So. I had a proper post written for today. But. When the comments started buzzing over on my little marriage update about all the Reclaiming Wife stuff we had to talk about... I scrapped the post. Because I needed to ask - what conversations about marriage and married life do we need to be having? Dish.
I also wanted to take a moment to point out the obvious - APW has lots of my writing (that's a big part of why I do this) but it also has a lot of community driven content (the community is the other part of why I do this), and Reclaiming Wife needs to work the same way.
I'm new at the married game, and I'm still sorting out what it means to me. I'm sorting out the ways in which being married has changed our relationship (it has) and the ways that we're the same couple that has been together for five and a half years (because there are ways it hasn't changed too). And I'm figuring out what is hard, and what is not, and what I want to write about and what I don't.
But the bottom line is this - I'm just one person. So when people write me to ask if I could share, say, how I'm handling sharing holidays as a newlywed, I realize what they are really asking is how are you guys sharing holidays as newlyweds, and that they have something to SAY about sharing holidays as newlyweds, but they are feeling scared to put it on paper and could I write it for them? Pretty please? Because here is the thing, you don't want a post about how we are sharing holidays, because it's BORING. Check it out: our extended family is interfaith, and our families are long-time friends, so we do Christmas with my family, Passover with David's family, Thanksgiving together, and High Holidays by ourselves.
Look and what I just did there. I did NOT solve your problems.
But I really do want to talk about all this stuff, I just can't do it in an echo chamber. So why don't you guys go crazy on this thread. Throw out the stuff you want to talk about. "Exactly" each other. And if you're reading this post, or reading the thread, and you think, "HOLDUP! I've got something I have to SAY!" or "I have a question I wanna ask Meg/ Team Practical!" then why don't you email it to me? Send it to reclaimingwife at apracticalwedding dot com. Because I wanna talk about this stuff too.
PS I'm probably dooming myself to more comments than a human can read, huh? But seriously, I feel like we need to get some of this out in the open already.
Religion, religion, religion!
I’m a progressive Catholic in love with an atheist, and we’re not engaged but talking marriage. He is ok with me raising kids Catholic. I struggle with a few things:
– celebrating milestones in a way that would feel authentic to both of us–i.e. not a baptism in a church where he’s standing there faking it
– Teaching kids religion: tough. Teaching kids religion when you’re building a faith community from the ground up (as many progressive Catholics are these days) and without the support of your partner: incredibly tough?
Anyone else in a similar situation?
May 11, 2010 3:58 pm
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I am. My boyfriend of four years was raised Catholic and now considers himself sort of non-papist Catholic with occasional bouts of agnosticism. I was raised Baptist and am now agnostic, and nonreligious. We have had many talks about what we’d do with kids. He wants to raise them in the church, and I’m basically OK with that. He doesn’t expect me to participate all the time if I don’t want to. But he does ask me “What will you say if our (future, hypothetical) 5-year-old comes to you and asks you if God is real?” and I say “I’ll tell her the truth: I don’t know.” There are other issues, such as he wants to have baby baptized in the Catholic tradition, and I am basically against it. I expect to have lots of talks over our life about these kinds of things, and I hope we will always respect each other and think about what’s best for the children, and I’m sure he’ll give in to me when I feel strongly and he doesn’t, and vice versa. But it is a tricky thing. I was always told that you should marry someone with the same spiritual beliefs as yourself, but what do you do when you both have kinda sorta spiritual beliefs and aren’t 100 percent sure on anything?
May 11, 2010 4:09 pm
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I am not in this situation with my partner, but as an agnostic have taken part in many religious ceremonies in my life where I wasn’t exactly 100% on board, and I didn’t/don’t feel like I was “faking it”. I think there’s a middle ground where you can be there as a support to someone you love who believes, and be there 100% for THEM even if you’re not 100% there for the religion.
May 11, 2010 4:25 pm
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Leigh Anne, exactly! Sometimes I wish my own beliefs were more firm. I could see myself either giving up on the Catholic Church and becoming a Unitarian in ten years, or having kids and really missing the familiar, if patriarchal scene and going back to it. In some ways, both would be easier, at least from a raising kids perspective. But neither is where I am right now!
Marina, thanks for your take on this. It makes me feel better. As someone who’s very involved in religious stuff I tend to feel that it’s no good if every single word of the ceremony isn’t acceptable to both of us (and I do have friends who have been able to pull off weddings, etc. like that, and won’t sing the words to a song if it calls God “King” or whatever.) It’s a good reminder to think about the macro-message of ceremonies and the macro-reason you’re there.
Natalya, I sympathize. From everything I hear, having kids can either make people yearn for the way they were raised or push them further to what they really believe now–which would be the opposite in both my partner and yours’ case. Although yours already has the one kid–is your partner opposed to you taking him to church, or is it more the extended family?
Such a relief to talk about this with you all.
May 11, 2010 7:55 pm
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Well my step-son goes to a typical public school in England, which is run by a church (I don’t understand how that works exactly). Once when his son said he believed in God, my partner commented to me later that he was being brainwashed at school. I found that a bit odd as there are plenty of other ways children are exposed to the concept of God, and really he still believes in Santa and the Easter Bunny, right? My partner hasn’t made it clear that he is opposed to me taking his son to church, he agrees that he should be allowed to make up his own mind. So I think he’d be okay with it but I worry more about his mother, who doesn’t particularly like me to begin with.
Right now I am picking out a Psalm to be read at our wedding in a couple of weeks and I asked for my partner’s opinion knowing it wouldn’t mean quite the same thing to him as it would to me. Regardless he gave me an honest opinion on which one to use but since it’s “my realm” left the final decision up to me. Most of the people at the wedding aren’t very religious (meaning my friends) and my brother in law is even Hindu. I like having diversity, it makes it interesting and I hope my children will be educated about all the religions of the world.
May 12, 2010 6:51 am
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I can relate. I’m a life-long Episcopalian. I go to church every Sunday and I read from my Irish Jesuit prayer book every night. My almost-husband was raised Scottish Mormon but he doesn’t consider himself to be religious at all now, but agnostic. We both respect one another’s beliefs and he joins me in church on Christmas Eve (I’m trying to get him to come on Easter too!). All that is fine but when it comes to raising children it brings up some issues. His son has expressed interest in coming to church with me but I don’t want anyone to think I’m trying to “brainwash” him (I find the Brits to be pretty un-religious so far). I’ve made it clear that I expect our future children to be baptized (his son isn’t) and I’d like to take them to church until they are old enough to decide for themselves (it’s a nice family activity). Although he says he’ll support me in this I wonder when it comes down to it how it will actually pan out?
May 11, 2010 6:00 pm
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This is a HUGE issue for us.
I was raised – and am still – a practicing Catholic. Pretty much every guy I’ve dated before my fiance has not only NOT been supportive of my faith, but has been downright mean/condescending about it. This was such an issue for me, that the day after our first date, I told him, “FYI, I’m raising my children Catholic. And whoever ends up raising them with me, WILL be supportive of that. Whether or not he’s Catholic, too. Parents have to be a unified front, and I’m not going to be undermined by my co-parent.”
My fiance was raised Jewish, but was agnostic-bordering-on-atheism when we met. At heart, though, we have very similar spiritual beliefs, and – while he’s still uncomfortable with the concept of Jesus as the messiah – he believes in the existence of God. I find that his in-depth knowledge of Judaic history/old testament really just strengthens my own beliefs.
Here are my “requirements”:
-Must go to church with me every Sunday (has done this since the very beginning, and says he loves going for the meditative aspect…I didn’t want our future kids throwing, “why do I have to go if Daddy doesn’t?” in my face every week. eff that mess.)
-He’s totally allowed to express his own doubts/concerns about faith to our children, but has to do it in a, “here is one way to look at things,” way. Luckily, that’s how he presents most of his opinions.
I know I got lucky as far as the dual-religion business goes. But I’m still pretty nervous about the whole thing. And I’ve gotten some questions from his very.very.Jewish. family members which I don’t feel comfortable answering without consulting with him first. Especially because his grandmother (who was the one who saw to it that he and his siblings were given a strong Jewish upbringing) recently passed away, there’s a lot of guilt about doing what she would have wanted. It’s all tough stuff. For sure.
May 11, 2010 9:10 pm
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We came to our relationship as an interfaith couple. Because of that, and all the work I’ve done personally sorting through that and coming to decisions over that past five years, I have some pretty strong feelings on the subject. Because of that, and because I think issues of conversion and faith are so big that they deserve their own forum, I’ve traditionally stayed away from these subjects.
I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’ve written strong provocative pieces about faith issues, and faith issues and relationships, but I feel like APW is not the venue for me to share those sorts of essays. They are things I like to talk about in the context of faith, first of all, and second of all, I’m not a blank slate on this, and that wouldn’t be helpful to many of you.
So that’s me and where I’m coming from on that. Sometimes it’s helpful for me to point out what my boundaries for this blog actually are, personally :)
May 11, 2010 9:56 pm
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What a tease! Are these provocative pieces published somewhere else that you might be willing to send us to? : )
Or, while I completely understand that you’re not comfortable discussing your own faith decisions–I was kind of getting that from reading the archives–does that rule out an open thread on interfaith relationships, or a guest post from someone else? Hearing from the women who make up this community and have been shaped by your guidelines on discourse so far is always thought-provoking and helpful, no matter what the topic.
Though, if it’s just not something you feel equipped to moderate the comments on, I completely understand . . . maybe I need to start my own blog : )
May 11, 2010 10:03 pm
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religion is some tricky ish.
May 12, 2010 6:20 am
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First, I would like to veto the posts on how to buy a house. Yes, traditionally, this is something that married people do. But, not ALL married people do this, or even WANT to do this. It would be more interesting to spin it into a convo about compromising and working together towards a common goal. But, escrow and banks and mortgages and blah, blah, blah. No thank you.
Second, let’s talk about The Five Love Languages. This is a book by Gary Chapman that my husband and I started reading this weekend. It has slight Christian undertones, which I understand are not for everyone, but, it has really great ideas about how we receive love (physical touch, gifts, acts of service…etc) and how we can give love better to our partners. It really opened our eyes and helped us express our love to each other in different and more constructive ways.
May 11, 2010 5:19 pm
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I loved the Five Love Languages. Very helpful and interesting since my husband and I speak different love languages.
May 11, 2010 7:29 pm
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My FH and I both read that book after a recently married friend recommend it. We’ve talked over it with several people who know both of us but we still don’t know what our languages are. Not knowing which category we fall into has made us both work harder to meet each other’s needs on as many of the languages we can. It’s helped us consciously treat each other better and think daily about not taking each other for granted. For us, that’s probably worked better than thinking that x or y language will fulfill all our needs.
May 11, 2010 8:23 pm
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I’m interested in discussing navigating marriage with both partners’ fathers deceased. My fiance and I both lost our fathers as teens, and left our Mothers to raise us alone, with some help from extended family/the community. (I might add they both did stellar jobs!) But I wonder how it will work without close marriages to look to for guidance/advice/as role models. I haven’t thought about this much – I’ve mostly been focused on how to make it through the wedding day without my Dad – but this post and the comments made me realize that moving forward into our marriage without our Dads is going to be tough at times. Has anyone else had experience with this? Did someone else (perhaps unexpectedly?) stand up in their place (not on the wedding day, but the days after)?
May 11, 2010 5:26 pm
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Having planned a wedding and gotten married without my mother, who died 7 years ago, your post spoke to me. I’m afraid I don’t have much encouraging to say–it’s really f*cking hard, and will remain so as you start to negotiate the next phase of your lives without the benefit of someone you look up to. At our wedding, we left a chair empty for my mother, and placed a corsage in it. We also acknowledged her in the ceremony. But yes, now that the milestone of getting married without her is passed, there are more to look forward to. We talk off and on about children, and I ache with wanted to ask her questions. My parent’s marriage was messy, so I don’t feel I can turn to memories of them for guidance. But I do find that I gravitate towards friends who are in really wonderful, long-term relationships. We are friends with some wonderful couples, some of them married and some of them not (some of them gay), who really inspire me with the way they handle their lives together. Knowing these people helped me get over my fears about marriage, and now help me negotiate some of my concerns about the future.
May 13, 2010 8:57 pm
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i’d like to talk more about finances, division of labor (house and ‘professional’) and particularly about religious households- how partners compromise between differences, how to approach a wedding, a family, and how to incorporate and deal with one’s own family when embarking on a (what’s the word??) inter-religious partnership…
May 11, 2010 7:09 pm
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*Newly Engaged Over Here*
Please talk about long term (years)”Co-habituating” (sort of hate that label) and how that effects navigating the venture into marriage.
Also FINANCES. It is understood that I will lead with the money, because that is a strength. I know this will be a cause of friction. We have different habits……. Insight please.
How to integrate your families. To what extent this is necessary. How to make this comfortable in the wedding process.
What goals and things to absolutely be clear and certain on before getting married?
THANKS!
May 11, 2010 8:09 pm
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Also geography. My fiancé is very connected to where we live. I would prefer to not settle here…..
uh oh my issues are sounding like BIG ISSUES. Time to get them out on the table. huh?
May 11, 2010 8:22 pm
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I just knew I was going to reply a million times over. So also. I have more familial baggage than he does. Dealing with Daddy issues and Mama issues, at that, as much as possible before the marriage and during would be a helpful subject to me. ( Look at me-all No Holds Barred) I can not be the only one. Right?
May 11, 2010 8:28 pm
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Annnnnd. How to develop that thick skin in terms of your decisions and life together. I’m feeling so sensitive and judged by everyone.
May 11, 2010 8:42 pm
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Foster parenting is something that has always been in the back of my mind……Add this to the Adoption discussion, will you?
May 11, 2010 8:46 pm
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In-law integration. My husband’s brother and I didn’t get along the first time we met and in fact he broke off contact with my husband because of it. Eventually, through much hard work we repaired the relationship, though my fiance (now husband) and I have had other minor hiccups with him along the way.
Unfortunately, I find that I don’t trust his brother and am paranoid that he’ll find something else to get riled up about. At our wedding (about a week ago) he got really drunk, hung his hand on my shoulder and said “You’re family now” and “I have a sister.” I think he was sincere but I felt repelled. Am I obligated to trust him? I’m an only child and while on the one hand I could be excited to have a sibling now, instead I feel kinda weird.
Similarly, how much skepticism or questioning of your spouse’s parents is ok? We’re a new family now and our primary loyalty is to each other, not to our families of origin. We each walk a fine line of poking fun at each other’s parents, but I want to make sure I don’t go so far that he’ll start feeling defensive of them (or vice versa).
May 11, 2010 9:44 pm
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I’m curious about learning to fit into a new family (in-laws) dynamic while still staying yourself. My family is quite warm and open, and have made an effort to make my fiance feel welcome since they first met him, which has paid off. We both love spending time with my family. I’m quite fond of both of his parents (divorced), though I do feel like it’s always “work” when we visit. His sister is always cordial, but she’s a very protective big sister and is slow to warm to people. Since we live halfway around the world, I haven’t been able to spend too much time with his family (though luckily they do all live in the same city, which makes things easy). I guess I’m looking for any advice about how to help his family feel like my family, too, all while staying true to who I am.
May 11, 2010 10:10 pm
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this sucks- but they may never.
i have a big, warm, loud italian family on my mom’s side. and a chillier, stoic german family on my dad’s side. and even now, after 25 years of marriage, it’s all strained politeness and formal cordiality when my mom visits my dad’s family. that’s just the dynamic of some families.
maybe i’m wrong. the other apw girls can kick my ass if i am.
May 12, 2010 6:17 am
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I think gaining in-laws is possibly the weirdest thing about marriage. Luckily I like mine a lot…but you know, they just do life differently than my family of origin.
May 12, 2010 7:50 am
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@Liz: “this sucks- but they may never.”
Yeah, in my experience, this is pretty true (talking about my mom’s side vs. dad’s side, specifically). There is ebb and flow in feeling connected w/certain members (babies and weddings being too good points to draw everyone together), but some families just have a different family culture, a different way of relating.
That said, I’ve noticed when it comes to my future in-laws, the more time we spend with them (we live out of state), the closer I feel. I also tend to be VERY shy, so it takes a while before I feel close to someone/another family.
May 12, 2010 7:59 am
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Something I would love to hear about from ladies (and guys!) that are a few years further down the road is about career expectations, especially early on.
We are both in the early stages of our chosen careers, and balancing the needs of our respective fields has been giving me a lot of stress lately. My job, at least at this point, requires me to move around a lot for the next couple years (mostly to big, expensive cities). He is a math teacher and is also just starting out, but has a bit more flexibility since you can teach anywhere.
I don’t want to compromise my future career by keeping myself in one place, but I also don’t want to have a long distance engagement if I can help it. We’ve been doing distance for a while now, and we can’t wait to experience this awesome time in the same zip code for once. He is absolutely on board with moving around with me, but I feel kind of uncomfortable having him”follow” me just so we can stay close. That just seems unfair, especially since young women are told not to follow a man and to be independent and pursue their careers before family.
How can I be ok with him following me, when I would feel like a totally selfish hypocrite? And even though it’s possible, it’s probably not the wisest choice for him to bounce around from city to city this early on in his career and I want to be sensitive to that too. So we are struggling with how to make the geographic and career issues work, while also trying to start our life together and have a balanced partnership.
This is the stuff they don’t (but should!) teach in college!
May 11, 2010 11:14 pm
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Jessie, the man and I have lived apart for a long time. He was in the Peace Corps while I was in Graduate Shcool. That was hard. Him being in Africa while I was doing the hardest, most emotionally draining activity EVER was really hard. And now we’re in the same place you are. He’s a teacher and I can only do my job in a few places in the country and so he has to follow me. I can be OK with that because he’s OK with that. I know he’s always known this was how my career would go and he has chosen to be with me and to be dragged to a place he would never have thought about living. I was really clear early on that this was how it would be, and now I have to respect his choice and not take too much on myself in the guilt department.
He is a teacher, but not working as one, because he still hasn’t found a teaching job here after 2.5 years. He took a job a few hours drive from here for a school year in the middle of those 2.5 years and we tried to see each other over the weekends, but we weren’t happy with that. I say a little prayer every day that he’ll find a teaching job next year and include a little prayer for some self-forgiveness that I’ve brought him to a place where my career is the only one really prospering.
For me, it’s about respect. Respecting his choice to be with me and respecting his ability to speak up when he’s had enough and we need to make a change.
May 12, 2010 5:15 pm
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Respect. Yes, absolutely. I think that is key, and I’m so happy we have that and are working towards strengthening it.
I guess I just worry that once we make some definite choices, and if they happen to not work out so great for one of us, that resentment will start to grow. Planning to be honest about our individual needs as they arise, and then actually responding to them seems like two different things. This might be the pessimistic view, but it seems like it would be easy to feel bitter if you get the short end of the compromise stick.
I don’t want to look back with regret, and I don’t want him to either. Of course I hope this doesn’t happen, and I tell myself it won’t, but the thoughts are there. That’s the hard part — getting rid of the doubt.
May 13, 2010 11:08 pm
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The nice thing about decisions is that most of them you can make multiple times. If one of you starts feeling resentful, then make a new decision that fits both your needs. He can follow you right now, and if in the future he finds a job he really wants to stick with and not move anymore, then you can decide again whether he’ll follow you or you’ll follow him or you’ll live separately for a little while, or maybe they will have invented instantaneous travel by then, you never know!
May 14, 2010 10:17 am
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Cross-cultural, multi-national marriages. My fiance and I have been together for over 5.5 years and 4 years ago I made the decision to move to the other side of the world to be with him. At the time I was still young and excited about the adventure, now the adventure starts to feel a bit old from time to time. I love him, I love us, but sometimes I have this horrible feeling that someday I’m just going to be completely done with living in a foreign country and I’ll give him the ultimatum of “me or your homeland”. Or we’ll move back to the States and he’ll do the same to me. We have talked a lot about these issues, but you can’t predict the future and that big question mark in the distance terrifies me. Our decision to get married came with the understanding that these challenges exist but we are ready and willing to work through them because we love each other, but still, it’s really scary. I would love to hear from people who are in the same boat – engaged to ex-pats, married to ex-pats, ex-pats living abroad who are engaged or married. How have you handled these enormous questions?
And, on a similar note, how do you handle the cultural differences? We’re having two weddings – one in the US and one in Israel (where we live now) – when I explained that people give gifts and not money for the wedding he was floored and flabbergasted. For me, I’m somewhat dreading the reaction my parents will have to our celebration in Israel because it will be so different and foreign to them and I’m not sure they’ll like it. And that’s just the wedding! He’s a socialist kibbutznik who grew up in the desert and I’m a nice Jewish American city girl. Usually we’re on the same page, but sometimes we’re very much not. Maybe its not so different from any other marriage, but in any case I’d really like to hear from folks who are/have been there. Raising kids? Family traditions? Political/worldviews? Finances? How do you find a balance when you come from such different places?
May 12, 2010 12:49 am
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My almost husband is Scottish and I’m from the Southern US so our cultural differences may not be as drastic as you’re describing but we do encounter them. Particularly within the context of wedding planning. But it’s my first wedding, and it isn’t his so I’ve gotten to make most of the calls. Plus we are getting married here in the US and we’ll have a big party in the UK when I get my visa.
I can attest to the issue of where to live. Since he has a son from a previous marriage it wasn’t really an option for him to move here without leaving his son, or separating him from his mother. Nevermind, I’ve always wanted to live in the UK so that was okay with me. On the other hand, I am VERY attached to where I come from/live now and I’m very sad about moving far away, even if it will be worth it. We came up with a compromise ages ago, that we would move back to the States after his son finishes school in about 8-10 years. My grandfather has already set us aside some land for us to settle on and we often dream together about fixing up an old farmhouse on land very near to where my great-grandmother grew up. Knowing that I won’t have to live in urban England for the rest of my life makes it a little easier to move away in the first place. (well, I haven’t left yet so ask me again in 6 months when I’m missing the mountains, my parents and my grandparents).
So good luck with everything!
May 12, 2010 7:04 am
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Life and career-mapping please! How to reconcile being a career-driven woman moving across the country for a long-term partner? Balancing who does their MA/PhD/LLB first if you don’t get into schools in the same city? Choosing what is best for your relationship over what is best for your career?
I’m in my early 20s and I find the whole process terrifying. What if 10 years from now, I’m no longer with this person. Will I regret my decisions?
May 12, 2010 7:19 am
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I could not “exactly” this enough.
I think finding the balance between creating a rewarding personal life and a successful career life is absolutely the scariest thing about the future. How do I know what the right choices are? How do we keep the relationship first priority without compromising our individual goals?
May 12, 2010 5:51 pm
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What I find most frustrating about this process is that everyone around me (coworkers, friends, family, professors) second-guess our decisions. I’ve learned to say “I was offered a great job” when asked why I moved to City X. The truth is I moved to City X because of my partner, and found a great job. But there is a big career risk implied in the latter statement. A professor (who did her BA, MA and PhD in the same province) warned me quite strongly not to make education/career decisions based on my partner. Some of the response has to do with age (I’m in my early 20s). Some of it has to do with expectations based on my personality (ambitious and high achieving).
For myself, I feel like the best thing we can do is be honest in our education and career needs with our partners. Will you need to move every few years? Will you need to live abroad? Are you limited to one state/province/country?
May 13, 2010 10:28 am
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I’m in a bit of a reverse situation in that I am staying in my city for the time being because my guy has two more years left on his Army reserves contract. When he’s done we’ll probably be moving to whatever city I decide to work/go to grad school in, which is very possibly overseas. That’s sort of the deal we’ve struck for now — I stay for a bit, then he follows for a bit. There are definitely jobs and opportunities I could take now in other cities, and he is understanding and open to me doing that, but I feel really uneasy about leaving right before we are about to get engaged.
I want to share that time with him, so I’VE decided to stay. This choice is horrifying to people and a lot of older people and mentors warn me against it, saying I shouldn’t do anything because of “some boy”. These are often people whose advice I seek and respect, so it really makes me wonder if I’m doing this all wrong, or if the cultural expectations about young women are just messed up.
Being young in a liberal academic world makes it hard to be taken seriously when it involves significant others and weddings. I don’t tell people I’m planning on getting married relatively soon because I hear “But you’re so young, what’s the rush?” or “What a waste!” or “You’ll ruin your career” literally every time. Just because I want to get married doesn’t make me less smart or driven or feminist. I am still all of those things!
I agree, NRM — being a talented and ambitious early 20-something comes with huge cultural expectation. We are not supposed to choose relationships over careers. And yet, for some reason, it’s ok for a girl who doesn’t aim high or isn’t seen as having as much potential (whatever that means) to get married right out of college. I recently graduated and have a ton of awesome stuff happening right now with work, but people act like that will all disappear once I put on a ring. Why does getting married young mean I must give up a career? Why do people assume that young brides are unintelligent or that they buy into traditional gender stereotypes?
I can’t change that I met my partner while I was young and not 5, 8, or 10 years down the road, but that doesn’t mean I’m giving up all the goals I have. I feel blessed to have a partner that supports my dreams and wants to help make them happen, even if it takes a lot of extra coordination.
(Sorry that was so long…clearly, this is something I have an opinion about!)
May 13, 2010 10:54 pm
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I think I’m in the minority (pre-engaged) camp here, but I’d like to hear about compromise and dreams. Did getting married mean you had to compromise on your life-long dreams? Lauren over at Suburbalicious Living had a good post about this: http://suburbaliciousliving.blogspot.com/2010/04/i-still-remember-when-30-was-old.html
I have (and my family has) always loved to travel and explore new countries and cultures, and I consider it to be a really important part of who I am. My significant other really doesn’t give a hoot about travel. His idea of a great vacation is sitting by the beach or pool for a week. That would bore me to tears.
I love him and he’s a great guy, but my reoccurring fear is that if I marry him, I’ll never get to realize my dream of taking time off to traipse around the world before settling down to have kids.
May 12, 2010 9:21 am
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Had to put my two cents in on this, since I love both traveling to far-off distant lands sitting on the beach with a book… I’ve recently realized (as in, while planning our honeymoon) that I think there is a difference between “travel” and “vacation.” To me, travel is about exploring, seeing and learning as much as possible, expanding horizons, etc. A vacation is about unwinding and escaping the pressure to do anything that you don’t want to do in that moment. They can overlap, but don’t have to. So, we’re taking a “vacation” for or honeymoon, but making plans to travel as soon as possible. Maybe treating them as two completely separate types of trips would help you guys find a way to meet both of your needs.
May 12, 2010 9:50 am
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travel compatibility was one of my guy’s big prerequisites in a relationship, and so it was really important for him that we took several trips together before he could really picture a long-term path together. We do have fairly similar travel styles, but it still took some discussions before, during, and after trips to hash out the differences and learn to both verbalize our own needs (“I really cannot handle exploring for 3 more hours before dinner, the jet lag has my body clock off and I need to eat within the next 45 minutes”) and to respect the other person’s preferences and learn to compromise (“I am fine going to see X, Y, Z on the 3rd day if I can have the 2nd day to chillax on the beach” or even “if we do a beach spot this year, can we do an urban spot next year?”).
We do also have a family friend whose partner is totally not into traveling at all, and so she comes and travels with other like-minded friends instead. So that might be another thing to consider – just because he doesn’t want to join you may not necessarily mean you don’t get to go (although I can understand why that may not be ideal).
I know that doesn’t quite address your question, but I just wanted to say I totally understand why it is a big issue/concern for you. I’m sure there are other types of dreams/passions other people have to negotiate but travel was high on our list, too.
May 12, 2010 3:19 pm
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(There are a whole lot of pre-engageds around. And post marrieds. It’s a whole lotta fun!)
May 13, 2010 5:36 am
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The hard stuff. The stuff life throws at you just when you think everything is going ok. Illness, death, money, insurance, family, the ability to go with the flow and keep your relationship in tact ( even if your partner has trouble going with that flow). I had a chronic/potentially terminal illness, as does my sibling, that my mother passed away from. So many of our “issues” stem from this aspect of my background. In the 3 months we planned our wedding in we also lost 3 of our close relatives (grandfather, cousin, father) which put us into the “just cope and move on” mode. I would LOVE a post on loving through loss. How to support one another through worst case scenarios. How to keep life & love beautiful when the outside world gets ugly. At some point or another we will all go through a loss of some kind and yet finding intelligent writing on the topic seems to be near impossible for me.
Side note: I am a first time poster and long time lurker and I want to thank you Meg. Thank you for having the discussions that are intelligent, and challenging. Thank you for reaching for the voices that are too rarely heard and allowing them to be heard.
May 12, 2010 7:13 pm
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oh! And how to navigate these minefields as a team instead of reverting back to your own, solo, methods.
May 12, 2010 7:26 pm
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at 300+ posts I can’t guarantee that this hasn’t been covered already but… how about personal growth, change, and long-term committed relationships. I feel like the model we are so often given is that personal growth often means waking up to moving beyond a relationship, but what about waking up and moving forward through a relationship? How to communicate with and maintain intimacy with your partner in a way that nurtures change?
May 12, 2010 9:51 pm
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So many great things already brought up, and I don’t know if anyone will read this far, but to echo a few already written and add my 2 cents:
Here’s a couple of things i’d love to talk about:
1) emotions/practicalities surrounding legal vs “not legal” weddings.
We already got married at a registry office in January because of timing determined by visa stuff and wanting to have legal crap out of the way and not deal with it on honeymoon (and save a pile of money) and are having a wedding in the US in a month. My family was really worried about this overshadowing our “real” wedding, how I’d feel about it, would it be anti-climactic etc (to the point where my dad didn’t want me to say anything to him about it).
I was concerned about these things as well but so far it has felt like an awesome decision. I would be into writing about this or hearing from others. I know this is true for many for reasons of health insurance, same sex marriages, visas etc. I would also be interested to hear from others about how they then incorporated ceremonial aspects into the ceremony given the legal bit was already out of the way (we have some ideas involving a ketubah, I’ll let you know how it goes).
The addenda to that is that we are also having another party in the UK in the summer and at my dad’s house in cali on boxing day – so another topic would be how to balance/get excited about so many wedding parties and keeping everyone happy and yourself sane (and solvent) through 4 (in our case) wedding ‘events’ of varying sizes.
2) health stuff
My partner has 2 pretty serious health conditions, neither one is fatal but there’s sometimes scary stuff about future surgeries, pain, ability to travel being limited (I’m a super big traveler). He hates it when I nag him about being health (although interestingly this has gotten easier since we’ve been engaged as he sort of accepts that it’s my ‘role’ more than he used to) but I really really don’t want him to get sick. He was in the hospital for about a week at one point and it really freaked me out, both for him and also for myself, as in will this be an on-going experience for us?
How have others dealt with/are dealing with this?
3) issues around relocating, especially to foreign countries… this has been covered a bit above
Many thanks to Meg and all for inspiring and thought provoking posts as always.
Now back to PhD writing (2 weeks to go) and wedding planning (1 month to go) – thank you all for your words of encouragement a few months ago…
May 13, 2010 6:12 am
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I would like to talk about not how people are dealing with the effects that being married has on all their relationships *besides* their relationship with their spouse. Do you find that people like co-workers and new acquaintances react differently to you now that you’re married? Does that stress you out? What about your single friends? Even though I’m 28, I ended up getting married before most of my friends–and I always expected I’d be the last one to get married. My friends are all rather cynical about marriage, as I used to be. I feel like my wedding and now the fact that I’m married and they’re not has put some strain on our relationships–anyone else feel that? It’s very painful to realize that your path has somehow diverged from those of your closest friends. How are people dealing with that?
May 13, 2010 8:45 pm
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I have felt a little that way since I started dating my now-fiance. In fact, I have made special efforts to NOT discuss my great relationship, how happy I am & our wedding plans with certain people in my life. I do this because it makes me sad to get the “oh, that’s nice” response, followed by an immediate topic-switch to their recent escapades. So now I actively go straight to their escapades stories, and keep my happiness to myself & share it with my fiance and my family. But I can’t help but wonder – was I that single, cynical girl once, also? (Probably I was, because I *just didn’t get it*? I suppose we can’t fault naivety?) So perhaps you can find other common ground to keep the friendships focused in, and hopefully once they are in a happy relationship, they’ll be begging to talk about weddings!
May 15, 2010 1:22 pm
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I’m not engaged, but have learned a lot about relationships from APW, and feel that people here may have wise advice on something I’ve been thinking about in my relationship. How do you begin to talk about marriage with your partner? Before you decided to marry each other, what were some crucial things to discuss?
I keep wanting to have this conversation with my boyfriend, yet get so tongue-tied and don’t know where to begin. I know this is fairly late in the thread, but I have enjoyed reading these and haven’t yet seen this.
Thanks Meg, (and Team Practical) for this sane and brilliant community!
May 15, 2010 4:55 pm
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i think for many it happens organically. how long have you guys been dating?
May 19, 2010 10:27 am
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You’ve probably stopped reading these comments by now, but I’ve been thinking about this for a couple of days and I finally figured out what I wanted to say/talk about.
While I really enjoy this website and I find that it really resonates with me in some ways, there is something lurking that I haven’t heard mentioned, that I would like to talk about.
Where is the Reclaiming Husband site? This site is yet another example of how we (women) think and ponder, consider and assess, how to be good partners–better partners–for someone else. And how much time are our spouses thinking about it? How much time has my fiance spent thinking about what it means to become my husband? If I had to guess, I would say probably under twenty minutes. Our many, many discussions about our relationship, marriage, engagement, etc. usually end with him saying what we’re going to DO. Not what it’s going to be like, or how it’s going to be different.
This site also worries me a bit. Because these discussions really makes it sound like being a Wife is your most life-defining role, but I’m not sure I want it to be. I don’t really want to be His Wife; I want to be Me, who is also married to Him. Sure, I think marriage will change us and I love that we are becoming more of a family unit. But I’m not sure that I want my whole existence to be Wife. How do you balance that? I want to be married. I want to be a team. I am not sure I want to be known and defined as His Wife. Can we talk about that?
May 17, 2010 11:39 am
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hmm. i kind of always thought that was the point of “reclaiming wife.” that the societal expectation is that once a woman becomes a wife, that’s suddenly her identity: Wife. i feel we’re combatting that misconception that all of our other facets are lost and we are newly defined as “just a wife.”
May 19, 2010 10:26 am
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Right. What Liz said. “I’m not sure I want my whole existence to be wife.” That’s why the site exists. Who the f*ck wants to be defined as just someone’s wife? Who wants that to be their crowning achievement? But here we are, and that’s what we are now, so we need to go ahead and reclaim the word already.
As for reclaiming husband, I’m going to start with the obvious – I’m not a man, can’t write it. Then – I don’t think the word husband is anywhere near as loaded with awful baggage as the world wife is. And why not reclaiming marriage? Well. Like the tagline says, that was rejected as sounding homophobic. Besides, Reclaiming Wife sounds edgy, and I like that. Would I take posts from men? Heck yes. I’ve been pretty clear about that.
Now it sounds to me like you need to go read the reclaiming wife archives already.
May 19, 2010 6:23 pm
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