Three times in my life I have watched women friends of mine, dressed all in white, carrying beautiful bouquets of flowers, walk down the aisle sobbing. The first time I was in my mid-twenties; I had known the bride and her family since middle-school. Her groom, Rafael, was Cuban; we’d met a few times, and it seemed like she was really happy. The attraction they felt toward one another was palpable.
Therefore, the tears – as I thought at the time – were tears of joy, overwhelm, emotional exhaustion and overload, or all of the above and more. Her parents were divorced, meaning that wedding planning was an especial bitch, I was sure. Anyway, I really, really believed this, that she was overcome with joy, exhaustion, relief. I, me, Mojree believed this despite having sung at many weddings over the previous decade, the vast majority of which had already ended in divorce. She was just so, so, so, so moved by it all. How endearing.
No. Fast forward a handful of years, after their baby girl was maybe a year old, she called to say she and Rafe were getting a divorce. I was devastated. You seemed so happy?! Is it the stress of parenting? Can’t you work it out? I am pretty sure I wept a little after we ended the call, because they were a couple I had got behind, like a booster or fan, and now – divorce?!! How sad. How sad? Or how liberating?
Turns out the tears she shed on that hot day in New Haven were because she knew she was making a mistake, she knew it – but her family and his family were pressuring them, and pressuring them hard to wed, and, feeling trapped, she went through with it anyway.
Your family was pressuring you? Why? Well, they wanted me ‘settled’. Oh. It had seemed odd somehow, before their baby was born, how no one in her family, or his, had thought to make an effort, throwing them a baby shower, but – y’know. People are busy? But the atmosphere at the shower, which I threw on her behalf (their behalf?), because she needed one (everyone needs one the first time around!!), was odd, odd and awkward. But again, I assumed all was well and I was happy to do it, as an old friend and fan of the young couple!
Rafe was almost done with law school, she was about to pop, and let’s face it, her fractured family (mom and step mom, two very spoiled, younger half-sisters and two rather spoiled full brothers) all lived outside NYC. I was there with her, so sure, Moj can take it on, no problem. My pleasure, in fact.
No. The atmosphere was actually, truly awkward and odd, because her family already knew “things” weren’t going well, including when she was eight months along with baby, opening gifts playing at being thrilled by it all, including with hubby at her side. They knew that while she had supported Rafe through law school, and the decision to have a child was made to be timed for when he was finally ready to start a career, he had decided – well, maybe not? Whoops! He wasn’t interested in working as an attorney. He wasn’t interested in working, at all. Two weeks after her daughter’s birth, my friend went back to her job in order to support her newly expanded family of three. She said she had felt as depressed as she had ever been in her life to that point, depressed, exhausted, and despairing.
Rafe’s plan to make things better – ‘things’ being the marriage, their lives – was to move back to Queens and into his parents’ big house; his mother – a doctor – was already giving him one-thousand dollars cash every month in spending money. If they moved in with abuelo y abuela, my friend, his wife, could stop working or working so hard; he had no intention of starting, but might work pro-bono for other immigrant Cubanos and Latinos. Plus, his dad and mom would help with childcare.
This was not her dream. This was her nightmare. She waited, she worked, she watched her daughter grow, and then she was done.
After this experience, whenever I have seen a woman sobbing (or stumbling drunk) down the aisle, I have not invested time or energy into the marriage because I learned something, which was to ascribe actual woe to actual weeping (and drunk or drugged to a close approximation of the same depth of sadness). Genius, right? Yet we’re told to believe in the dream of wedded bliss, the joy of the day, the coming together of two hearts, and families!! Hahahahahahahaha. I mean, it can work, right? Sure.
But I learned something else, too, or was able to articulate it for the first time all those years ago: that the pressure I felt from my family to ‘settle,’ to be set in stone, safe, taken care of, not their issue/responsibility/burden anymore – despite the fact that at the time my friend got married, we were both working and living independent of our families and had been for years – that pressure was real, not just my imagination. It was also my burden, because the heaviness of expectation, of being required – even if by inference alone – to meet the conventions and needs of others, and to conform – was real. Stupid, but real. Sexist, but real.
“Today we will read love poetry. You shall read aloud to me and we will weep together.” – Iris Murdoch