I do...but do I know why?

I often feel super dazed and confused when I am asked to officiate a wedding or write a ceremony for a couple.  In oh so many ways, I am the least likely wedding officiant. I am flattered, honored. But my first response to an engagement is rarely wide-eyed or excited or congratulatory. It's not that I am cynical (not exactly), but I wouldn't say I am an enthusiastic proponent of marriage across the board, either. I look around most days and am hard pressed to identify a marraige that I admire or that inspires me...which is always a great time to get curious about whatever it is in me that I am meeting through my reticence. 

But when you are invited literally to marry people, you start to ask what it's all for, too. 
Why do it?

There are practical and pragmatic and symbolic reasons to marry, of course. 
There are passionate and political and beautiful reasons to take vows and formalize your relationship.

But it's an oddly interesting position to be the one holding that sacred space, much less helping people clarify and articulate the real promises they are making and the actual vision they are creating. 

I wonder how often people are even gazing in the same general direction, much less looking at the same vision.  

Too many people seem to just, well, collapse into marriage without asking why or how. So much emphasis is placed on the "whether" or "what" that they lose sight of these essential questions. Why marry? And what does it even mean? The momentum or the expectations or the "where I want to be by age___" sometimes take over and eclipse any sense of what it actually means, day to day. All too often I witness the bewilderment and disappointment of couples who perhaps mistook their wedding for a marriage or based their vows on abstract projections that have little to do with their actual lives. Frustrated or scared or hurt or disenchanted, people often choose to suck it up rather than communicate honestly about where they are and how they feel. Because they "made vows."

So many vague promises are made that seek to restrict and control what shifts, as individuals and as a couple. As though growth and transformation are threats. As though we can predict, forecast, and control what and who we are becoming instead of vowing to really SEE and support who we are becoming. Yet most people really want to be cheered on in their growth, to feel supported in the challenging processes of exploring and evolving and becoming who they are becoming.

I spend A LOT of time with people who are healing from broken down relationships they expected to be fairy tales. People who grapple with the sense that a perfect marriage meant you'd never change. People who realize their codependency isn't passion, their resignation isn't devotion, and their paralysis isn't very healthy. People who diminish themselves to make the other person happy. People who are starved for genuine connection, because their partner stopped noticing who they were becoming and no longer knows them at all. Even when they share a house. Even though they share a bed. People who make great roommates, but terrible lovers. People who are stuck in patterns they have no energy to redress or change, though it's killing them inside. People who can't even have the most basic of conversations for fear of being shut down, pushed away, or attacked.

And listen, I am not saying this is true in all marriages. 

There are some marriages I absolutely admire and from which I glean hope: couples who are present to one another, and honest, and generous but independent. Supportive, passionate people who you just know--because you see, feel, and hear it in all the subtle and obvious ways-- belong together, in this way. At this time.

But that is the issue I see the most. People gamble that who they will become is as simple and seamless as saying "I promise." Life rarely goes according to our plans, though. People grow and change and shift in ways we cannot predict. So, the trick is not auctioning away future you into the confines of some mold you think will make it all perfect. Similarly, so many people find their relationship "commitments" make their worlds smaller--casting suspect on any connections outside the unit so that jealousy, control, and co-dependency eventually (de facto) trump trust, expansiveness, and interdependence. One of the crippling and toxic habits we have around relationship is asking someone to be our everything, and then stripping from them the ability to cultivate and nurture themselves outside of us. It's a recipe for disaster, yet it's so commonly what we expect from the one we "love." 

Relationships of all kinds ought to make our lives bigger, brighter, and richer, right? Yet, very often we only feel secure if our partner's life gets smaller, under careful monitoring. In subtle and overt ways, people demand that Life is forfeit for the security of the relationship, when in fact the relationship ought to be one way we are brought more fully and beautifully INTO Life.

Some marital vows implicitly privilege stagnation over transformation and are based in fear/control rather than the dynamic love that most people really seek. Rarely do I witness couples commit--through their vows--to being fully present and honest about what IS, outside the fairy tales, and to communicating the hard and messy stuff, supporting one another in their respective evolution--even as that might mean growing in different ways.

Most people I work with need to commit to themselves and develop that inner intimacy before they go promising themselves to someone else. That is the marriage we seem to avoid committing to more often. The vows we make to ourselves, through thick and thin, richer or poorer. How will we honor and support our own heart in all the days ahead?

So, every time I am asked to write a wedding ceremony and support a couple in vows to share a life together, I always balk and ask,"WHY on EARTH do you want to do this? Why does this even interest you?" I ask them if they know who the hell they are now and we spend less time projecting into who they think they will be.

It's an odd thing. Writing a ceremony for me is not just giving MY blessing (whatever that is worth), but it's a process of helping two people recognize who they are--here and now--as individuals before they let that get eclipsed by who they think they are as a couple.

I guess I am a hard sell on this.  

Lots of people love with passion and commitment and honesty without a wedding.

Lots of people lose all passion and commitment and openness within a marriage.

I don't think a relationship has to last forever to be valuable or meaningful.

And I don't think the most loving thing we can do is ask someone to sacrifice who they really are in the service of playing along with who we promised (projected, expected) we would be. 

I do think real love is about seeing someone as they really are and letting them see your vulnerable belly, even when it might mean rocking the boat.

So, anyone who wants me to bear witness to the ritual of it all has to know that I am not just interested in their wedding...I am asking them to consider their ideals and ideas of marriage. The why and the how.

So, maybe that is why I get asked. I am just reluctant and leery enough to pose some tough questions before I will say "I do" to them and they say "I do" to a shared vision. And what I am going to write for and about them is not a fairy tale projection that belies or denies the gritty hard work of any real intimacy. 

But, what I am finding--with great delight and a peppering of hope-- is that the few couples for whom I DO end up saying "yes" these days are the ones whose answers suggest that that their relationship brings them more fully and expansively into life rather than collapsing them into one another and withdrawing from life. I say yes to the ones who champion the growth of the one they love, even when it scares the shit out of them and demands that they grow, too. The ones who promise NOT to stagnate or tip toe around the truth just so to keep the boat from rocking. I say "yes" to writing and officiating when I feel myself saying inwardly "yes."

I feel lit up around them and inspired by their care and connection. The way they carry equal measure of awe and honesty as they describe the other. And when I say yes and sit down to write for them, I also get to wrestle with all my own ennui and cynicism, which is undoubtedly a good thing, too. 

It's a humbling and deep undertaking, for which I feel truly grateful.

I do.