on being a wife

It took me thirty years, but I finally convinced a rather handsome man that I'm the best he can do. And it took a lot less effort than you might think. All you have to do is keep all your worst traits locked in a dark cellar until he's lulled into a false sense of security. 

I know what you're thinking. I'd rather have someone love me for me. That's unrealistic.  Think of all the things you do when no one's looking. Actually, think of what you look like when you get up in the middle of the night to pee. That person staring you in the mirror through one squinty eye is who you really are. That's the person who relishes the splat of pus from a popped zit, whose pubic hair sometimes pokes through her spandex capris because she refuses to wear underwear to yoga, and who has maybe once called in sick because Barneys was having a sale. Is that the kind of person you imagined committing a lifetime to? 

I can hear you saying, "But that's what love isssss. It's accepting another person in all their unsavory glory. It's unconditional." No, that's what parenting is. Romantic love is a much more fickle and fragile being. It requires constant maintenance. It needs patience, understanding, seduction, a good sense of humor—and bathroom doors. 

Thank god once you're married you can leave all that behind. You can stop holding your stomach in. You can lay spread-eagled on the couch watching The Mindy Project. You can suck Cheetos dust off your fingers with an enthusiasm you used to reserve for...erm, popsicles, and then wipe your spit-soaked hand on the sweatpants you've been wearing all weekend. Or worse. Because now you have a legal contract that creates an administrative nightmare should your partner decide he can't take the smell of your armpits for one more day. 

But if you're lucky, the basically perfect human being you're married to makes you want to be better than the creature that shuffles around in the middle of the night cursing at the furniture for being in its path to the toilet. That's a nice thought, isn't it? 

Of course, we've only been married for three weeks. There's still time to let myself go. 

boys

The first boy to ever enter my orbit wore sweat suits and smelled like Play-Doh. I noticed him because he was climbing up the slide of our classroom jungle gym ignoring our teacher’s wild threats of a timeout if he didn’t come down immediately. In all my four years, I had never seen a creature so terrifying. I spent the next six months following him around recess, hoping he’d notice my dress. I think he finally did when we were juniors in high school.

In the years in between, other boys caught my eye and broke my heart without ever acknowledging my existence. This is probably because just as they were beginning to realize that girls were more than just playground targets, I blossomed into a gawky adolescent with mild-to-moderate acne and crooked teeth.

My early teen years felt long and unkind, but eventually I grew into my limbs and learned of the sorcery of salicylic acid. The day I got my braces off, I swanned out of the orthodontist’s office thinking finally—finally—I would be in the pretty camp. Then I got home, looked in the mirror, and cried.

I had straight teeth, but my nose still had a monopoly on the middle of my face and my hair was doing its weird frizzy-cowlick-y thing that wasn’t particularly flattering. I’m not sure what kind of power I thought braces possessed, but I marched right out to the living room and told my parents they had been ripped off. No one was ever going to like me. And surely that’s what they’d paid all that money for.

“No one” is of course an exaggeration. I had a lot of friends, just no suitors. I was tired of being appreciated for my sharp tongue and good grades. Intelligence be damned, I wanted to be liked for my looks. So, I sought out guys who seemed like they might go for my brand of awkward splendor. Unfortunately, American high schools are not heaving with teenage boys who are quite so evolved. The pickings were slim.

That was okay with me. I only needed one all-consuming crush. Adam was it: tall and gangly, with a ridiculous laugh and his own set of braces. Upon meeting him for the first time, I thought he is me as a boy and promptly fell in love. But girls adored me as a boy. A mouth full of metal and a little flamboyance are but speed bumps when the boy in question is funny and popular. Adam was both of those things in spades.

It was only the fact that he was a year younger than me that made him seem less intimidating. My friends talked to his friends. He wrote his phone number on the back of his school picture like it was his business card, and had one of his teammates give it to me after a soccer game. I pretended that wasn’t a disturbing gesture and called him the very next day. Thus began the two most humiliating years of my romantic life.

Adam and I made out in empty stairwells at school and in his basement. (This makes him sound like my Jordan Catalano. Picture less brooding and more pastels.) We passed notes and I drove him home. But we were never officially a couple. I just happened to be available when he wasn’t parading down the halls with girls who wore Abercrombie & Fitch. With every khaki-clad snub, I would halfheartedly listen to my girlfriends lecture me on how guys are supposed to treat you, thinking if I were prettier, he would like me more.

Now, when I look at old high school photos, I want to leap into them and shake the skinny girl with slumped shoulders. Sure, there were a couple of awkward years, but they probably built character. Once the braces came off and my acne cleared up, I was alright. But I couldn’t see it at all. My self-worth was too wrapped up in how attractive I was to other people. Specifically, to the boys I liked.

Once in awhile, a memory of Adam slinks into my mind and I think about all the things I should have said. Like the time he asked me to drive some circuitous route out of the school parking lot so no one would see us leaving together. It would have hurt me less if he’d physically punched me, but I whispered “okay” and did what he asked. In my fantasy, I stop the car, walk around to the passenger side, open his door, tell him to get out (calmly, but using many expletives) and never speak to him again.

My dad is fond of saying, “We teach people how to treat us.” I’ve never liked hearing it, but it’s true in that way parental offerings often, annoyingly, are. I let Adam walk all over me because I didn’t think I deserved any better. At 16, I didn’t have the gumption to say, “Hey, you can’t treat me like that.” I was too concerned with making him like me. Turns out, you can’t make anyone like you.  

It didn’t occur to me until my early 20s that what mattered most was if I liked me—and not just how I looked, but who I was. To my own astonishment, I actually did. (Most of the time, anyway.) That realization changed everything. It’s made me choose better partners. To care less what other people think of me. And to stand up for myself.

I can’t go back in time and stop my teenage self from wasting the hours I spent consumed with insecurity, certain that if only I were different or better in some way my life would be easier. She wouldn’t listen to me anyway. But I hope someday I can pass this wisdom onto a daughter of my own, who I pray, if she listens to nothing else, will never call a guy who writes his phone number on the back of a tiny photo of himself.

great expectations

When marriage first hit the scene, people lived to be about 23. "Till death do us part" might have only meant until next winter. It was a safe bet. These days, we're looking at a 50-year dance. And while I can't imagine doing that dance with anyone other than M, I'm a little scared.

It has nothing to do with my feelings for him. It might even be the opposite. Every time I look at his little face, I have an overwhelming urge to squeeze him to death. Literally to death. I fear for the safety of our future children. Still, I've listened to enough Tina Turner to wonder "what's love got to do with it?" 

I doubt that very many people go into marriage expecting it to fail. Yet, overwhelmingly, it does. We're both children of divorce. We've seen how this could end. It doesn't instill a lot of faith in the institution. This is probably why I keep asking myself some variation of the same questions. Is marriage going to change us? Will I be a good wife? Is it possible to remain loyal to one person forever? Should I tell him that I might have been born a boy? (I mean, I wasn't obviously, but just to see how he takes really horrible news. Definitely a no on the last one? Fine.) 

What I'm feeling can't be that uncommon, but no one seems to talk about it. People get engaged and plan their weddings with an exuberance that I reserve for tater tots coming out of the oven. My priorities have always been a bit askew. So instead of throwing myself into venue scouting, I gaze at my ring and hope that we have what it takes to make it through a lifetime together. 

Nonetheless, I did buy a magical 3.1 Phillip Lim dress last week. And it's white, rendering me a total hypocrite. We'll get there. 

i am the wedding grinch

He's perfect. I don't deserve him.

We have dipped our toes into wedding planning. And then we sat down on the edge of the pool and gazed at each other for awhile. We got engaged three months ago. You'd think we'd be further along than having a shared Google doc entitled "wedding." 

I keep telling myself things like, "Everyone moves at their own pace!," "What's the rush?!," "We want something unconventional anyway!," but inertia is a dangerous thing. Have you seen The Four-Year Engagement? In spite of its adorable San Francisco finale, I don't want that to be to us. 

Yet, I feel like I'm supposed to take the reins because I'm the lady. Ladies are supposed to be mega into this shit. The 40 billion dollars that the wedding industry rakes in every year suggests that at least one party is pretty jazzed about centerpieces. Why isn't it me? 

My fear is that my inability to muster enthusiasm for wedding planning means something. That it represents some kind of feminine failure. Worse, that it means I won't be a good wife. If i can't even make a guest list, how are we going to file joint taxes? That doesn't even make sense.  

I think my problem is this: society still stuffs down our throats the notion that a woman has three major life moments - her engagement, her wedding, the birth of her babies. I might have just made those up. My point is, these are built up to be the greatest days of our lives, but what if you're sort of "meh" about that list? That's how I feel. I don't want to be told when I'm supposed to be peaking. I also don't want to ruin all the days up to THE GREATEST DAY OF MY LIFE preparing for it. And what if it turns out not to be the greatest day of your life? Well, I guess you might as well just kill yourself. 

I don't need that kind of pressure. I need a stiff drink.  

behave yourself

Discovering a word that exquisitely captures one of your greatest flaws is extremely liberating. At worst, it encourages you to continue on your self-defeating path because it's gratifying to see yourself in the dictionary. At best, it provides solace, proving that you are not alone in your neuroses. Which, again, sort of makes you shrug your shoulders and think, oh why bother? 

Akrasia is a word derived from an ancient greek term meaning weakness of will. More elegantly and accurately put, it is "a perplexing tendency to know what we should do combined with a persistent reluctance to actually do it." That is me all over, and it's probably you, too. 

Philosophers as early as Plato and modern psychologists have tried to explain why we often do X when we know and believe Y to be better. It seems the best anyone's come up with is that we act on conflicting motivations. In other words, reason and logic are but mathematical equations we choose to ignore.  

The whole world is X-ing when we should be Y-ing, and the worst part is that we know it. We're well aware of our nonsensical X-ing, yet we carry on. It's fascinating. 

I have no lesson to offer here, but doesn't it make you feel just a tiny bit better to know there's a nice Greek word to blame for at least one of your shortcomings?   

things i have lied about

To say that I never lie would be, well, a lie. I just save them for special occasions. Not because I'm especially virtuous, but because I always assume I'll be caught. It's probably because from as early as I can remember, whenever I told a lie, my mom knew instantly.

One thing you should know about my mom: the woman makes Sherlock look like he runs a detective agency for babies. I'm not sure if she actually has super powers or she secretly works for the FBI, but it's scary what she can unearth with barely a squinted-eye glance in your direction. Maybe it's a mom thing. 

When I started 4th grade, I decided I was ready to shave my legs. She disagreed. I understand now why she said no (because what kind of demonic Lolita needs to shave her legs at nine?!), but at the time I thought she was being completely unreasonable. So I did what any clever child of divorce would do. I shaved my legs at my dad's house and wore pants at my mom's. Boom. Flawless plan. 

She sniffed me out in less than a week. 

I guess the fact that I'd stopped bugging the shit out of her with gym class sob stories and coupons for Nair set off her Spidey sense, because she got me one Sunday night when my dad dropped me off. She didn't even wait for him to leave. She just casually brushed her hand against my leg as he put me down from a hug. 

"Did you shave your legs?," she asked

"What?! No!"

"Then what happened to your leg hair?"

"You know, that is a good question."

"Don't you dare lie to me."

"I'm not!"

My dad was not at all prepared for this. I still let him pick me up for hugs, for god's sake. That I'd wanted to shave my legs was shocking news to him. And now I was a liar. It took them approximately 30 seconds to agree on my punishment. I would have no friends or phone for a week and I'd write them each a letter of apology on why it was wrong to lie. I found out it had to be a two unique letters when I tried to get my dad to drive me to the library so I could photocopy the first one. They ran a tight ship. 

However, I might note that I did get to keep shaving my legs. They said it was because, "We weren't punishing you for shaving your legs. It was that you lied about it." That lesson has stuck with me ever since. Okay, not ever since. It took awhile to sink in, but as I grew up, I got it. The lie magnifies the crime. Even now that I live 3000 miles away, I think of those letters I had to write when I'm tempted to bend the truth a little.

Of course, I still sometimes make up unnecessarily elaborate excuses for why I'm unavailable because it hurts people's feelings to say you'd rather read than hang out with them. Though I think this gets into some sticky white lie territory. Or maybe I'm acting out. 

we will not be going to the chapel

In high school, I fantasized about having a murder mystery wedding in a castle with Weezer as the cover band. I'm not kidding. Weezer was in their heyday back then. I figured they'd be just washed up enough to be ready to accept wedding gigs by the time I was getting married. Blasphemy, I know. Anyway, I've moved past that. Now I'd like Chromeo to DJ our wedding and I don't want it to resemble the game Clue.

If M had his druthers, we'd go to City Hall next week and make it official without any fanfare at all. I'm not far behind him, but I think we would regret it if we didn't celebrate with our nearest and dearest. In other words, our moms would be sad. So we're having a party. What kind of party, you ask? Well I'm not sure, but I've thought about it enough to come to terms with the fact that Chromeo will probably not be there. That's fine. I've been waiting my whole life to make the ultimate wedding playlist.

In order for us all to maintain realistic expectations, here are a few other things that our wedding will probably not feature:

a big white dress

As a good friend put it, I'm "more 'suck my wang' than Vera Wang." It's true. If this is going to be my sartorial apex, I want to wear Tom Ford. Or Jason Wu. Or Chloe. As a regular human being, you don't have a lot of opportunities to buy the designer dress of your dreams. This is my moment. I'm not squandering it on a something I can never wear again. 

"here comes the bride" 

The thought of walking down an aisle while everyone looks at me is nauseating. And since it's MY BIG DAY, I can have whatever I want. That's how this works, isn't it? That's what I thought. Well, we'd like to keep the ceremony portion of the evening to an absolute minimum. No wedding march. No bouquet that someone else will need to hold while we exchange our vows. No la-di-da. And I don't need to be "given away," thankyouverymuch.

bridesmaids 

Bridesmaids, the movie, was hysterical. But it had a $32 million budget, Kristen Wiig and projectile vomiting. We can't top that. And as mentioned, this thing's going to be short and sweet. We'd rather our friends just come and dance their asses off, wearing whatever they like.

cocktail hour followed by dinner 

We want everyone drinking from beginning to end. There will be no time for sitting down and making awkward conversation with whomever we've chosen to seat you next to. We promise to have food, but it will be bite-sized and passed around by disarmingly attractive people. Or midgets. We haven't decided yet.  

cake 

WTF! No cake?! Then you're not coming? Good. Because we're trying to keep it under 75 people. Actually, there might be cake, but it won't be white or tiered or iced in fondant. In fact, it might be pie. We'll let you know on the invitations so you can decide whether or not to attend. 

Listen, I know I sound like the wedding grinch. It's just that, well, we're paying for this ourselves and all we want is to celebrate with our friends and family in a way that feels meaningful to us without dissolving our savings. The fact that it won't involve a bridal party or a white dress or many of the traditional trappings isn't a dig to everyone who has had those things. They're just not us. We hope you'll still come and celebrate us becoming a little family. Did I mention the open bar?