GWSSblog

I grew up in a pretty religious family. We went to church every Sunday, my Dad was involved in the church leadership, and my Mom would read us devotions every morning before school. Then my Dad died, and everything changed. I didn’t really know what I thought about church, and especially the church that our family attended. I refused to go to our church youth group anymore because I hated it. It was full of a bunch of kids who all had the same goal in life: getting married. Sick. I have watched all of my peers in that church get married by age 20, and start popping out kids a few years later. Not for me. I wanted to go to school, get a job, and then consider marriage and kids. Well, my sophomore year of college, I met my boyfriend Nate. Our relationship became serious, and last fall, after 2 years of dating, decided to move in together.
Of course this was not great news for my mother, and she still randomly calls me to tell me how sinful my “shacking up� with my boyfriend is. I, on the other hand, strongly believe that I could never marry someone that I haven’t lived with. She begs me to “at least become engaged� and even offers to let me wear my grandmother’s old wedding band until Nate can afford to buy me one himself. Somehow, no matter how many times I tell her I don’t even want to be engaged, she cannot accept this fact. She loves telling me about how she thinks that getting married is the “right and Christian� thing to do. For some reason she can’t comprehend the fact that I do not want my life to in any way resemble that of those girls at her church. I don’t believe that getting married so young is the right thing for me to do. So many people in my Mom’s generation got married when they were 19, 20, and 21 and now over 60% of them are divorced. Apparently, this is of no concern to her.
I don’t wish to judge anyone who decides that marriage is right for them; all I am saying is that it is not right for me right now. I do not believe that living with my boyfriend makes me a “bad� person in any way. I wish that my mother would not judge me so harshly. She told me the other day that my living with Nate is “a big family secret�, that it is embarrassing for her, and that I am setting a poor example for my younger siblings. Personally, I don’t care who knows, I am not embarrassed, and I hope my siblings will be as careful as I when choosing who they want to spend the rest of their lives with. I am extremely afraid of getting divorced; it fucks so many things up. I have so many friends whose parents got divorced, and it made their lives complicated. I would rather end up with a broken heart because I lived with a guy and we didn’t get married, than with a broken home.
I think that the extremely different viewpoints of my mother and I on this issue, are very interesting. I want the basis of my upcoming video project to reflect this generational difference. I also want to include my grandmother’s thoughts on love and marriage in the project. I cannot wait to see how dramatically our family’s opinion on this topic has changed throughout the generations. My grandmother was married when she was very young, as was my mother. Neither of them had the opportunity to go to college, as I have had, and I know that this has played a huge role in shaping my understanding of the topic. I am by far the most liberal and the most feminist of the three of us. This one topic has brought to light many issues in my life that I struggle with. Ten years ago, I am sure that I would have told you that I would be married by now, and interestingly enough my 11 year-old sister constantly tells me that I’m old and should be married! I wonder what she’ll think about that when she’s a 22 year-old college senior! I’m sure there is much she has yet to learn and discover.