Wedding Day Jitters When You're Not Even Getting Married: An Introverted Tale

My brother has done it.  He finally tied the knot.  

For years it’s just been the three singles.  The strangely autonomous children who were all in their thirties and still unwed.  Brother broke the cycle.  

There was a show on television called “Married at First Sight” where a panel of 6 experts match people up.  The matched couple then agrees to get married without having ever seen one another.  They have to stay together as a married couple for at least two months.  After which, they can decide whether to divorce or not.

Sounds like disaster waiting to happen, but alarmingly, the panel of experts has an astonishingly high success rate.  I’m not surprised.  I often think people can see other people better than they can see themselves.  Though I think the real crux of success in this situation is that they force the couple to stay together and make it work for two months first.  All the couples are disappointed and question their choice in the beginning, but by the end of the two months they realize why the experts placed them together and why it works so wonderfully.  This never would have happened in the real world.  In the real world, a first date never would have happened, let alone a two-month courtship. 

The show was successful enough the network opted for a second season.  Each season follows three couples.  When we heard they were doing a second season, I told my sister we should volunteer.  Three siblings, all around 30, unwed, Mormon, one red personality, one yellow, one white, one interested in women, one interested in men, one uninterested…as they say, you can’t write this stuff.  This would make for good television.  Now our chances at 15 minutes of fame and a life-long arranged marriage are shattered.  

I’m happy for him anyway.  Actually…I don’t really care.  It’s his life and his wife.  And, I like most anyone.  So, I’m more along the lines of if he's happy, then I'm happy.

  

The reception was difficult for me though.  I’m an introvert to begin with.  But, compound that with a wedding reception and I crave a hole to crawl into.  I asked my sister if I could go sit in the car.  She said she would allow me 15 minute increments: 15 minutes in the car, 15 out mingling.  I wanted to take her up on this offer, but I knew my mom wouldn’t appreciate it.  I bucked up and took this event as one of the requirements you have to make it through in life.

  

The reception was an ad naseum stream of relatives and friends of my parents whom I haven’t seen in 15 years.  These are people I have positive feelings toward, but not people I have an easy, natural, comfortable relationship with.  Not people I long to reconnect with.  People who cause me anxiety because interaction with them always follows the same pattern: wow!  It’s been so long.  What are you up to?  And where are you living these days?

  

I then feel forced to either divulge details of my lackluster, disappointing accomplishments and my alternative viewpoints and lifestyle, risking my eyes to deteriorating expressions of judgment and alienation…or I have to find a way to seamlessly step around them, which causes stress and its own set of difficulties.  Neither option is particularly pleasing.

This is where the bad taste arises.  As an introvert, these types of interactions syphon my energy.  It’s like the movie Hocus Pocus.  The witches brew a potion and feed it a pretty young girl.  She turns translucent and ethereal.  The witches lean in and suck the vapors of her youthful soul into their lungs.  The witches feel rejuvenated; having been exploited,however, the young girl dies.  It's not that I dislike the people attending the reception, it's that I don't have a way of withholding them from taking my energy, even though they do so unintentionally.  For most people reconnecting is invigorating.  They are happy to see one another and catch up.  For me, it's exhausting.

I know I should return the favor and request information about them and their lives.  However, as I mentioned earlier, I’m not invested in their lives.  With good reason.  I haven’t seen them in 15 years.  Even then, our relationship didn’t extend beyond seeing you speak to my mother, or riding home from school in your carpool van where I quietly sat in the back.

More than that, it feels as though my energy has already been plundered by your own questions.  Once I've finished answering your questions, all I want to do is run away and hoard what little energy I have left.  Therefore, the chance to voluntarily offer up more by catalyzing further conversation is not terribly appealing.

Had it been up to me, I would not have engaged conversation in the first place.  Not because I'm shy, not because I dislike you, but because I'm in an African watering hole situation.  I'm desperate to replenish but the pathway there seems entangled with tricks, traps, and jaws.  I feel awkward, uncomfortable, unsuitable, and terribly drained.  So, the moment conversation begins, my mind is thinking how to escape, not how to stay. 

There are people I can see after years with no contact and we pick up right where we left off.  But, these rare gems are people who know me as me.  This means they have to have known me at some point after I learned to know myself.  AND that I felt comfortable enough with them and the situation to share myself.  Which pretty much negates anything before college. 

When I was in college I remember telling my mother that when I get married the only people that will be there are me, my spouse, and the person marrying us.  She did not care for this.  A strange combination of upset and emotional came over her that manifested itself mostly through becoming defensive.  With the finalizing power of a period, she stated she WILL be there; that it was her right as a mother.  I didn't care much at the time.  The idea of marriage was so far away, plus I figured her persistence would waiver as she was bound to disapprove of whomever I married.

The idea of other people being there seemed superfluous.  I knew my mother would require the punctilio of extended relatives being in attendance, and I didn't want these near-strangers sponging my special day.  Remember that as an introvert other people don't bolster and infuse my experience, they truncate it.  I told her I saw marriage triangular: it was between my, my spouse, and God.  Therefore, only those three were allowed to be present.

As I sat in the front row of the small assemblage gathered together in the attic of Brigham Young's home for my brother's wedding, I felt all the eyes of the people behind me watching them, and I realized I was right.  I don't want the distraction of those eyes at my wedding.  I don't want to be onstage.  All I want is to gaze into my love's eyes and have that connection.  Then I realized, not only was I right, I might also be wrong.  Not only do I want my wedding intimate, I may not want a wedding at all!  

I was supposed to be there supporting, sending positive wishes and loving vibes to the joyous couple being wed.  Instead, I sat there thinking how much this was everything I didn't want.  My mind was warped.  Astonished!  Since my early twenties I've always planned on marriage.  I was so simply sure I wanted it.  Now, sitting in my own brother's wedding, a moment when I should be swept up in nothing but happy emotions, I felt my feelings on marriage crumbling.

I listend to my uncle leading the service.  Do you promise to love, honor, cherish, look unto this man and none other, etc...the list seemed to go on and on.  I've never been a firm fan of marriage vows.  This is because I am slave to accuracy, and I don't believe it possible for anyone to accurately answer the marriage vows affirmatively.  These are worse than crystal ball predictions, they are crystal ball promises.  At least predictions are allowed the grace to be untrue.  No one minds when a prediction doesn't come through, but when a promise is broken, it's catastrophic.

I understand that's the whole point of marriage.  Moving your relationship forward from prediction (I predict we will always be together) to promise (I promise we will always be together) is what elevates the relationship from common to supernal.  However, with promises come expectations.  And, expectations are what lead to disappointment and resentment.  

To say--to promise even!  With 100% surety--that you will always feel, and behave the same way as this one particular moment in time, that you will never change, or that if you do change you will only change in similar and proportionate ways is a beautiful ideal, but completely irrational.  No one can predict the future.  No one knows what will be brought upon them, what they will encounter, and how that will affect them as individuals let alone a couple.  Things change.  People change.  And, to promise that they never will--to build up that expectation--is foolish.  

I believe the best one can do is make the promise, "I want to always love you.  I will do my best to honor, and cherish you.  I will try my best to keep us together."  Phrases that carry the same sentiment, but also the understanding that people are human.  Something that says I'm aiming for the stars, but we may land on Jupiter, and if we do, it will still be worth the ride.  While I believe in always striving to be better, I also believe there has to be an allowance for people to be people.  It is unfair otherwise.  If we don't allow people to be people, then we are really doing a disservice to both us and the other person.

  

Be that as it may, I watched my brother take his wife by the hand and promise everything the crystal ball asked him to.  It felt intrusive.  It felt privy to a private, intimate moment which made us all voyeurs, even if we were invited.  In the background I could hear pots and pans being readied.  One couldn't blame them, they were serving the wedding dinner the instant the ceremony was over.  Yet, somehow, it seemed so disrespectful to the moment.  Here these people were pledging their lives together.  There should have been angels singing, or utter stillness at least.  But, there it was: a reminder that no matter what momentous thing we do with our lives, the world doesn't care.  It doesn't stop.  It rolls over our small, insignificant lives and keeps going.

I consider marriage to arguably be the most intimate of all things.  Marriage is combining.  It's a union.  It's not just sharing a life together, it's a splicing of souls.  I understanding wanting to share your happiness with those you love, but to include others in that--the most personal of moments--seems...indiscreet.  We would never gather a crowd together to watch us consummate the marriage on the wedding night.  That would be inappropriate.  Yet, that involves bodies.  Something held less dear than our inner being.  Whereas, marriage entwines our very cores and, for that, we have no problem allowing an audience. 

I understand sex in a loving marriage transcends the physical and becomes something more.  It becomes making love.  Sex is just a physical action, but making love combines a couple together in way nothing else can.  Even so, when I commit myself to someone, I want to be as far removed from the world as possible. 

I began to have visions in my head.  Standing isolated on the shores of Ireland.  The easy comfort of the rolling green hills on one side, the magnificent, tempestuous power of the ocean on the other.  From the cliffside, we can look down and feel the thrill of the jump below, or look to the ridge and feel the excitement of the climb ahead.  We stand in the middle.  On the threshold.  Holding hands, embracing, looking into each other's eyes.  And, there, we share our commitment.  Without the world, we promise everything we can.  We say what's in our hearts.  We accept the other person as our love, our partner, as the person we choose to be with.  We accept them for everything they can give, and as importantly, everything they can't.  We cherish their presence, their love, our relationship.  This is my marriage.  Sharing our profound and personal moment intimately.  

But, it's not a marriage, you say!  I know, I know.  It's not legal.  There's nothing to say it actually happened.  It's nothing more than Tony and Maria singing "Make of our hand, one hand.  Make of our hearts, one heart."  But, for the first time in my life...I don't mind.  It seems to be enough for me.  Somehow my version of marriage holds more weight than the stock I put into a signed civil certificate.  Of course, I wouldn't mind putting my John Hancock down on a marriage license once we return.  But, people must have married themselves together one way or another before civilization swept in.  Who's to say my exclusive wedding on the edge of glory provides a less official marriage than anyone else's?

Marriage is what you make of it.  And--like a little school girl planning it out in her first diary--I've made mine.  And, I'm delighted :-)   

Why I Think the Fight for Gay Marriage Is Ridiculous

Recently, I've accumulated many articles on relationships as part of a project I'm working on.  I've been reading articles on all types of relationships, but one I came across the other day made me think.  It was titled 10 Reasons Gays Guys are Losing the Ability to Fall in Love.  That sounded horrible!  What could be worse than losing the ability to fall in love?  A ghastly epidemic.  My interest was piqued. 

Truthfully, I only made it through the first reason before my mind took off in its own direction.  The first reason the article listed was "We Get Too Comfortable Too Quickly."  

The article says that by week two of the relationship, the couple is already treating each other like an old married couple rather than letting the passion sizzle.  Essentially, giving me the image of a passion silo where your ability to have a long-term relationship is dependent on how well you ration it out.
  

This made me question.  Is this true?  Love is exciting and wonderful, particularly in the beginning.  Is it wrong to follow your heart when it's feeling that way?  Can peaking too soon burn up all the fuel in your love fire?  Would taking it slower be likely to extend the life of the relationship, or is getting comfortable a quick way of determining whether substance is there or not?

Perhaps it's because I originate from a "when you know, you know--why wait?" culture that--more often than not--has proved that to be true.  But, I don't believe in holding back in a relationship.  I believe in honest, open communication and behavior.  If that means I think about you all the time, I'm going to let you know.  If I enjoy spending time with you, I'm going to try and spend as much time with you as possible.  And, why not?  We are trying to see if we want to spend the rest of our lives together, after all.  

Of course we all know the butterflies will fade.  But, if it's a good partnership, the core structure upholding longevity will still remain.  If a relationship goes from hot and fiery, to old married couple, to over and done in three weeks...then it's not because the couple blew their emotional load the first week.  It's because one (or both) of the partners doesn't have the structure to uphold it.

*Caution: this post is going to contain large generalizations.  I want to acknowledge I'm fully aware there are beautiful, wonderful examples out there and exceptions readily available.  Also, I am only basing this on what I have witnessed.  I have no empirical data to back up my hypotheses.    

In my personal observations (which are multiplied ten fold when taking into account all the stories and examples others have shared with me), the gay population is largely mercurial.  Always on to something new; something shiny; the next best thing.  This is why the gay population (though statistically very small) is such a massive contributor and driving force in pop culture.  Unfortunately, though, relationships are not fickle exempt.

*Note: I am also specifically speaking of gay male culture and not the entire LGBT community.  For whatever reason, these generalizations don't seem to apply as much in the lesbian culture.

I would guess this propensity for the next best thing arises from living on the surface.  People live on the surface when they can't fathom their own emotions.  Living on the surface means living among distractions.  It's a way of self-medicating.  Rather than dealing and learning to live with emotions that seem overwhelming, people shove the emotions in a closet and shut the door before the emotions can fall out again.  To keep their mind off the bowing, burgeoning, mushrooming closet, they go out on the town.  This provides plenty of distractions.  Ooo!  Alcohol.  Ooo!  New clothes.  Ooo!  Pop star's new album is dropping.  Ooo!  Reality television.  Etc.

Not at Home in Homeroom

I have this condition where I don't know I'm nervous.  I'm cool, calm, and collected most of the time--blasé as my friend calls it--so, I don't FEEL nervous.  However, over the years I have learned to RECOGNIZE when I'm nervous.  I can tell when I get nervous because I start to sweat.  My palms go first, my underarms second, and my brain is third.  My brain is actually surprised every time it happens.  "My palms are clammy.  My underarms are hot.  Oh, hey!  I guess I'm nervous!"

Last June my three-piece Italian style suit and I sat in an office.  I was being interviewed for a job.  It was the first time I'd interviewed for a job in 4 years and it was probably the most prestigious job for which I'd ever been interviewed.

It was summery warm.  The office was glass and no bigger than a shoebox.  Small enough that the three of us inside the office (myself and the two interviewing me) had to sit with our knees touching one another.

As they probed me with questions, I began to sweat.  Profusely.  No way to hide it, running down my face, had to wipe it away, somebody hand me a handkerchief perspiring.  Which was mortifying.  Which only made the situation worse.

I thought the job was no big deal.  I thought I didn't really care about it.  If this job didn't pan out, another one would.  It wasn't until I was walking away in my damp dress shirt, dejected with disaster, I realized I must have wanted it much more than I thought.

I bring this up because--looking back--I realize high school must have been one never-ending, anxiety-filled mess.  I didn't feel like a mess.  I felt quite put together.  Academically, I excelled--and if the bullies were seeking scapegoats they never checked the black box theatre.  But, I've never been very good socially.  And high school is a social pressure cooker.  One period of gym and 7 more periods working out your nerves.  

In summer I would blame it on the heat.  In winter I'd blame it on the fleece.  I even wondered if it was happening to everyone else and I just didn't know it.  Being the certifiably dry (humor and otherwise), self-assured person I am now, I realize that wasn't the case.  I even resorted to wearing underarm pads at one point.  It was that severe.

I remember one evening I was hanging out with my friends Marc and Katie.  They were playing the most wonderfully horrible game.  You raise your arms above your head.  Someone pins down your legs while another pins down your arms.  Then, they give you a task to do--name 10 state capitals for instance--while they tickle you nonstop.  The tickling only ceases once the task is accomplished.

It was quite hysterical to watch people loose all mental capabilities and fight their way through the tickling's physical dominance.  Everyone else had done their turn.  They asked me to do it.  I declined.  Not because I was afraid of the tickling; I was afraid of raising my arms.  I knew my armpits were unsuitable for any hand.  The spotty sight of my darkened shirt alone was embarrassing enough to decline.  There was no way I could let people pin my arms above my head and put their hands in there!

They badgered me.  They said everyone else had done it and I wasn't allowed to leave until I had done it too.  I finally finagled them into letting me get something from my car first.  I came back with a thick leather jacket on.  They teased me for trying to cheat the system, pointing out my jacket would dampen the effect of the tickling.  In reality, I was just mortified to have my armpits exposed and knew the leather would cover it.  Even though they teased me for trying to cheat, I was RELIEVED they interpreted my actions that way versus the actual alternative.

Too bad the job interview didn't ask me what my most embarrassing moment was.  I could have just relayed that story.  Given the Niagra spramp happening down my face they probably felt I was already embarrassed enough.  And, they were right.

If you could go back and tell your younger self one thing, what would it be?  Another classic interview question.  I guess that's the thing.  The whole point of this.  I'm proud of the person I've become and the discoveries I've made.  I've become confident and solidified enough in who I am that I don't sweat it anymore.*  And, I wish I could instill some of that in that poor, socially insecure, overweight high school kid who must have internally trembled his way to graduation.

Perhaps that's the reason why we sweat when we get nervous: to counteract the trembling; to keep the chaffing at bay and come away relatively unscathed.

*Except in interviews, or auditions, or on dates