If there are two things in life a person receives constant advice about, it's children and marriage. I understand this idea, in general. I want advice in marriage from my grandparents. Not only have they been married for 55 years next month, they've had a happy if not always easy marriage that was based in faith, in work, and in love. For them also, I know that it's important to them to pass that knowledge on so that I can learn from their successes and mistakes and make a happy marriage for myself. Clearly I'm at a point where this wisdom is relevant and needed. In my life, for myself, all I've ever wanted was a happy marriage. I'll sacrifice any amount of pride, freedom, sleepless nights, or selfishness to wake up next to Bobby 60 years from now. I'll take sound advice from any place I can get it.
On the flip side, the random little gems of marriage "wisdom" that people throw at me are baffling. I have been asked personal questions that I can't write without shuddering, questions that embarrassed the fool out of me in front of Bobby. These little gems scare me, quite frankly. They portray marriage as a light-hearted joke. The media paints wives as naggy, overwrought women exasperated with their lazy, horny, moronic husbands. They never have sex. They can't stand each others company. They tolerate each other and, outside children and a shared bed, their lives rarely cross.
To make matters worse, there's the children thing. Everyone but everyone thinks they have wisdom of child-rearing to impart on the world, and since I am with the person I will make children with, everyone but everyone thinks it's their place to instruct me on children. The child-rearing advice doesn't bother me too terribly; most of that I have my own opinions about, due to growing up with much younger siblings and two degrees in psychology/counseling. It's mainly the opinions about when Bobby and I should have children that bugs me so much. For a long list of reasons, I'm not ready to have children just yet. My biggest fear is that, like much of the marriage business, I'll end up like these people I see. Their lives totally revolve around their children. They have no friends, no social life, no ideas or thoughts outside of what new thing their child did this week, and no life after children. Mothers who identify themselves only as what relation they are to their children- no longer wives, friends, sisters, daughters, career women, just mothers. Those things terrify me, and I am simply not ready.
While I'm scared of the way some other marriages are, I'm finding hope in that my marriage will be what I want it to be. I've met several couples who are themselves only better after marriage. I've yet to meet parents who are more than parents, and maybe that's why I'm still scared of that and not marriage. Either way, I don't have to know what I want my parenting to be like just yet; I'm not a parent. I know what kind of wife I'm going to be, and if my idea of that changes, so be it. The only thing I want is to be still madly in love with Bobby 50 years from now, no matter what everyone else says. It's a trepidatious adventure, a daily walk through what I want my life to be with Bobby.
To make matters worse, there's the children thing. Everyone but everyone thinks they have wisdom of child-rearing to impart on the world, and since I am with the person I will make children with, everyone but everyone thinks it's their place to instruct me on children. The child-rearing advice doesn't bother me too terribly; most of that I have my own opinions about, due to growing up with much younger siblings and two degrees in psychology/counseling. It's mainly the opinions about when Bobby and I should have children that bugs me so much. For a long list of reasons, I'm not ready to have children just yet. My biggest fear is that, like much of the marriage business, I'll end up like these people I see. Their lives totally revolve around their children. They have no friends, no social life, no ideas or thoughts outside of what new thing their child did this week, and no life after children. Mothers who identify themselves only as what relation they are to their children- no longer wives, friends, sisters, daughters, career women, just mothers. Those things terrify me, and I am simply not ready.
While I'm scared of the way some other marriages are, I'm finding hope in that my marriage will be what I want it to be. I've met several couples who are themselves only better after marriage. I've yet to meet parents who are more than parents, and maybe that's why I'm still scared of that and not marriage. Either way, I don't have to know what I want my parenting to be like just yet; I'm not a parent. I know what kind of wife I'm going to be, and if my idea of that changes, so be it. The only thing I want is to be still madly in love with Bobby 50 years from now, no matter what everyone else says. It's a trepidatious adventure, a daily walk through what I want my life to be with Bobby.
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