Secret Life of a Nerd Girl: We Were Together 6 Months, It Should Have Been One
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A blogumn by Gudrun Cram-Drach
An 84 year old woman recently told me the story of her marriage. She said, “we met in December, three months later we were engaged, three months later we were married, and 59 years later, here we are!”
Awestruck by their simplicity and success, I said “wow, why can’t it be like that now?”
She said, “that’s how we did it in those days. Now, people have to live together for 10 years to see if they get along.”
What’s that about?
How much analysis and deconstruction is required to determine the viability of a relationship? If you love someone, then what’s the problem?
I have a friend who bought the engagement ring within a month of meeting his wife, then sat on it for over a year. Others struggle through breakups and make-ups to get past the minor relationship humps and glitches before taking the plunge. There is no clear cut map to the altar.
Conversely, try asking someone in a recent breakup when they knew it wouldn’t work. I bet a lot of them would say some time early in the relationship. I know I have said of many dead affairs something like, “we were together 6 months, it should have been 1.” It may seem mysterious, but we know what we’re doing. Even if we don’t like it.
I think there exists a belief that women, if for biological reasons alone, are more prepared for marriage than men. I know I believe it, but I’m not sure it’s true. Maybe the phenomenon of me caring so much for my creative career has created a psychological unprepared-ness within me for marriage. Even if I believe it’s what I want, maybe I’m not ready, and that’s what keeps me single. I never dreamt of a fairy tale wedding, me a princess in a big white dress. It’s not something I want to rush into… most of the time.
This is about the time in my internal discourse that I yearn for simplicity. The kind of simplicity that gets couples married in 6 months and keeps them together forever.
In the comments that followed my last installment “Married Exes,” someone went deep: “Stop talking so much and put in the work – no one is perfect. When you think you should jump – stop and put in the work.”
Good point Bob, if that is your real name.
What I’m trying to get at here is, being ready enough to even think about jumping, that may be the hard part. And solving that question doesn’t involve anyone else but myself. The balance of career and marriage and family is a tricky one, and while we sometimes blame men for being “afraid of commitment,” and having a “fear of intimacy,” I’m starting to suspect that my own fear of jumping shows on the outside, and maybe if it didn’t, I’d be better off.
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Life’s a funny thing you never know what is going to happen tomorrow.
Life’s a funny thing you never know what is going to happen tomorrow.
Life’s a funny thing you never know what is going to happen tomorrow.
Here’s something I’ve been wondering about. I had heard that in Austrailia, the aborigines have collectively decided to stop reproducing, basically due to the world sucking so hard (from the book Mutant Message Down Under). I have also heard from a sociology major friend that when the young adult population of a society rebel against social norms, it is a symptom of a dying culture. So my question then is, could this increasing lack of commitment in relationships, decreased interest in marriage, and procrastination of procreation all point towards a communal perception that the established social systems are failing? Are we seeing a subconscious repulsion to contributing to the local node of humanity?
Here’s something I’ve been wondering about. I had heard that in Austrailia, the aborigines have collectively decided to stop reproducing, basically due to the world sucking so hard (from the book Mutant Message Down Under). I have also heard from a sociology major friend that when the young adult population of a society rebel against social norms, it is a symptom of a dying culture. So my question then is, could this increasing lack of commitment in relationships, decreased interest in marriage, and procrastination of procreation all point towards a communal perception that the established social systems are failing? Are we seeing a subconscious repulsion to contributing to the local node of humanity?
Here’s something I’ve been wondering about. I had heard that in Austrailia, the aborigines have collectively decided to stop reproducing, basically due to the world sucking so hard (from the book Mutant Message Down Under). I have also heard from a sociology major friend that when the young adult population of a society rebel against social norms, it is a symptom of a dying culture. So my question then is, could this increasing lack of commitment in relationships, decreased interest in marriage, and procrastination of procreation all point towards a communal perception that the established social systems are failing? Are we seeing a subconscious repulsion to contributing to the local node of humanity?
Wow PizawL! I met my husband when I was 19, we got engaged six months later and married three years later (only because my mom made me swear I would not get married until I finished college). Today it has been almost twelve years of being together and almost nine years of marriage. No regrets. Maybe I’m an old soul.
Wow PizawL! I met my husband when I was 19, we got engaged six months later and married three years later (only because my mom made me swear I would not get married until I finished college). Today it has been almost twelve years of being together and almost nine years of marriage. No regrets. Maybe I’m an old soul.
Wow PizawL! I met my husband when I was 19, we got engaged six months later and married three years later (only because my mom made me swear I would not get married until I finished college). Today it has been almost twelve years of being together and almost nine years of marriage. No regrets. Maybe I’m an old soul.
Here's part of my theory on this: Love is not just a feeling, it's also a choice that we make. I consider myself a romantic, but I believe something that could be considered anti-romantic: there isn't just one perfect match out there for anyone. That one person that fate means you to meet and fall in perfect love with and live in perfect harmony with. There are many, many people out there that most of us could fall in love with and have a shot at viability with. So a long term relationship comes down partly to choice: Deciding that this is the imperfect person that you love enough that here is where you're going to make your stand, "forgoing all others"–the thousands of other potential mates that you might lust after when you come across, that you might have had a shot at happiness with if the dice of time and place fell a different way and you met them first.
So what might be different about today, that makes things less simple, is we're so conscious of all the other possible mates out there it makes it hard to settle our eyes on the one in front of us, because it's so tempting to look over their shoulder at the next one and the next one coming down the pike, or back over our own shoulder at all the "ones who got away." At some you've got to make your choice and take your stand and work hard to make a go of it with somebody, in all their frustrating imperfection and braving all of your imperfections and unreadiness.
You're never ready. Doing it makes you ready.
Here's part of my theory on this: Love is not just a feeling, it's also a choice that we make. I consider myself a romantic, but I believe something that could be considered anti-romantic: there isn't just one perfect match out there for anyone. That one person that fate means you to meet and fall in perfect love with and live in perfect harmony with. There are many, many people out there that most of us could fall in love with and have a shot at viability with. So a long term relationship comes down partly to choice: Deciding that this is the imperfect person that you love enough that here is where you're going to make your stand, "forgoing all others"–the thousands of other potential mates that you might lust after when you come across, that you might have had a shot at happiness with if the dice of time and place fell a different way and you met them first.
So what might be different about today, that makes things less simple, is we're so conscious of all the other possible mates out there it makes it hard to settle our eyes on the one in front of us, because it's so tempting to look over their shoulder at the next one and the next one coming down the pike, or back over our own shoulder at all the "ones who got away." At some you've got to make your choice and take your stand and work hard to make a go of it with somebody, in all their frustrating imperfection and braving all of your imperfections and unreadiness.
You're never ready. Doing it makes you ready.
Here's part of my theory on this: Love is not just a feeling, it's also a choice that we make. I consider myself a romantic, but I believe something that could be considered anti-romantic: there isn't just one perfect match out there for anyone. That one person that fate means you to meet and fall in perfect love with and live in perfect harmony with. There are many, many people out there that most of us could fall in love with and have a shot at viability with. So a long term relationship comes down partly to choice: Deciding that this is the imperfect person that you love enough that here is where you're going to make your stand, "forgoing all others"–the thousands of other potential mates that you might lust after when you come across, that you might have had a shot at happiness with if the dice of time and place fell a different way and you met them first.
So what might be different about today, that makes things less simple, is we're so conscious of all the other possible mates out there it makes it hard to settle our eyes on the one in front of us, because it's so tempting to look over their shoulder at the next one and the next one coming down the pike, or back over our own shoulder at all the "ones who got away." At some you've got to make your choice and take your stand and work hard to make a go of it with somebody, in all their frustrating imperfection and braving all of your imperfections and unreadiness.
You're never ready. Doing it makes you ready.