Love your honesty about how ambiguous feelings around marriage can be. When I got married at 28 my wasband and I had already bought a home together and I was pregnant with our daughter. Getting married should have been the easiest of those choices and yet I still struggled with the decision to do so. Our lives were full and happy already so why risk changing that? To say I was ambivalent is an understatement. The night before my marriage I sat in a bath and cried until I had no tears left. At first I couldn’t put my finger on why and then I realized….it was grief.
This was one of those pivotal life moments where two things were true at once and we see the complexity of the human soul. I loved my life with this man and I loved him. He wanted to marry so much and I felt like it was what I was supposed to do. I had no reason to grieve but I did. I felt the loss of my last name and the feeling that this was the beginning of tiny steps that led to a loss of self. And yet I also wanted my daughter to have the family she deserved. It was complicated and messy but very real.
That marriage lasted 16 years and I never legally changed my name but all sorts of things did slip away. Some were replaced by new and improved pieces and others seemed to just whither under the gravitas of expectations that came with a traditional institution.
When we divorced I grieved again…and also felt an immense sense of relief… like I finally could be myself unapologetically. It turned out that my daughter truly got the family she deserved once we split. No longer distracted by our marital angst we became free to enjoy the things we had always liked about each other. We both became better parents to her and actual friends to each other.
At 52 I love the solitude and freedom that has come with being alone. I don’t yearn for the life I used to have- not even when someone tells me I should. My biggest takeaway from my marriage was coming to understand how deeply embedded the expectations of the “traditional good wife” and “good husband” are and how hard it is to not fall into their trap. Friendship and true honesty didn’t exist between my wasband and I until we divorced.
These days I often say that I’m not anti- marriage, but I am pro knowing oneself really well before choosing to yolk yourself to another, otherwise you risk being consumed.
As you said- it is indeed a complicated relationship both personally and culturally.
Thank you so much for sharing this Chris. Yes it's very complex and I'm grateful to be doing it much later in life when I feel like I know a little bit about myself and about relationships. I love what you say about not being anti-marriage, but pro-knowing yourself. I am so with you on that 😊 And I think it should probably be illegal to marry under the age of 25!!
I would second that! I have so much respect for Gen. Z really leaning into the idea that marriage should be a potential rite of passage, not the only one. Congratulations on your upcoming marriage. May it be filled with adventure, joy and a force determination to make it into the perfect union for you both.
Loved reading about your personal journey to marriage and the way grief has a hand in the process you're in right now. It was so interesting to read about all the ways and whats you're grieving for. Thank you for sharing that and for putting language around all of it. It really resonates with me in the space I'm currently in also but from a different angle.
I was married at 22 years old, stayed married for 22 years and am now divorced. In the space I'm currently in, I'm recognizing how grief was so pervasive in and outside of marriage, how we go through loss over and over again, many times in ways that we don't stop to pay attention and recognize, or even honor. Some of the grief I'm experiencing, now divorced, is both in the present and in the past, along with the reverence and love, for the girl I was and the woman I became because of it. I'm finally taking the time to just honor the places I didn't before.
I think it's an incredible place to be - the place of awareness - of where you are with it all and just wanted to share that I appreciated your story and your take at this for yourself and women in general.
Thanks so much for your comments, and for sharing your experiences Lisa. Yes, I fully agree. Grief really needs to be honoured and have its place in the process.
I understand that to my core. For so many of us middle life becomes a thousand tiny compromises until one day we wake up and don’t even know ourselves anymore.
It’s hard to honor those tender places when in the middle of raising kids and being the glue of the family. There’s something beautiful about this new place in life where we can look back and see those choices and compromises and take the time to grieve, or even celebrate them, for how they got us to this place:)
Yes, exactly. I often try to connect the dots and trace my steps and I’m finding so many tiny compromises where I just didn’t listen to myself, where the noise wasn’t enough to stop and hear. I think about how that happened and why it needed to. This process now is such a place of necessary self-discovery, sometimes celebratory, sometimes grief-full, sometimes both. And it’s also beautifully and surprisingly quiet.
This was beautiful. I love the question about what messages we carry from our ancestors about marriage. Those stories are so powerful. As for me, I did not change my name either. I didn’t work all those years to earn the title of Doctor, to then attach it to someone else’s surname!
Yes exactly! People keep asking me if I'm changing my name and I feel like that would be nuts at age 50, having built a professional reputation (and published writing) with this name 😀
Firstly congrats… to be doing it so wonderfully on your terms feels how it should be. I’m divorced after I found out my husband was gay but I had always been ambivalent about marriage…: it wasn’t a big issue for me but it was for him so we did and well, it didn’t turn out so well. I respect you are doing it differently and I suspect with eyes wide open… I would struggle to legally and financially tie myself to another human although I do still hope to meet the love of my life at some stage. But most of all I love your reflection on the women before us who never had any choices and how lucky we are to say yes, to say no and to live with agency. Lovely piece x
I love this so much, Vicki. Congratulations on your choice to walk this path, in this way, with your partner.
I didn’t plan or expect to get married but did in my late 30s...only to get divorced...only to remarry the same person. Our marriage 2.0 is wholly different from the first version, and we even lived apart while married for a while (and may choose that again at some point - or not). I treasure solitude, silence, and space. But I also love our life together. As you express so beautifully, there’s more than one way to do this marriage (and relationship) thing. ❤️
Thanks Dana. I love your story of re-marrying the same person but doing it differently. Very inspiring. If only we were taught how to have a healthy relationship in high school rather than have to figure it out the hard way!
Thank you for these thoughts and congratulations! I wish you Love in all its guises, joys and demands.
And much food for thought for me here. Starting with; perhaps I didn’t fail at marriage. Perhaps its internalized assumptions failed me.
The overarching message from grandparents and my parents about marriage was the refrain; better the devil you know than the devil you don’t know! (I was the first in our line to divorce). And I soon took as my mantra in my rebellious 20s the DHLawrence quote from Women in Love; marriage is the end of all experience.
But I’m happy to say that I’m in an uplifting, loving and inspiring relationship with a man now in my late 50s which is teaching me yet more about what humans are capable of in tandem. Quite miraculous and also the real work of life.
Of all the things I could say or might want to say, what I'll say is this. For what it's worth, I think you're doing it right. You have had this whole lifetime of figuring out yourself and loving yourself and being yourself BEFORE joining yourself to another person. It feels like that would be the more correct way, as long as you aren't losing yourself to that other person and he understands you. When we are young, there is so much we don't know about ourselves and change is inevitable, so the person who you may be with in that stage won't always withstand all the changes each of you will likely go through and sometimes won't be able to stick by you. Congratulations! I wish you ALL the best!! XO
Thank you Danielle. I'm inclined to agree. As I commented to someone else above, I think it should actually be illegal to marry before you're 25. I was utterly clueless about relationships in my 20s. There's been a lot of mistakes and a lot of learning along the way!
Oh Vicki I resonate with this deeply. I too married late at 45, very happily, after being opposed to and fearful of marriage most of my life ( a common attitude for those of us who were teens in the 70s.) I too carry a grief for my female forbears forced into marriage, especially my great grandmother, Sara Gillespie. At 17 and in love with someone of her own choosing she was forced into a marriage with an older man chosen by her tyrannical father as his business partner. I have their wedding photo, with her sad sad face staring out at me. In the next 15 years she bore 11 children ( my grandfather the eldest) and then died. I think of her often, of the freedoms I have had and the life she could not have. Yet she imbued her children with a love and compassion which lives on in her descendants ( many of whom interestingly married late in life). She is someone I always want to honour when think of my ancestors. May you have a gloriously happy wedding day and deeply fulfilling marriage
Thank you Sally, and thanks for sharing a little of your great grandmother's heartbreaking story. I strongly feel that we carry our ancestors' stories in our bones, our DNA and our psyche's and they deserve acknowledgement and honouring, as you say.
Congratulations Vicki. It is wonderful news. We have been married for 45 years and we are still joined at the heart. We are fortunate to have loved each other unconditionally through the roller coaster of life. Judy
Ahh Vicki, so beautifully written and so beautifully thoughtful and thought provoking as always. I am so happy for you - and damn straight those ancestors will be cheering you on on the day, bursting with pride and happiness for their girl who chooses to do it differently ♥️ xx
A poignant piece for me as I am getting divorced after 20 years of marriage. I married in my late 30s so being alone heading towards 60 is a bit daunting but my husband became a person I didn’t want to grow old with. I believe I will find another partner but not sure I would be quick to marry again. It is in many ways an outdated institution. At least in your 50s you are approaching marriage with your eyes wide open, no biological clock ticking and plenty of time to have done your inner work. I’m sure that will stand you in good stead and I wish you every happiness in this new chapter of your life.
Thanks for your thoughtful comment and for sharing your experience Nicola. Yes, I can certainly imagine I would be hesitant to do it a second time. My partner and I have been together for 14 years, so we have a good sense of what we're signing up to, but still there are no guarantees, and sometimes the healthiest thing can absolutely be to walk away from something that's not working. Wishing you all the best for your new chapter.
Love your honesty about how ambiguous feelings around marriage can be. When I got married at 28 my wasband and I had already bought a home together and I was pregnant with our daughter. Getting married should have been the easiest of those choices and yet I still struggled with the decision to do so. Our lives were full and happy already so why risk changing that? To say I was ambivalent is an understatement. The night before my marriage I sat in a bath and cried until I had no tears left. At first I couldn’t put my finger on why and then I realized….it was grief.
This was one of those pivotal life moments where two things were true at once and we see the complexity of the human soul. I loved my life with this man and I loved him. He wanted to marry so much and I felt like it was what I was supposed to do. I had no reason to grieve but I did. I felt the loss of my last name and the feeling that this was the beginning of tiny steps that led to a loss of self. And yet I also wanted my daughter to have the family she deserved. It was complicated and messy but very real.
That marriage lasted 16 years and I never legally changed my name but all sorts of things did slip away. Some were replaced by new and improved pieces and others seemed to just whither under the gravitas of expectations that came with a traditional institution.
When we divorced I grieved again…and also felt an immense sense of relief… like I finally could be myself unapologetically. It turned out that my daughter truly got the family she deserved once we split. No longer distracted by our marital angst we became free to enjoy the things we had always liked about each other. We both became better parents to her and actual friends to each other.
At 52 I love the solitude and freedom that has come with being alone. I don’t yearn for the life I used to have- not even when someone tells me I should. My biggest takeaway from my marriage was coming to understand how deeply embedded the expectations of the “traditional good wife” and “good husband” are and how hard it is to not fall into their trap. Friendship and true honesty didn’t exist between my wasband and I until we divorced.
These days I often say that I’m not anti- marriage, but I am pro knowing oneself really well before choosing to yolk yourself to another, otherwise you risk being consumed.
As you said- it is indeed a complicated relationship both personally and culturally.
Thank you so much for sharing this Chris. Yes it's very complex and I'm grateful to be doing it much later in life when I feel like I know a little bit about myself and about relationships. I love what you say about not being anti-marriage, but pro-knowing yourself. I am so with you on that 😊 And I think it should probably be illegal to marry under the age of 25!!
I would second that! I have so much respect for Gen. Z really leaning into the idea that marriage should be a potential rite of passage, not the only one. Congratulations on your upcoming marriage. May it be filled with adventure, joy and a force determination to make it into the perfect union for you both.
Thank you Chris 😊
Loved reading about your personal journey to marriage and the way grief has a hand in the process you're in right now. It was so interesting to read about all the ways and whats you're grieving for. Thank you for sharing that and for putting language around all of it. It really resonates with me in the space I'm currently in also but from a different angle.
I was married at 22 years old, stayed married for 22 years and am now divorced. In the space I'm currently in, I'm recognizing how grief was so pervasive in and outside of marriage, how we go through loss over and over again, many times in ways that we don't stop to pay attention and recognize, or even honor. Some of the grief I'm experiencing, now divorced, is both in the present and in the past, along with the reverence and love, for the girl I was and the woman I became because of it. I'm finally taking the time to just honor the places I didn't before.
I think it's an incredible place to be - the place of awareness - of where you are with it all and just wanted to share that I appreciated your story and your take at this for yourself and women in general.
Thanks so much for your comments, and for sharing your experiences Lisa. Yes, I fully agree. Grief really needs to be honoured and have its place in the process.
I understand that to my core. For so many of us middle life becomes a thousand tiny compromises until one day we wake up and don’t even know ourselves anymore.
It’s hard to honor those tender places when in the middle of raising kids and being the glue of the family. There’s something beautiful about this new place in life where we can look back and see those choices and compromises and take the time to grieve, or even celebrate them, for how they got us to this place:)
Yes, exactly. I often try to connect the dots and trace my steps and I’m finding so many tiny compromises where I just didn’t listen to myself, where the noise wasn’t enough to stop and hear. I think about how that happened and why it needed to. This process now is such a place of necessary self-discovery, sometimes celebratory, sometimes grief-full, sometimes both. And it’s also beautifully and surprisingly quiet.
I love that Lisa 😊
This was beautiful. I love the question about what messages we carry from our ancestors about marriage. Those stories are so powerful. As for me, I did not change my name either. I didn’t work all those years to earn the title of Doctor, to then attach it to someone else’s surname!
Yes exactly! People keep asking me if I'm changing my name and I feel like that would be nuts at age 50, having built a professional reputation (and published writing) with this name 😀
Firstly congrats… to be doing it so wonderfully on your terms feels how it should be. I’m divorced after I found out my husband was gay but I had always been ambivalent about marriage…: it wasn’t a big issue for me but it was for him so we did and well, it didn’t turn out so well. I respect you are doing it differently and I suspect with eyes wide open… I would struggle to legally and financially tie myself to another human although I do still hope to meet the love of my life at some stage. But most of all I love your reflection on the women before us who never had any choices and how lucky we are to say yes, to say no and to live with agency. Lovely piece x
Thank you Alana - and yes - the choice to yes or no is something not to be taken lightly (sadly), given the experiences of generations before us.
I love this so much, Vicki. Congratulations on your choice to walk this path, in this way, with your partner.
I didn’t plan or expect to get married but did in my late 30s...only to get divorced...only to remarry the same person. Our marriage 2.0 is wholly different from the first version, and we even lived apart while married for a while (and may choose that again at some point - or not). I treasure solitude, silence, and space. But I also love our life together. As you express so beautifully, there’s more than one way to do this marriage (and relationship) thing. ❤️
Thanks Dana. I love your story of re-marrying the same person but doing it differently. Very inspiring. If only we were taught how to have a healthy relationship in high school rather than have to figure it out the hard way!
Thank you for these thoughts and congratulations! I wish you Love in all its guises, joys and demands.
And much food for thought for me here. Starting with; perhaps I didn’t fail at marriage. Perhaps its internalized assumptions failed me.
The overarching message from grandparents and my parents about marriage was the refrain; better the devil you know than the devil you don’t know! (I was the first in our line to divorce). And I soon took as my mantra in my rebellious 20s the DHLawrence quote from Women in Love; marriage is the end of all experience.
But I’m happy to say that I’m in an uplifting, loving and inspiring relationship with a man now in my late 50s which is teaching me yet more about what humans are capable of in tandem. Quite miraculous and also the real work of life.
Yes - it truly is the real work of life! Makes me think of the quote 'The greatest thing you'll ever learn is to love and be loved in return' ❤
Of all the things I could say or might want to say, what I'll say is this. For what it's worth, I think you're doing it right. You have had this whole lifetime of figuring out yourself and loving yourself and being yourself BEFORE joining yourself to another person. It feels like that would be the more correct way, as long as you aren't losing yourself to that other person and he understands you. When we are young, there is so much we don't know about ourselves and change is inevitable, so the person who you may be with in that stage won't always withstand all the changes each of you will likely go through and sometimes won't be able to stick by you. Congratulations! I wish you ALL the best!! XO
Thank you Danielle. I'm inclined to agree. As I commented to someone else above, I think it should actually be illegal to marry before you're 25. I was utterly clueless about relationships in my 20s. There's been a lot of mistakes and a lot of learning along the way!
Oh Vicki I resonate with this deeply. I too married late at 45, very happily, after being opposed to and fearful of marriage most of my life ( a common attitude for those of us who were teens in the 70s.) I too carry a grief for my female forbears forced into marriage, especially my great grandmother, Sara Gillespie. At 17 and in love with someone of her own choosing she was forced into a marriage with an older man chosen by her tyrannical father as his business partner. I have their wedding photo, with her sad sad face staring out at me. In the next 15 years she bore 11 children ( my grandfather the eldest) and then died. I think of her often, of the freedoms I have had and the life she could not have. Yet she imbued her children with a love and compassion which lives on in her descendants ( many of whom interestingly married late in life). She is someone I always want to honour when think of my ancestors. May you have a gloriously happy wedding day and deeply fulfilling marriage
Thank you Sally, and thanks for sharing a little of your great grandmother's heartbreaking story. I strongly feel that we carry our ancestors' stories in our bones, our DNA and our psyche's and they deserve acknowledgement and honouring, as you say.
Congratulations Vicki. It is wonderful news. We have been married for 45 years and we are still joined at the heart. We are fortunate to have loved each other unconditionally through the roller coaster of life. Judy
Thank you Judy, and that is beautiful to hear 😊
Ahh Vicki, so beautifully written and so beautifully thoughtful and thought provoking as always. I am so happy for you - and damn straight those ancestors will be cheering you on on the day, bursting with pride and happiness for their girl who chooses to do it differently ♥️ xx
Ah thank you for your lovely comments Odette. It's so good to have you reading and supporting me ❤️
A poignant piece for me as I am getting divorced after 20 years of marriage. I married in my late 30s so being alone heading towards 60 is a bit daunting but my husband became a person I didn’t want to grow old with. I believe I will find another partner but not sure I would be quick to marry again. It is in many ways an outdated institution. At least in your 50s you are approaching marriage with your eyes wide open, no biological clock ticking and plenty of time to have done your inner work. I’m sure that will stand you in good stead and I wish you every happiness in this new chapter of your life.
Thanks for your thoughtful comment and for sharing your experience Nicola. Yes, I can certainly imagine I would be hesitant to do it a second time. My partner and I have been together for 14 years, so we have a good sense of what we're signing up to, but still there are no guarantees, and sometimes the healthiest thing can absolutely be to walk away from something that's not working. Wishing you all the best for your new chapter.
Thank you Jen, I'm glad to hear it resonated 😊