Today was my sister’s first year wedding anniversary, which is awesome to be sure, but it still makes me roll my eyes a little. Not at her being married or anything like that, but the idea of celebrating her anniversary because she is married. My mom got her a cake and we had a little cook out and I made her a little gift to go with the whole “first anniversary gift is paper” thing, it was nice.
And yet here I sit, with the same guy for 10 years (anni was July 14th) and I don’t see any little congrats celebrations coming my way. Why? Because we’re not married. Chris and I have had a better, longer lasting relationship than over half of all married couples… what does that say about marriage? That its over glorified and rather pointless. Don’t get me wrong, planning a wedding and getting married is still something that I would find fun to do but it’s not something I need to do in order to be happy and love Chris. Chris doesn’t plan on getting married anytime soon and he loves the fact that I really don’t care one way or the other, he knows I’m not going anywhere.
10 years and I don’t think anyone I know has ever really brought it up and yet my sister makes it through one year of marriage and gets a party. Makes it through… lol maybe she earned the cake xD Anyway, I’m not looking for some sort of validation to my relationship here, I don’t need that, I am just pointing out the double standard for married couples vs non-married couples. I think the only way I will get cake is if I plan an event myself which is incredible sad when you think about it, as it shows just how much support I get for my relationship from people outside of it.
eh whatever, I don’t need other people to acknowledge the accomplishments I have had in my love life. I love Chris, he loves me, and neither of us are going anywhere. We’ll just be living happily ever after without the wedding scene. Cheers.
Well I’m giving you a cake anyway, because ten years with someone you love should be celebrated not because you “made it” like relationships are some kind of endurance trial and every year you throw a little party to celebrate not failing yet… But because why not celebrate happyness with cake and get even happier.? So here *presents awesome cake*.
Ant and I have been together 7 years this September. We both want to get married. Very much likely to each other. At some point in the future. Honestly the main reason I’m waiting is because we met and got together in High School and when I get married I want my friends and family at the wedding to be taking my marriage and relationship seriously and not thinking that because it started when we were young it probably couldn’t be real or last forever. I want them to see us as adults in love making a lifetime commitment, not teenagers in puppy love making a mistake that will probably fail at some point. I also want to wait till I’m more of an adult, probably after I hit 25, but I thought we were close to the being taken seriously by others part. Until recently when I mentioned for the first time to my mum that I had some details of my wedding planned/thought out and that Ant was more than likely going to be involved in those details. She was surprised that I was considering marrying him because I’d apparently not been with enough different people to know if I loved him properly and she thought I should date a few more people before I married. IDK, if he’d been my first boyfriend I might understand more but he was like my 10th relationship (counting some different relationships years apart with the same person separately), and my 3rd serious one. I know it all happened in HS but what part of our last 7 years together – 5 as adults – made her think we weren’t taking this relationship seriously and I wouldn’t know what I was doing if I wanted to commit to more time with him? And I know we aren’t proper adults yet, but I wasn’t planning this marriage any time soon. I obviously would like to be more grown up, independent and settled with him before it happened. But that doesn’t mean I have to pretend like I don’t plan for it to probably happen with him in the future.
On the subject of marriage not being necessary to validate a relationship though – I totally agree. Marriage is something I chose to do in the future as a personal preference. In my mind it will not make my relationship one iota more valid/real/important than a non-married relationship and it’s not some kind of inevitable conclusion to every relationship. I mean if marriage is going to make me and Ant’s relationship “real” where it previously wasn’t than that kind of dismisses the more than a decade we would have likely been together beforehand as a lesser kind of relationship which I wouldn’t see it as. I think that marriage is one way of outwardly displaying your commitment to a relationship. The only necessary form of being committed to a relationship is identifying to yourself that you are committed to whatever kind of relationship you agree you have. And to be clear I don’t mean commitment as a synonym for fidelity/normal/whatever society tells us “real” relationships have to be. I just mean it as committed to the relationship happening in whatever way it’s meant to depending on what kind of relationship it is. And I don’t even think commitment is necessarily a vital part of all relationships.
Sometimes it gets complicated being so obsessed with the intricacies and variations of relationships/romance/love/sex/etc 😛
So anyway, that’s just my giant wall of $0.02
Loved him ‘properly’? Dear God. I never understood that whole argument about how you have to date lots of different people before you learn what ‘real’ love is, frankly I think its bullshit. The person telling you that is just someone who feels that way about their own love life, it has nothing to do with actual love (and by you I don’t mean you specifically dear hehe). I find it rather insulting when someone tells me that I ‘couldn’t have known what love was at that age’ when I talk about how much I loved (and still love) my first boyfriend. Love is unique to each person, just like relationships as you so obviously know hehe
It just bugs me when people act so arrogant about something that can’t be used arrogantly. Love isn’t something that you can be superior at, it all depends on your own situation. Just because you haven’t found the right person doesn’t mean that couple down the road who has been together for 20 years is any ‘better’ at love. Actually, that makes love seem more like something akin to compromising or even cooking which is a horrendous notion to me so I am going to change the subject 😛
Thank you for the awesome cake hehe although I should point out, as you did with some of your relationships, that the ten years Chris and I have been together is actually two different relationships as we did break up once after being together for 3 years. I count the time together for a variety of reasons. And you know I also love your $0.02 🙂 hehe
Love is unique to each person, just like relationships
Love isn’t something that you can be superior at
Thankyou, yes!
I only counted seperate relationships with the same people differently in this context because they were seperate enough experiences that I felt I learned something different from each of them, and this context was about my variety of experience dating or my lack there of if you ask my mum. So normally I would say I had 7 boyfriends, 2 serious ones, not including Ant.
Yeah, make sense. Its been so long that I would have to actually think about how many boyfriends I’ve had haha that and I just work up xD
Hi, just wanted to leave my own 2 cents here. I fully agree that anybody that says you have to be with many partners to know what love is is nuts. My husband and I met and married in one year, to the angry calls of “It’ll never last.” and “They’re too young.” and “You can’t possibly know what love is.”. We even found out there was betting going on AT the wedding on how long we would last. We met in high school, May of our senior year, and married the following May. I do sometimes wish we had waited a bit, or eloped, just to not have had to listen to people run their mouths. Then, I realize that we did what WE wanted, not what others decided for us. As long as you’re thinking as a couple, it doesn’t matter if you wait a short time or a long time for that piece of legal paper. Oh, and we’ve been happily married for 9 years, together for 10, with no intention of ever parting. Take that doubters!! 😉
Love is, in my opinion, a complete and total willingness to give everything of yourself for another’s sake. When you have love like that, nothing can come between you. Not even the crazies who think they know what’s best for you.
Anyway, after reading all this, I had to throw in my 2 cents, take it or leave it. Good luck to both couples, and may you have many happy years to come. 🙂
Hey Sweetie, your 2 cents are always welcome here too hehe 🙂 Anyhow, that whole betting thing is so dumb. Honestly, talk about being a pessimistic person! But we both know Ronnie is awesome, and everyone else can just go away 😀