SATC Wedding jitters - lack of love or simple panic?
Loredana commented on Baggage Reclaim about how simple it is - a guy either shows up for the wedding, or he doesn’t love the bride. The topic was the Sex and The City movie, and how disappointing a role model Carrie is for going through with marrying Mr. Big. Mr. Big seems to have made a career out of teasing and avoiding commitment.
I think there is a confusion here. I don’t respect someone that backs away from a wedding at the last moment.
But love isn’t simple, and marrying isn’t about love, completely. Until fairly recently in human society - like the 1400’s for European cultures, last week for India and China, and other countries somewhere in between - marriage had nothing to do with affection, love, or even knowing who you were marrying. Marriage was originally designed to be a business or social transaction between families.
People that confuse this with fairy tales of falling in love with the handsome prince “marry in haste, and repent in leisure”.
Love means different things to different people. For some, an engagement of hormones (lust) is all there is to love, for others it is the intimacy and vulnerability with a nurturing partner. Tender feelings for your partner. Respect and adoration in varying degrees, trust, honor, honesty - these should all be part of ‘in love’, yet many people don’t notice or don’t care (at first) when some of the components are missing. In past years, and some think in the trying years ahead, the sheer ability of a partner to defend the family, to manage sufficient food and shelter for healthy family growth, and fertility were prime considerations, much more important than appearance. Social standing and business and social connections might be considered survival or chances that a family will flourish.
The social commitment of marriage, especially as the ceremony approaches, causes most people to reflect and reconsider that they appreciate the advantages and obligations of a formal union. And most times questions arise. People that haven’t previously gotten to know themselves well often find surprises, or questions they can’t answer, or problems they don’t understand how to approach. The air of panic can prevent clear thinking, at times.
Originally the formal binding of couples was intended to bind their energies, something akin to what we call ‘magic’ today. Pagans usually bound the couple and community to provide energy for fertility, to encourage the miracle of life and support healthy births and children. This was part of the recognition of the essential energy and power of women. Patriarchal religions and cultures turned this, to bind the woman’s magic to her husband’s family and line. Remember that admonition for ‘man to be woman’s head’ or some such? The Christian church embraces that power, and binds those energies to itself, through bonds to the husband. And you wondered why the Church doesn’t want women to exercise their own power?
OK, enough digression. There is a lot of energy, and ritual, and social weight of commitment, even beyond the obvious ties between woman and man. Today a ‘happy bride’ is expected as a matter of course. Originally, a happy bride was a surprise. Both the bride (despite the ritual of being ‘given away’ by her family, as usually signified by her father) and groom have to face their own choices and decisions. When the agreement to wed is made in the bliss of sexually stimulated hormones, there will be many issues, accommodations, and parts of their previous lives that will die a little death to provide enough doubts and concerns that ‘wet feet’ are not that unexpected. We have a name - wedding jitters.
Society used to be bound together with many ties, many of them formalized on the wedding altar. Marriages still strengthen families and communities and countries. Yet in many ways here in the US, with examples like SATC, we have lost sight of the magnitude and power that are supposed to be involved in the simple exchange of rings and ‘I do’s.
That is, too many people are ill prepared to walk down the aisle, at the time the music starts. “Marry in haste, repent in leisure.” Whether one party finds, as the moment approaches, that they are unable to make the commitment, or fear their unpreparedness will hurt their intended, backing away from the ceremony, even at the last moment, might be the right thing to do. Many issues and fears and obligations may be at issue, quite aside from the basic question of respect, adoration, affection, and desire - love - for the other. This is an individual issue, and I am reluctant to say that any decision to proceed or postpone is ill done.
Getting to the altar and deciding that another partner would be better is wrong - self deception, dishonest - the questions should be ‘this partner or not’. If one wonders about ‘this partner or that partner’, then I see serious character flaws at work. Once one forms an attachment to someone, you either stop noticing others as potential partners, or deliberately set yourself in the mode of “I am a professional dater, I am playing the field and am incapable of being a meaningful partner for anyone, at this time.”
OK, not always, there are the few who choose the ‘three coins’ lifestyle. Marriage meaning ‘one man, one woman’ has only been a modern invention, after all, to simplify Italian Merchant Prince family inheritances. The biblical Wedding of Canaan, after all, doesn’t mention whether the bride was a first wife or only wife. That wasn’t the practice there, at the time.