The Hard Stuff

Apr 2012

For many of us, an early-in-the-relationship deal breaker might be a loved one moving to another country for work. But what happens, when, like April, your love moves to Egypt, and then things fall apart? What happens to your relationship? What happens to your future plans? How do we evaluate and re-evaluate when the truly life-changing happens and all in an instant? This is April's story of how she found herself in the land of wedding planning, and what she's learned through crisis and multiple continents.

The inevitable interview question: “Where do you see yourself in five years?” If you would have asked me that a couple years ago, I might have talked about where I see my career taking me, potentially going back to school to get a law degree or maybe buying a house. But now? Now, my answer would be much different… I had been dating Shaun for a year when he got a job offer to move to Egypt. Up until that point, we had been dating somewhat seriously but had never discussed our plans for the future out loud. I knew there was a possibility of him moving away from Wisconsin since he had just graduated from his masters program and was on the job hunt. I was always secretly hoping he’d find a great job in Madison and we could keep on keeping on the way we had been. Prior to the Egypt offer, I was the most stressed about an interview he had in Seattle. (Ohmigosh! It’s so far away!) Little did I know Seattle really should have been the least of my worries. We were in Florida on a long weekend vacation when he got the interview offer, and I initially was so mad that this terrible news (for me) had to come right at the beginning of our vacation. But, it turned out to be the best thing that could happen. It forced us/me to actually talk about where this was heading. And, after a night of wine-fueled conversations about everything from student debt to babies, it was decided. We were going to see this through to the end. Whatever that may be. In November of 2010, Shaun moved to Cairo while I stayed back in Wisconsin. Our plan was that I wouldn’t move to Cairo unless I really couldn’t handle the long distance. I couldn’t. I couldn’t handle it at all. I give kudos to those in long-term long-distance relationships, especially the military wives. I don’t know how you do it. I was applying to jobs in Egypt by the end of November, only three weeks after Shaun had left. I was ready to move to Egypt, but I still clung to an idea that I must have a job lined up first. And ideally a job that wouldn’t be a complete detour from my current job. And would ideally further my career. These lofty ideals ended up being just that, and the job hunt turned out to be pretty fruitless.

Finally, I decided to throw caution to the wind and move to Egypt ASAP regardless of the job prospects. Oh yeah, we officially got engaged on New Years Eve while Shaun was back in the US for the holidays. He asked my dad for permission and everything. I gave my notice at work on January 28, a Thursday. The next day (literally, the.next.day.), I woke up early to call Shaun before I left for work. No answer. Not on Skype either. I turned on CNN and started my morning routine, and the first thing I saw was someone getting shot in the chest by a rubber bullet in Tahrir Square in central Cairo. The country was in the midst of a popular uprising that would eventually topple their 30-year dictatorship. Minutes later, I found out that all forms of communication, phone and internet, had been shut off by the Egyptian government. Continue reading Letting Go of the Plan

Posted in: The Hard Stuff, Wedding Undergraduates | 43 Comments »

Apr 2012

Reclaiming Wife: Accidentally In Love

This week, we decided to go all in. To take all the posts we've been pondering for months, loving, but knowing they are really hard reads, and post them. This week, we're talking about Deal Breakers & Hope Rising. What happens when your marriage hits something huge enough to destroy it? I wanted to start with this story, from a longtime member of the APW community, about how her current happy marriage started as an affair at the end of her previous, emotionally abusive marriage. We'll be sharing lots of stories of couples hitting potential deal breakers and finding a way to make their marriage stronger, and it only seemed honest to start with a deal breaker that ended a marriage. I find this story so compelling, not because it's about moral relativism: for all that she's not sorry with how things turned out, she's saddened by the pain her actions caused. I find this story so compelling because it's in the rocky cracks where hope unexpectedly springs up, in the decisions that we never wanted to make, that we're sometimes able to glimpse our own humanity.

I fell head over heels with my sweetheart (let’s call him S.) in ways that I had only dreamed possible. He made me laugh until my gut hurt. He made me think about things in new and interesting ways. When my shoulder brushed against him, lightning shot through my body. When we kissed for the first time, my knees literally went out from underneath me. When we first made love (and it was making love, from the first), everything just fit in ways that left me trembling, tearful, and understanding, for the first time, this was what the big deal was. He found my clumsiness endearing, he thought I was the most beautiful woman he had ever known and told me so. All fear of saying something that was the “WRONG ANSWER” disappeared in the incredible peace and rightness of being myself in our easy togetherness.

Suddenly we got it. Ohhhhhh, said we, THIS is what this whole soul mate thing is about: The utter inevitability of being together, the utter insufficiency of any words or poetry to capture this…. LOVE. LOVE! LOVE! Accidentally in love…. THIS! Together could never be close enough. Forever could never be long enough. People who feel like this should get married and grow old together (even though we already were a little bit old). People who feel like this would (of course!) have joyous and tearful weddings and shout their love from the rooftops!

The only thing was that we were already married.

To other people.

I am a cheater. There I said it. I cheated on my first/ex-husband. And I really don’t regret it. Continue reading Reclaiming Wife: Accidentally In Love

Posted in: Reclaiming Wife, The Hard Stuff | 148 Comments »

Apr 2012

Elisabeth: Going The (Intercultural, International, Wedding Planning) Distance

Today I'm thrilled to give you a post from intern Elisabeth, who's writing for us once a month about her wedding planning process. Elisabeth converted to Islam just about a year ago, and she is currently in Saudi Arabia, with her fiancé in London, planning a wedding in Dubai. (And you thought your wedding planning was complicated!) But everyone on staff laughed till they cried over this post, because RIGHT? YES. We've all totally been there. I mean, just look at these annoyed Skype faces. I rest my case.

When Amin and I got engaged last November, I didn’t give a second thought to how long distance would affect our wedding planning. After all, we were world champion long distancers. If we could handle ten years in different places, surely wedding planning over a distance would be a walk in the park, right?

Wrong.

Let me be the first tell you: long-distance intercultural wedding planning is a special, special flower. A puce-colored flower, covered in thorns and smelling of poop. One that steals all your money, runs to the shops and buys a diamond-encrusted baseball bat with which to beat you over the head.

Thinking back, the situation with my engagement ring really should have tipped me off.

Early on, I told Amin that I had actually been given my grandmother’s engagement ring when she passed away. This is something of a tradition in my family—my mother wears her grandmother’s wedding ring, and plans to pass it along to her eldest granddaughter when the time comes. So we identified the ring, and that should have made things simpler.

Enter long distance. The ring was in the US, in my parents’ house, and Amin and I were in London. A year ago, Christmas-time, he called my sisters and tried to enlist them in getting the ring without letting me know. They didn’t know where it was. My mother didn’t know where it was. Time passes. Eventually he has to ask me for help, so I called my mother and walked her through the house to find it. Then we knew where the ring was, but it was nowhere near to me, or to Amin.

Lo, the many months passed, and eventually the stars aligned, and I finally got my hands on the ring. I brought it back to London, and handed it to Amin. Family visits ensued, and the ring burned a hole in his mattress during months when we enjoyed almost no time alone together. Finally, last November, three days before I was flying out of the country, the time was (finally) right. He put that lovely ring on my finger, but then took it right back off… the alterations still needed to be completed. My grandmother wore that ring every day of her more than forty years of marriage and, though it broke my heart to change it at all, it was wearing pretty thin in places by the time it came to me. So when I took off for Saudi Arabia, I left the ring in London. Last week, nearly two full years after we first discussed the subject and four months after getting engaged officially, everything is finally arranged, geographically and otherwise, and the ring has found its final place on my happy little finger.

This ring was meant to make life easier, cheaper and more meaningful for everybody, and instead sucked up almost two full years of time and energy on three different continents.

I’ve dedicated quite a lot of thought over the past months to what, exactly, makes the wedding-planning process so excruciating. With the help of Meg’s book and its wisdom, I have narrowed it down to two major factors. Continue reading Elisabeth: Going The (Intercultural, International, Wedding Planning) Distance

Posted in: Planning: Journeys, The Hard Stuff, Wedding Undergraduates | 57 Comments »

Apr 2012

The Flower Girl

When A. sent me this post, she told me that as a younger woman becoming a stepmother by marriage, she felt a bit alone. She said, "In reading around the wedding blogosphere, I've found it difficult to locate stories of women like myself: youngish, first-time brides without children of their own who are stepping into insta-families. A lot of stepmom stories seem to be geared toward women who are entering their second marriage, or who have biological children of their own. I admit that I've been feeling like the lone ranger." And I realized this is the kind of story we really need to be telling each other. We need to be talking about this not just because none of us should have to feel alone (and I know many of you are, or are becoming, stepparents). But also because A.'s story is about bravery. It's about stepping into all the complications of loving another person. It's about being scared, but not letting that stop you. And in the end, it's what love is.

The first thing we knew about our wedding planning was that we definitely had a flower girl.

She's seven years old. She loves chapter books, ballet, and swimming. She's bright, funny, and articulate, and she has her own sense of style, favoring brightly patterned tights and twirling skirts. She is my future stepdaughter, which means I'm a future stepmother. Which means... well, it means that my baby family is going to have to become a grown-up, fully-functional one in a hurry.

There was never much doubt in my mind that I wanted to be with my partner, B. I loved him from very early on. As our relationship marched forward, I became increasingly certain that I wanted to be with him for the long haul.

But a ready-made family had never figured into my vision of the future. I wasn't afraid enough of the concept to run away right off the bat, but I worried. I stayed up at night worrying about whether I could handle being a stepparent and all that I imagined that it entailed—and if I knew that I couldn't, whether I had any business being with the man I loved. I wailed, I gnashed my teeth, and I sobbed in my car in parking lots across town because I was just so terrified that I might be morally obligated to walk away from him if I knew that I couldn't handle eventual stepparenthood. Even ages before we were talking marriage, I knew it was an issue I had to deal with.

The logistics of dating a single dad were doable. His daughter was two when I met her, after B. and I had dated a few months and said “I love you” to each other. There were bedtimes to observe, custody schedules to juggle (he has her every other day) and occasional toddler tantrums to wait out. As a then-27-year-old who had never changed a diaper or rocked a baby in her life, I was perfectly happy with the fact that he never asked me to be a parent to her. Just hanging out together now and then was fine by me.

Besides, she had a mom already, who was doing a fine job of being a mom.

The things that so often bother the partners of single parents—the tough scheduling, the feeling of somehow coming second to a child—those things didn't bother me. I never saw myself as in competition with her, because...well, because she was a child and I was a partner and those things are very different. What wasn't fine, for me, was that I was basically terrified of a small, blonde moppet of a human being. My natural reticence around children was amplified by the fact that I believed getting too close to her was emotionally dangerous for both of us. What if my relationship with B. didn't work out? What if I turned out to be attached to her more than him? What if... well, what if I ended up loving her? Scary stuff. I know women are supposed to be all “Yay! Children!” but I'm just not. The scariest thing I could think of would be to develop a close relationship with my boyfriend's daughter. Continue reading The Flower Girl

Posted in: Friends & Relations, Reclaiming Wife, The Hard Stuff, Wedding Undergraduates | 95 Comments »

Apr 2012

For Richer or Poorer: Being Broke Doesn’t Break You

I half feel like our whole For Richer, For Poorer series was just a lead up to this, from (new!) APW staffer Liz. Here Liz dives into the meat of the thing: being young, having a baby (surprise!), and not having enough money to eat, let alone pay the bills. (For the record, the situation has improved somewhat, and Liz and her family are eating three squares a day. We don't have starving staffers!) The amazing thing about Liz is first, how much grace she's shown navigating through this whole experience. I've watched with wonder (and offers to help) remembering my own broke 20s, and trying to figure out how I would have managed with an adorable kid as well. But more than that, Liz is able to tell us what she's learned, not just how she's managed. And that's true grace.

I’m a bit of a pro at being broke. It’s something I’m accomplished in, the way some people are skilled and knowledgeable in playing piano or building a birdhouse. I have a knack for not having money.

We have never been financially comfortable in our short stint of marriage. We’re both young (I was 23 when we married), and particularly in this economy but also in general, that spells “broke.” That’s fine, I guess, when you’re both starting out in your chosen fields and haven’t made your way just yet. But, it gets a little harder when you find out—surprise!—you’re having a baby.

During the nine months I was pregnant, we were both lucky to find lucrative jobs. We weren’t in the clear, but we were able to go to an OBGYN and even buy a crib and some picture books in anticipation of the baby. Choosing to leave my job was difficult. I was passionate about what I did and it offered the true breadwinning paycheck, but I already loved my son so fiercely—and I hadn’t even met him yet.

Very shortly after I quit my job, Josh lost his.

We had dealt with unemployment and late electricity payments before, but this job loss, unlike the others before it, brought a special kind of panic. Now we had this awesome little creature relying on us. And he liked to eat.

We did everything we could think to do. Resumes and job applications, temp agencies, and websites for networking consumed our days. I began to focus more ardently on my blog and Etsy shop and Josh started his own business. These things helped a little money trickle in, but nothing that made any sort of dent. Who are these magical people who quit their jobs and start taking pictures of their outfits or knitting toilet paper cozies and can still afford rent? WHO ARE THEY? Continue reading For Richer or Poorer: Being Broke Doesn’t Break You

Posted in: Reclaiming Wife, The Hard Stuff | 322 Comments »

Mar 2012

Reclaiming Wife: Taming the Fear

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. Continue reading Reclaiming Wife: Taming the Fear

Posted in: Reclaiming Wife, The Hard Stuff | 129 Comments »