Photo: "Wedding, Pregnancy and Wait, What??" by Flickr user Notnef via Creative Commons License
As I made my way to the cash registers at the grocery store, I caught sight of the magazine racks stocked with different bridal magazines. It made me think about how we women are bombarded by the idea of a traditional “white” wedding, whether it’s on tv shows or magazines or music videos. A cultural institution as pervasive as marriage is bound to be problematic, especially in the context of a patriarchal society. But what if, as a feminist, you still want to get married?
Last month, my youngest sister tied the knot. A few weekends later, my boyfriend and I flew to Las Vegas for my brother’s wedding. Coincidentally, that same weekend Radioguy and I celebrated the fifth anniversary of our first date. On top of that, several of my friends are either getting married or just got married. All of this talk about marriage had me thinking about my own relationship, not because I feel pressured to get married (or maybe I do, I’ll let you be the judge of that) but because of the nature of my own relationship with Radioguy.
A little over five years ago Radioguy and I started corresponding online. I still remember getting his email in my inbox, checking out his Myspace (yes, THAT Myspace) profile, thinking “this is the kind of person I could be friends with!” and emailing one of my best friends to ask her what she thought. She knew I’d been on the dating scene for a while and that until a week before l I had been on an online dating website. However, she also knew I was done: I had gone on several dates with several guys, some of whom were weird, some of whom were nice, and some of whom never called/emailed again. But my friend encouraged me to email Radioguy back, and I did.
From the beginning we broke a lot of rules of modern dating. We spent a lot of time with each other from Day 1. He called me the day after our date, and we went on a second date almost immediately. We became official without really talking about becoming official. I started dropping off my stuff at his place with no warning, and he didn’t say a thing. We spent Thanksgiving together with each other’s families in New York City two months after we started dating. We fit a lot into those first few months, and felt comfortable with it. I must confess that I knew early in our relationship that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with Radioguy, but dismissed the thought because–wait for it–I thought that was irrational.
In the first two years of our relationship we never really talked about marriage in depth. I wouldn’t talk about it, but I did think about it. A lot. I’d tell myself, “it would be nice, but not necessary.” Radioguy and I both believed in living together before getting married. So, we lived together, we had careers, we had lives together and apart. I thought to myself, “I don’t need him to put a ring on my finger to know he loves me.” I felt very smug that we were living together and not married; the academic in me refused to believe that my life would only make sense if I got married. That is not what I wanted to be. That’s not who I was supposed to be, at least.
I did a lot of rationalizing.
But deep down I wanted a ring. I wanted a wedding. I wanted to call him my husband. It felt like a dirty little secret, something I wasn’t supposed to want or think about. That’s probably why it took me so long to actually admit it to him…and to myself.
In the past five years we’ve had our ups and downs, very much like a married couple (and I talked about the downs at Small Strokes Big Oaks). After our “hiatus” we decided to get back together and patch things up. It took us a while to even think again about getting married, but eventually it came back into the picture.
Radioguy and I never really talked about getting married before our daughter was born. I now recognize that part of the reason we didn’t want to discuss it was because getting married would mean we’d have to make concessions in our careers, the big thing that mattered to both of us. We’d have to find a happy medium, and neither of us at the time knew what that looked like. But after Miss E was born, we discussed it. I said out loud, perhaps for the first time ever, “I want to marry you.” I couldn’t reconcile the free-thinking feminist with the woman who talked about how she wanted to get married. But I was finally honest and true to my feelings.
Since then, Radioguy and I have seriously talked about getting married. We both agree we want to marry each other and that we won’t wait another five years to do that. We both are vocal about our desire to have a very small, private ceremony. We’ve joked about what song I will play when I walk down the aisle. But we’ve also been very candid about what we can and cannot afford right now. At this point we’re not getting married for appearances; we’ve been living together for years. We’re not getting married because we have a child; cat’s out of the bag. We’re getting married because we want to make it official to each other and we want to celebrate that union. So we will save and we will wait.
I will continue to dream about my wedding to Radioguy because it is something I want. I decided to marry him, I never felt obligated to do so. Ultimately this is what feminism, for me, is about.
i like PhDeviate’s story. i think we’ve definitely come to a place/time where the trappings and ceremony have a meaning beyond the legal status of marriage…interestingly as the legal stuff has become less & less meaningful there’s been a huge push to celebrate/reify those trappings AS meaningful. probably lots of implications for economics and status of women in there.
myself, i took kind of the same paths as you, but in different order. i got married at 25. i proposed (with matching silver bands bought by mail order) to the guy i’d been living with since we finished college. i’d never especially valued marriage (grew up with a single working mother, didn’t particularly identify as straight) but felt like we needed a “next step” in the relationship and couldn’t think of anything else so set out to make ourselves a marriage on our own terms. we had a cottage wedding. i wore a blue dress, we played guitar around a bonfire. but the people we loved were there, and it was exactly the trappings i wanted.
in the end, we split three years later. mostly amicably. when i partnered again, i figured that i’d look inward this time for next steps, rather than outward to the cultural institution. so far, three babies and a lot of change and growth and sorrow and mundanity later, we’re good. most people assume we’re married. i benefit from the heteronormativity and middle-class normativity of that, i’m sure. but i do think had i not had the first marriage, i’d have wanted to try it this time. and it probably would have worked for me, because the relationship works. but THAT’s actually the thing…the relationship.
and to me, feminism has lots of room for celebrating whatever kinds of relationships we want, absolutely including marriage.
Bon, thanks for commenting. Talking with you on twitter about this cleared so many things up for me! Like I mentioned there, what was so problematic was that growing up it seemed that for the people around me marriage was the end-all, be-all. That was it. That was as far as you can go. I think that was the idea that didn’t sit well with me. It needs to be unpacked. I’m hoping this was a step, even though small, in that direction. And you are right, feminism has room for celebrating all kinds of different relationships!
You made a good point, the important thing is the relationship. Getting married can’t fix that, improve that, cement that. The relationship is the basis of marriage.
I love this post. I’ve been single for a very long time (and happy, dammit!) but lately have thought quite a lot about my desire to have that companionship and stability.
I am very aware what a privilege it is to have the choice to marry or not, and I’m grateful for that. Since I’m still not in a relationship, I don’t have to worry about these entanglements and crises, but I certainly do think about it.
As Bon says, I agree feminism has lots of room for celebrating relationships.
Picky, I think we all think about that. I know I did when I was single. But don’t let it take over your life. It’s a choice, not an obligation. For me, feminism is about choice. I don’t need to do anything; I can choose what to do…My responsibility is to make conscious choices.
I bet this was hard to writer. And the comments are really great. I know that my experience and Bon’s might be very different from yours because in Canada the legal differences are really not that great. We have statutory protection against marital status discrimination, wheras you (In the US) do not. Not only that DOMA legislation in many states mandates marital status discrimination. That just muddies the decision though you don’t mention any of those issues. (I’ve been involved with http://www.unmarried.org for a long time which is why I know this stuff.)
Ritual and ceremony is important. And for a variety of reasons. Yes, you are entitled to it. And feminism is about having that choice.
Since you mentioned the “for show” thing, you might be interested in a book called White Weddings by Chris Ingraham. Very interesting cultural analysis of weddings, the wedding industry, and how weddings are used to sell totally unrelated stuff.
Thanks for sharing the link, Jo! I didn’t know about that project. We’ve had to deal with some of the issues you bring up in terms of health insurance. I cannot have my boyfriend on my health insurance because the state does not recognize our relationship, even though we’ve been living together for years. If we were married, it wouldn’t be a problem.
This was tough to write, in part because it’s so personal but also because I had trouble articulating my concerns. After chatting on Twitter and after reading these comments, I feel I can express better what my issues are. Growing up, getting married was what a lot of women aspired to, and I didn’t. That is problematic (and certainly not limited to the town in which I grew up). I rejected that early on. But when I realized I wanted to marry my boyfriend, I thought I was just caving to that impulse. I’m not. Like you pointed out, the ritual and the ceremony is important. Also, choice is important too. I want to be able to show my daughter what those choices look like.
My husband and I got married in our living room with just a handful of people — the timing was dictated by the non-renewal of his visiting position (thus losing health insurance), but we had planned on getting married anyway — just hadn’t sorted out the time, place, or method. Having a deadline meant improvising. We had a JP, I wore red, and then we went out to dinner afterwards. Right before the ceremony, we sat in the kitchen and asked each other “what the hell are we about to do?” over a beer to calm our nerves. It was lovely (and much nicer than my first, larger wedding — to a guy I never should have married).
I never had a problem reconciling my feminism with my desire to be married (and I still also use the term “husband,” not “partner” which occasionally gets me scowled at in feminist circles. But I just hate the term partner — it sounds as if we’re opening a law firm or something). One of the side benefits of being married (and one I hadn’t thought about previously) is the way I am able to use being married to get the students I work with (both in class and in the Women’s Center) to rethink their pre-conceptions of gender roles in heterosexual relationships. Most of the students I’ve taught or worked with in Texas and Missouri have no idea what a feminist marriage might look like (and mind you, I’m not saying mine the right or only model, but it is one) — and so I find myself having conversations about my marriage a lot and role modeling for my students. We talk about why I kept my name, why we decided not to have children, who cooks (he does), who takes out the trash (I do), how we make decisions about careers without automatically sacrificing mine (I’ve moved once for him, he’s moved once for me — if there’s a third move, it will be decided by who gets an offer and what s/he can get for the other), and how we handle our finances. For a lot of them, this is the first time they’ve seen a marriage that functions as an equal partnership and it gives them a way to reconcile their growing feminism with their desire to be married. This wouldn’t be as effective if we “only” lived together. So, while I didn’t set out thinking that I could use being married as a quasi-political statement, that has been a good side benefit.
Brenda, you bring up a great point. Part of the situation is, what does a feminist marriage (or a married feminist) look like? I don’t think I recall any married women who identified as feminist. It’s only recently that I’ve met some who self-identify as such and who are married. (This brings up a whole other bunch of issues, not the least of which is identifying as feminists.) I’m glad you have these conversations with your students. Like it our not, choosing to get married and to behave as equal partners in that relationship is a political statement of sorts. The personal is political, isn’t it?
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