As a person who is scheduled to spend the rest of her life with some dude, I have a vested interest in this whole “marriage” thing. I want to learn more about it. I want to hear about what’s it’s like, from people who are experiencing it.

This past holiday season put the beau and I back in touch with a lot of recently married friends, which gave me a prime opportunity to pick their brains. The results have been… intriguing, to say the least. A (non-scientific) scorecard of results:

49% said that, basically, nothing changes after you get married.

44% said that, basically, we should totally get married because OMG, you get a lot of stuff.

7% said that marriage has made things easier for them, though I should perhaps note here that a majority of this couple’s premarital tumult was directly attributed to arguments about whether they should get married or not.

That’s pretty much it. That’s all the recon I’ve gathered so far, and it feels like so much fruit salad. Where’s the meat and potatoes?

Now, of course, this kind of response is probably due in part to the fact that I have sarcastic friends. And maybe these friends didn’t want to share their mushies with me. And needless to say, each individual relationship is different because marriage affects people in different ways. But still. I was kind of hoping for feedback on a level deeper than FREE GIFT GRAB or IT’S THE SAME THING AS DATING or even IT SOLVED OUR PROBLEMS YAY.

And that look, always the same look. The startled glaze that comes over each of us when we’re asked to answer questions we’ve never considered. Like deer in the headlights.

I feel like I repeat this a lot, but: It’s been a real treat for me to find blogs. Blogs written by people who are genuinely excited to be married, and genuinely affected by their commitment to another person, and genuinely committed to finding their own meaning as an individual and as a partner in all this mess.*

So here I am, with my deer-in-the-headlights look on. I may not yet know what marriage is going to be like for me and the beau, but I want it to be better than what’s out there. I want it to be better than what you hear it’s like in the media, and I want it to be better than what you hear it’s like around your neighbor’s dinner table.**

It won’t be perfect, but it will be ours.

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* Wifey Wiferson springs to mind, as well as Accordions and Lace.

** Meg’s post from a few weeks back (and her whole Reclaiming Wife series, actually) has very, very good examples of the kinds of things you hear about marriage.