“You got me trippin oh, stumbling oh, flippin oh, fumbling oh, Clumsy cuz I’m fallin in love, in love” ~Fergie (Clumsy)

I’ve always wanted to be married.  When I was a kid there was no doubt in my mind that I would someday be a wife and mother.  I was your stero-typical teenaged girl, decorating my folders with my first name and his (whoever “he” was at that moment) last name every way imagineable, til death do us part…or at least until someone else would steal my heart.  My first such love was Ted.  Ted E. Bear.  Well that wasn’t really his name, but it became how my friends and I referred to him after he shaved his head because when you touched it, it felt just like a teddy bear.  Ted was a preacher’s son, a football player and the resident ”bad boy” at school.  He was also on the wrestling team and I was a wrestlerette (read: towel girl).  I met him through my best friend Gayle who sat in front of him in math.  I was turning 16 and having a party.  She, knowing I had a crush on him invited him to said party.  He being gorgeous (note the gorgeous part)  and super sweet, showed up at that party bearing a single red rose and a birthday card.  To me that was monumental!  I mean c’mon, the guy I’d been harboring a crush for my entire sophomore year, ended up being MY date at MY sweet 16 party.  No one could have written a better script than that one!  That was probably my best summer ever.  He lived pretty far from me, and had a car that never seemed to work, so he used to ride his bike to come and see me.  In retrospect, he set the romance bar pretty high for crushes that followed.   However, the romance was short lived as once school started he went back to his on again, off again girlfriend “Shark” (not her real name either, but OH so fitting.  Did you see what just happened there?  Just the thought of that girl still makes me cringe.)  So even though he was back to dating Shark, we remained friends and I secretly loved/lusted him through most of my junior year.  Hence, my becoming a wrestlerette (read: towel girl) just so I could watch him roll around on the ground wearing those….ahem…but I digress.  Ted was followed by Rich C., Anthony A., Rob C. and Anthony M.  In that order.  Rich was a green eyed Cuban boy (Oh Lucy, you got some ’splaining to do….) who used to call me at 10:35 beacuse odd numbers are more believeable.  Anthony A. loved my lips and used to let me know it…often.  Rob(bie) called me Annie(cris) and used to make me laugh.  Anthony M. was my best friend’s older brother and protected me from sharks when we went water skiing in the summer.  (Not that there actually were any sharks that I was aware of, but I certainly didn’t mind him being in the water with me, just in case.)  Oh how I loved each and every one of them with a Romeo and Juliet  kind of intensity.  They were all beautiful, charming and all left me with some very idyllic notions about love and marriage; wholly unprepared for the reality. 

” ‘Cause when it comes to being lucky he’s cursed.  But when it comes to loving me he’s worst…the first cut is the deepes.  Baby I know, the first cut is the deepest.”  ~Sheryl Crow (The First Cut is the Deepest)

Mark was my first true love, my first time and eventually my first husband, I won’t go into all the details of our marriage, because a) it just annoys me and b) He’s SO not worth the effort.  Suffice it to say that Mark didn’t get the concept of no more dating once you’re married.  No, he didn’t have AN affair.  He just never stopped being single.  He was in the Army and we were young (19 and 20), but in my mind age is not an excuse for immaturity, stupidity, or being a man-ho.  To say the relationship was volatile, is like saying Katrina was a pretty bad storm.  We separated 6 weeks after my eldest daughter was born and I haven’t looked back since.  And honestly, I don’t even really consider that experience to be that of married life.  How could I?  I was married, but he wasn’t.  At least not as far as he was concerned.  But even that relationship did not prepare me for how difficult marriage really is.  

“I’m not gonna write you a love song ‘ cause you asked for it ’cause you need one, you see, I’m not gonna write you a love song ’cause you tell me it’s make or break in this…Imma need a better reason to write you a love song, today” ~Sara bareilles (Love Song)

 
I used to think that love was the answer.  That LOVE could conquer all.  What I discovered is that love doesn’t do the dishes, pay the rent or change diapers.  In the movie The Break-up, Jennifer Anniston and Vince Vaughn are arguing after a dinner party they had, which she had been planning and preparing for, for weeks and cooking and cleaning for, for hours.  After the party, he wanted nothing more than have a well deserved relaxing bit of video game down time.  Which she wanted him to have AFTER they did the dishes and cleaned the kitchen.  In the midst of their argument she exclaims “I want you to WANT to do the dishes!”  To which he responded “That’s crazy.   Why would I WANT to do dishes?”  The answer seemed pretty obvious to me and probably to almost every woman who ever watched that movie. 

“You must not know about me, you must not know ’bout me.  I could have another you in a minute…matter of fact, he’ll be here in a minute, baby”  ~Beyonce (Irreplaceable)

(Stay with me here for a second…) Have you ever really listened to the wedding vows?  Okay so here’s the thing… a vow by definition is not something that should be taken lightly.  When we were kids, we took vows all the time.  We even pinky swore on most of them!  Pinky swearing is a huge deal when you’re 10!  And the wedding vows don’t play.  Not even a little bit.  For better or worse (whether you’re happy or not), richer or poorer (even if you’re broke and owe your right arm), in sickness and in health (even if the illness is something self inflicted like addiction), til death do us part (DEATH!  Did you catch that one?  Only death shall part you).  Biblically, you’re only off the hook if your spouse cheats or leaves, other than that, you’re in for the long haul.  Those are some tall orders and they don’t really leave any loopholes.   And what they translate to is doing whatever it takes to keep the marriage whole.  Whatever it takes is a HUGE commitment.  It sometimes means sacrificing one’s own wants and/or needs for those of the other person.  But who wants to do THAT all the time?  Right?  No one does…duh-uh.  It’s why it’s called sacrifice.   I heard about a woman who’s husband of 36 years recently told her that he’s found someone else and is leaving her. The woman telling me the story exclaimed, “You’d think a person could get comfortable with the relationship after that long!” But, society tells us that everything is disposable and replaceable.  And guess what?   It is!  Nobody keeps anything for any length of time anymore.  It’s much more cost effecient to buy a new one than to fix or upgrade the old one.  I’d like to think that no one goes into a marriage thinking “Hey, if it doesn’t work out, I’ll just get a divorce.”  And perhaps for most people that isn’t the case but marriage is tough.  The toughest job you’ll ever love.  No wait, that’s the Army, isn’t it?  Nonetheless, it requires so much more than love and even though it’s all spelled out in the vows, sometimes the concept is just not grasped.  It may have something to do with the backwards ass way marriage is looked at anymore.  I personally know some people who spent tens of thousands of dollars on weddings for their kids.  Both marriages lasted all of a few months.  Personally, I’d want my money back if I were mom and dad.  It seems to me that too much focus was put on the weddings and not enough was put on the marriages.  And in their euphoric states of pre-nuptial bliss, they totally missed the part about not parting.  But Anacris, they fell in love!  “Falling in love”.  You know, I really, really don’t like that phrase.  It sounds like something that is involuntary.  And while I firmly believe that one cannot control feelings.  I DO believe that one CAN control how one reacts to said feelings and THAT my friends is a choice.  For example when someone cuts you off in traffic, you might not be able to control becoming furious, but it is up to you whether you cultivate that emotion and allow it to dictate whether or not you will just sit clench fisted and mumbling under your breath through gritted teeth, or whether you’ll get out and beat the everlovin’ tar out of that @#$%$#@.  With that said, love should be treated as a verb, not a noun.  Don’t just talk about how much you love, rather, actively LOVE.  I’m not referring to the mushy love stuff.  I’m talkin’ about the stuff you do that makes him or her FEEL loved.  Like, oh, say…wanting to do the dishes or listening to him prattle on about sports. 

It’s tricky though isn’t it.  That whole whatever it takes thing.  I mean, how long is one supposed to do whatever it takes when the marriage is one long excercise in misery…for whatever reason?  OR, what if you are the ONLY one doing whatever it takes.  I watch a lot of movies and another favorite scene of mine, is from a movie called The Last Kiss.  The character Jenna finds out that live in boyfriend Michael, has had an affair and wants nothing to do with him and so throws him out of the house.  The one piece of advice her father offers him, is to do whatever it takes.  So he parks himself on the front stoop outside their front door and tells her he’s not leaving…ever.  The film doesn’t really define a timeline, we only know that it’s at least more than 1 day, but he doesn’t leave.  She steps over him going in and out, it rains for a while and he just stays until she accepts the fact he’s not leaving and deals with him.  There is of course a happy ending, but how close to reality is that scenario?  I suspect that in a real life situation, he would have given up pretty quickly, or she wouldn’t have come around so soon, or at all.  I am by no means suggesting that a person should do whatever it takes one sidedly forever.  Or should they?

“i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)i am never without it(anywhere i go you go,my dear; and whatever is  done by only me is your doing,my darling) ” ~e.e. cummings

Marriage is a union.  Through it we become as one.  The dissolution of a marriage is like the amputation of oneself.  I’ve always been aware of the terms, heartache and heartbreak.  But never realized how phisiologically real the pain was, until I felt it.  When a limb becomes gangrenous it is amputated.  Can the same theory be applied in a union such as marriage?  Going into my marriages, I believed in doing whatever it takes, no matter what.  Now I don’t know what I believe.  I am jaded and without answers.  I have only endless questions.