So, I've been legally married to my man for three days now. At least, in about two hours, it'll be three days.
Everything is different now. It's better. Two nights ago, we were kicking back and talking, and one of us (I forget who) said something like: "Being married makes everything different. It's more real. It's serious. Before, it felt like we were just two teenagers playing house. It doesn't feel like that anymore."
Come and jump with us...
It doesn't feel like that anymore. Before marriage, we'd say 'husband' with this sort of wistful 'yeah, that'll happen... not' feel to it. We attended weddings with a bittersweet feeling - happy for our straight friends, but ripped up inside that we couldn't have that too. There was always this thread of "this is temporary" running through our lives, simply because our promises to each other weren't taken seriously by most people - including, in some cases, members of our families. We've been waiting for at least four years to get married - we actually decided we would after the 2004 weddings in San Francisco - and sometimes it just seemed like it would never happen, like our whole relationship was a joke because the state wouldn't acknowledge us as equal to other married people. (And don't get me started on domestic partnership. It's a second-class status.)
That feeling of "this is temporary," of "this isn't really serious" - that feeling is gone now. It's been replaced by a feeling of seriousness, of permanence, of validity.
I participated in a wedding of two straight friends about two weeks ago as the best man. Because I knew that he and I could get married now, the feeling of bittersweet ouch was almost nonexistent that day. It was replaced with a feeling of anticipation - of "we will have this soon, too."
And on our wedding day, when about ten or twelve people from our church and a few of our friends and our Unitarian pastor stood around us in a rough circle on the courthouse steps and said, repeatedly, "bless this marriage,"* I almost fell apart and cried. We wanted minimal ceremony with maximum meaning, and that's exactly what we ended up with.
Every time I look at my wedding ring, I hear him saying his vows to me. And I well up. I can't help it.
People have been so kind and so generous. It's been stunning. A friend of mine took us to lunch yesterday as a wedding present. People here on Daily Kos got together and collected $340 to send us on a honeymoon (we'll probably need to save some more, but it's a great start, and a huge gift - we're still stunned).
Being married has meaning. It has weight. It's almost a tangible thing, this connection he and I have made. It's something we're aware of all the time now. It's powerful.
And your support and help and generosity - that helped make this happen.
Thank you.
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*The pastor had a responsive reading, and the response was "Bless this marriage." I have e-mailed him for the name of the author and I'll find it on the web when he sends it to me so everyone can see it; we're going to use it again in December at our church wedding.