I've mentioned before how, for most of my life, there was a lot of pressure put on me to get married. A lot of this came from my Mom, Grandma Bend (her mother) and Aunt Cind (her sister). Usually, at some point during a family gathering, one or more of them would make some comment about me needing to get married. Sometimes, I would think I could clear a visit without this topic being brought up, only to have one of them mention it when I was saying goodbye.
Something I noticed recently is that the majority of my Mom's male cousins could be described as nerdy, geeky, dorky, twerpy, etc. (Pretty much how you would describe me.) In fact, there was probably only one alpha male out of the whole bunch and a couple of betas. Everyone else was pure gamma. But they all found someone to marry early in their adult lives. For the most part, they managed to meet someone willing to be with them during college and pretty much stuck with that one person.
So yeah, this is what I figured was going to happen to me. I thought I would start dating someone in college and we'd like each other well enough to decide to get married before we graduated. We'd be following the same path that my parents did. In addition, my three older cousins, Wend, Sted and Grad, each got married before they finished college. And this appears to be what my Mom imagined was going to be my path. I guess we both just figured things were going to just happen that way, that nature would just take its course.
Because of this, no one considered putting any effort into making me suitable husband material. Now, having been married for more than 13 years, I look back and I know there was NO WAY I was ready for marriage at that age. What were they thinking?
But the scary thing is that, if I'd had a real girlfriend during college, I probably would have married her. I'll admit that I thought that Loz would have made a good wife candidate when I dated her, but my unintentional stalker behavior ruined that for me. (Again, some general guidance from my parents might have helped here.)
And of course, there was Biz, the only other woman in college who I know liked me. If I hadn't known her from Artesia before, I probably would have said to myself, "Well, it's not going to get any better than this," and gotten involved with her. That would have led to us getting married sometime after I graduated.
After this, I had a succession of girlfriends (already noted in this blog). With each one, I became less and less convinced that I would ever meet anyone who could be considered suitable for marriage. In fact, with my last couple of relationships, I refrained from bringing up the topic. It just seemed like they were going to come to an end, with or without my participation.
In March of 2002, I was 2 1/2 years away from turning 40 years old. I started to realize I had no prospects on the horizon for marriage. I knew that if I hit 40 without having met someone who would make a suitable wife candidate, I was probably never going to get married.
I really didn't have a problem with this. While I always struggled to keep a roof over my head and avoid starvation, I was fine not involving another person in my misery. I was prepared to go through the rest of my life alone if it had to come to that. I knew I would still date and continue to have relationships, but I would no longer attempt to force them to take the path that would lead to us being together forever. And at this time, I was working at Walmart, so I know I didn't have much to offer as a potential husband.
However, I knew this revelation would not sit well with Mom, Grandma Bend and Aunt Cind. If I didn't do something, they would continue to hound me about marriage until they all passed on. I could not live the rest of my life waiting to get an emotional sucker punch at all future family gatherings.
I planned to combat this by writing a letter to each of them. I would plan it out so that the letters would arrive on what would be my 40th birthday in September of 2004.
While I never did actually sit down and write those letters, I pretty much knew what they would say. What follows is an approximation of everything I wanted to express at the time:
"Dear Mom, Grandma Bend and Cind,
"Today is my 40th birthday. I wanted to send you a letter to express gratitude for how much you love me and want the best for me.
"However, this birthday is going to be a very painful one for me. I have decided to give up on trying to get married.
"Let's face it: in 25 years of dating, I have not come across one woman who was capable of becoming a member of our family. (And goodness knows you've all met most of them.) Each of them had a whole host of problems that could not be overcome by simply loving them. I do not consider any of my ex-girlfriends as 'the one who got away.' To me, they're all 'glad they got away.'
"The worst part about this is that I feel like I've let you down. You were all looking forward to being able to welcome someone who would bring new family to your homes. I wanted that, too. And I know you feel like there isn't any reason why I wasn't able to find that special person, but things just didn't turn out that way. There wasn't anything I could do to make myself appear more desirable and no matter how much I went after the women slightly out of my league, I always had to settle for the ones who required damage control.
"So I have one request of you going forward: Please do not talk about the prospect of me getting married ever again. It's hurt in the past when you've done it and I've just been too nice to say anything about it. It's going to hurt even more now, to the point that if any of you bring up the subject, I will get up and leave to avoid discussing it further.
"And if you think you can circumvent this by doing what you've done before and mention something when I'm saying goodbye, I may never come back to see you again. I really mean it when I say it's that painful.
"I hope you understand and will honor my request. I do look forward to being able to visit you again and discuss more pleasant subjects.
"Love, Fayd."
As it turned out, I never had to send anything out for my 40th birthday.
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