Thursday, January 03, 2008

I What?

So, my New Year's resolution is to write more outside of school. Since it has now Jan 3 and this is the longest thing I've written, and since I discovered one of my classes requires 3 7-page papers throughout the semester, ending with a 20-page paper, it might not happen. In my own defense, I do write lots of blog entries. The only problem is that they are all in my mind. When we can post directly from our mind, you'll get lots of entries, I promise.

I've been thinking a lot about people getting married/engaged. Not me. God knows, the last thing I need right now is a major change in my life. But the marriage of friends and people in general. Partly because I've decided that so many people around me are potentially setting themselves up for a failed marriage. Not that I really have a huge amount of right to say anything. But first of all. 18 year old? You don't know everything. You think you do. And I think that's a little sad and boring, and I hope you are wrong. I know many 18-year olds think they know everything (strangely, not a delusion I ever suffered from, aided probably by the fact that I haven't known what I want to do with my life since I was 9), which is in and of itself boring. Then one of my friends may or may not be expecting a proposal, which I disagree with for a number of reasons but which I won't go into here. Not because I can't nicely outline them, but because they didn't choose to put their life online, so I won't do that to them.

Also, I REALLY don't like people asking me when I'm going to get engaged. Yes, I know SB and I have been dating for forever, and most people do it because they care, but still. I am okay with the question from friends. Particularly good friends who are more asking about the status of my life. But adults with whom I have a fond, non-substantial relationship, not so much. I mean, what am I supposed to say? "Are you going to marry him?" If I say yes, then it's as if they are proposing for him and no one asks if someone loves someone else randomly and I just am not comfortable answering that personal of a question. I'm going to start asking married people if they are going to divorce their spouse.

I do have a theory about getting engaged. See, I think you can either get engaged before you enter the "we have issues and crap to work through" stage, or after you have worked through a good portion of said crap. And I don't want to be talked down to or pitied by those around me who are still in that obnoxious honeymoon stage of having dated for only a few months. Listen, we went through that, too, and you are going to have problems and you will have to deal with them, so stop acting like your relationship is better than mine because you don't know each other that well yet.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Donna first words to me when we came back from break was "so no ring on your finger?" It bugged me so much and made me feel pressured. I will probably marry Elgan, but what if we were just the type to want to live together for a lifetime and not marry. None the less, it is no ones business and if you are happy in your relationship in the stage it is, then people should be happy for you.

Rebecca said...

That's ridiculous. You should ask her the same thing...

JordanBaker said...

I'd never thought about the way that there are two phases at which people tend to get engaged before, but I think you're absolutely right.

And the ones who do it early will always say "when you know, you know," whether they're 14 or 44. And they'll end up living in their parents spare room 6 years down the line either way.