Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Thanks For The Marriage Advice, But No Thanks

Sometimes I don't understand how our society has developed its impressions of marriage. In the early years, you "dream" of a white wedding with tons of people. When you are a teenager, you swear to never be like your parents and never want to settle down. As you go through college, you kind of start to realize that being married and having children is something that you would like to see in your future. Then you get engaged in or shortly after graduating or after working at your first job for a while. You get married. Go on the honeymoon. But maybe by then you realize marriage isn't for you, but you start to see all your friends get married. And then....

And then everyone talks about how bad marriage is and how you should never get married. "The old lady" never lets me go out. "My messy husband" never gets off the couch.

I really just don't understand how something magical turns into something tragic.

Undesired. Unwanted.

I went to Wal-Mart on Monday to return a book. The guy in front of me was returning about 30 towels and three boxes of wine. Yes boxes of wine. I like his style.

The sweet old man that greets Wal-Mart customers had to scan EVERY single towel and box of wine, taking the elderly man a hot minute to accomplish the task.

Finally, the man doing the exchanges turned around to me and said, "Sorry, my wife thinks if something is on sale, she just buys everything!"

I laughed and thought of myself and said, "Yeah, sometimes we just think so much about saving a dollar that we forget we are spending $50 more just to get the "deal" or "saving."

"Yeah, she does that often!" He said.

I was wearing an IU hoodie and he asked me if I went to school there and we had small talk for a minute. He was impressed that I went to Bellmont because he was really into wrestling and followed us. He thought very highly the Sheets brothers and I was happy to saw John was one of my best friends in high school. In fact, I even wrestled with him a little bit. I told him I won a few matches, but we all knew it was John who could do some serious "strawberry shortcake moves!" LOL

He looked down at my ring finger and said, "You should wait to get married. You are too young."

If only I had a quarter for every single time I've heard this statement, even from the Comcast cable man who asked me if he treated me "well enough" -- okay, If I start pouring out my heart to the cable man, we know I'm in trouble.

"I am 23," I said back.

Its not like I'm 15, come on. Or even nineteen, I think that's too young. People change the most from about 18-25...I am almost done with my "most notable change" stage.

"Yeah, that's still young," he said. "I was a party man in college and I had a lot of fun. I didn't get married until I was 30! And its (our marriage) has only gotten better from then!"

"Well that's good," I said. "Because that's what works for you and you didn't marry when you weren't ready. But I'm ready. I am with my best friend who means the world to me. He supports me and encourages me to do great things, why wouldn't I want to spend the rest of my life with a person like this?"

He looked shocked and puzzled that I was that confident in my decision and commitment to get married. Listen, I'm not getting married to wear a nice dress and have a big party. Marriage is a WHOLE lot more than that and its going to be hard and its not to take work and I'm going to have to fight to make it work-- but I've given my heart away to a man who I trust 100%-- which is something I never thought I'd be able to say with my rocky relationships in the past.

"Well, congratulations- seems like you have a great guy!" He said with a sudden change of heart.

"He is," I said. "And we are happy."

"And he got you a nice ring," He added.

"Yes, he did!" I said back. "He picked it out all himself! I am so proud and happy that he picked this out for me without even me being there. He just knows me so well that he knew I'd love it. And I'm the type of girl who doesn't need a big rock.... because that won't keep the marriage together. Heck, I didn't know what a caret was- still really don't. I always just thought it was a vegetable."

Just then the cashier called him up to do his exchange. He laughed and said, "Well good luck with everything!"

I thanked him and smiled. I don't really need luck, I have destiny on my side.

Much love,
Ashley


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