Sinan Writes This

Engagements, Marriages, Weddings, That Whole Malarkey

The problem with life is other people have lived it before you. It’s easy to fall into the cliches of growing up. And so I find myself 27 years old, in the middle of a relationship of six plus years with a lovely and utterly patient woman, and we are not yet engaged. Not even close. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.

Everyone around us, everyone we know and love, is either getting married, already married, or both. Or something, I dunno. The world is having a wedding, I thnk.

I seem to have created this world in which everyone is taunting us with their engagements. That’s not the case. I actually don’t get too much of the ‘so when are you getting married?’s that I would profess to getting. It’s happened, sure, but in my screwed-up reality there’s a parrot on my shoulder who repeats it 10 times a minute. In my reality, I am the pirate never to wed.

One of my best friends got engaged this weekend. He and his girlfriend have been going out for four years - that’s two years less than me and my girlfriend have been going out. I think I felt more OK about all this when all of my best friends (all four of them - oxymoron, I know) were single (in the married sense). That way, I could lull myself into a belief that I’m still young, sexy, able to get Jennifer Love Hewitt should the opportunity come etc.

The truth is that I’m procrastinating because of two things. The first is that I don’t really like the idea of marriage. I fully confess that my parents got divorced and it was painful for me, blah blah blah. While that surely has some bearing, honestly, I’m not 100% sure I get the point of wedding and marriage anyway, at least beyond the legalities. I don’t get the “to show our love” thing about it, and I don’t get the “to make it permanent” thing. I can do all that without asking my girlfriend to wear a virginal white dress that insults and demeans her only slightly less than getting her dad to ‘give her away’ - and he would want to, I might add.

The second is that, frankly, we’re not financially comfortable. Since I took on the recklessness that is pursuing a mostly non-viable career late into my 20s (woo) and my girlfriend returned to studying as part of a career that is similarly uncertain (woo), I’ve been left always aware of the cost of one of these wedding things. And I know she will want a big old wedding. Actually, I don’t know that she will, but I’m afraid to lead her down the path I would go down, which is one that is - safe to say - not every little girl’s dream day. Although, frankly, I’m not sure my involvement could ever amount to a dream wedding.

Sometimes I think about getting engaged… and just seeing how long that can last. That’s a very male way of looking at things, isn’t it? Committing to a day when you’ll make an actual commitment. It’s just a half-commitment. Pathetic.

Still, at least the parrot would shut up.