Finding Creativity in the Construct

Navigating the messy middle of being engaged

I had 16 months between getting engaged and getting married to wrestle with the decision to say (and mean) “I Do”.

16 lovely months to look deep within and analyze and rethink and wonder and make sure I was truly ready before taking the leap to legally join lives with another. Wedding planning only seemed to add insult to injury: after all, who wants to plan the biggest party of their life when they are simultaneously feeling the most unsteady and anxious of their life?

Why do people do this? I often wondered. The huge life transition of getting married is already vulnerable enough and now we’re going to invite an audience of 200 people to watch?!

I felt see-through, like everyone must see my doubt and wobbliness; and then invisible because nobody did. They just kept clapping for the milestone, covering me in a well-meaning chorus of questions and enthusiasm: “How’s wedding planning going?” “It’s getting so close!” “Are you getting excited?!”

So much anticipation. So much hype. So much prescribed emotion.

This was just not my jam.

I kept having a particularly haunting fear that I wouldn’t feel how I wanted to feel on my wedding day - joyful, in awe, brimming with emotion and love. The kind others could see. The people-pleasing part of myself had woken up and now suddenly wanted to be acceptable to others. To perform for them. To not let them down. How annoying. I thought I was past this.

I lived in the questions and noisy parts that piped up daily. It was like playing whac-a-mole with my internal world.

I kept talking to my therapist. I journaled a lot and let everything seep out onto the page, hoping it would stay there for good so I could finally feel at peace. As the days and weeks rolled on, I tried to remain calm. I realized I was seeking a feeling of total cellular certainty in my body - to get to the other side of all of the questions and fears and reach a place of safety and ease. A YES that I felt deep in my bones - like but of course this getting married thing is what I truly want. I wanted it to feel NATURAL.

I was afraid I’d feel this way forever. Anxious. Clenched. Unsure. Like a fraud for being unsure. Guilty that I didn’t feel the way I thought I was “supposed” to feel. ANGRY - at all of the itchy traditions that I did not consent to but felt were being thrust upon me; the wedding machine; the pressure society puts on brides and getting married in general. I was angry at myself for allowing all of this to happen to me - for feeling frozen in a 16-month long spotlight I wanted to enjoy but much of the time, didn’t. And most of all, angry that I cared so much about things I claimed not to care about: What other people think. Looking a certain way. Pomp and circumstance.

It was the construct and its connotations that irked me - never my fiancé. Why were we tightening our grip on a relationship that felt so freeing and right? Wouldn’t that just make it worse? Again, why do people do this?!

Eventually I realized that the majority of my fears stemmed from questions of personal identity. I was stubbornly committed to making a choice that felt authentic more than anything else; a choice I could comfortably live with in my skin - forever. Better for everyone involved that I figure this out now rather than later, right?

Was getting married a true desire of mine or was I signing up for a life that would ultimately dilute my purest sense of self?

I felt trapped imagining a nightmare of societally-dictated dominos all laid out in a row:

Get married. Have kids. Be stressed. Lose all your free time. Pour out for others. Die.

Dramatic, I know.

I never did find that perfect pocket of calm I was looking for - the kind where all of the cells relax and the body gives its full permission to enter into the unknown. What I did find was a glimmer of hope in considering all of the fear and uncertainty I felt before going to college and again before making the leap to spend a year abroad in England. I remembered how some of the biggest shifts in my life began with HUGE RESISTANCE and resulted in HUGE AWE. Maybe this would be the case with tying the knot (again with these terrorizing terms!) too.

At a certain point I made the decision - no matter how many conflicting emotions I was feeling around getting married - it was absolutely happening for me. I’d give it a go! I’d try it out! I loved this man! I would be walking down that aisle no matter how much discomfort it brought up. I would get to the other side of this and see how it all felt.

Luckily I had a fiancé - who was cool as a cucumber and claimed no qualms about getting married to my rollercoastery self- that made it his mission to lighten everything up. In the mix of this internally tight-fisted time were so many moments of reassurance and support from him. So much silliness and laughter. He looked for countless ways to soften the blow of all of the traditions and formalities without ever invalidating my feelings. Wow. We wore the same outfit to one of our wedding showers (see pic attached) just to make ourselves laugh. We became an even stronger team, a creative force navigating the wedding machine on our own terms and in our own style. At every point he reminded me - you can still be authentically you. We can still be authentically us.

Slowly I began to soften to this idea: maybe it was about finding creativity in the construct. Authenticity in the onslaught of perceived expectations. Freedom in the structure of lifelong commitment.

Still, I needed some very specific reassurance: I needed to know that getting married wouldn’t be a CAGE. I needed to know that our marriage wouldn’t look at all like the lifeless pictures my imagination was conjuring up. I needed to know we wouldn’t be playing any sort of fixed roles as ‘husband’ and ‘wife’. That I would still feel a sense of individuality and aliveness coursing through my veins. I needed to know that our life would feel as juicy and expansive after getting married as it did before.

…more next week!