Why are we all so insecure?

So I love that so many of the women whose blogs I follow got married at around the same time as me; it has been wonderful watching us all negotiate the early days of marriage together. Thanks to this syncronicity, it seems that lots of ladies have been talking, lately, about how it feels to get married (see: the transcendence debate), and how it feels to be married (see the “wife: does it or does it not need to be reclaimed?” debate). All of this is awesome, since I am a big fan of thinking through stuff that we might otherwise take for granted.

Here’s what I do not think is awesome, though: the shitty ways in which we assume that the differences in our experiences indicate some sort of hierarchy of authenticity in marriage or strength of partnership. I have to say that I was looking forward to moving out of the wedding world in part to escape the passive aggressive judgementalism that pervades it (see this rant here for my feelings on the matter). I am shocked and appalled to see that life on the married side of things still has a healthy dose of ladies judging each other in really quite useless ways.

What am I talking about? Let’s see. Those of us who experienced transcendent or huge moments at our weddings are: a) naive religious fools; b) space cadets who clearly hadn’t paid attention to what we were committing to until we walked down the aisle; c) brainwashed romantics who were not partners before we married.

Those of us who did not experience transcendent moments at our weddings are: a) superficial bridezillas who didn’t take the meaning of our weddings seriously enough; b) bimbos who don’t actually understand what we’re getting into; c) women getting married for the wrong reasons.

Those of us who think that being married has felt distinctly different, and in need of unpacking, are: a) wishy washy ladies who were not truly invested in their relationships until they got married; b) backwards women who buy into gendered stereotypes about marriage when we all know that we live in a post-feminist world; c) morons who didn’t understand what we were getting into.

Those of us who think that being married feels the same as dating/cohabitating are: a) vapid women who don’t take their decisions very seriously or think very deeply about their lives; b) dodgy ladies who don’t understand what marriage means; c) crappy wives.

Listen, I know that it’s a weird thing to blog about our personal lives. We put ourselves out there in very intimate ways in an attempt to connect with like-minded people. And sometimes this whole process can make us deeply insecure about our decisions; if someone that seems smart out there in the blogosphere says they had the exact opposite experience that we did, we feel insecure, like they are attacking our choices or our feelings. I don’t know why we do this: we’re all smart and thoughtful and capable of understanding that we live different lives and that there are a million reasons as to why every single one of our marriages is a little bit different. Rather than appreciating how incredible it is that we manage to find really profound commonalities among our diverse lives, we focus on our differences and lick our imaginary wounds as though another woman’s experience is meant to be a personal insult.

And let’s be honest, some of us are writing as though our particular experiences are reflective of our being better women and better wives than everyone else. We may not realise we’re doing it, but it comes across in the tone of our posts. If I read one more thing that says that “we didn’t feel any difference with marriage, because, you know, we were already PARTNERS for YEARS” I may scream–yes, indeed, those of us who felt something change with marriage were clearly all shotgun weddings. That’s as bad as those of us on the other side who make comments that we did feel a marked difference because we took our ceremony and our commitment soooo seriously, as though anyone who feels differently just got drunk and stuttered through their vows. Come on, man. Let’s be serious here.

I don’t want to argue against critical thinking; personally, my blog has been a useful place for me to unpack some of the stuff about weddings and marriage that grates on my last nerve, and as such I am a big fan of us all having our opinions, and us having them strongly. I think we need to own our own experiences unequivocally, but to still take a step back and think about how we write what we write. We also need to listen to each other sympathetically. We need to find ways to connect with each other through our reflections that don’t involve passing judgement, or trying to figure out who has it right and who has it wrong. A good example of this was the recent post I wrote about name changing; I wrote it mostly to be silly, but I was inspired by the discussion that broke out in the comments. Women on both sides of the debate engaged with each other in intelligent, critical ways, but without making broad, hurtful generalizations on one side or taking things needlessly personally on the other. So I have faith that we can do this.

I feel like this whole project of blogging about our weddings and our marriages is meant to inspire ourselves and each other to think a little bit more critically or to listen a little bit more deeply to our experiences and the experiences of women who we respect. The passive aggressive bullshit, born out of a sort of “oh my goodness, what if the internet tells me I’m not doing marriage right?” insecurity, doesn’t really help us get there at all. Let’s give each other the benefit of the doubt. Solidarity, sister.