How's Married Life?

I separated 3 packs of M&Ms by color to decorate this
Eurovision-Dusseldorf cake... for love.

1. How's married life?
2. Does it feel different being married?
3. What's your new name?

These are the most common questions I've fielded since my wedding, and that can mean only one thing: the People demand a Shut Up and Love blog post on these three topics.

Here's a full report, eight dear readers: weddings and marriages have nothing to do with each other.


Married life is good. It's less eventful than wedding planning, and as my mother says, "People with boring lives are blessed." Joining finances is a chore, but no more than hydrating after a night of heavy drinking.  We came back to Georgia after the wedding, unpacked, and checked Facebook hourly for wedding pictures. We returned to work with new jewelry and hosted our first party as a married couple to watch the Eurovision finals. 

Then, we packed for a honeymoon visiting family in Germany followed by three serrano-and-tinto-de-verano-fueled days of doting on each other in Madrid.  Have a look thanks to my husband's new video hobby:


Being married is different, or at least a magnification of the long-term relationship. Sure, it is a game to use the unworn phrases "my wife" or "my husband" with the straightest face you can muster - and lose. :) 

More importantly, because we have committed to working out our differences FOREVERRRRRR, the little things become (probably always were) ridiculous to fight about. Even my outlook's chilled out a bit. I'm not indignant anymore that saptastic Azerbaijan won Eurovision. They seem so sincere.



Marriage is also different, because others treat us differently.  You always hear that men are afraid their partners will change after marriage; they don't tell you some people will be offended if you DON'T change after marriage.  Some have taken offense at my name staying the same as when they first met me, for example, or look sideways if my husband and I don't RSVP the same way to an event. 

Isn't it ironic?  You wait to marry until you find a partner who loves you just the way you are - and I found one fiercely protective of my characteristic independence - but as soon as you get engaged, seemingly reasonable people started projecting all kinds of assumptions on to you: about what marriage indicates, about a woman's ambitions, her priorities, which direction her weight will change, and identity. 

• I resent my love being usurped as proof that being married is inherently better than being single; it isn't. 
• I was not faulty or incomplete before I met my Beloved; everyone is born perfect in their beauty.  
• My priorities were already in an honorable order, thankyouverymuch, and that's what brought the boys to the yard. 
• And anyway, I thought you always liked my name.

Basically, given today's circumstances, part of marriage has to be the slow construction of what marriage means to us, because the old definitions are an awkward fit. 

"Being a wife only means that you’ve chosen someone to stand by and to stand by you, whom you love. ...Any definition more complex than that is just somebody's personal opinion, which you are no more obligated to follow than when they tell you what to weigh, wear, and watch."   -Read the rest of "Reclaiming Wife: Remember the Lesbians" on A Practical Wedding blog

For someone not allowed to marry in most states, this lesbian was prescient about "how's marriage."  I wonder how she's handled joining finances and party hostessing.  Could someone tell me why gay people aren't allowed to do this again?