The Conflicted Bride

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September 17, 2006

The Conflicted Bride

When B-friend proposed to me I remember being happy and impressed that he "caught me" unawares. I subconsciously dreaded that I would know of his plan to ask me to marry him and have to fake surprise. Or worse, that he would share his plan with me, and our search for a ring would be my implicit answer to his un-asked question. That would have been like sex without foreplay, or foreplay without sex. I wanted to have the emotional orgasm, the one everyone talks about, where the woman cries and is overcome by joy and unequivocal certainty that this moment seals what was destined to be.

And yet there were qualifications that I applied to this moment--it couldn't be over-the-top, which for me meant that it couldn't involve planes, football stadiums, a staff of waiters--basically other people. It had to be understated and authentic, yet it had to bowl me over, somehow, in a way I had not yet defined. That's why I was so impressed with B-friend's proposal--it adhered to the contradictory logic of my seemingly impossible desires.

When the moment finally arrived I was so surprised that B-friend got it right, and that I hadn't been fighting with him for months beforehand about why he couldn't ask me. He'd never been coerced; though admittedly, because this was the case, I had to question his motives: Did he ask because his brother was thinking of getting engaged, and as the elder brother he wanted to beat him to the altar? Was it because a few of his best friends had popped the question to their girlfriends, and he was feeling a matrimonial form of peer pressure? B-friend scoffed at these motives when--much, much later, after I'd said yes--I asked him why he asked me to marry him when he did. The irritation in his denial signaled another message to me: Give yourself a little credit, Jory.

I noticed that when he popped the question, there was a tinge of restraint in my joy. Although I'd been asked for nearly a year by friends whether B-friend was "The One," and I'd said "I think so;" though I'd just come from a trip visiting my sister and lamenting, "I KNOW he's not going to ask for at least another year;" though I was deliriously happy that B-friend had surprised me and shown me he was ready to commit to a level that I hadn't given him credit for, something wasn't right.

I've been trying to identify what my hesitation was about and have been on a wedding reading spree since I got engaged. The Conscious Bride was a wonderful primer into the conflicting feelings that brides experience during their engagement, and yet, there were still emotional landscapes the book addressed that didn't apply to me, areas where the author described peaks and valleys, while I was surprisingly level--in North Dakota rather than in the Grand Canyon part of the matrimonial journey. Chapters in the book referred to emotions that I didn't have, which made me fear that I was an inactive volcano that would inevitably erupt at the altar, spitting all of the unacknowledged emotions building up from the many losses of the year and incomplete relationships of my childhood.

"You know," my friend Britt said to me, after I finished the book, "you don't HAVE to feel anything."

"I know," I said, wondering what was wrong with me.

This weekend I started reading Kamy Wicoff's book, I Do But I Don't: Walking Down the Aisle Without Losing Your Mind, and I must say this book feels more familar to me. For one thing, Wicoff likes a good story. You think I get chatty in my blog? Even I had to take breaks from her long, drawn-out stories of near-engagement, engagement, and--well, I'm still only on the second chapter. But already the book speaks to my hesitation. I still want to get married--good news, since my wedding is three weeks away--but after reading her book I recognize that I'm feeling a hint of survivor's guilt. Let me explain.

I hadn't been planning my life to necessarily be a married woman; now that I am becoming one, people and society have dropped their pretenses about it not mattering. I now see that I have a whole new set of entitlements that weren't allowed me before--gifts that come my way because someone asked me to marry him, a sparkling new family, a really good reason to take time off from work. Would I have been allowed--or allowed myself--these things as a single person? Probably not.

While B-friend's timing was perfect, it wasn't MY timing. Had he not asked me to marry him, this newfound "almost married" status would never have been bestowed on me--a status similar to getting accepted into Harvard Business School: I didn't have the fat salary or prestige of working at a top company yet, but being accepted into the program meant I sure as hell could have this status, so treat me accordingly. I use the HBS example because it resonates most for me--a woman developing her own presence in the business world, who didn't go the corporate route but who followed her own bliss and has managed to make a living at it. It seems almost incongruous to create my business destiny and then to have my wife-worthiness bestowed on me. I don't resent B-friend for this; I resent this...faceless entity that makes this acceptible.

Is this entity society? Society won't cop to it, so we blame it on women--WOMEN have this undying need to get married and make the whole process of authentic union very unpleasant because we rush it. But I'm not pissed at my peer group. As Wicoff says, we're just the suckers sandwiched in between shifting expectations. We believe we can do and achieve anything we want, and yet we believe that we have to wait to be asked to enter into probably the most significant agreement of our lives. Our worst fears about not having control over it are actually founded.

Wicoff goes to great measures to examine the other side of the coin, to explore what the contrarian would say, "But YOU could always ask HIM to marry you," and shows that this argument is UTTER bullshit. I identified all too well with a woman Wicoff interviewed who described her experience attempting to empower herself by asking a man out. Like my ONE experience being the pursuer, it was, well, underappreciated. While a man asking a woman out is a display of a man's power and ability to choose, Wicoff says, a woman who attempts the same is seen as desperate, unchosen, and forcing the dynamic. And if a woman's early attempts are accepted, she better not let assertion become a habit. Wicoff noticed, as she and her boyfriend became more and more enmeshed in their relationship, that she gradually relinquished the reins of the future to her Man. In the end it became about when HE was ready to propose, and though the proposal--when it finally came--was a beautiful one, in retrospect it was imperfect because she had to relinquish her power to get it.

Another area Wicoff touches upon, but can't fully relate to because she was married in her twenties, is the pressure on women who are unmarried and over 30. This was the part of the book that raised the temperature of my blood considerably--the thought that since I'm getting married at 34 I've just dodged a bullet; another year and I might have been perceived as being unwanted. Given the fact that, out of all of my siblings--there are four of us in total, all of us are in our 30s--I'm the second one to be married. And given that roughly half of my friends--mostly in their 30s and 40s--are not married and not freaks, I get angry even hearing disagreement with this social norm, because even disagreement with it suggests that it's unacceptible to get married late, or not at all. I have friends, now divorced and in their 30s, who are relieved--at least they got marriage out of the way, even if it was a bad one. At least, when they meet men now they can say, someone DID want me before age 35, and it just didn't work out.

I, too, think of all of the stupid things I did in my 20s and am grateful they didn't result in permanent damage; does this mean I'm better than someone who never made the mistake at all? A girlfriend of mine never had sex--or even a relationship--until she was almost 30. Not long after her first experience she was married. I ask her if she felt like she had missed out, not having many lovers to draw from before entering into marriage.

"You kidding?" she said. "After seeing all the heartache my friends went through, I vowed to learn from it and do it right the first time."

In a society that says, "Don't rush! You have plenty of time," and then starts clocking you after age 30, is patience really a virtue? My friend should be applauded for waiting, but others would argue she was dangerously close to becoming an Old Maid.

I think of all I did up to age 30, when I started dating B-friend: very little of my time was spent strategizing over how to get married. Granted, I needed that time to learn to appreciate healthier relationships, but I don't believe that this knowledge would have necessarily resulted in me getting married at age 25. Even when B-friend proposed, when I was 33, I was asking myself, ever so subconsciously, are you ready? Is there more you wanted to do? I wasn't waiting for him, identity in hand, wanting to hand it over. I was still clinging to it voraciously, thinking it was still so young, it was just starting to grow boobies. It was only just starting to understand what it wanted.

At least, that's how I remember it in retrospect. Maybe I really was ready and waiting. Wicoff gorgeously describes a game many Gen X women like to play, where we feign independence--a fake it till you make it stance--until our siginificant others propose, at which point we can take off the costume and play a new, more dependent role. Perhaps I had become so used to my independent role that my costume had started grafting itself to my body and couldn't entirely come off. Perhaps, underneath, I really always was ready and waiting and became so good at independence that I fooled myself. Wicoff doesn't come to a definitive conclusion on the veracity of this argument; she simply beseeches the right for it to be true without impunity.

After writing this post, I called out to B-friend, who was in the kitchen.

"Why do you want to marry me?" I repeated my earlier question.

"You want to know now?" he said. "I thought we would tell each other why at the wedding."

"I'm wondering why you decided now was the time," I said.

"There's two separate questions here," he said. "There's why I want to marry you, and there's why I want to get married."

That response in itself speaks volumes. Perhaps that's the difference: Men wait until they can answer both of those questions. Women answer the first and don't realize the second exists until after they've been proposed to. At least this one didn't.

Posted at 02:19 PM in Books, Love & Co-Habitation, Women | Permalink

Comments

Ever the analytical daughter...well, I guess I have a couple of those.

All I know, is that when we walk down that aisle, I'm going to be looking into the face of a very beautiful and happy woman who means the world to me. And, waiting at the end of that aisle, will be an equally blissful Jesse. And in my eyes...that's all that counts.

This was a really wonderful piece Jor....

Posted by: Joy | September 17, 2006 at 03:35 PM

Best wishes. This news has undoubtedly broken a lot of hearts.

And like your mom says, it was a truly wonderful post.

Posted by: fp | September 17, 2006 at 08:09 PM

Jory, one way to make peace with the fact that women have to relinquish power to men when it comes to starting relationships and proposing marriage is this. In modern world we women are expected and expect ourselves to be so very masculine. Relationships are the only place left where a woman can relax and be feminine and a man can relax and be masculine – and not worry about political correctness. I think both sexes need just a tinge of that to be balanced and happy. Besides, most men take longer to feel safe with and ready for intimacy. That is primarily why women are ready for marriage much earlier then their men are. Given that, it is only fare that the couple does not get married until both partners are emotionally ready. Congratulations to you both on tying the knot so soon - how exiting!

Posted by: Love Coach Rinatta Paries | September 18, 2006 at 12:13 AM

Jory
I know you've been busy so I want to say thanks for taking the time to blog. I suspect there's a bit of therapy in there as well for you. You know writing a blog post = get yourself grounded and back in your self instaed of the bride self.
I just LOVED all these thoughts and contemplations.
We'd love to hear from you again before the BIG DAY if you can!

Posted by: Chris Owen | September 19, 2006 at 02:56 PM

Ever the contrarian, I'm going to point out that men have to give up power in this equation as well. Down on one knee offering up your heart is not exactly a position of power. Quite the opposite, in fact.

And then there's the wedding planning, in which the groom is often less involved than the cake. F'rinstance, I filled out a wedding registry at a department store where the section "may make changes to this registry" had two check-boxes and a couple of write-in lines. The check boxes were "bride" and "mother of the bride".

Ultimately, I think the reason you're not 100% happy about getting married is because you're too smart to let that happen. Tinkerbell may have been so small she could only feel one emotion at a time, but that ain't you.

Posted by: Mike | September 21, 2006 at 12:12 PM

Jory - I really liked this piece and can't wait to see you in a few weeks to enjoy your big day with Jesse. As I read this distinction popped into my head - relationships have a lot to do with levels of magnatism btwn two people and that is largely affected by the call and response btwn the couple. Personally I feel drawn toward a woman who offers an open and compelling "invitation" to the world and her man. There is a tremendous amount of power in choosing what to offer and how to present it. Personally, a woman in persuit feels more on the desparate side to me; a woman, clear about what she wants and inviting that toward her = powerful. And, seeing a woman who is confident about the fact she deserves a quality relationship layers on even more power.
Jesse - love that you separated those questions out, very insightful.

Posted by: steven | September 21, 2006 at 04:47 PM

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm.....
Jory, I love this post. Very interesting for me to read, and to feel. When my BF (Boyfriend, now Best Fiance) proposed, I never felt I relenquished power, I felt the power was in my answer. And, similar to you, I felt it was coming, but was quite surprised (pleasantly) at the moment. My first response was "Are you sure?" , then tears, then, "I'm really "HARD" you know, I'm not easy."...more tears.
He responds "Really?" "I love difficult, and want to spend the moments of my life, like this, with you."
Now, I'm approaching 50, and the response from my friends on my engagement were very strange. Only my Godmother seemed truly happy. For some reason, the mere fact that I was engaged, gave PAUSE to everyone. I wasn't quite sure why, I think I was the poster girl for the SINGLE WOMAN in my circle. Never married, traveler, love my life, happy, continued friendships with past realtionships, always available. But it was a strange feeling, one I decided to examine, que surprise, and now sit happily with the feeling. A part of me will always be a single woman, because this is my definition OF A woman. So the status doesn't change. I just get to experience being a single woman loved by an amazing man. I await your next post and the post "post" wedding...Thanks once again Jory...magnificent insight!

Posted by: miffy | September 27, 2006 at 11:01 AM

really excellent post.

would that more women--and men--were this thoughtful about taking on such a huge responsibility.

as someone who caved to the pressure in her 20s (and regretted it, and took a long time to recover), I so admire and appreciate what you guys have done.

kudos. and continue to light the way for others...

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