On Marriage, by the Unqualified

Marriage. Marriage is what brings us here together, today. It must be the strangest intersection humanity has developed yet, this weird confluence of friends and family, custom and law, the sacred and secular. Here you have what is intended to the happiest of states, so the societal norm informs us, of union. Yet everyone has a story of this friend or that relative, or themselves, who married and divorced. Perhaps again and again.

In a marriage you develop the deepest intimacy. Not just the sex, but what happens afterwards. Laying in bed together, after the afterglow has faded. Sharing the home, the chores, figuring out the rhythm and desires of each others' lives without losing your own. And bills. Debts. That stain in the underwear. The bad breath in the morning. The in-laws you can't stand and the friends that rub you the absolute wrong way. And all the harsh words that will come. The mistakes.

The affairs.

Kids even.

Maybe kids from other marriages.

Even kids from affairs, mayhaps.

Marriage. Marriage is not exactly as advertised.

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My mother and father divorced when I was two. Or three. The family has always been a bit fuzzy on the exact moment. My mother never remarried, and only rarely dated in the dim, dim recesses of my memory. From there, it would be easy to accommodate a belief that any trepidation of marriage on my part, or relationships in general, could be easily Freudianised as their fault. Too easily.

This would not factor in my grandparents, who raised me as much (and perhaps a bit more) than my mother. From age three on, I grew up in a multigenerational household. My grandparents were nearly a stereotype: Depression-era survivors who met and married post-World War II. They lived and loved their five children through the Forties and Fifties and Sixties. There was never any doubt to look at them it was a cooperative marriage, with each a claimed spehere. Inside the house, grandma ruled. Outside, you heeded grandpa. I wanted permission to go somewhere? That's child-raising – ask grandma. I need money? That's finances – ask grandpa. Never once did I have any sense my grandma was unfulfilled, or my grandpa bitter. They lived and loved exactly as they wish.

When grandma broke her hip and slowly faded painfully over the next two years, me, my uncle, and my mother took turns driving grandpa to the hospital or nursing home two or three times a day to spend time with her. And mostly, it was me; I had more availability. I listened to them chat and laugh, or her whimper and him hold her hand.

These two are not idolized, however. Neither were pure saints with some “I only met my soulmate once” story. Theirs was my grandma's second marriage; two of my uncles and an aunt are technically half-relatives by blood. My grandpa stepped up to the plate and adopted them all when he married. Only my Aunt Sandy would grow up to defy him by taking her biological father's surname after her own divorce. And when grandma died, she left me a book she had been working on for years. A baby book, oddly enough, called Grandmother Remembers, filled with all kinds of facts I had never even though to ask about.

Such as their marriage date, March 21, 1952. My mother was born October 12, 1952. I did the math. Less than six months.

“Well,” grandpa said, “she was early.” He smiled.

Sure.

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I can divide my friends up into two distinct camps: the ones I had before returning to college later in life and the ones in college with me now.

The ones before, almost none had gone to or completed college. The closer we were, the less likely for them to be products of higher education. Some married, all divorced. One dutifully pays his child support, loves his daughter, is a great dad, but never married; relations between him and his child's mother are rarely harmonious. Another's longest lasting, most loving relationship was with another man's wife, long distance. He cited that marriage as a “military marriage of convenience” and thus a sham. Another friend who was in the military confirmed this is fairly common, which speaks volumes in itself. The longest marriage of a close friend likely lasted only so long since he spent a great deal of time in prison; once he was out, the combination of personality traits and parole constrictions wrecked his marriage and free access to his three children.

Never once, however, have any of them took a stand against marriage. Not one does not desire a relationship, and a marriage eventually. A permanence.

The friends in college, most of them, seem deathly afraid of marriage. As much as most religions make marriage a sacrament, they take a stand against marriage for themselves as holy writ; usually this is coupled with an intense abhorrence of having children as well. It's not that they want to “date around” or can't have relationships either; most do. “If I ever wake up next to him and realize we actually are in a relationship, something that won't end at any moment, I'll freak out and run,” said one after they'd been together over a year; now they live together.

It's all a bit paradoxical. What is a marriage? Is it the ceremony and the paper? All the college friends who view marriage with an intense distaste for themselves all vow support for rising surge in favor of gay marriage; but why support something as a legal institution you can't stand the thought of doing yourself?

Whether you call it marriage or keep it undefined, when you figure out a system after the afterglow has faded, sharing the home, the chores, figuring out the rhythm and desires of each others' lives without losing your own, what can you call it? And bills. Debts. That stain in the underwear. The bad breath in the morning. The relatives you can't stand and the friends that rub you the absolute wrong way. And all the harsh words that will come. The mistakes.

If you can face all that, why be terrified of a single word?