Married Life: Week 1

For those of you who missed, it, I got fucking married last Saturday!
                                     

Courtesy of Jamie Dalesandro Photography

Marriage means a lot of things to a lot of people. For some, it’s a holy union between two people (and Jesus, as a card from someone who obviously doesn’t know us very well deigned to remind us.) For others, it’s the choice of a lifelong bond and family building partnership. For others still, it’s just a relationship with legal benefits.

A couple friends of mine got married a few weeks before we did, a couple who had been together for four years pre-knot. Theirs was a beautiful, moderately sized celebration with a tinge of religion, and they left for their honeymoon right away. When they got back, the wifely half of the couple posted a status on her Facebook.

               “Nothing has changed,” she said, “Except that we have more stuff.”

               I wasn’t terribly surprised by this. After all, when you take away all of the romantic embellishment and traditional emphasis, isn’t a marriage just a relationship with tax breaks? After all, my couple friends had been living together for years, sharing bills and household responsibilities. Weren’t they pretty much married anyway? Weren’t Josh and I pretty much married, save for the party and the contract? Hell, we got a dog together. That’s practically having a baby! (shut up, it’s more similar than you think.) How different could marriage really be?

               The answer is highly personal, I suspect.

               I honestly wasn’t expecting much to change after our wedding, except for my ring and his last name (yes, he changed his last name. I’ll get to that.) After the party and wedding night hotel, we were going home to the very same place we lived before the wedding. We weren’t exactly stepping into a new life. Even more, we had a week between our wedding and our honeymoon, so immediately after marriage, we’d be diving back into our regular weekly routine.

               That’s why I was fairly surprised when we got home and I realized that it did feel different. Not completely. Not even constantly. But there was a marked change between Josh and Dee and Mr. and Mrs. 

               For us, I think what really hit home that yes, we are a married couple, and that is different, was that we opened a joint banking account. I’m aware that not all married couples do this, and that some unmarried couples do, but for us, it was a marriage thing. Previously, we had ‘my’ money and ‘his’ money, to be smooshed together during bill time and haggled over on dinner dates (for us, this typically involved one of us trying to discreetly hand our debit cards to the waiter before the other noticed.) But now, we have an entire account dedicated to ‘our’ money. Money that we earned, or in the case of the wedding, were given, jointly. As a unit. It’s kind of strange in a way I can’t quite explain. And let me tell you, it’s only been a week, and it’s already stopped my “YAY! I HAVE MONEY! IMMA MAKE IT RAIN, BITCHES!” reaction to income dead in its tracks.

               Josh’s name change has also been a strange feeling. I’m not talking about the fact that the (gasp) husband changed his name in a male/female relationship, but trust me, I’ll get to that. It’s the act of a human legally changing their name, a piece of their identity, to signify a shift (dare I say, upgrade?) in relationship status. For my husband (AHHH!!!) and me, the name change signifies that we are now a family, and I suspect that’s why many modern couples still change their names, but it’s still weird.

               And now for a minor digression to answer the questions so many friends/family members have about Josh changing his name.

1. Why?

               In my previous post about marriage in general, I discussed how my husband (AHHH!!) and I define marriage, and part of that definition includes family building. This is where we saw the significance of a change in name: You, your spouse, and your children will all “fly under one flag,” as it were. As I stated above, our marriage meant that we are now a family, and we wanted to fly under one flag.

2. Why him?

               When Josh proposed, we discussed name changes right away. I expressed my love and deep attachment for my last name, probably not for the first time, being the proud little Dago that I am, and that I wouldn’t be keen on changing it. Josh, being the Seed of Heaven far too good for this world, totally understood that. But we also wanted to, as previously mentioned, “fly under one flag” as a family whenever we decided to reproduce. Neither of us were into hyphenating, and Josh didn’t like my idea of an epic gladiator battle over what last name the kids took (weird, because he totally would have won. He’s strong as a titan,) so he decided that he would change his name. He was happy to, stating that he has two straight brothers, one of whom is already married, to carry on his family name, and my family name, though awesome, isn’t terribly common, and it dwindling in the US. Pretty sure it’s still going strong in Sicily, though.

3. But what about his precious masculinity?!

               Dude, get this: My husband is so manly that he feels absolutely no need to reaffirm his masculinity with outdated social mores steeped in toxic gender roles.

                                         

4. Come on. You bullied him into it/it was your idea, right?

               Nope. Sorry to disappoint those who desperately want to believe that all men who want to get married are hen-pecked by manipulative shrews. This was Josh’s decision entirely, and he got incredibly annoyed with me constantly asking him if he was sure about this, if he could handle people’s dumbass assumptions and ridicule, if he’d regret it, etc. I even asked him while we were in the social security office. He gave me quite the epic eye roll.

               “We’re here.” He said, gesturing wildly, “Do you really need to keep asking me at this point?”

5. How did people react?

               Josh’s family was okay with it, though I imagine it took a bit of adjustment for them. My family is ecstatic, of course. A few of my extended family members welcomed him to the family by saying, “You’re Italian now. Congratulations!” My one adorable but conservative aunt, who previously told us that the very idea of Josh changing his name was, and I quote, “too twisted for colour TV!”, is still not thrilled about it, but she, and everyone else, is happy that we’re happy, and the name doesn’t matter a whole lot. Though Josh’s best man did stutter adorably when we asked him what he thought.
              
               Side note: I desperately need to get Too twisted for colour TV tattooed on me somewhere.

               As for strangers, I was honestly expecting a lot more confusion and some complications from an administrative standpoint. When I looked up how Josh could change his name, there were precious few resources available online. The ones I found were pre-legalization of gay marriage, and warned that a man changing his name was highly irregular and was very complicated and expensive in many states, including Ohio. But we ran into absolutely no trouble whatsoever. All we had to do was clarify once or twice that he was the one changing his name, and that was it.

               One highly unexpected byproduct of Josh changing his name is that when middle aged women hear of it, they fawn over him like he’s a newborn Corgi puppy walking for the first time. At the BMV, I seriously thought that our receptionist was going to reach across the counter and ruffle his hair.

               “You changed your name?” she gushed, “Oh, my God, I love that! Isn’t that just ADORABLE?! CONNIE! Have you ever heard of that? THAT’S JUST SO SWEET!”

                

               Anyway, back to the meat of my post. The financial and administrative changes were big ones, but other than that, our day-to-day lives haven’t changed, other than our frantic scrambling to pseudo-plan our honeymoon. However, I’d be lying if I said that everything was the same. There’s this strange, somewhat abstract difference, a feeling rather than an event. I’ve struggled to describe it, even to myself. The relationship feels…legitimized is not exactly the right word, because it implies that one needs a piece of paper to be a legitimate couple, and who the hell believes that but Evangelicals and a handful of kids who are too obsessed with Disney? But there is a feeling of importance, a feeling of significance, that is stronger now than it was before. The celebration that was the wedding was truly a welcoming to one another’s families. For example, Josh was able to move about freely and converse with my aunts and cousins without someone asking where I went off to, so in a way his presence in the family is now…well, legitimate. He’s no longer an outsider, and I’m no longer an outsider to his family. I am Josh’s wife (AHHHH!!!), but also his mother’s daughter, his brothers’ sister. Er, in-law. But it is a very, very different feeling than being a girlfriend, or even a fiancé.

               My mother also said something very significant about the weird subtle shift in relationship status. For those of you who don’t know her, my mother has a tendency to be…ever so slightly…a butterfly’s eyelash…a unicorn’s whisper…over-involved. But a couple of days after the wedding, she said, “It’s weird. I don’t feel quite so responsible for you anymore. It’s like…you’re not alone anymore.”

               That’s definitely the feeling. I’m not alone anymore. For the first time since I left my parents’ house nearly ten (ugh, sweet zombie Jesus) years ago, I feel like I am a part of a team, an iron-clad unit, a family. I’m no longer on my own.

               And it’s wonderful.

 

Courtesy of Jamie Dalesandro Photography

And now, an unnecessary clarification!
I have to point this out because I know that one or two people are bound to feel weird. I am one who makes a family of friends. Josh and I both are. My bridescreatures and Josh’s groomsmen are absolutely our family. Ination, my beloved darkling throng, is my family. However…they are not the kind of family like parents and siblings, aunts and uncles and cousins. They are a more fluid type of family, ever changing, sometimes disappearing. Josh’s and my marriage signifies a union that isn’t going anywhere, and a family that will be joined in blood and, for our future spawn, growing up together. My friends and my freaks are a family to whom I will always be devoted, and there are those of you who will definitely be known as Auntie and Uncle to our kids, but the family that Josh and I create will be a different sort, a different feeling. Hopefully I didn’t just make everything even more confusing.