day of my life so far. But my life, in matters connected to my husband and with my personal development, is so much richer than I thought possible growing up.  I think that’s why the divorce rate is so high– people build up the wedding in their imagination, the rest feels like a let-down. A wedding is just the start of something beautiful and an excuse to eat cake. I’m glad I learned that before I got married. Someone needs to get the attention of little girls and tell them their life is leading to more than a wedding. Maybe I’ll be the one to do it.

How do you feel about the word “wife”?

I know the word has a lot of baggage. It packs some possessive meaning and it’s got domestic connotations. But I stress a few semantic differences that make the word nicer to hear. Firstly, when I hear “my wife,” it’s not in a possessive way. I am his wife in the way that I am my aunt’s niece or my mother’s daughter. I don’t own my mother, but she has a specific relationship to me. That’s how I envision wife. He doesn’t own me, but I do have a significant relationship to him that I don’t have with anyone else. We have stitched each other into our families. Husband and wife are familiar titles, among many, that we give to each other. 

Why did you make the decision you made about your name?

It was actually a pretty easy decision. I had the same first and last name as a pop star, purely by accident, and I knew I wouldn’t make it far as a writer using my own name. His last name was more unique, more anonymous. I had never met anyone with that last name. It was like becoming my own pseudonym. If I had decided to keep my name he would have been supportive, but I see changing my name in this sense as an act of agency.

Do you think your relationship with your partner has changed since you got married?

Absolutely. We’ve grown up more, and become better communicators. And it sounds corny, but I love him more every day. Sitcoms and what-have-you put out this message that marriage is a death sentence to a relationship, that you run out of things to talk about, that the sex gets boring, that you get sick of each other. But I’m thrilled to say it doesn’t have to be like that. We’re constantly discovering new things about each other, widening our comfort zones.

What have you learned about yourself since you’ve been married?

Being married– having a friend to help me through life’s obstacles–  has helped me work through a lot of personal hang-ups. And I’m amazed at the depth of feeling I’ve found in myself. Putting someone else’s happiness on par with my own has made me a more caring person. I want to be there for him the way that he’s there for me. I’ve also learned to savor and appreciate small moments, because the rest of my life is not enough time to love this man. I wouldn’t want anyone to get married for any other reason.

reading assignment

(Northampton, MA. photo by me.)

http://www.salon.com/writer/alexandra_gelfenbein/

Alexandra Gelfenbein wrote this piece at Salon back in May, so obviously, I’m just getting around to posting it now.

“I hope women start to feel more comfortable as eternal bachelors, those charming, smiling guys who pass 40 and still don’t feel in a rush to get hitched. I think we can learn from them, because that attitude seems a far more productive and healthy way to live as a single woman.”

It’s possible that I’m now trying to track her down for the Marriage Project, and while searching for her email address, I also found this:

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/happy-single-forever-040000095.html

From the author, Sarah Treleaven:

“I’ve never felt incomplete while single. (But I have often felt nauseous while coupled.)”

I’m so glad women are saying these things, even if I read them 7 months later.

The Marriage Project: Reflection 19: “It never stops being a mixed bag; I wish people understood that going into it.”

 

W is 52 and has been married almost 9 years.

Why did you decide to get married?

For years I didn’t believe in marriage (see third question), although I very much believed in monogamous, live-in relationships. I thought the commitment is either there or it isn’t, and who needs an old fashioned institution telling us how to live? I also felt it vital as a woman to maintain my autonomy (and also felt strongly that my partner should retain his autonomy). 

Then, when I was 28, my live-in boyfriend, to whom I considered myself common-law married, walked out. There was no struggle period, no divorce process, and no closure. He just left clean and clear and I felt absolutely bereft.  I realized that formal commitments meant something! And that the fact that neither of us had wanted to get married was a sign not of liberation but of ambivalence.

So I decided I believed in marriage after all, as long as it wasn’t super conventional.  And as time wore on and I remained a “starving writer,” it became clearer to me that there were tremendous economic and other practical advantages to it.  I really wanted to form some kind of family unit with someone, with or without children; it was hard to conceive of growing old alone, much less wondering how to afford health insurance.

I didn’t meet my now-spouse until I was 39 1/2, at which point I had become one of those pathetic, desperate lovelorn women you see in the movies. Despite my feminism, I felt incomplete. There, I said it. Really embarrassing. But, as I explained to a friend who couldn’t understand espousing feminist independence and yearning to get married at the same time, it’s not like I thought I was nobody without a man. It was that who I am as an individual is someone who needs intimacy and partnership…without having intimacy and partnership, an important part of who “I” am wasn’t being expressed.

Anyway, long story longer,  I eventually met L (recently divorced) and we moved in together after a year of dating. After another year of cohabitation I was ready to marry, but he wasn’t. Finally we both were, and it felt incredibly natural and second-nature. We signed a Quaker license in front of two witnesses, then went out to dinner…no ring, no honeymoon.  Later we did a write-your-own-vows hippie ceremony with family and friends in the country followed by a barbecue.  Many told me it was the best wedding they’d ever been to….which I tend to agree it was.  It was marriage, our way, not tradition’s way, and fun.

What did you think marriage would be like?

By the time getting married was becoming a reality for me, I thought it would be like living together, only with more security psychologically and materially. I actually didn’t have a picture in my mind, and still don’t! I just wanted to share my life and be mutually committed with L, and to create a life that would be unpredictable in the best sense of the word — except that we could always count on each other’s mutual  support.

This is what I always wanted, but didn’t think marriage could be. For years I thought marriage was where women checked their identities and dreams at the door and put husband and children first.

Where do you think you got your ideas/concept/narrative about marriage?

Pop culture (esp. TV shows), my parents’ and friends’ parents’ marriages and, in young adulthood, my friends’ marriages. And I did not like what I saw; it seemed oppressive and sexist to me, far from a fairy tale. Understand that, despite that my own parents have now been married over 50 years, they often acted as if they hated each other’s guts, and I suspected they were “staying together for the children.”  Our family and my parents’ friends had had many divorces,  so marriage and family per se were never something I aspired to because it was clear to me they didn’t bring happiness. In fact, for some time I actively avoided and spoke out against the institution of marriage.

Mind you, I believed in love and soul mates and long-term commitment and had all sorts of overly romantic fantasies of what love was, and somehow believed that my Soulmate Prince would find me and we’d live happily ever after. (I guess popular culture infiltrated my bones, despite my conscious beliefs to the contrary.) I just didn’t believe in “the piece of paper” part of it, much less being sanctified by a church, even less in the traditional roles and routines of marriage-babies-move to the suburbs etc.

How do you feel about the word “wife”?

For a long time it had retro connotations to me, sort of Donna Reed-ish or slavish.  But now that lesbians can marry in some states and call each other “wife,” and now that I know you can be married and not totally lose yourself, it seems fairly neutral and generic to me.

Why did you make the decision you made about your name?

When I was nine years old (1968) I declared that I would never change my name.  Even before I knew the word ‘sexist,’ the idea that you gave up your name (ergo previous identity) for your husband’s seemed weird and unfair to me. On top of that, my father had no sons and no brothers, so I knew there would be no one from our line if I didn’t keep it.  So when it finally came time to get married, it was a given that I would keep my name. (I was willing to hyphenate, but only if we both did it.) My only concern was that people might give us grief, or I might get questioned at the hospital or something. But it hasn’t been as issue and I love when my now-husband introduces me by my first and last names, with pride.

Do you think your relationship with your partner has changed since you got married?

Yes, and for the better, but it took work and maturity.  Somehow, despite my feminist beliefs, I let myself be dominated by and/or cared for by him in a sometimes unhealthy and conventional manner, and would do anything to avoid conflict — which of course isn’t healthy.  At one point, he said, “In ten years you’ve never really gotten angry with me,” to which I replied, “Yes I have, but didn’t show it.” Once we mutually realized the imbalance, we worked on creating the emotional openness and reciprocity we both believe in but weren’t really living.  Now, was it being married that spurred that change? Would we have realized and addressed that if we’d just been living together or just dating? I don’t know, but the fact that we were committed for the long haul and our lives entwined certainly motivated us, if we wanted to make it. 

What have you learned about yourself since you’ve been married?

See above!  But that was more about us as a unit; as far as self-insight, I don’t really feel I’ve learned anything I didn’t already know.  Let’s say my pre-existing understanding of myself (both virtues and faults) has been validated.

I have to say that some of my fears of marriage — that my identity and freedom and dreams would be quashed — are realistic. I find you both have to actively fight for the “me” inside the “we” and always ask yourself “am I compromising, or being compromised?” Every day I thank my lucky stars I’m married and that I found L, and every day I wish I were still single and free.  It never stops being a mixed bag; I wish people understood that going into it. It’s not a fairy tale, and it’s not this horrible drag, it’s just two people trying to make a life together and forever a work in progress.

The Marriage Project, Reflection 18: “It’s not a one size fits all institution.”

C is a community organizer living in the Northeast.

Why did you decide to get married?

I met my husband almost 7 years ago when I was a struggling single mom.  I had an almost 2 year old son whom I was pretty much solely responsible for, no family living near by and a super exhausting job as a faith based community organizer.  L and I clicked right away.  I sometimes joke when I say I organized him because he was a leader in one of the churches I was working with -yes, I broke the cardinal rule of organizing.  But the thing is, he was smart, funny and attractive. Perfect partner material. And frankly, I was so tired of being on my own.  I was seeking a partner, someone to help me with drop off and pick up. Someone to warm up supper for me when I got home from my late meetings. Someone to split the bills with. L was a great dad right off the bat and provided a level of discipline and structure that was most certainly lacking in my household.  Long story short, after 2 years of being the fill-in dad and partner L freaked out.  L is 5 years younger than me and was 22 when we met.  He told me that he wasn’t ready for a family.  He moved out.  My heart was broken. 

And then some time later, he came back. He said he missed us, that he didn’t want to be without us.  I told him that I was pregnant.  I told him that I was thinking about terminating but if I did, that would be the very end of us.

He said he chose us.  He moved back in.  And while I wanted to feel normal and ok, I was terrified that he would leave again.  So I insisted we go to a JP and get married -for insurance reasons of course.  He said he wanted to have a ceremony and a reception. To “do it right”. But ultimately he agreed to do a quiet JP wedding with the commitment to doing a more traditional wedding in the future. We had our “real” wedding a year and a half later in front of our family and friends.

When L and I were up in front of the JP, after I insisted we seal the deal before the baby came, and the JP asked me if I did…I felt this full body sensation of dread. I felt like I had pushed us both into something we weren’t ready for. And then it passed. But I look back on that moment with some sadness.

Our “real” wedding a year and a half later -the one with the Rabbi and L’s Pastor- was wonderful. We wrote our own vows and the entire ceremony. L exchanged vows with M, my oldest son. It was great. Maybe that moment of regret in front of the JP was that we didn’t do it “the right” way from the get go.

What did you think marriage would be like?

I thought that marriage would be a place of total emotional security. I thought that once we sealed the deal, all of the feelings of apprehension, insecurity and terror would instantly be replaced by bliss.  The first months of my marriage were the final months of my pregnancy and were a time of healing, growing and altered expectations.  We fell in love again with each other and with our family.  We bonded in a way that is totally ineffable but changed us both more than I ever expected.

Where do you think you got your ideas/concept/narrative about marriage?

My roommate in college was one of eight kids.  Her parents always seemed to be so in love. They couldn’t be in room together without touching one another every now and again.  I thought, THAT’s what marriage is all about. It’s about being deeply in love and intimately tied to the person you are wedded to. My parents argued a lot. They yelled.  But the funny thing is, it works for them. They’ve been married for 35 years.  I realize now as an adult and as a parent that each relationship creates its own parameters and definitions of marriage.  For one couple, skipping through the tulips is the narrative. For another, passion.  For me, trust, confidence and solidarity.  It’s not a one size fits all institution.

What are your feelings on the word wife?

I didn’t know that I had a feeling about the word wife, until I was introduced as the girlfriend and I cringed because I WAS the wife.   

Why did you make the decision you made about your name?

I made the decision to take my husband’s last name -much to the chagrin of my parents- because hyphenating it was too long.  Also,  it felt more permanent.  It took me a long time to totally trust in our relationship even though we were married.  Somehow changing my name helped.

Do you think your relationship with your partner has changed since you got married?

Yes.  we have 3 kids now and having a family changes the nature of the marriage.  But it’s more profound now.  We work in sync and as a team more than ever.  Our relationship is about our family unit which, for better or for worse has subsumed us as individuals. 

What have you learned about yourself since you’ve been married?

That I have an on-line shoe shopping problem.  Honestly, I’ve learned that I have the capacity to love my husband and my family more than myself.  It’s a stunning feeling for someone who can be a bit selfish.

The Marriage Project, Reflection 17: “I’ve also learned the depth of my patience and the shades of love that you learn to live with.”

 

J lives on the East Coast.

Why did you decide to get married?

I lived with my partner for mostly 5 years prior to getting married. I just knew we’d be married. I felt it was important to get up in front of my friends and family and declare my love and intention for my partner. A sense of security that ties us together – all the benefits that go into that; sharing of resources, having a family and building a life together. 

What did you think marriage would be like?

Honestly, I don’t know. I had fairly good traditional family role models, with a moderate amount of dysfunction built in. My parents are together and seem to genuinely still love each other after 38 years of marriage. I knew it would have its goods and bads, especially knowing my partner as I do!

How do you feel about the word “wife”?

I don’t mind it. I use husband and like to be referred to as “my wife.” 

Why did you make the decision you made about your name?

Really – I had  a complicated name to spell/pronounce. My married name is MUCH easier to deal with.

Do you think your relationship with your partner has changed since you got married?

No – it has changed since we have had children. Marriage was a non-event compared to that! You have to constantly be thinking of the other person – what they are doing, where they are. But it felt that way before marriage… So I guess the loss of independence in that sense. But there are the benefits of always having your best friend around. As long as you can continue to say that you are golden.

What have you learned about yourself since you’ve been married?

A lot of your negative traits come out and (again especially with my partner) over analyzing my own behavior and motivations for why I behave a certain way or do things a certain way. Then there are the odd geographical linguistic differences and cultural challenges of being in an interfaith relationship.

I’ve also learned the depth of my patience and the shades of love that you learn to live with. There are definitely patterns/roles that you fall into in a traditional boy/girl marriage. I’ve also learned from my relationships with other married woman that the same challenges exist within these relationships at their core. 

The Marriage Project, Reflection 16: “I wanted to maintain my previous identity and take on a new status at the same time.”

A is 31 and lives on the East Coast.

Why did you decide to get married?

I felt that it was right from the minute I met my husband. I felt so connected and that we just got each other right away. I got married because I wanted to build a life together and have children. I  guess I was affected by my upbringing (as much as I hate to admit it sometimes). I think G and I both were. I always believed in a somewhat traditional view of marriage and family (although I am somewhat untraditional in other ways).  I felt excited and proud to call G my husband. It’s the feeling of being totally committed to one another and feeling like we took the next step in our relationship.

What did you think marriage would be like?

I knew that it would be wonderful living together, and that it would mean compromises on both our ends. I thought it would be a progression from our relationship and not be that different aside from the fact that we would be living together.

Where do you think you got your ideas/concept/narrative about marriage?

I definitely got the ideas I had about marriage from my mom. She has very magical views on marriage (ex. you never fight and hurt each other’s feelings) and that has tripped me up at times. Unrealistic expectations about marriage have at times led to pitfalls.

What are your feelings on the word “wife”?

I think that I like the term, it doesn’t make me feel like G OWNS me, like many might feel. I like equally saying my husband.

Why did you make the decision you made about your name?

I hyphenated my last name because I felt I really wanted to take my husband’s name, but also wanted to keep my last name for business purposes. I wanted to maintain my previous identity and take on a new status at the same time.

Do you think your relationship with your partner has changed since you got married?

I think definitely living together was not completely what I expected it to be.  I don’t think our relationship has changed per se, I just think it can present some challenges at times since you are living together and seeing the person on a daily basis.

What have you learned about yourself since you’ve been married?

I really need to think about the other person’s needs sometimes over my own, and that it’s not only about what I want. Also, that it can be a wonderful feeling to depend on someone else and have them depend on you.

The Marriage Project, Reflection 15: “Families are built on love and relationships, not names.”

 

(It turns out that there are no symbols of marriage that are not in some way tinged with sexism. Even delicious cake.)

 

T is 32. She lives in the Tri State area and will be married 7 years in November.

Why did you decide to get married?

When I first met E., he was the most interesting person to talk to I had met in months—having something to say is really sexy. And he was very upfront to settle down and get married and have kids. I was at a point in my life where I wasn’t looking to get married but I wasn’t against the idea either. I knew that to be in a relationship with E., getting married had to be something that was on the agenda if things worked. We never considered other options for a long term relationship. Getting married is part of our religious values, that once you find the person who you want to build a life with, that you get married. This is not to say that other relationships aren’t sacred, because I think that many types of relationships are holy.

What did you think marriage would be like?

My parents are still married, and I understood that marriages have ups and downs. I never idealized it. But I also saw how much my parents enjoyed each other’s company, did things together, and also took pleasure in the little moments of life. There was also this back story in my mind of a grand romance—they met at a party and were married within 11 months—set in the more liberal 70s, and I thought that being married was about having interesting experiences together, exploring together and maybe saving the world.

You might notice a theme of being married=spending time together. And that actually made the beginning of our marriage really difficult, because E was finishing his residency and was never home. And when he was home, he was asleep. There were weeks when we didn’t see each other because he was home sleeping when I was in class, and gone when I got home. It was very emotionally tough, we couldn’t really lay the groundwork for being partners for six months, until he finished. I kind of knew that might happen (I hadn’t wanted to get married until his residency was over, and he was rightly concerned that his elderly grandparents wouldn’t live to our wedding if we waited), but the reality was hard. Marriage got easier over time.

Where do you think you got your ideas/concept/narrative about marriage?

From watching my parents, mostly. It didn’t seem remarkable at the time, but my parents had a much more egalitarian marriage than most of my friends’ parents did. They valued each other’s work, split the chores and raising my sister and I. Looking back, especially now that I am married and have two kids, I can see the ways that it was less egalitarian in practice than in theory, but I give them a lot of credit. My dad is a feminist because of what he learned from my mother, and I assumed that would be part of any marriage I would ever enter into (I always assumed I would eventually get married but it wasn’t something I thought a lot about).

I think the egalitarian nature of their relationship spoiled me. E’s parents had a much more traditional marriage, so his starting point for what makes an egalitarian relationship is different  than mine, especially now that we have kids. He sees himself as being way more involved and egalitarian than his father—and he is. But we’re still getting to the point that my parents were at when I was growing up. And I pay the bills. Money is the only thing my parents have really ever consistently fought about, and I’m determined to not let that happen. The cliché about doctors being terrible with money is true, so E. is actually thrilled about this.

What are your feelings on the word “wife”?

I am fine with it; “partner” feels too cold and impersonal. What I am much more aware of is the ways I use “husband.” Sometimes it seems clear to me as I am saying it that I am using “husband” (or mentioning E.) to establish heteronormative privilege. Ever since I noticed that I do that, I’ve been trying to stop.

 

Why did you make the decision you made about your name?

I was never going to change my name. My mother didn’t, I grew up with a hyphenated last name, and I’ve wanted to be Rabbi MyLast-Name ever since I was small. Since I grew up in a household with three different last names, I’ve never understood the argument about changing your name so you feel more like a family. Families are built on love and relationships, not names. I continue to be surprised every time a woman of my generation, especially those with established careers, changes their names. And I continue to bitch about administrative software at doctor’s offices and schools that can’t handle multiple last name families. It isn’t Mrs. E’sLastName. First of all, it’s Rabbi. Second, it’s MyLast-Name.

By the time I met E., he was too established in his career to change his name, and we didn’t want to triple hyphenate. Our girls have his last name (and I still secretly hope they will go to mine when they get older) and I got to pick their first names. That was a really hard decision on my part. There were tears.
What has been especially interesting/annoying is people assuming that once you are married woman, that a hyphenated last name can’t possibly be the name you were born with. My dad is also a rabbi and fairly well known, so I’ve had people assume that E.’s last name is the half of my last name that is actually my mother’s last name. A lot of people who know me through work don’t actually know what E’s last name is.

Do you think your relationship with your partner has changed since you got married?

Yes: we’re finally best friends. I have a sister, and that’s my model for an intensely close, essential relationship. When we got married, we’d only known each other a year and a half. I even argued that I should keep my twin sister as my healthcare proxy. At some point, I don’t remember when, I realized I was closer to E. than I was to my sister, that I knew him as well as I knew her.
But it is a different kind of being best friends. When my sister and I are in a social situation together, we default to talking to each other. E. and I socialize better and meet more people when we do so as a pair. I think for two geeky people, there is a confidence that comes from having someone who loves you for who you are in the room.

What have you learned about yourself since you’ve been married?

I’ve learned to control my temper, to compromise, and fight more fairly. That sounds like a cliché but is really true. Also, I didn’t marry super young but young enough (I was 25) and towards the beginning of rabbinical school. I’ve done a lot of growing up over the past 7 years, but it is hard to separate out what is being married, what is motherhood, and what was first rabbinical school and then being a rabbi. There was a lot of personal development in rabbinical school.

The Marriage Project, Reflection 14: “We are doing so out of love and hope.”

 

S is 33 and has been married for 4 years.

Why did you decide to get married?

I decided to marry J. because I knew that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him. I did consider moving in with him and not getting married, but he’s fairly traditional and, even though we lived together pre-engagement, I knew that he wouldn’t want to live together indefinitely without getting married. Also, we’d like to have children, and mainly because of how both of us were raised, we wanted to be married when we had kids.

What did you think marriage would be like?

I thought it would be pretty much the same as my life pre-marriage, just with a wedding ring to keep track of! (I didn’t want an engagement ring.) I was both right and wrong about that. During the first two years that we were married, very little changed in either our relationship or day-to-day lives, which was great. Going into our third year, though, we dealt with a series of major upheavals that really caused both of us to question what our commitment to each other meant, and how – or even if – we could still be happy in our marriage. Working through those issues continues to be a process almost two years later, and while our day-to-day life is still remarkably unchanged, I have thought a lot more about our relationship, and now I definitely don’t take our marriage for granted.

Where do you think you got your ideas/concept/narrative about marriage?

From my parents, definitely. They have been married for 38 years, and have had their own rocky patches, particularly when I was a child. But that showed me that it was okay to disagree and even fight with someone that you loved, and that as long as both people were honest and willing to change, that there was always hope for a better relationship. It’s been very educational to watch them go through different phases in their marriage, and now as an adult I can really appreciate how much they love each other as well as how upfront they are about their own expectations and shortcomings, and what they are and are not willing to compromise on.

What are your feelings on the word “wife”?

It’s strange, but after four years I still don’t feel like a wife. Perhaps it’s part of a larger discomfort with labels, since it also feels weird to refer to J. as “my husband,” and in the nine months between our engagement and wedding, using the term “fiance” or being identified as J’s fiance also felt strange. I don’t mind the word per se – I am married, I am a wife – but for almost  thirty years I identified myself as an individual, or a sister, or daughter, or friend, or writer, or Jew, or girlfriend, or pet lover: all identities that I had either grown up with or grown into. I’m sure at some point it’ll stop feeling odd to be called J’s wife, but it might take a few more years to fully identify with the word!

Why did you make the decision you made about your name?
When I was a teenager, I learned that the name I grew up with – my father’s last name – had actually been changed by my grandfather when he came to the United States. The original name was considered “too Jewish” at the time. I understood my grandfather’s decision, but the more I thought about it, the more uncomfortable I was with having a name that deliberately disguised my religion. Before I began graduate school, I decided to change my name to my mother’s maiden name, both because it was an original name that had not been changed when her great-great grandfather came to the US, and because I liked the idea of honoring my mother in that way. Both of my parents were very supportive – my mother told me that she’d never wanted to take my father’s name, but her own father had insisted; and my father said that if he wasn’t as established in his career as he was, he’d change his name, too. It took a lot of paperwork and cost about $200, but I was so happy to have my new last name (I made my father’s last name my middle name).

My husband loves the story behind my last name and, when we first started talking marriage, correctly assumed that I was never changing it again. It doesn’t bother him; if it bothers anyone in his family, or in my extended family, I haven’t heard about it. We have discussed which last name any future children will have. Right now the agreement is since I’m the one that has to go through pregnancy, any kids will have his last name as their middle name, and my last name as their last name. We’ll see what happens when the time actually comes, but honestly I can’t get too worked up about it, since I know very well that they could always just change their name anyway.

Do you think your relationship with your partner has changed since you got married?

I think so, yes. We were committed to each other before we got married; we had talked a lot about what we wanted out of our relationship, what kind of family we wanted, our thoughts on religion and careers and finances and all that. But as I mentioned earlier, we experienced some very, very difficult times after our marriage, and there is a world of difference between talking about how to handle a crisis, and living through that crisis. We are definitely more aware of each other’s flaws and shortcomings now, and also more patient with ourselves and each other. We’re also very aware that we’re choosing to be in this marriage, and that we are doing so out of love and hope.

What have you learned about yourself since you’ve been married?

I’ve learned that it’s okay to let myself depend on my husband and not feel guilty about it. I’ve also learned how to make decisions that take both of us into account, and to be more communicative about what I’m feeling, whether that’s good or bad. And I’ve learned that while it’s necessary and important to turn to friends and family for help – and that I’m incredibly lucky to have great, supportive friends and family – that ultimately the course of my marriage can be determined only by my husband and me, and that’s okay.

“I wish for a word that two friends could live inside, like a shingled house with faded Persian rugs.” (Pagan Kennedy)

Katie Haegele, the dynamic and thoughtful writer behind The Lala Theory and creator of the White Blackbirds zines about women who aren’t married and don’t want to be, pointed me to this great piece in the June/July 2001 issue of Ms, by Pagan Kennedy on the Boston marriage. (In the near future, I’ll be posting a collaboration between Katie and I in which we talk about White Blackbirds, marriage, feminism, instinct and more.)

First: A Boston marriage is a term used  in New England in  the late 19th and early 20th centuries to describe two women living together, independent of financial support from a man.

Kennedy talks about Liz, her great friend with whom she shares creative, intellectual and political energy as well as a living space, and how she grapples with what to call their relationship in order to make it seem “valid.”

From the piece: “Most likely, the Boston marriage was many things to many women: business partnership, artistic collaboration, lesbian romance. And sometimes it was a friendship nurtured with all the care that we usually squander on our mates — a friendship as it could be if we made it the center of our lives.”

There’s a lot of intellectual and feminist fodder in this piece and to be extrapolated from it-the idea that for straight women, our lives “start” once we get married, that living with a man and having children is a mark of true adulthood and stable mental health, and what it would mean to have a platonic marriage, especially with another woman, in a world where heterosexual marriage is not the centrally valued and strived for relationship.

Go and read.