'Til Death Do Us Part

About a month ago, Rob and I attended the most beautiful wedding I think I have ever been to. Honestly, I cried like every 20 minutes. It was so intimate because of Covid, it was so special because of the people who were getting married and it was so gorgeous because the venue was perfect, and the Ohio fall weather was the most pleasant it could have possibly been. After a delicious dinner and plenty of dancing, all the good vibes got me thinking about my own wedding. A lot of people ask me how I went from ardently against the institution of marriage to asking someone to marry me in seemingly under a year. Well, here it is…

When I was younger, because of the way marriage is portrayed so heavily as the end all be all, I dreamed of my wedding, my dress and all the fixin’s. But, as I got older, saw marriages establish and dissolve in front of my eyes and I, myself started having longer term relationships, I realized that perhaps maybe marriage isn’t all that it is cracked up to be. The cost of some weddings nowadays can buy you a small house and the current statistic is that some 40% of marriages end in divorce anyways. I am a fairly headstrong, stubborn, Aquarius so over time, that small realization blossomed into a complete distaste for the thought of legally binding yourself to another. For me, what seemed idyllic was a Goldie Hawn/Kurt Russell, life partner situation and I pretty much held this belief until I actually got married. I might still hold this belief if it weren’t for the situation that brought Rob and I together.

I have had a crush on Rob since the day that I met him. It all started when I quoted a line from the movie Hot Fuzz and he answered me with the next line in the movie. I was gobsmacked! I had NEVER met someone who had even heard of the movie, let alone knew it well enough to continue the dialogue. It was also his musical taste that led to hearts in my eyes. I hadn’t really met anyone who liked more than half of the music I liked. There were usually some minor overlaps with people but for the most part I was in a place where other people weren’t. Don’t get me wrong, there is even some music for instance, Gogol Bordello and Andrew Bird, that Rob says is a hard pass. But the circumstances with which I met Rob, him being the manager of the restaurant I worked at, didn’t make the desired outcome seem possible. Namely because it was very much frowned upon and he is hard worker and he wouldn’t be the one who lost their job. It was ok though because I had plenty of things to focus on like school, plus in less than a year I knew I was moving to NYC for a bit and he had other things too, like his new girlfriend.

Fast forward to 2 years later: Rob and I started dating in secrecy after I came home from globetrotting for 9 months, I graduated college and we packed up and moved to Columbus, still very much planning living the domestic partnership life until the end of our days. But then I started thinking, I have never met a man who cares so much about me or my success as Rob does. He cares about our financial future, my credit health, my actual health and my career goals and aspirations. Not only that but, he is down for the ride. Our one-year of dating anniversary was approaching, and I was trying to figure out how I could show him all the love and support he shows me. I felt that my appreciation for this man would never change. I got a crazy idea and then it just happened. Sitting on the couch one day watching tv, I told him how I felt about him, I said that because we had had to hide our love for so long, we couldn’t celebrate it for what it is and I felt that we had something more special than just boyfriend/girlfriend. He looked at me and said, “Is this you asking me to marry you?”, I responded with a shy, “Yes”. He then said, “Of course I will marry you! When?” I said, “I don’t know, at the courthouse in like a month?”. So, just two weeks shy of our one-year anniversary, we eloped at the courthouse with our good friend as a witness.

I think the reason I was most against marriage is because it seems constrictive. If something is going wrong or it is unhealthy, it’s difficult to leave. There is a lengthy, expensive process you must go through to free yourself. Whereas if you’re only life partners, you can simply walk away. I think what I learned when I met Rob is that marriage can be more like a promise of mutual respect. A promise that I respect you enough not to just walk away, that I will put work in. It isn’t about the word marriage or saying my husband/wife, we don’t even wear our wedding rings that often (only when we gettin’ fancy). It is about the respect for the relationship we have with one another and it is a sentiment that I have grown up enough to consider not just me and my feelings but also, you and your feelings and I promise to continue to do so. They say the first year of marriage is the hardest and ours consisted of starting new careers, me having cancer, a pandemic, one of us furloughed, getting by on one income and quarantine. But with Rob, I haven’t found any one of those or all combined to be insurmountable. On our one-year of marriage anniversary, over cheers at dinner I said, “I hate to break it to you babe, but I think we’re gonna be married for a while”. He responded, “I’m ok with that”.