The whole affair was rather drab and uninteresting, except for the part where it was actually a kind of shot-gun wedding, since the happy couple had only met 3 weeks ago.
My friend, L, had always wanted to be married. I have only known her for about 2 years, but this she tells me on rather a regular basis. Last year she was married to someone else, but by January of this year she had unwillingly become a lonely divorcee. Having always been attracted to straight women, I naturally tried to get some action. Alas, however, I did not get very far.
L met her new husband- the guy she married last night- on a blind date. It was at a friend’s braai and there were a whole bunch of straight people doing straight things like drinking beer out of mugs and talking about sport and stuff. The Groom was there but he was not the blind date, some other guy was.
Anyway, the details are sketchy (mostly because I don’t care to remember them), but the blind date guy disappeared and the Groom became a part of L’s life. In fact, he proudly stood up last night and told us all how he had taken her on a weeklong hike just to “push her to the limit” and see what she is made of. What he didn’t say is that there were 2 other girls there who were also vying for his affections, in a sort of Survivor-meets-The Bachelor type game show. Luckily for L though, the other 2 girls didn’t last long and promptly left on day 4 of the hike.
Just as L was about to give up as well the Groom proposed.
Obviously she had passed this endurance test of love, and now she would get what she wanted- a husband. I don’t know how ethical it is to make people compete and do a lot of rugged hiking to win your affections, but hey what do I know?
Very little. That’s what.
At the reception afterwards, I was seated next to a married couple who had been together for 10 years. That amazed me. I asked them what the secret it to their longevity as a couple and both of them said they didn’t really have an answer. Later I found out that they are in fact on the brink of a divorce, and that if it wasn’t for the fact that they have 3 kids they probably would have gotten divorced years ago.
That, to me, is very depressing. There I was, trying to believe in Love and willing myself to be happy for my friend’s new marriage, but now faced yet again with the painful eventuality of most relationships. If you look at most relationships, there is a clear point at which the relationship begins to fall apart. Its kind of like a hill- half of the relationship is building it up, and then the other half is the slow and relentless disintegration of that which was built.
Most people stay in relationships because they are scared of being alone. And for others it seems to be that this is a decision they make and are quite dedicated to. Its like they have decided that a part of their identity will be defined by being “married” or “in a relationship”, and so they cannot not be a part of a relationship. And so they submit themselves to grueling hikes and do all kinds of stupid and degrading things.
We’ve all done it- compromised ourselves for someone else.
I am not going to lie and say that I wouldn’t like to be in a warm, loving relationship, but I do know that I need to set limits and boundaries for myself in order to preserve what little dignity and self-respect I still have. Why, just last night I got so depressed with the whole marriage thing that I ended up getting drunk and stoned, and woke up this morning feeling sad and dirty. Now I will have to clean compulsively in order to remove the invisible dirt in my brain, which is caused whenever I do something I shouldn’t.
So I guess the conclusion of this story is that love is a choice. If you want to live ”happily ever after” you are going to have to working your ass off to make that happen. Which makes me think that maybe that whole hiking thing might actually be a good idea.
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