Thursday, September 22, 2011

Maybe usually means no.

About a month before we broke up, my ex and I went to a weekend-long wedding out of town. It was so lovely: a quaint resort in the Catskills, a room in the cutest bed and breakfast ever, ponds and streams and barns. We were both pretty enchanted by the event. One night while we were there, he turned and said to me, “Maybe we could have something like this.”

My heart swelled.

Early on in our relationship (and throughout it) we discussed marriage. He was adamant in not wanting it, I was adamantly ambivalent. Coming from a divorced family, I just don’t think it’s necessary. Commitment is necessary, not marriage. And I see NO reason for a big day filled with hoopla. But of course every one wants someone to want to marry them, right? I wasn’t looking to get married, but when the man I love said, “Maybe we could have something like this,” how could I not get all gooey inside? I remember waking up the next day and thinking, “He wants to marry me.” It was like Christmas morning or something. I didn’t realize how big a deal it was to me for him to have the intent. We could have gone on happily for the next 40 years without actually getting married but the fact that he wanted to seal the deal, even just a little, meant a lot to me.

Funny how quickly things fell apart after that. You could analyze it any number of ways: maybe I realized that he wasn’t serious. Maybe he realized that I wasn’t the right person to marry. Maybe he realized that he had said that in an emotional moment and "maybe" meant "no." I don’t know. But now that I got a taste of the metaphorical wedding cake, I think I want more. I don’t want the planning or the presents, the big day or the spotlight focus. I don’t want a weekend wedding in the Catskills. I don’t even know if I want any wedding. I just want the intent; the, “maybe we could have something like this.” Because we really could have, and I still can.

4 comments:

  1. I've always said I either don't care about the whole marriage thing and/or probably won't ever do it, but as times passes and I get older, I feel like the simpler and more honest answer is that I just haven't met a person yet who I'd want to marry.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I really like your outlook - it's not the wedding or the hoopla that matters, it's the commitment from the person you love. I hope you do find someone who feels that way about you, but more importantly that you feel that way about.

    ReplyDelete
  3. KM, At some point we must have talked about this (or you wrote about it and I read it) and I always thought that you're TOTALLY the marrying kind! So you're probably right: it's just a matter of intersecting with someone worth marrying. Which is a million to one shot, IMHO.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I used to think marriage was the be all and end all - until I got married and divorced. Now I want the real thing, with the right person and a piece of paper making it "legal" is not as important as our intentions!

    Yes you can have it and seems to me like you desereve it! Good luck!

    ReplyDelete