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On Being Married Practically a Year

pegasus

So far, we've been married 11 months which is pretty bizarre to me.

I still turn to say to Brian, "We're married!" on a regular basis. As if by saying it over and over, I will somehow be able to wrap my head around the idea of being married. It's too huge for me to really understand in one day or 270 days, but I feel like maybe that is the whole point—marriage is supposed to be understood only over thousands of days—millions of minutes.

When Brian asked me to marry him, it felt like he'd invited me to sit with him on a back porch somewhere—something that equaled peace and gorgeousness. Some thing as natural and as easy as taking a drink of water. It felt good to make a choice that didn't make me feel chills or hyper or scared or overly star-crossed romantic. It felt good to love him—to be loved by him.

When we got engaged, it was important that I didn't need to marry him. It was important that I could actually live without him. I'd had so many dating escapades where the stakes were really high and spiked with adrenaline. It felt good to know I was choosing, not being fated to the altar based on a feeling I had on the first or second date.

It was a relief to say out loud: If I broke up with him, I would marry someone else good and kind. I can live without him, but I want to marry him.  I don't have to marry him, but I choose to love him forever.

A year ago, I may have apologized for how anti-romantic that might sound to someone not inside my brain. But, I won't ever apologize now.

At my reception, my best friend Emiline read Shakespeare's Sonnet 116. When I originally asked her to read a poem she loved about love, she immediately started speaking the words, and then my friend Mary chimed in. It was a pretty magical moment.

And, it was a magical moment when she prefaced her recitation at our wedding by talking about how love should be rational. Then she talked about lichen, and how it is two living organisms that combine. She talked about how lichen can survive the harshest climates and conditions in the world. Then, she recited the words:
Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments. Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds, or bends with the remover to remove: O no; it is an ever-fixed mark, that looks on tempests, and is never shaken; it is the star to every wandering bark, whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken. Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks within his bending sickle's compass come; love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, but bears it out even to the edge of doom. If this be error and upon me proved, I never writ, nor no man ever loved. 
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The day we got home from our honeymoon, Brian went to the grocery store to purchase food and tampons. While I slept off cramps, he made me dinner.

A few days later, when I clogged the toilet, he went to the hardware store to buy a plunger.

He now knows that I sometimes set my alarm a full hour before I need to get up—just so I can go back to sleep, and that I often leave my belongings all over town. He also knows I have to go to the bathroom, sometimes, twice a night.

I know that he always eats breakfast. He is particular about where he buys gasoline, and he loves nature documentaries.

We do each other's laundry. We make each other dinner. He makes me breakfast. It took us five months to sleep through an entire night without waking each other up.

We fight about downtown parking and carbon caps, and I feel perpetually guilty about the time I spend online when maybe we should be having a conversation.

We're still working on organizing exercise into mornings filled with each other and after-work evenings of dinner and errands and other things. We have "drawing" time recently, which means he draws and I write blog posts. He does not start the timer until he hears me actually typing on the computer because he knows I will procrastinate until the bitter end.

I make him listen to Dave Ramsey. He tells me about stories he hears on the news. We pray for each other's family members and friends because now they are ours. The best: when we can pray in gratitude for answered prayers for people we love together.

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This is all to say, mostly songs and movies lie about what romantic love looks like and what it feels like.

It's okay to choose to fall in love. And, it's okay if you don't feel desperate or star-crossed about it. In the words of my cousin, Sally: Find someone who is helpful. Find someone who nourishes you. In the words of my friend, Samantha: Find someone who is kind to you. As my friend Carly says, Balm to your soul.


Marrow to your bones. 

Find someone who is your equal.
As Emiline says, A collaboration.


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Dear readers, what do you say? What is your advice on finding and/or creating a marriage of "true minds"?

What surprised you the most about being married?

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Reading List:
The article starts out slow but gets amazing real quick. Presents research by John Gottman on how he could found physiological factors predicted how a marriage would end (or continue). Basically, the couples who were feeling a lot of adrenaline—didn't make it. The couples who were calm and generous—still married and happy.

Favorite quotes: 
"In other words, it was in the practicality that I found the love I was looking for."
"Imagine a whole nation of people constantly chasing the emotions they had when they were dating.  A country of people trying to live a Disney movie."

On Vanity: or the Tragedy of "Modest is Hottest"

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One of my favorite days last Winter semester was the afternoon my students and I looked at the argument behind the phrase "modest is hottest".

We'd been talking all year about how words, phrases, graphics, commercials, lyrics, even colors can make an argument. And, how an argument, or rhetoric (how something is presented or explained), can change reality. I don't know what prompted the discussion this day—I think we were talking about cliches we sometimes say as Mormons—and how sometimes they don't actually match up with church doctrine. One of my students raised her hand and said: What about "modest is hottest"? 

A perfect example! I immediately wrote it on the board. Most of the students laughed—it's not a typical phrase to write on college class white board.

I acknowledged that the phrase is almost always used jokingly, but I challenged the students to see, even as a joke, the reality the phrase creates just by saying it out loud.

To examine the "reality" of this cliche, first we brainstormed words the students associated with "modesty".

In a cloud around the word on the board, I wrote the words they called out: simple, humble, humility, moderate, unselfish, unassuming.

Next, we recorded synonyms and words associated with "hottest": competitive, sexy, sexual attractiveness, flashy, center of attention, elite, exclusive.


I didn't have to say much about the two word clouds on the board and what they meant for the phrase. There was a general sense of horror in the room—not because "sexiness" is negative, but because modesty is so clearly supposed to be the direct opposite of vanity, competitiveness, and exclusivity. 

One student said, "It's just funny, what is the big deal?" A fair question—how can a simple, rhymed phrase be harmful? So, we talked about what the phrase reinforces about the doctrine of modesty in terms of our religion. Is modesty just about sexy fashion choices?  And, do we practice modesty in our religion to be exclusive or sexy or competitive?

And, if this phrase is almost exclusively used when talking to women—what does that teach women and men about the purpose of modesty? What beliefs about women does the phrase create?  Are these beliefs false doctrine? Are they blasphemous?

Modesty actually means simplicity and moderation. This can specifically include speech, behavior, and dress. It means freedom from boastfulness.

It means freedom from vanity! 

These are beautiful ideas because the underlying root of vanity and boastfulness is self-consciousness. Christ was not self-consciousness. He was modest. He loved God, himself, and others. This love lead to a kind of inclusivity that has the power to forgive and exalt every human being. So, I think modesty is a sacred doctrine. And, I think the practice of modesty in all its aspects promotes more love (for God, for ourselves, for other people).

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Anyways, what do you think? Has living the doctrine of modesty ever helped you feel the love of God? Has it helped you love others more? Or yourself?

Will you join my campaign to eliminate "modest is hottest" from the spoken and unspoken language of mormon people everywhere?

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Reading list:

What a Pope can teach us about Modesty
The phrase "Do you see this woman", is repeated too many times, but otherwise, it's a great essay.