The Relationship Chronicles: Learning to Say 'I Do'

"It's been a week," b-friend said. "You blog about everything else, but you won't blog about this."

"Believe, me, I plan to blog about it, Babe. I haven't blogged about anything in a week, I've been so busy."

"Spare me the violins!" B-friend said.

It's true--I've been a broken record lately about working too much. But it's rare when I can't even fit in a blog. Still, you'd think I could at least fit in a one-liner about getting engaged.

Gotta admit, I have to give B-friend credit. I didn't even see it coming. Sure, we'd talked about it in the abstract. We talked like we were married without ever addressing the act of matrimony. He's finishing his graduate program in May and considering jobs. We've talked about moving and co-home-ownership, and how life will get so much better when we buy a new couch.

We've gone to weddings and commented on how we would do the food/venue/food differently, without ever nailing down a commitment to ever do so. When my father died, and my family had to write his obituary, we cautiously left B-friend's name off the list of loved ones, thinking "Significant Other" was too unorthodox a designation, and not one that would change soon. Only married partners get in obits. We talked about opening a joint account so we could stop keeping track of who had cash on-hand and could pay for things with a singlecash card, but this was purely a practical matter, not an omen.

About a month ago B-friend told me he had a dream about asking me to marry him and offering me an amber ring. I wasn't sure what to make of this.

I mentioned the exchange to Lisa and Elisa.

"What do you think that's about?" I said.

"Are you really that stupid?" Elisa said. "He's checking things out."

"It almost seems too obvious for him," I said. For some reason, I couldn't picture B-friend ever testing the waters. He always said exactly what was on his mind.

"He's checking it out," Lisa confirmed.

"But ... he's in GRAD SCHOOL!" I said.

I always had this notion of B-friend being too much of a perfectionist to ask me to marry him before he felt established. He always referred to our future in future tense, "When I'm settled in we'll do such and such...When we have a house..." He was a credit purist who didn't put anything he couldn't afford paying for in full on a card. He wouldn't want to pay for a wedding until we had more money in the bank. He thought the diamond industry was a racket. He didn't blink when friends of ours, together half the time we'd been, announced their impending nuptials.

"Good for them," he'd always say in a way that came across to me like, "but NOT for us."

I'm five years older than B-friend and in prime childbearing years. I don't have a timeframe on kids--the jury's still out on that one--and I'll watch jerky, over-budget and violent films to keep the peace we've attained over our Netflix account. To some men not too attached to cooking and cleaning, I am the perfect woman. And I'm not a pressurer; earlier in life I'd sworn not to be one of those women whose heart drops the second she eyes a velvet box, and to also know when it was time to walk away. I figured everything in my personal life would come as it needed to. It was my career that needed the unnatural forcing and threats that I would break up with it if it did not comply.   

Recently B-friend got a little windfall and blew a chunk of it on a new road bike--one custom contoured to his body; his sixth, since, you know, a guy needs a "cruising bike" to add to his collection. I call it his Tuesday Bike since he seems to be trying to own one for every day of the week.

I was disappointed that he'd bought the bike, especially considering all the furniture we'd pledged to buy. I mentioned his purchase to a friend who might have misunderstood me and thought I'd said he'd killed someone.

"Omigod!" she said. "He spent your RING MONEY!"

I guffawed at that. Then I sat for a moment and wondered, "Could that be why I'm pissed about this? Could I be subconsciously wanting to get hitched?"

"Omigod," I replied, "He DID spend my RING MONEY."

I tried to forget that little episode. I've been with friends who suddenly got it in their heads that they needed to get married. Every purchase, comment and potential schedule conflict one year out became analyzed. I didn't want to be That Girl. I still wanted to be the clueless type who watched the episode of Sex in the City--the one when Carrie accidentally sees her engagement ring before her boyfriend proposes and hates it--and wonder why a pear-shaped diamond is so bad. I wanted to remain in my exalted state of ignorance, when I could go to weddings and not judge the details as "decent for what they could afford." I didn't want this level of understanding to cloud my critique of events. I didn't want to ever be in that position myself. I managed to tell B-friend that, should we ever decide to--you know--make it permanent, don't, like, think we need to go all Royal Family'n shit. We agreed--without ever saying the M word, that should we ever decide to formalize our arrangement, we would throw a party and be done with it.

But then he asked. And now I'm wondering if I could win the lottery and fly out 300 friends and family to an estate I'd rent in Sonoma. Food and wine would be unlimited. Anyone could stay the week, on me.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. It seems people like to know how it happened so I'll share the gory details.

I'd just come back from a trip out East and was pissed that he couldn't pick me up. I'd been warned and told he had a class, but I was in an irrational state, having traveled most of the month and being sick of the literalness of the "planes, trains, automobiles" scenario. And, I suppose, being a bootstrapping small business owner, I suppose I was a bit sick of the constant attempt to save a few bucks here and there by subjecting myself to the schedules of public transportation. A sudden, Alexis Carringtonesque funk came over me, and I found myself barking at him from the BART platform at the airport,

"Well for GODSAKE, if you can't pick me up here can you at least spare me from having to TRANSFER trains!" He happily agreed that he would pick me up at a station farther from our home. He'd absorbed some of my vent, but not enough. I knew that we'd planned a nice dinner when we got home, as a late celebration of the anniversary of our nebulous first date. We've pulled out our calendars from 2003 and still can't recall which date we had our first outing together, nor which date matters more--the day he asked, or the day I rescheduled for, which, he claims, is a critical day because if I'd blown him off again he wouldn't have asked again; he doesn't play that, apparently.

Getting back on track...so I'm this stark raving bitch wanting to recoup some drama out of this situation, and B-friend was playing it entirely too cooly.

"Y'know," I said. "I've spent the entire day traveling and have loads of work to do. I'm not sure I have time for dinner anymore."

There was a palpable silence, followed by a cheery suggestion.

"OK, then, why don't we have our nice dinner, and then if you want you can go back to work. I've made something really special tonight."

His refusal to engage in my frustration: Clue #1. But I still wasn't getting it.

When I got home I went immediately to the office and began to return emails. He started dinner. He didn't ask me to clean up the kitchen, prep food, or do anything to earn my keep in our partnership. Normally this is a big deal to him; he doesn't mind cooking our meals, but I do my share by sous-cheffing, sweeping, and pretty much steering clear of cooking food. I heard a knock at the door.

"I'll help in a minute, Babe." I said through the door. "Just let me finish up here."

The door opened, and there he was smiling with a glass of wine in his hand. Clue #2.

"Where's that really good bottle of wine we have?" he said, referring to the one bottle in our house that isn't under $10. "I thought we should open it tonight." clue #3.

Dinner was ready, and he called me out. I saw that he'd lit candles and set our plates on the dining room table, not on the coffee table in front of the TV. Clue #4.

At this point I'm wondering what's up. He's not mad that I didn't help him cook; he wasn't mad earlier today. Could he be...? Oh no, Jory. Don't. Go. There. Girl.

He made seared ahi tuna--what he made for me the first time he cooked me dinner, before he went to grad school, back when he could still spend money on fish that was $17 a pound.

"Look familiar?" he said. "Remember the first time I cooked for you?"

I just nodded. The clues were coming on like contractions now.

But then they stopped, as we ate our meal primarily in silence punctuated by our usual stream-of-consciousness-type banter.

"I had a 7-Up on the plane today. I've been drinking a lot of that stuff lately."

"You should drink more water."

"Yeah...It was diet at least..."

I still don't remember what brought us to the subject, but then B-friend began talking about the dream he had about a month ago. The one I pretended meant nothing.

"I've been thinking about that dream a lot," he said. I thought, maybe he's ready to think about thinking about marriage.

"Yeah," I said.

But then our cat kicked something that had been sitting on the chair next to b-friend.

"Shit, Ginger!" he said.

It was a box, the kind you get in specialty shops for beads and little knick knacks. B-friend began speaking in unintelligible words, like he'd become a grown up in a Charlie Brown Special. "Wha wha WHA wha wha...live the rest of my life with you...wha wha."

The ring was silver with a big hunk of amber. I figured it was a nebulous-anniversary gift. But he was giving it to me on one knee.

"I didn't want to pick an engagement ring for you. I want you to pick it out. This is like the ring I saw in my dream."

I don't remember him asking me to marry him. But I know he did. And I know I said yes, because the ring ended up on my finger, and we got a "real" engagement ring on Sunday. 

I learned something new about myself and how I take life-altering news. I'm careful. I need to understand it before I jump up and down for joy, or in sorrow. When my mother called me to say that my father had died, I hung up and held it together, making my way to the airport. I figured, show me the body and then I'll start crying.

When B-friend proposed I felt it out the same way.

"Who knew about this?" I said. "When? How? I thought...I need to call my mother."

"She knows," he said. "I called for her blessing." The gesture was a sweet one, but thinking about it rationally I can only imagine what my mother must've been like through her tears... "You want my blessing? Ummm, OK. That all you need?" No wonder she'd been short with me on the phone--she always is when she's hiding something.

Needless to say I didn't get to the rest of my email that night. The next day was like every day--busy. And so was the day after that. I started getting emails from relatives with subject lines like, "Is there something you want to tell us?" I wasn't trying to be coy. It just takes me a while to let news like this sink in. Things that change the life that I thought I'd had planned to a tee. All I could say to B-friend, soon to be H-band, that night was, "What can I say? I'm impressed."

Comments

[Denise]

Wow, congratulations to you both.

[Kathryn Elliott]

Dear Jory, I've been reading and loving your blog for quite some time now. So far I haven't commented or participated in any way, but I just had to say many, many, many congratulations to you both. It's a great story too.

[Elisa Camahort]

Now, come on...did I really say "Are you really that stupid?" :)

Congrats to you both. The ring is to die for, as is the man, of course.

[Colleen Wainwright]

What a fantastic engagement story!

And with a wedding in the works, what a lot of wonderful blog fodder!

I look forward to seeing you, the hardware and the BFriend/Hband this July.

He IS going to be there, right?

[Jenn]

Can I be a total girl here and squeal with delight, throw my arms around you and throw in a few "omigosh omigosh omigosh!! Jorrryyyyy that is soooo sweeeet!"

Congratulations, sweetie! I am so happy for you!

[Jules]

Congratulations! That is fantastic news!

[Eric Anderson]

Congratulations!

[Joy]

Yes, Jesse made me cry...right after the part where he took my breath away. My blessing...what a beautiful gesture; and one I'm not so sure happens much anymore. I think of Dad being alive and the humorous inquisition he might have had to endure. By comparison...I was a piece of cake. Jesse's plan was flawless, except for Ginger running off with the ring; but even that made it all the more endearing.

I told Jesse how happy I was that he was going to be part of our family; but in fact I'm very proud. Proud to have such a wonderful person as my son-in-law; as my daughter's husband...a daughter that means the world to me; as an uncle to Bella & Bastian; as a loving member of our family. God knows we've had some sad moments over the past months; but along with the birth of Bastian, and now your engagement...it's nice to experience a little joy. Thank you Jesse.

And Jor...you and I take things in and process them very similarly. So when we've talked several times since all of this happened, it's always been through our humor...that's how we are. But you need to know how happy I am for you, my sweet girl...and that I couldn't love you, even an ounce more, if I tried. -Mom

[genevieve]

Oh, hurrah. I am going to La Traviata tonight. I will think of you all the way through with your two rings. (I have a garnet on my other hand.) Best wishes to you both, long may you run.

[Jennifer Warwick]

Yay! What wonderful news! Congrats - enjoy the engagement, enjoy the planning, enjoy the bumps in the road - enjoy it all. Could not have happened to a more wonderful person (and her BF).

[Phil Gerbyshak]

Way to go Jory! This is WAY cool! Congratulations on best of luck on the planning and then...enjoy your day!

[Average Jane]

Congratulations! Be sure to flash that ring around at BlogHer - I wanna see it. :)

[Antonella]

Congratulation Jory!

[Julie Leung]

Congratulations! Thanks for sharing the story. It's wonderful! Yes, as Jennifer says, enjoy it all. :-)

[Toby]

Congrats! .. ahhh, how very sweet - what a lovely memory and story.

[Dan]

Best to you both! Thank you for sharing this loving and special joy!

[Koan Bremner]

Ah, Jory - now you *really* get to learn about each other - and yourselves. ;-)

I am so happy for you both - (and for your Mum, of course!) Well, happy for *everybody* - I'm a bundle of happiness.

[Stacie Penney]

How sweet! And thoughtful. What a wonderful soon to be H-band!

Congrats!!!

[Lisa Stone]

I'm so happy for you both. After B-friend pulled a 24-hour workday at BlogHer '05, I was pretty convinced that he deserves you.

And thank you for satisfying my curiousity. What I really wanted to do last week was drag you through every excruciating detail!

[Rebecca]

I've always enjoyed your writing Jory, but this story was a true joy to read. Congratulations & blessings in abundance to you & the B-friend :)

[Meri]

Congratulations!!! Veels geluk :-)

On a side note, I know exactly what you mean about not wanting to know all the gory details of wedding planning. But I warn you now, you will get to that point.

Our wedding is only 6 months away now and there are all sorts of strange things I appear to need to worry about. The strangest though is somehow procuring snailmail addresses for all of our friends. Somehow email invites don't seem right. Amazingly I never predicted that this would be my number 1 wedding issue, until it happened ;-)

[Jeremy]

Congrats, Jory. B-Friend (fiance now, I guess) sounds like a total catch. Perhaps I'm biased by hearing that he's a fellow bike geek...

[DUST!N]

Very cool. Congrats Jory! My proposal to my wife was such a gush of emotions that after we gathered ourselves, I had to ask if she had indeed said 'Yes'.

An impromptu blessing (humor me, I'm hopeless):
Seen or unseen. Clear or mystical. Overwhelming or imperceptible. May your love never fail to grow, and may your faith in that love never fail.

[Jon Moter]

Congratulations!!! If you want to take any of our wedding magazines off our hands, you are most welcome to. Our wedding is 3 months away, we're in the midst of details, but it's a lot of fun.

Gonna post any pictures of the rings??

[SeanO]

Jory, many congrats and what a great story! So much better than just hearing, "guess what, I'm engaged."

Cheers!