Marriage Mythology
Two months and a couple of weeks until the wedding. I've been silent for a long time, I admit, but there's been a bad combination of stress and stress and more stress making me tired and unable to do much more than come home and paint and pretend that it'll all go away.
Today, for the first time in months, instead of looking at the pile of crap I'm wading through, I'm looking ahead to where it thins out, and the road opens up, and there's fresh air. I'm finding that, for the moment, the stench is tolerable, I just need to keep moving forward and stop standing in it and sulking.
We sabotage ourselves in so many ways.
Semi-obligatory wedding updates: My dress arrived on Thursday last, I go to pick it up on Friday. No I'm not showing you. Yes it's pretty. We've mostly sorted out what the attendants are wearing--although sadly we decided we needed to cut back the number of them. Five each seemed a little bit of an overkill for a simple backyard ceremony, and besides, some of our friends just couldn't afford it. Now they can sit and enjoy the ceremony and not worry about how they look in their dresses/suits, etc--which I think, were I in their shoes, I'd certainly prefer. I'm finishing up the invitation designs, will probably print them sometime in the next week or so, and start sending them out by the end of the month. Tables and tents have been rented. Need to talk to the catering company, order the cake, etc.
It's coming along.
There are a lot of myths revolving around weddings: what colors to wear or not, what time to get married or not, what to carry, what to put in your shoe, who stands on which side, what everyone throws, etc.
There's one myth I want to talk about right now though, one that bothers me a bit. Some person John knows keeps telling him that as soon as we're married I'm going to clamp down on him, change him, and make him stop looking at other women.
She's utterly convinced that I'm going to start picking out his clothes for him. She thinks I'm going to stop him from doing things he likes. She tells him almost every day that once he's married, he's never going to be allowed to look at another woman again.
Now, while I may not always like what John wears (c'mon, he's male and utterly straight, which makes his fashion sense somewhat questionable at times), I'm not his mother. If he's wearing something embarrassing in public, it's his ego, not mine. I might get the itch to hide his checkered Vans, or toss out those tapered leg jeans that I loathe, but I probably won't do so. Why? Because as I said: I'm not his mother. He's an adult. If he chooses to walk around looking like the poster child for "What Not to Wear" that's his business, not mine. I might make suggestions, but I'm not going to toss half of his wardrobe. Mine, however, is another story.
I'm also not going to force him to give up the things he likes. That's just asinine. I love John: for who he is. And part of who he is, is what he enjoys doing. That includes martial arts (even though I have visions of him loping off bits with pointy objects with scary regularity), drinking more coffee than seems humanly possible, playing video games, and arguing with his son. Okay... maybe I'm gonna work on that last one. There's only so much bickering a woman can take.
As to the last... On what planet do you snap your fingers and all of a sudden every other female turns invisible to your mate? He's human. He's male. He's gonna look--and nothing I can say or do is going to change that. In fact, I think I'd start worrying if he STOPPED appreciating pretty women.
The key word here, is "look." I have no problem whatsoever with him looking. When it crosses into touching, then we're dealing with another problem altogether. But looking? Hell, I look at other men all the time. I'm an artist. I spend more time than most women looking at photos of hot guys with rippling abs and bulging muscles wearing jeans that look like they've been painted on (and in some cases, have been). I look. I appreciate. I enjoy. I'm not gonna touch, though.
Why? Because in the end, those muscular Adonis's aren't John. They're not the warm, sleepy, slightly sweaty man with questionable fashion sense who tucks me against him at night and pets my hair like I'm something precious to him. They're not going to wake up and leave their coffee mug sitting on my counter half full until midafternoon when they reheat it in the microwave. They're not the man who reaches out and wraps his big hand around mine and argues with me, patiently, about the existence of ninjas.
And I know, that he knows, that all of those busty, slutty, bimbo babes out there aren't me--and they wouldn't let him wear those checkered Vans in public at all.