Category — marriage

As you read this, I am standing somewhere near (and possibly in) the Pan Pacific hotel in Vancouver, BC getting married to Joe.

Don’t worry, I’m not typing this as I take my vows – I’m not that wired in.

I can just imagine what our wedding Tweets would look like:

Rambleicious: OMG!! I’m married!!1!

Joe: OMG – I’m having her committed!

I am writing this in the past to post in the future so you can read it in what is now your present.

Yes – I am a time travelling bride.

And…

OMG!! I’m married! Woo!!

Today’s post is all about Joe – I think he’s earned it.

I mention him from time to time: he’s the guy who brings me bananas, who never touches my bum crack in public, who is totally cool with me going away for a weekend by myself and for some reason has not smothered me in my sleep – and he could totally get away with it for these reasons (and many others too numerous to list here):

• I often stand around and read in the bathroom – even though I have absolutely no need to be in there and he’d like to use it.
• I leave water glasses all over the house.
• I leave books everywhere – even on his nightstand.
• I have woken him up yelling in my sleep (what can I say, hanging around on Angelina Jolie’s speedboat was exciting).
• I poke him awake when I am feeling hyper at 4:30 a.m.
• I tease him for being the slowest dish-washer ever.
• I bring home more books than we actually have space for.
• I can be as charming as a recalcitrant two year old when it comes to dinner some days.
• I’m a little too enthusiastic about throwing things out or donating them.
• I say evil things like, “But, sweetie – don’t you want me to be happy?” when justifying the purchase of yet another MEC bag (I only have three now – I’ve been good for a long time).
• I dedicate blog posts to him with  Backstreet Boys lyrics in the title (this all by itself would have the murder charges dropped).

Yet, he sticks around, does all the ironing, eats my cooking without complaint, brings me pretty rocks and video games, watches cartoons with me because he likes them too and is funny, cute, supportive, really smart, geeky, fun, and all round awesome.

So, just for the record Joe:

Thanks for being my best-friend.

The signs are all there: irrationally crabby, moody, easily annoyed and withdrawn.

I need a vacation.

My first thought upon realizing this was “A vacation from what exactly?”

Let’s face it, I have a pretty sweet life. I have a fantastic (and cute!) fiance who has been extremely supportive and encouraging in my quest to run my own business and do what I like for a living. He is my best-friend. We live in a nice apartment, we have lots of books and toys to amuse ourselves with and we eat like kings most nights.

But, amidst all this happy “we”, a canker is blossoming.

I need time alone. I need to get away from our nice apartment, away from my best-friend, away from our toys and routines. I need to regain my sense of space and self. I want to come home with a sense of eagerness and come back to our life with the ability and renewed desire to participate in it fully.

I felt guilty for wanting it, for needing it – I questioned myself about it endlessly. Do I love Joe less if I need to be alone? Does this mean that I’m a selfish person? Does my need to sprawl out across the whole bed without running into anyone supersede my responsibilities to our relationship?

The answer to all those things is no.

I discussed everything with Joe and I should have known that this would be his response: “You should go – a couple of days of doing nothing by yourself will be good for you.”

Rilke said it best:

“I consider the following to be the highest task in the relation between two people: for one to stand guard over the other’s solitude. If the essential nature of both indifference and the crowd consists  in the nonrecognition of solitude, then love and friendship exist in order to continually furnish new opportunities for solitude.”

My thoughts about love and relationships have changed drastically over the past two years. Yet, there is still this nagging voice in my head (the product of too many romantic films and novels) that needing to get away, alone, from your regular life for a few days was disaster in the making. That real love means merging together as one person forever and ever, it means being a mirror for the other, it means bringing them into your fully-realized world where you entertain them with endless delights and teach them how to live within you.

Now I understand fully that those perceptions are all garbage.

I don’t want to submerge myself in someone else’s personality (nor do I want them submerged in mine). I cannot be anyone’s mirror. I refuse to let some half-finished, disorderly mess of a person come and live in the internal world I’m still building for myself because they find it easier than building their own world.

I find myself agreeing with Rilke again:

“[Young people] (who by their very nature are impatient) fling themselves at each other when love takes hold of them, they scatter themselves, just as they are, in all their messiness, disorder, bewilderment…:And what can happen then? What can life do with this heap of half-broken things that they call their communion and that they would like to call their happiness, if that were possible, and their future?

And so each of them loses himself for the sake of the other person, and loses the other, and many others who still wanted to come. And loses the vast distances and possibilities…No area of human experience is so extensively provided with conventions as this one is: there are life-preservers of the most varied invention…society has been able to create refuges of every sort, for since it preferred to take love-life as an amusement, it also had to give it and easy form, cheap, safe, and sure, as public amusements are.”

Before now I had simply withdrawn deeper into myself to come to the solitude I need to be happy. Now I know that Joe and I can create space for the other to live in and leave out all the guilt that is supposed to be associated with needing that space.

So I booked my two day/two night trip to Victoria, BC (I got an amazing deal with Pacific Coach Lines) and that’s that.

Two days of keeping my own counsel and focusing on my own inner needs will go a long way to regaining and preserving my happiness!