This is a post written before Mandy’s wedding last weekend! She’s now a married lady!!
While the wedding is only a few days away, I’ve been a wife for 17 months already. The question I have spent a lot of time answering lately, posed by myself and others, has been ”Why have a wedding if you’re already married?” - so the question of “Why marriage?” hasn’t been knocking around my brain for a while. But the question of “Why marriage?” was one that I spent a lot of time pondering, even before I was set to be married.
Back before I was a part of a marriage, I devoted my academic studies to marriage and the queer identity. I wrote my graduate thesis on the topic of how queer identity is influenced by the “performance” of contemporary interpretations of wedding traditions and the legal, social, and economic factors of marriage and the wedding industry. *Insert snyde academic remark about the social construction of “love” and the perils of heteronormative sterilization of queer identity here.* (For the record, I was very much in favour of marriage and saw it as having a great deal of positive potential for shaping the future of queer community-building… but anyway…)
So, it’s all well and good to sit back and “problematize” an institution from a distance, but then you fall in love with someone from another country but want live in the same place and be their emergency contact number and make squishy little babies with them and fall asleep next to them every night and walk through the world knowing that your partnership is respected and protected. And that’s when it gets a lot more REAL. Then you sign documents and repeat vows in front of an officiant and then go home and look at each other and can’t say anything except “We’re married!?!?” for a week straight it’s a lot more REAL. And for every happy moment I get to share with my best friend, there is something somewhere in the back of my head that is thinking “I can’t believe I get to do this forever! Awesome!” . And for every little spat, and even the bigger arguments, there is no out, there’s nowhere to go, there are no games to play – I have pledged to work through everything that comes up. We have bound our lives together; I have given myself over to a commitment to be a full partner to another human being, to be responsible to them, and to fully integrate them into the building of my future. That is REAL.
So while I still keep a critical eye on how our queer marriage exists in this society, and how gender roles play into our partnership, and how our queer identities evolve as we engage in the marriage paradigm, and how we struggle with the personal and public aspects of our queer existence in a heteronormative institution, and all the other blah blah blah that comes with being who we are… it’s the REAL stuff of our marriage that fills my heart and my head every minute of every day. In the place of deep, deep love that is the foundation of our marriage, there is no room for cynicism or the distance I once tried to put between myself and anything sentimental. This has been the first, of what will be many, lessons learned by me in my marriage and is but one of the multitude of ways in which my marriage is making me a better person.
One of things that I think is really great about gay marriage becoming legal in more states is that it focuses on why people get married in the first place. No one NEEDS to get married, it’s not legally required for anyone to do, so there’s always a choice, and always a reason for that choice. As a wedding planner, I come up against a lot of reasons, some more valid than others. Some people want the party and the pretty white dress, some want to validate why they’ve been with this person for so long, and, of course, lots of people love each other and truly want to spend the rest of their lives together, and have that union legally recognized by the state and socially in front of family and friends. EVERYONE should ask themselves “why do I want to get married?” And trust me, not enough people do, or they answer the question with a shrug.
Epilogue:
I didn’t think that after the wedding last weekend we would feel any different in terms of our marriage. We hoped that by saying things in front of everyone to celebrate our existing marriage, and by asking for the recognition from our loved ones, it would in some ideal sense feel meaningful in in the moment. But I didn’t really expect that this would carry over into our relationship with each other. Which was totally stupid of me! Of COURSE it’s effected our relationship! It’s only been a week, so I can’t really define it yet. In the weeks leading up to the wedding, we joked about how because we were already married our wedding meant we were going to get “Super-Married” – we were just being silly, but it’s totally how it feels now. The love and support that we were surrounded by at our wedding has strengthened our bond, instilled us with a deeper faith in the possibilities created by our union, and has given us a clearer picture of who we are as individuals and as a partnership. *Seems I’m getting a little sentimental and reflective while still riding the emotional high of last week, but that’s what it’s all about right?*
Thank you Mandy for sharing your thoughtful wisdom and “heart” with us. Well said!
Great post! And, CONGRATS married lady!!!! It’s hard to put into words that something how a marriage changes a relationship even when you think you couldn’t be more married. Thanks for giving us some insight into that.
Mandy–I was so with you on the college full of ‘problematizing’ marriage and waist deep in fem & queer theory. I loved it, and I think some deeper aspects of that discussion opened up when I fell in love and really *wanted* to get married…then it became more REAL. And after getting married in front of family & friends it makes it even more REAL–you’re not stupid for not knowing what it would be like, how could you?! When people ask me now ‘How was the wedding?!’ I say ‘It was the most profound experience beyond anything I thought possible.’ Congrats, you two, and I can’t wait to see the photos!