An Actual Defense of Marriage (Without the Exclusion)

Wow it's been a while. There are so many posts a-brewing and there has been so little time to share it with you. We will get there and keep sharing.

Today, though, I would like to use our blog as a platform to start a discussion that has been brewing for me for some time. Since this is the Crunchy Marriage, you may be able to assume that we are, in fact, sort of Crunchy and usually Married. These two seem to be paired together less and less which is part of why we think our blog is interesting- we'd really like to write about how we are pairing two increasingly unique decisions.

The first decision we've made is to live our values. We've decided to attempt to tread lightly on the earth, to be as self sufficient as we can, to be curious and creative, and to live to be healthy and happy before wealthy and worldly. We made those decisions alone, and it worked out that we have been able to support each other in them in a really great way.

The second decision is increasingly uncommon and uniquely terrifying. We decided to get married. Young! On the day of our wedding, Mark had only been able to drink for two weeks. Much to the chagrin of some of our family and friends who advocated that we see the world, date around, get a bunch of degrees, Mark and I decided to jump in and acknowledge what we still hope will be a life long commitment to each other.

We have lots of friends who would say that marriage is an institution that comes out of mistrust, that people that truly love each shouldn't need a contract or a ceremony to prove it. We also have friends who think that marriage is all well and good in your late twenties or early thirties when you are solid in a career with lots of titles and you own a piece of the world or two and you can hop in. And we have some friends who believe it is hopelessly unrealistic to believe that two people can be committed to each other for their whole lives.  All of these seem pretty popular.

To me, what stands out in the middle of a somewhat anti-marriage climate, is the fight NY went through recently to legalize gay marriage and how many friends- gay and straight alike- stood together to make that right a reality.

We are both from blended families touched by divorce and we have friends and family we love who have made decisions both to marry and not to marry, to commit for life and to commit for now. We love all of those folks the same and offer this post with no judgement on any side. But here is why we got married, its a very personal decision that has worked for us.

We married because it seemed important to us to stand in front of the people we loved and claim one another, to have our families joined, to acknowledge the little family of our own that we were creating with ceremony.  Like many other ceremonies- baptism, bar mitzvahs, sweet sixteens, graduation- nothing felt different about having gone through it. But we had stated our intention in front of the ones we love and who love us, "Hold us to this, we are diving in."

Since then, they have needed to do that more than once. Ministers we know have dived into to offer a pertinent word that stopped an awful decision. My brother has called Mark to tell him to "Knock it the hell off!". Mark's friends have offered hypothesis to help me understand him. Parents have said, "Get with it." And as a result, we've made it through very, very hard times. We invited the community into our commitment through the act of marriage.

What is the point though? Of staying when it's hard? Why marry if this kind of shin kicking takes place?

I believe that it makes us better. I am better. Mark is better. We communicate better, we argue better, we offer affection better, we are better family members and friends. And I think it makes the space we are creating feel more secure to us.  We have both made promises to people we were in love with, but none of them stuck.  In promising to our community, we have at least made it a little more difficult for one dramatic argument to stop us from plowing ahead. We've asked for the community to see us as a couple as well as individuals. And we've created a load of paper work and tons of time to think before any major decision can be made. And I'm very grateful for that. It has been hard. It has been ugly. But in the dust settling, I am always glad to have stayed and I'm filled with love, I am always a better person.

And if I could just run.... I would have.

This also means that as we hopefully welcome a child in the next year or so, that he or she will have the opportunity of hopefully feeling a bit more safe, a bit more secure, knowing that we have made a step toward permanence and a bit more support. And that's the tip of why we think its a good idea at least for us.