Most of us consider ourselves realists, especially the ladies of our generation. Well, yes: We do watch those romance “chic flicks” in hopes that we can keep the dream alive of having the fairy tale courtship, falling in-love, and –lest we forget—the magical wedding. We ladies grew spoon-fed on the make-believe stories of handsome princes and knights in shining armor to rescue us sleeping beauties and Cinderellas. Then we grew up. Started dating in our teens. And in our twenties-or-so, we realized the awful truth of dating and falling in-love: It’s not all that’s cracked-up to be. Or true love didn’t exist like it did when our parents fell hopelessly into each other’s arms (30+ years ago) and promised each other “till death do us part.” We began to understand why the divorce rates became closely apparent when are our high school besties and our college sorority sisters got married and watched their marriages fall apart in a matter of months, years, and sometimes days. Sadly, all this and the current media reminded us how fallible our visions of fairy tale romances erred. After college, we drifted into our professional careers and casual relationships with so-called open eyes, beginning to think that marriage was an open, not-so-sacred, financial and emotional arrangement: you scratch my back while I scratch yours. We started dating like it didn’t matter as much to lead into courtship as much as it mattered that we had a good time, had a good dinner, and spent time with a guy that we thought was “alright.”
I was one of those girls. As I embarked on my career in DC and into the next stage of adulthood (post-college years), I remember having countless conversations with cousins, girlfriends, and colleagues of how pointless dating had become. The “dating game” seemed like a bunch of ups-and-downs, with twisty bends, just like a rollercoaster. We fell in pseudo-love and fell out of it just as quickly. We would get flowers one night before dinner and a break-up call the next. Some of us watched our friends get pregnant, realize that their S.O. (or significant other) was a cheat and didn’t want anything to do with the child. We attended numerous weddings of family and friends, later realizing that things were painted to seem “magical,” once we saw the divorce papers issued just months after that supposedly special day. In our twenties, we saw the rise and fall of what we thought were beautiful relationships and dismissed those who claimed they had found “the one.” We went into our dating with armored hearts, vowing to each other that we would be untouched by this mystical thing called “love” and snag “the best that is still left out there.” We became cynical and hardened in our dating relationships, while we still carried a torch (and a box of Kleenex) for the sappy love movies that we continued to torture ourselves with on cable TV or DVR. Were we confused in our search for the right guy to date? Most likely. Did we think that the true devotion that our grandparents and parents talked about existed anymore? We kinda hoped. Would we be able to tell the difference between real and faux love? Sadly, we rarely do. Because of this, I present myself as the case for one who has made loads of accusations against the power of true and lasting happiness and in the end, the one who stands corrected in her thoughts and ways.
I say all this because recently, I was blatantly asked that interestingly hilarious yet serious question: Are you and MZ pregnant? Some close friends at grad school alerted me of the false (the urine test tells you that) conceptions of other colleagues in their evaluations upon receiving news of my marriage, just months after my engagement. The colleagues’ logical-so-they-thought-explanation of my “quick” wedding to the man I love, was that we had gotten pregnant and needed a shotgun wedding to cover-up our mistake. My friends retorted to these unbelievers with the fact that I had fallen in-love with a man I had dated for 2 years and we knew it was right. “Shotgun” or not, we wanted to get married sooner rather than later, my friends responded. Upon receiving news of these questions from acquainted colleagues (I refuse to call them friends if they are not ballsy enough to ask me themselves) from my friends, I laughed. Out loud. What else could possibly be my reaction when MZ and I know the truth? My initial thoughts were that my colleagues in school had thought I had gotten pregnant because I had gained a few pounds during the months preceding the wedding. I think that hurt the most: I had gained 5-8 pounds since my eating/exercise habits were not on par considering my hectic graduate school schedule and planning our wedding at a destination location. Then when I was told of the real reason why these people asked the question of my fertility was because I had married “so quickly.” Was I supposed to stay engaged until these naysayers thought it was the appropriate time to get married? Maybe if I was twenty-something, I would’ve been grieved and so concerned about my approval ratings. But I’m not a young co-ed who is naïve and cares too much about what people (especially those who do not know me at all) think: I do what I want and NOW, what is best for my husband and I. To clear the air on this matter: I AM NOT FRACKIN’ PREGGERS. Good. Glad that’s out. Not that I would be against it if we were right now; but it’s not now. Not that I owe anyone an explanation either; but it just feels good to be absolutely clear.
The reason why I share this with the blogger world is this: When have we, as young adults, become so brazen, so cynical, so hardened, that we cannot accept other people’s judgments of falling in-love on its own merit? Why can’t we, as women, accept it as truth when our friends find “the one” and rejoice in their happiness? Have we become so blinded by our own ideals, misconceptions, and lack of dating sincerity, to realize that people are allowed to experience their own “fairy tale” love stories and get married in their own timetable? Who made us (yes, I say “us” because I was once one of those naysayers) the living authority to judge when or how people should fall in-love and to what degree their love genuine? Have we been so infatuated with our own selves to not allow others the support and sincere well wishes that happy couples deserve from us, when they finally find their counterparts in this life? Have we been overtly saturated in our own miserable dating habits to realize how hard-ass we’ve become, to question someone else’s reason for making a life-long, love-encompassed decision such as marriage? Sad to see and experience firsthand, why yes: our generation (or mostly, the generation after mine since most of my colleagues are at least 7 years younger than I) has become of such mindsets.
I love MZ. I have loved him since we our first date on a warm, DC spring day. He means more to me than anything in this world. He is “my one,” that took me hundreds of pointless dates to find. So does it really matter how long it took between our engagement and our wedding day? Heck no. To all those naysayers of lasting, vibrant, and true love: read this and weep, because your day (of finding your “one”) will come. It did for me.
