I love your first point. I think the fact that people marry for the benefits and benefits alone is gross. I love that you didn’t do that. I love that I’ve never thought about that. 

I love your second point. I can’t really argue with it. I scream from the roof tops about how much I love the boy. It’s no secret. I can totally relate to the wanting to hold myself accountable thing, and I kind of do that on my own right now. I’ve never thought so deliberately about being a better person and making the best choices as I do with things that occur between me and the boy. I’ve always been told to think before I speak, and I didn’t understand how to do that until I met him. Now I’m pretty damn good at it. 

I love your third point. It makes total sense as to why people reacted like they did.

No fake pregnancies. Pinky swear. Kinda. 

– You know how you are with the right person and your marriage will work? When you never once think about the legal benefits of marriage as you are about to go through it. Granted, we have needed my insurance for the wife and kids since we’ve been together, but thinking about that never entered my head. Ever.
– You know how you will often post about things you are going to do or steps you want to take in your life as a way to hold you to them and have some kind of accountability? That’s what marriage is. I am not saying that marriages are ‘more serious’ than long-term relationships of other kinds (see: Kardasian wedding), but I do know that when I was with Lara, I wanted my friends and family to see me, in public, tell everyone that this is the woman I was choosing to go through life with. Silly, cliche and sentimental? Maybe.
– The people in your life, the ones who really care about you, want you to be happy. It would only stand to reason that they would react so strongly and immediately when it would appear that you were so settled and happy that it was causing you to want to do something that you never really thought it was for you. I said this to you in another place: when you are with the right person, marriage is for you, even if you have said that it isn’t.

You’re not an asshole. But if you have a fake pregnancy, we’re going to have some serious words.

And, we’re doing it on a beach in a super casual ceremony. A friend of ours got ordained. I bought a white dress that I can probably pull off wearing after the wedding because it’s so simple. And I told my fiance that he can wear American Eagle shorts (what he wears every day in the summer) and a light shirt. And, basically, I’m insisting on it being one big party with our family without most of the traditional crap that I never cared for. 

I think it’s great that you’re honest about it. And, I think the hoax is hysterical. 

Secondly, if we ever get to the point where marriage is a legit discussion, we definitely do have some role models to follow. And we have some that we want to avoid like the plague. 

Your questions are interesting. And I think that’s the most intriguing part of this whole thing. One of my close friends from college said congrats on the post, then congrats in an email today, then when I said “it was a joke” she was all OH THAT MAKES SO MUCH MORE SENSE because since she’s known me, I’ve always treated the whole marriage thing like it’s no big deal, so to see the engagement thing on Facebook totally confused her. 

I guess joking about it is our way of dealing with the occasional odd stare we get when people accidentally call me his wife (because they assume that we’re married already) and the uncomfortable silence that follows. Or maybe it is our way of avoiding the topic that we’ve already talked in depth about… not sure. 

But, after we joke, I always say the same thing: “If you ever asked me to marry you, I’d say yes.” Because I don’t want him to think that because it’s not a huge priority for me, that I wouldn’t want to spend the rest of my life with him,  as if him asking me to marry him was the only indicator of that feeling for him. The last thing I want is for there to be a miscommunication about how much I love him. And he knows how much I love him.  

I’m skeptical about your chocolates. I might need you to send us more to confirm my love for those as well.  

And a story for the books, indeed. Thanks for stopping by!  

There’s nobody out there who thinks marriage doesn’t have some kind of meaning.   And that’s why people take this stuff seriously, because even if some of us knew you were joking, we knew you were joking about something important.

That said, I am curious a bit why marriage is a punch-line.   Why is it so ridiculous that some of us knew right off the bat?  Why is it so ridiculous that you thought it’d be fun in the first place?

What is it about you, about The Boy™  that makes the thought so ridiculous?  Does joking about it make it less of a poignant question?

And no, I don’t expect answers to my barrage of awkward questions.  But it is interesting.  You’ve got plenty of people around showing that marriages can be quite happy, even got some great role models to follow.  So follow?  Or not.