So marriage is a few years off (at least), but every now and then some girl gets you thinking about it and you freeze up. Sure, we’ve all heard horror stories – and some of them are true. But it’s not all bad. Take it from Jack as he gives you the low down on the highs and lows of the first six months.
When I first agreed to be someone’s husband, I knew I was in for trying times. Accordingly, I steeled myself by researching solutions to problems I assumed husbands faced: picking out an engagement ring, cooking up whiz bang proposal ideas, learning how to smoke cigars and appreciating football.
But as it turned out, every aspect surrounding marriage that I thought would be an issue worked itself out naturally while everything that I never considered turned out to be a challenge for which I was wholly unprepared. All in all, I learned that getting married and staying that way takes more than wearing a tux for one day and hiring a DJ. But I also learned that some of the changes that I dreaded as a bachelor turned out to be surprisingly okay.
Here are some of the pleasant and not-so pleasant surprises I’ve encountered so far:
Meet the Parents
Pleasant: It ain’t so bad.
I don’t care how rich Ben Stiller got by playing off stereotypes about in-laws: my wife’s family rocks. Sitcoms and the big screen like to instill an inordinate amount of trepidation when it comes to meeting the extended family of your future spouse. I think it might be one of the foundations of bad situation comedy along with getting trapped in a walk-in cooler with your arch-nemesis or an “intimate gathering” turning into a raucous house party (subsequently joined by a pop punk band, a dude carrying a keg on his shoulder, the pizza delivery guy, the cops and then the parents home early from their cruise).
That’s not to say that there aren’t some differences between my wife’s family and mine. They are Catholic, I am (sort of) Episcopalian. The men in her family are engineers and the men in mine are English majors. Her dad likes Rush Limbaugh, I like Ira Glass. My family functions are tame, wine-sipping, screened-in porch affairs that wind down around 9pm while hers are boom-ba stickin’ all night polka parties.
You’d think that these were the makings of a semi-hilarious box office smash, but they aren’t. Because all it boils down to is that we are family and we treat each other as such. And if either of our respective families were the type to violently or passive aggressively haze a guest, then chances are we wouldn’t have made it into adulthood with our sanities intact anyway.
Not-so Pleasant: More birthdays, more weddings, more funerals.
The downside of doubling your familial connections is that you are also doubling your obligations. I often find myself at a birthday party and shaking the hand of the wrong person, or meeting someone for the first time at their wedding reception or, worse, at their visitation. I’ve also had to cancel a couple nights out with the boys because my wife’s great aunt’s second cousin was in town for the week and we were all going for brunch.
But on the flip-flip-side, I’ve been getting a lot more birthday cards than when I was single. These issues of unfamiliarity with my new found kin are just a matter of the connections being new. Some of the gestures that my new extended family have made in order to get to know me have been quite surprising and touching: receiving a congratulation card for a new job, housewarming gifts and showing a general interest in what I do (which I’m not really sure what that is), for example.
Bottom-line: Meeting new people with different values and different ideas is, surprisingly, not that bad of a thing. If you find yourself unable to be cordial with someone who is a little different than yourself then I’d say you have some more deeply-seated issues than merely being a fish out of water.
Read the rest of this article at Primer Magazine.
