The funny thing about this post from APW Associate Editor Maddie is it’s not the post she set out to write. She told me she wanted to write something lighthearted and funny about wedding planning. Turns out, she wrote about marriage and death (oops). But what she wrote nails everything. It banged me over the head with a new perspective of what getting married and creating a family is and why it really can matter. It single handedly answers the question, “Why even bother getting married?” Let’s discuss.
Earlier this week, as I was preparing to write my post for today, I kept burning through draft after draft, amassing a small digital pile of crumpled papers in my computer’s trash bin. Nothing was sticking. Nothing felt right.
But then I read Sara’s post, and on that same day stumbled on a video for a grieving center that my mother and sister had participated in back home, and it was like the universe was telling me to get over my desire to write about wedding dresses already and just write the damn thing it wants me to write.
What Sara, my sister, and my mom reminded me about was just how f*cking scary marriage really is. I know that popular wedding and marriage conversations would have us believe that the worst thing that can happen to our marriages is that they end in divorce (always spoken about in the abstract, too—Divorce, like it’s the same for everyone) and if I didn’t have the morbid mind of a kid who attended one too many funerals in her youth, I’d believe that was true. But for me, the reality of marriage is that it represents the constant risk of loving someone with all your heart while knowing full well that the universe might break it. To me, that is the scariest of scaries. And it terrifies me on a daily basis.
When my sister Stephanie passed away almost thirteen years ago, my family fell into disarray. My younger sister feared that she’d contract the same illness that had taken Stephie’s life; my mom was doing everything she could to keep our family together while coping with her own immense grief; and I shut myself off from the event entirely.
My grief manifested itself in the form of perfectionism and control. Amid the chaos of my family’s coping mechanisms, I saw the ability to manipulate the tangible artifacts of the world around me as a means of mitigating the tornado of feelings present in my house, while simultaneous providing me with the false sense of empowerment that I could prevent further tragedies from befalling us. I was a perky, overachieving robot who had cut herself off from reality, and as a result, from feeling anything at all. Which to me, was all the better. No feelings meant that you couldn’t feel anything bad.
And then came Michael. Who ruined everything. Being with Michael granted me access to feeling again. (I’ll never forget the first time I cried during a sad romantic movie. I couldn’t figure out what the hell was wrong with me.) I finally understood what it meant to care for someone with your whole heart, which is something that you can’t do when you are a closed-off robot. But in opening me up to that kind of caring, Michael also opened me up to The Fear. Anyone who has ever lost something precious knows about The Fear. It was the thing that made it so difficult for my mother to let me leave the house after my sister died, because she no longer had faith in the universe to send me back.
At first, I tried to micro-manage The Fear. I thought if I knew where Michael was at all times, that if I could keep him from doing too much, experiencing too much, that the world would keep him safe. But we all know that you can’t foster a relationship when you let The Fear dictate your actions. It builds resentment and stifles relationship growth.
So, slowly, I trained myself to push The Fear down. I forced myself to trust that the universe might let this happiness be mine. It was like a training exercise. If I could look beyond all of the horrible tragedies that might befall my relationship, if I could see past The Fear, then I would be granted the awesome experience that comes from building a family. Over time I’ve been successful in this activity, and The Fear has been reduced to a whispering nag that lives in the back of my brain.
But the thing I know to be most true is that, small as it may be, The Fear never actually goes away. If you’ve ever suffered an injury while doing a physical activity, you know this. You’ve probably fallen off your bike before. It sucks, it hurts, and you get back up again and you ride. But after that first fall, you know you will never be the same. It takes greater courage to ride again, because you now possess the knowledge of how much it f*cking smarts to fall off a goddamn bike.
Which is why it makes me so angry whenever I have to defend my decision to get married (which I do, seemingly over and over again). When I was working in the entertainment industry, it was a favorite question of the older males in my office (the ones with long-term committed girlfriends, oddly enough). “Why are you even getting married? What’s the point when half of them end in divorce anyway*?” they’d ask. And I’d laugh and respond with some bullsh*t answer about taxes or the ring on my finger, but inside I’d be fuming.
Because what they don’t know is that my choice to get married is a daily exercise in bravery. It is a decision to go against all of my better judgment, my knowledge, my experience, and to accept the risk of possible devastation for the reward of something better. As far as I’m concerned, I might as well be living under an active volcano for the sake of the lovely ocean views.
So when people try to talk to me about how crazy it is that anyone would get married these days, I want to shake my fist at them and tell them “You don’t know the half of it!” I want to stand up for the people who enter into the institution of marriage because it takes such bravery to commit yourself to caring about another human being, for better or worse, ’til death do you part. And while suffering a great loss may have made me acutely aware of life’s potential for heartache (and let’s face it, in a way I probably wouldn’t wish on anyone else), I don’t think I’m alone in my bravery. I think we all deserve a small badge of courage for staring life straight in the eye and daring to be happy.
So here’s to us. I’m raising my morning cup of tea to you. Because marriage is f*cking scary. And we’re all laughing in the face of danger.
Photo by: Julie Randall (APW Sponsor)
This post includes Sponsors, who are a key part of supporting APW. For more information, see our Directory page for Julie Randall Photography.
Maddie, I love that this was not the post you originally intended. I’m currently trying to write my post-grad post, and I think it’s turning out to be not at all about the wedding.
March 29, 2012 9:35 am
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Looking forward to your post-grad post however it comes out!
March 29, 2012 2:33 pm
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So many people have already said how wonderful this post is, so I wont bother to repeat all of that.
I wish I knew how to push down that fear and deal with it better. I’m trying, but I seem to be mostly failing. My mom passed away 2 years ago, about 10 days after I turned 20. And the day after D and I became exclusive.
In dealing with my grief, and learning to be in a long-distant relationship, there were some problems and we broke up for about a month. Breaking up was not at all the same as losing my mom but it sucked too.
Since getting back together, and getting much more serious, I am terrified that something will happen and I will be alone. Im not close with my family and all of my friends are back in my home state. I would be very alone here, if not for D. I don’t know to push that feeling away so I don’t. I just try to manage everything all the time… he rarely gets to go out alone and when he does i have to have texts when he gets there and when he leaves and maybe during too. When he has to travel for work, he has to call twice a day at least, even though time zones get difficult. He does it because he loves me, but the times that he forgets or something goes wrong, we have the worst fights.
Even while fighting and hating him so much, I know it’s not his fault. I know that I’m just scared of losing him and going through that again. But I don’t know how to handle it any better/
March 29, 2012 9:46 am
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Oh, I feel for you. I have been in the situation of moving to be with someone and then being very alone except for them. It is truly very very hard. And with your mother’s death on top of that you are dealing with a lot. It sounds like you have a pretty clear idea on what’s causing your reactions of trying to manage everything. Have you tried therapy at all? It can be scary getting started and maybe hard to find the right person but it might help you find ways to manage you fear. Hugs and I hope things get better for you.
March 29, 2012 4:22 pm
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Yes. yesyesyes.
March 29, 2012 10:04 am
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YES. Life is precious & life has no guarantees- a lesson I learned at 13 when my Dad died in an accident. It took me so long to open up to love. & now that I have it, my biggest wish is to grow old together & be one of those adorable, wrinkly, life-well-lived couples.
March 29, 2012 10:06 am
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We are constantly reminding each other that the other has to live for at least 30 years. And even though we’ve been married over two years now, that 30 year time limit still stands.
When we finally got pregnant and then it ended with a miscarriage, I knew there would be no going back. Our innocence about pregnancy was already shattered with how long it took us to get there. Trying again after that was one of the more difficult things I’ve ever done. To know that we could hope that hard and have that much joy and know it was possible for it to all be ripped out from under us, and yet willingly open ourselves up for it, was the impossible thing we did. We got up, we tried again, we lost again, and we keep going.
March 29, 2012 10:07 am
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Oh my goodness YES! Thank you for this post! It made me cry tears of relief that I may not be crazy after all!
Future Hubs and I are coming off a really tough year…no one thing in particualr, just a string of totally mundane and common things that the universe throws at you every now and then. But it just seemed like the universe threw them at us all at once! Then, we decide we’ve had enough of just reacting to all these setbacks and we are gonna TAKE CHARGE and get married! Yay! Positive Intentional Change! Take that Universe!
But then The Fear set in. For me, it’s been more like a dizzying array of “What do we do if…?” scenarios, and Will be able to handle it? Will we stick together? Because marriages fall apart all the time (albeit not at the rate the naysayers would have us believe), and no one goes in thinking that it won’t be forever. And the idea of living without him is just unbearable. So I just talk to him about it (sometimes in fits of hysteria) and he always listens and proves to me every single time that we will stick. And it’s getting better. Whew!
Maddie is right. I, too, have been training myself to push down The Fear. Lucky for me that I have an amazing and patient partner to help. And the ocean views under this volcano really are lovely. Thank you Maddie for this incredibly reassuring post.
March 29, 2012 10:22 am
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Thanks for this post, Maddie. I’m the youngest of anyone I know that has found a life partner (still in college), so most of my friends are still in the stage where they’re basically invincible and they think I’m losing it when I tell them about the Fear. It’s nice to have a reminder that it’s actually pretty normal (and brave!) to deal with it.
I have lived a pretty sheltered life; no one directly close to me has died. But I know exactly what Maddie and many others have talked about, how when you meet your partner and realize this is the person you are (hopefully) going to grow old with, it cracks you open. Even never having experienced death, I was suddenly struck with The Fear from all directions. As time has gone on, I have gotten better and pushing it down, along with the morbid, paranoid scenarios, but it definitely doesn’t go away.
I do have an example for beating it, in my partner. He lost his older brother (who was sixteen) when he was ten, and though he still misses him, I’ve never met someone so ready to take on life and all of its scary wonderfulness. I’m trying to be like him, but it’s hard.
March 29, 2012 10:30 am
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It is strangely reassuring to know that so many of you have The Fear, I don’t feel so alone or so different. Thanks Maddie and all of you for that.
I had a brief, intense experience of mental illness and thought I would lose absolutely everything in the course of it. The worse feeling was the thought that I might lose my SO and the chance to have a simple happy life with him. I’m 100% better now, but I have been left with The Fear, and like a commenter above, I feel anxious whenever he goes on a car journey etc. I have to give extra hugs to people before they leave anywhere. I am also now even more terrified of dying.
In some ways it is the first step to a liberating consciousness – that life is precious and fleeting and that we must live it fully! Many people don’t have that gift.
March 29, 2012 10:37 am
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This is my new answer to “why would you get married?”
“Bravery.”
Thanks Maddie!
March 29, 2012 10:40 am
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Oh my stars. This is EXACTLY my feelings on the subject. I lost my father when I was barely a teenager, and didn’t even go on a date until ten years later. My only sibling and brother had a near-fatal accident two years after my dad died. So, needless to say, this lady has some issues.
I can’t even describe the sheer terror I have in my heart on a daily basis. I have been courageous and accepted the love given to me by my partner, returning it willingly and happily. But then comes real life. Living every day, worrying if he’ll die in a car accident, or while getting his wisdom teeth out, or just a random little defect in his heart popping up and POOF! The center of my world crumbles again.
I wish I could live my life free of the knowledge that I will be putting him in the ground (most likely, as women in my family live into their nineties regularly). But, I can’t change what happened to me. All I can do is love fiercely, acknowledge the fear, and know that loss will come, so just live as best I can. That’s all anyone can ever do. I wish I had a better answer to that, but there isn’t.
There are scores of women who have your back, Maddie, who are in the trenches with you right now. Hopefully, we can all start owning up to the bravery of our own choices in public, in the hopes that we can re-train people around us to not ask such stupid questions like “Why the heck would you get married? It’s worthless! It’s just going to fail!”
This little act of courage will beget other little acts of courage, and before you know it, you’re living courageously. That’s the hope, anyway. :)
March 29, 2012 10:41 am
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“…my choice to get married is a daily exercise in bravery. It is a decision to go against all of my better judgment, my knowledge, my experience, and to accept the risk of possible devastation for the reward of something better.”
Wow. Thank you for saying what I feel but couldn’t put into words.
March 29, 2012 10:45 am
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I just decided this morning that perhaps we are overwhelmed by the good, which makes us unable to do the good all the time. And perhaps the risk is why we are overwhelmed. Because feeling something deeply then opens you up to that loss, as you so eloquently described here. But opening our hearts allows us to live the most beautiful lives… so… that’s my goal. It’s a daily struggle of course – to love your partner deeply and freely knowing things could change… and to love the world the same way.
March 29, 2012 11:11 am
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I don’t really have anything specific to say about this. Just, <3. Way to be brave. Etc.
March 29, 2012 11:17 am
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My fiance has an incurable disease. One he has lived with for nearly ten years. One that is precancerous and the cancer already runs in his family. My fiance lost his best friend to an aggressive cancer two months before he proposed to me. The kind of cancer that was discovered and took his life all in the span of six months. The affect this had on my fiance was immense to say the least….planing our wedding without his best man has been difficult but it brings up a lot of conversations and we have had very involved talks about his illness and about death and marriage.
Just last week as he crawled into bed beside me and in a cracked voice he said “I don’t want you to ever be alone.” That sentence filled with so much more meaning than just those few words…. Having lived with his condition for ten years, there is The Fear that any day now it may go from living with, to suffering from, to the inevitable.
Our wedding is September 2nd, which is also our 7th anniversary and even with The Fear very much a companion as we prepare to say our vows, I cannot wait to marry this man and to bind myself to him and to give him all the love I can for as long as we have together.
“It is a decision to go against all of my better judgment, my knowledge, my experience, and to accept the risk of possible devastation for the reward of something better.”
Thank you for writing this, for putting into words what I emotionally have known but have not been able to form into a solid entity. Thank you for showing that we are brave and not ignorant to the truth. That in fact we have looked the truth square in the face and we have told it not today my friend, today I will simply love this man with everything I have.
March 29, 2012 11:49 am
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THIS.
Also, you are amazing. Big hugs to you and your partner for your bravery.
March 29, 2012 11:59 am
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Thank you Maddie, and Amber, and everyone else who has commented on this incredibly insightful post.
My husband of 2.5 months also has a life-threatening illness and The Fear is very real, but it certainly doesn’t control our lives. He has very firmly decided to *live* his life, and I am trying my very best to follow his courageous lead. He is 9.5 years older than me, and before The Diagnosis, I had fleeting thoughts about how I would cope when I was old and grey and alone. Now the timeframe has changed and I know just how precious our every minute is. It is impossible to be optimistic and cheerful 24/7, to “make every moment count” etc. I try to acknowledge The Fear when it surfaces, then let it depart, because it is not going to ruin my day with him! I have been going to meditation classes (thoroughly recommended if you need some help to focus on the present) and my wise teacher often says, “thoughts are not facts”: just because you think something doesn’t make it true, doesn’t make it happen.
“today I will simply love this man with everything I have” – an excellent ambition I share with you Amber.
April 1, 2012 6:56 am
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Just want to point out that this isn’t just true of marriage, it’s true of *any* relationship. Like, I don’t think that *getting married* is the brave act in the face of that fear, but the act of *loving* at all.
It brings to mind this quote: “Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.”
― Louise Erdrich
And this applies to ANY loving relationship, not just marriage. Choosing to marry someone over these fears is certainly an act of bravery, and I think that falling love with the person in the first place and building any sort of relationship and life with them is already enough of an act of bravery itself.
(I think I get a little bristly when I sense an implication that the marriage itself *means more* than the committed relationship or goes above and beyond it in some special/symbolic way, as a queer person who is on the fence about marriage. But I think the message of this post is really important!)
March 29, 2012 12:38 pm
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Yes. Definitely. Also, love Louise Erdrich.
Although I think there’s something really brave about making a commitment to someone in the face of fear: when my partner and I decided to get married it was like closing the door, saying this is it, we’re done looking.* Before, we had been careful to leave ourselves exit options; now, we’re more focused on what’s right for the two of us in the relationship regardless of how it affects leaving, because we’re not planning to leave. That’s hard. It changed our relationship. We’ll see if the actual wedding will — I kind of think not, which is fine — but the decision to get married made us really decide about the commitment. Even though we’re queer and marriage-skeptical and stuff.
*(Obviously there’s always the option to reopen the door. But we don’t organize things around it.)
March 29, 2012 12:49 pm
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Oh I completely agree! And I definitely don’t want this post to come across as a “marriage means more” post. Especially since I think you can be brave and give your heart to many people over the course of a lifetime, and it is equally difficult each time (it doesn’t even necessarily need to be in a romantic way either).
I do think that sometimes marriage is met with more raised eyebrows because it is such a public display and because it implies forever. But what I’m really talking about is the commitment. I’ve seen non-married couples who take exactly the kind of plunge I’m talking about. And then there are people like my aunt, who was engaged for 15 years and could never actually get to the marrying part because she just couldn’t let go and give in to the unknown.
But I’ll never prescribe any implied hierarchy to relationships. Especially since it does take an immense amount of bravery to love someone as you’ve described. Whether or not you decide marriage is for you, you’ve already done the hard part.
March 29, 2012 12:50 pm
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Yes, this: “Especially since I think you can be brave and give your heart to many people over the course of a lifetime, and it is equally difficult each time (it doesn’t even necessarily need to be in a romantic way either).”
Thank you :)
March 29, 2012 1:05 pm
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I wholeheartedly agree with Eva’s comment. Including the bristly part.
March 30, 2012 1:31 pm
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Wow, I just understood something.
I grew up very sheltered and was extremely naive. In college, I volunteered as an emergency medical technician. Part of the reason was to at least get rid of some naivete in the medical area. However, sometimes thinking through scenarios gets a bit scary, because you not only have to think about the worst thing that could happen to people, are present for some of the worst things, but also need to do something to help, right at the moment. It’s empowering, but also exposes a naive person to all the possible bad things that could happen.
I’m recently engaged, and two weeks ago, I had several nights of dreams where my SO was hurt in some way and I had to save him. Seeing this post made me realize that I was trying to deal with “The Fear”. Thanks for making me cry.
March 29, 2012 12:53 pm
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Wow. This resonates.
Excellent stuff, and so very, very true.
March 29, 2012 2:25 pm
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love it. thanks.
March 29, 2012 3:56 pm
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Long time reader, but first time poster. Best article to date! I’m adding this to my Pinterest :)
March 29, 2012 4:29 pm
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I definitly feel the Fear. People tell me all the time, why rush? You have so much time. (We’ve been together 6 years, but are very young to even contemplate marriage here. My response is always “I don’t know that! G-d willing, I will have decades and decades of life with my partner. But I might have only a few years. Or weeks. Or DAYS, G-d forbid.” We’re sure that we want to spend our lives married to each other, whether those lives are short or long, so why wait? In this unpredictable world, we have no idea what life holds, and I know I want him by my side, and recognized by the community as my partner and family, through whatever life may hold.
March 29, 2012 4:31 pm
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Maddie, thanks so much for writing this. I fight the fear daily and my husband thinks I am crazy for having these thoughts and feelings.
March 29, 2012 5:06 pm
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How is it that APW always posts something that is completely related to what I’m going through at THAT MOMENT? My fiance is about to take his first of many planned trips to Taiwan this year, and every time he travels, The Fear sneaks in. And it stays until he returns. It sometimes goes away for a little while, but it always comes back. I thought I was the only one who suffered from this, but I’m so relieved that I’m not. Thanks for sharing, Maddie!
March 29, 2012 7:20 pm
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Thank you for writing this.
Whenever these thoughts creep into my mind (and I am so glad to know I’m not alone in this!), I get carried away for a few moments, and then think: “Stop thinking about this RIGHT NOW or else it might come true, and then how would you feel?!” which then immediately makes me feel crazy, and I have to give my head a quick shake.
That was more of a confessional. The point is: thanks Maddie, and I love APW!
March 29, 2012 8:28 pm
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Thank you so much Maddie! I totally get the idea of being surprised about crying during a romantic movie, because that is not something I used to do.
Thank you for describing the fear. My husband spends all winter competing in extreme skiing events (and now it’s part of the summer, too). A lot of competitors have passed away either in the competitions themselves or doing the (sometimes) more intense things they do on days off from the competitions. Every time he leaves for a trip, I have to overcome the fear, at least long enough to send him out the door with a smile on my face.
March 30, 2012 6:56 am
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You know, I read through this entire post and a good third of the comments, thinking to myself, “Huh, I don’t have The Fear. I wonder when It will hit me.”
And then I realized it already has, and it’s been with me so long that I’ve sort of just accepted that it’s The Way I Am.
My dad – who is, thankfully, comparatively healthy now – had serious heart problems from about the time I was 7 years old. I’d wake up late at night and hear him in the kitchen, and just KNOW we were going to the emergency room because he was having a heart attack. He had quadruple bypass surgery when I was 7, and had his first heart attack when I was 10. He had another when I was 11, and several while I was in middle school and high school. Plus, he has angina, and has multiple stents in his heart (most of which he’s acquired at separate times).
When I went away to college, I would get a call on my cell phone from a number that was a Maryland number, but that I didn’t recognize, and I would just KNOW it was my step mom calling from the hospital. Or she’d be calling from home (and we never spoke often) and as soon as I heard her voice, I knew to ask, “What’s wrong?”
I try not to be crazy about it, but if I’m expecting my soon-to-be-fiance home at 6, and I haven’t heard from him stating otherwise by 6:15, a slow panic creeps into my chest, and I am assaulted by all the What Ifs. What if he was in a car accident? What if someone went on a shooting rampage in his building (I, of the generation of Columbine and the DC Sniper and the Virginia Tech shootings, to name a few)? What if Something Happened, and I am completely helpless because I have NO IDEA?
I’m lucky, because he’s incredibly patient with me, and understands that my need for him to check in isn’t out of distrust, it’s out of experience. This post made me realize that I have been living in constant fear of getting The Call, and am so used to it that, for me, it’s just par for the course.
On Tuesday my step mom and I got into a fight over the phone, and I heard my dad telling her to drop it in the background, and after we hung up, I was too raw from the fight to answer the phone when it rang again ten minutes later. I didn’t hear from my dad until yesterday evening, and so for 48 hours contained the fear that he had gotten worked up over the fight, and ended up in the hospital.
I’m scared, because I never really articulated the idea that loving someone is one of the greatest acts of both bravery and vulnerability you can choose, that *that* is what is significant about it for me. Laughing in the face of danger sounds a bit too risky to me, like I’m just asking for it all to go wrong, but perhaps danger and I can at least walk peacefully together.
March 30, 2012 9:58 am
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I didn’t read all the comments but I also wanted to share the sentiment that this resonated with me.
I have never been through a death yet (knock on wood) but the thought that I might lose my husband sends me to my knees.
When we first started dating it took me so long to give him my heart not because he was anything less than perfect for me but rather because I knew I love him so much that I knew he was the person before all others who had the ability to shred my heart into tiny pieces.
Of course, then I didn’t even think about the fact that God or other circumstances might take him away from me.
Bravo for this article.
March 30, 2012 1:23 pm
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“Because what they don’t know is that my choice to get married is a daily exercise in bravery. It is a decision to go against all of my better judgment, my knowledge, my experience, and to accept the risk of possible devastation for the reward of something better. As far as I’m concerned, I might as well be living under an active volcano for the sake of the lovely ocean views.”
One of my favorite paragraphs ever on APW.
March 30, 2012 1:36 pm
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I love your honesty, all of you. And you are all truly so brave. I’m really commenting though because I kind of wanted to take this idea and flip it upside down. Because oddly, to me, it is the fact that death is going to happen, to all of us, one day, no matter what we do, that makes dealing with The Fear so easy to do. What I really think makes living with The Fear daily worth it is because the terrible alternative is not fully experiencing The Love, ever. I read a travel blog this week that said the number one reason to travel is simply because “you are going to die.” (http://www.vagablogging.net/the-ultimate-motivation-to-travel.html) That really resonated with me and I think the same goes for marriage – you can’t let The Fear keep you from true love and happiness, and if it is, you should seek professional help so that one day you can let someone in who will (as Maddie so eloquently put it) ruin everything. Thanks, Maddie!
March 30, 2012 9:38 pm
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This past Christmas I was sitting with my grandfather when he started to tear up because he was thinking of my grandmother not being with us. They spent 60+ years together before he lost her to dementia. It was that moment that I first felt the fear knowing that even if we made it to a ripe old age together one of us will still lose the other.
When I found myself curled up in a ball paralyzed by that fear two months later it was so difficult to talk to people about it. I felt like by admitting I was afraid I was invalidating my own relationship. I’m so grateful for this post and and the subsequent discussion because I was feeling so alone in my fear. I salute you all for being brave in your life and your relationships.
March 31, 2012 8:22 am
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Thank you Maddie. I needed this more than I can say.
March 31, 2012 10:35 am
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This was great! thanks Maddie :)
March 31, 2012 12:35 pm
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[...] private prediction about whether or not they will last. Thinking about this Cheryl reminds me of how brave the decision to marry is, and inspires me to think of Gabe’s and my relationship as a marathon and not a sprint. I hope to [...]
April 5, 2012 6:47 am
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[...] Elsewhere – 31+ Great Iconic Photos from History – I loved the one of Salvador Dali (a little more than halfway down) Yet another reason for me to love Fiona Apple (whose new record comes out SOON?! I hope!) If you didn’t read A Practical Wedding this week, you missed out on an entire week’s worth of amazing content. Last week was great too — I loved this post by Maddie about Taming the Fear. [...]
April 6, 2012 4:21 am
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Something that keeps me going and calm when faced the fear is something my Great Aunt said (who is a woman of few words): “It’s [life] not as good when you lose your life partner, but it’s still worth living.” This. Was someone who lost her son at 6 months and later her husband to Leukemia that he kept a secret for many years from his family.
April 16, 2012 2:10 pm
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“So here’s to us. I’m raising my morning cup of tea to you. Because marriage is f*cking scary. And we’re all laughing in the face of danger.”
Oh this post hit me deep! I know The Fear all too well. My relationship with my now-fiance started only a few months after a two-year boyfriend dumped me. That, plus experiencing too much loss as a kid, made The Fear control a lot of my current relationship. Even now! Thanks for talking about this.
I wrote about something similar on my blog: http://hannahafner.wordpress.com/2012/02/14/what-i-think-i-know-about-marriage-so-far/
Please check it out if you have the time! I’ve been blogging about being engaged and would love to write something for you guys if that’s an option!
April 18, 2012 9:07 am
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This post hit me hard. I am becoming all too used to The Fear. My fiancé and all both have chronic depression, and it’s so much harder than I ever expected. I have years of experience dealing with my own depression, after all, but it’s somehow worse when it’s him who’s depressed. It’s not just that he’s hurting, though I hate that too, it’s the knowledge that not only will he die eventually, as we all do, there’s a significant chance that it could be sooner rather than later, and by his own choice.
I hate that I have no control over it, that I don’t have the power to make him feel better. Ifind myself reduced to all kinds of begging and bargaining, watching my words in case something I say triggers his depression, and constant apologizing, even when I know it’s not my fault, because it’s all I can do. I know it’s not a healthy way to deal with it, but picturing my life without him is like staring into the bleakest of wastelands.
I keep planning for a future with him in the face of all this, because I need to. I need to believe we’ll somehow make it through to where everything is just a little easier, because despite everything, nothing has ever felt as right as it does to be with him, to know we’re a family, to know we love each other.
May 10, 2012 1:53 pm
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