I'm tired. I'm always tired with the anemia but last night I didn't get much sleep and I don't anticipate getting much tonight. It's a weird feeling because I'm tired but not...tired, if that makes sense. Like my body is tired but my brain is rebelling and so I stay awake.
I got into a lively discussion today with friends about marriage and family and whether "forever" is even possible anymore. And, if it's not, then why is that? All of us had at least one couple in our families that were married 20 years or more, yet none of us have been able to keep a relationship together for longer than 6 years. Friend A always wanted to get married and was engaged to her high school sweetheart, until he told her he didn't want to get married. It was so important to her that she ended it with him and, a decade later, is happily unmarried to Friend E (whom she also met in high school). Friend N is a bit of a commitment-phobe who has always been in and out of relationships but wants to have a family sooner rather than later. Friend R was briefly married and is on the fence about doing it again. And Friend G has been married a year and tends to lean towards the old fashioned side when it comes to relationships. And by now, ya'll know where I stand on it so this was basically a convo where 90% of the participants were anti-marriage.
I don't have many friends who are married. Whole lotta engagements in my crew but nothing that's actually made it to the altar. My mom once told me that every chick is marriage minded because they're wired that way and warned that if I was waiting for one who wasn't before I committed, I was going to end up a confirmed bachelor. Mind you, my mother would auction me off to be married to the highest bidder at this point and she thinks that women "let their men off too easy" by not getting married. Curiously, she does not bother my sister about getting hitched even though she's been with the same dude for 14 years. But I can tell you that my sister is definitely not a marriage minded chick and she never has been. Why I'm supposed to take a wife even though I don't want one is beyond me. Maybe it's a mom thing. Anyway, I've never told my mom I'm a definite 'no' on marriage because I don't want the argument that would bring. I'm sure she knows anyway cuz mothers know everything but I don't tell and she don't ask and we're both just fine with things as they are.
So all that said, I threw my mom's view that it's women who have played the biggest part in this whole trend of not getting married, by not "requiring" (for lack of a better word) it from their dudes. All but Friend N have met my mother and were not surprised by her point of view. But no one really agreed. Marriage is a two person dance and it can be just as important to dudes as it is to the ladies. You want what you want and if you want to get hitched, you'll find someone like minded (or at least you should if you know it's something you need). I think that subject should be discussed fairly early on so everyone's on the same page. The one thing the whole party agreed with is that marriage isn't what it used to be. It's not this big, epic, til death commitment. If I ever did make that kind of commitment (cuz, you know, we could all take a journey into the Twilight Zone), that's how I would go into it. When I got engaged, it was something I intended to do only once and I was fully committed to her and the decision. But at the same time I feel like if I chose to have more kids with someone, that would be a bigger commitment than marriage. It would for me anyway. But I don't think in terms of forever anymore since I did that once and it didn't work out the way we wanted it to and that word haunted me for years afterward. So I guess what's possible varies depending on who you talk to and the experiences they've had.
