Matt here.
I went to a hot yoga class today. The first time I did hot yoga was with the guy from this post, so I've been thinking about him on and off. I'm fitter now than I was in college, largely thanks to having a roommate who doubles as a gym buddy and the specter of Navy boot camp looming, and I did pretty well. Kinda wish that guy could see me now.
It's one of those faint sort of longings that you can hold on to for a moment and then let go of.
***
The friend who went to yoga with me is freshly married! He and his husband were among the first batch to be married at City Hall in San Francisco after the supreme court decisions. They didn't tell anyone--just went and did it. They figured ten years was long enough to wait, and the big celebration can come later. He's all full of talk about caterers and locations . . . it's sweet.
Probably no one is surprised to find that marriage is on my mind. Being Californian, Prop 8 was a big deal, and being a Navy applicant, so was DOMA. And they were both made even bigger by the fact that I met a boy recently, a boy who makes me feel the fire inside. Not, ironically, from the Bay Area. Between him and the rulings, I had a few reasons to think about marriage.
So I called my sister. We talked for an hour or so about who's and why's and how's. I worry about the commitment, I told her. I worry about falling out of love. I worry that I'm not experienced enough to be a good judge of when I'm in love, and that the simple logistics of the thing won't work out. These are things that I've generally been able to push out of my mind because I was at BYU or I wanted to get a career going or there was no chemistry or I was in Japan or it was illegal. But, as my sister pointed out, I'm at the age now (24) where it's normal to start looking at starting to look at looking at thinking about coming close to maybe someday deciding to start a family, if that's something that I want to do.
She brought up hard times. She's happy now, eight years in, she said, but for the first few years of married life she wanted out over and over again. More than once she was ready to go, and the only thing that held her back was her Mormonism. And her question for me was, minus Mormonism, what's going to keep me in a relationship during the times when I can't stand the guy?
Love? Hope? I'm not sure. I hope, probably unrealistically, that those times won't happen. Heck, I don't even know if things with this guy will go anywhere to begin with. I'll keep thinking about it. And if you have any advice about deciding to commit to someone, feel free to comment or email.
***
For your viewing and listening pleasure: All American Boy (It's a gay country song.)
*insert queer critique of marriage and relationships lasting a lifetime*
ReplyDeleteNow that that's out of the way...
To be honest, my judgment upon initially meeting a potential romantic interest is clouded by butterflies and giddiness. I've really taken to the approach of getting to know someone as a person (while remembering my butterflies for said individual). It is this way that I can see if I'd be able to sustain a relationship and life with someone.
It could be something that the person does or is that keeps you in the relationship. Or maybe it could be yourself: knowing yourself, your emotions, and how you handle things, so that you personally can survive the hard times because of how well you know yourself.
Ideas, if anything.
There will always be days when you know it would be easier alone. What keeps me going in a relationship where both of us have baggage etc.is remembering to see his innate innocence, and a firm belief in the inherent good of relationships. It is critical to find someone that has the same view of relationships as yourself.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the other Anonymous! It's super important to have someone who has the same view of relationships as you do. Mormonism leads to a set of views, and to some degree you'll probably retain a lot of them, so you aren't that different from your sister. I also feel like living together before marriage helps you figure out how to live together and negotiate places. I'm getting married soon and I'm having a hard time thinking of how it will be different in a day-to-day sense.
ReplyDelete