When I was a teenager, I daydreamed about what it would be like to go on a date. Then in my twenties, and because I was a late bloomer, I daydreamed about what it would be like to hold hands or have sex with a boy. Then in my thirties, after I had experienced sex and was no longer wondering about what it would feel like physically (but still reeling from how it could lay a girl out flat emotionally), I daydreamed about what it would feel like to have a man stick around, forever. What a relationship would feel like.
And that daydream persisted. It persisted for so long, in fact, that I began to wonder if for me, that was where my story was going to end? I had achieved the milestone 40th birthday, alone and with no dating opportunities immediately at hand, and my path seemed settled.
I began to resign myself to a future alone, and in many ways, to embrace it and enjoy it. There were a lot of things about being single that were fantastic and I intended to exploit them all. I was determined: if life was going to give me lemons, I was going to give lemonade a run for its money.
Then, the summer I turned 41, mere weeks after closing on my first home purchase, which I did all alone, with my own single-person salary, I met my now husband. He was unexpected, and in many ways, we were very close to not ever meeting. An online dating introduction, he was not a ‘match’ for me; rather, he was a ‘maybe’. The dating website felt we might like each other…sent me his profile to see ‘what if’ we might click, and I took a chance and sent him an email. Moments after meeting him outside the Eastern Market metro station, I was keenly grateful I did take that chance because it was obvious: he was different.
And I knew that regardless of whether or not we ever went on another date, (because by then, I knew better than to believe date #1 would necessarily lead to date #2. I’d been on this ride too many times to put my cart so quickly before the horse) this man was anything but the typical DC guy that single women the city-over bemoaned as player, asshole, or heartbreaker.
Now, twenty nine months later, we are married. Three Christmases have passed; two birthdays each; multiple weekend trips and vacations to California, Ocean City, Iceland, Australia and New Zealand; countless morning coffees and nightly dinners. Yes, we are married, and we are settling into our life together and it is an exquisite dance of so many things – things I couldn’t have even imagined; things I wasn’t sure I’d ever enjoy; things I sometimes don’t know how to handle; and things that every single day, I am thankful are mine to experience – good, bad, or something in-between.
But it’s left me in somewhat of an interesting pickle. I spent a vast majority of my adult life writing about being single. What it meant, and how it played out in the bigger picture of life – both for me and my fellow singletons. And at 43, my adult life is hardly over, but what is over is the writer I was at 29…33, 37. Forty. And finding my focus as a writer who is also a married woman has been difficult – more difficult than I would’ve imagined. What do I know about being married? Worse, what can I say that is any different from what every.other.writer has already said about marriages? They are hard. It is work.
I struggle with this sensation of feeling lost from myself every time I sit down at my computer, resolute to ‘write something today’. Or when I have an idea for a column that revolves around being newly married. Why would anyone want to read that, I question?
But the more I think about this, the more I believe I am viewing this experience through far too narrow a lens. Then – I was a writer, writing about the experience of being a woman…and figuring it all out, one word at a time, just like every other single person. Today – I am a writer, writing about the experience of being a woman, and figuring it all out, one word at a time, just like every other married person. Then I was single. Today I am married. But who I am? That is still the same.
I must stop expecting that somehow, inexplicably, I will stop feeling, thinking and being all the things I was before I got married simply because now, I am married. Yes, many of those ways are easily forgotten, but not everything. t’s going to take me some time to molt out of my single-person skin, especially considering I only just got married, and I’m 43 years old. For the past two decades, I’ve basically been the sole decision maker in my life; the one who paid my rent and utility bills, took care of household chores and made sure all that needed doing for my life, was done. My husband and I – we are each bringing decades of this kind of experience to our marriage, plus habits preferences to boot, none of which is simply going to diminish overnight because we are eager and happy to let go of (most) of them. That’s not a cause for alarm – that’s just reality.
At least to me it’s just reality. I suppose every woman will have to face the transition from single to married in her own way, but I do think the impact is more significant for someone in her 40’s than in her 20’s, who has barely flown from her parent’s nest before feathering a new one with someone else. And, who maybe never gave being single a shot.
And sure, going it alone…it’s not for everyone. It takes guts and determination and willpower and a tough skin. It also takes tenderness, and faith and hope and love – because for most of the single people I know, shedding the single person skin is the eventual goal. We can’t get there by not being in charge of our lives, but by the same token, we can’t totally be in charge of our lives when we get there. Which is maybe what people have meant by saying “marriage is hard” all along, only I just never knew it because I wasn’t married. And which also means maybe, just maybe my experience as a single woman and my experience as a married woman – are going to be not so different after all.
