Why Getting Married No Longer Feels Like an Obligation I Must Fulfill
By: Meg Paulsen
Tags: Women, Marriage, Relationships, Feminism, Self

I love telling the story of my parents’ engagement and wedding.

For starters, my dad had to propose — twice. My mom told my dad she didn’t want to get married until she had finished school, but this did little to deter my father. Before he even had the chance to pop the question, they descended into an argument that resulted in a three-month break. Obviously, they reunited, as my dad managed to get the green light the second time around during a commercial break for ALF, no less.

Fast forward to August 2, 1991: their wedding day.

My mother wore her bridesmaid dress from her sister’s wedding from the summer before. They exchanged $50 gold bands from JCPenney’s in front of a congregation of nine people. My dad barely made it through the vows because he was so choked up; my mom told him to pull it together so that he could exchange his vows intelligibly enough to be deemed legit. Not exactly the stuff marital dreams are made of.

And yet, they’re still going strong almost 30 years later. They laugh and crack jokes together, plan and execute successful political campaigns together, and most importantly, remind each other frequently of how much they love each other. The disintegrating institution of marriage notwithstanding, my parents have provided me the best example of what a marriage can be.

Maybe that’s why I’m so scared for myself.

As I now approach zero velocity in my mid-to-late twenties, the crescendoing knell of wedded bliss is getting harder to drown out. Suddenly, I’m seeing old high school classmates chart the rest of their lives with their dearly beloveds. They all look so airbrushed and happy and quite frankly, it’s a bit unnerving. It would be dishonest to say that this newly arrived marriage season does not fill me with a faint sense of dread.

I’m dutifully happy for my former schoolmates, of course; I’m not a total animal. But I may very well be a slightly different breed than the lot of them and a breed who is afraid she’s a little too late to this whole love thing.

I’ve only had two boyfriends in my whole gosh darn life, so I’m wading in a pretty shallow pool, romantically-speaking. While I fancy myself to be a wizened version of the heartsick teen I once was, I cannot deny the fact that my ineptitude in romantic relationships has caused me pain in my twenties.

But the beauty of these intensely intimate relationships is that you gather so much valuable information about who you are and what makes you tick, especially in the partnership department.

For the longest time, I only really wanted to date people I could see myself marrying because I thought that marriage was the end goal I was supposed to be aiming for.

It only dawned on me recently that this is a pretty restrictive way to look at a romantic partnership. Not to mention, it puts a lot of pressure on a relationship to turn into something marriageable. The ever-present obligation to partake in this societal rite of passage can be a real mood killer.

I wonder if this has anything to do with my most recent ex; I’m sure that his relatively jaded outlook on love and marriage has left a bleak imprint on my still impressionable heart. So really, the jury is out on whether my attitude toward marriage is genuinely evolving or if I’m still shaking off the debris of my last relationship. Something tells me it’s the former, though.