Today is the first day of the 11th year of my partnership with Dave.
From the very first day, our relationship was our own, to do as we pleased with.
In spite of the rough patches, I believe we have done that.
Those familiar with me know of my tendency to process via the written word, so here are my thoughts after a decade, take 'em or leave 'em.
We are married, but because we didn't seek permission from anyone, not a church or a government or a parental unit, we are Common Law married, and so there's no certificate or church register or any of that bullshit. I should thank my digital calendar, I think I would have forgotten our anniversary date a dozen times by now if it didn't remind me every year! LOL I loved our little ceremony at Ledges, with family and friends and food. It was a great start.
It hasn't gone all to plan, of course. In fact, the plan didn't even last the first week. We certainly didn't plan on getting pregnant with our eldest child before we even had our honeymoon. That honeymoon is still waiting to happen. I won't say I regret it's lack, a marriage is not the honeymoon. I wonder sometimes though, what a honeymoon would be like.
I digress.
We've loved, we've fought, we've forgiven, grown and loved some more. We had one kid, and thought, "that was intense, but cool, lets do it again!" And had a second. That effectively cured that bit of madness, and we've stopped.
The kids are pretty cute, if I do say so. Expensive fuckers though. America has lost it's damn mind, and every pregnancy and birth set us back so far economically, that it's not an exaggeration to say we've still not recovered, and they are 6 and 9 now. That's added stress to our marriage, in ways I've not enjoyed. It was tempting to take the frustration out on my partner, "If you just made more money, if our insurance was better...." But the truth was always that the deck was stacked, and not in our favor. #SinglePayerNow
In spite of that, we kept on. Whether it was walking off a job, pregnant and on the other side of the Mississippi, or starting a small organic farm with toddlers strapped to me, I always knew Dave had my back. Because he always does. That's not nothing.
We chose to keep our own names, for various reasons. The kids have the my last name, it's come up in discussions with them as they've come into contact with other families and learned about the "norms." The youngest has indicated he may change his last name to Dave's one of these days. He's got time yet to think it over and make the best decision for himself, we'll support him either way.
(No, kindergarden isn't too young, I changed my name in Kindergarden and have never gone back, but I never legally changed it.) Anyway, I highly recommend keeping your name, for anyone considering it. Neither of us had the hassle of a name change, which it is a hassle ladies, don't believe for a second you'll get it changed and things will go smoothly and you'll never have to think about it again. I entered into a contract with another adult, there is no legal reason to change names to do that. The common practice of changing names to do that seems weird to me.
Our contract is unique to us. Another practice I highly recommend.
"Love is patient, love is kind.."
*BARF*
Here's a snippet of our vows:
BECKY: David, will you cause her anger?
DAVE: I may
BECKY: Is that your intent?
DAVE: No
BECKY: Jennie, will you cause him anger?
JENNIE: I may
BECKY: Is that your intent?
JENNIE: No
BECKY: *To Both* Will you take the heat of anger and use it to temper the strength of this union?
BOTH: We Will
BECKY: And so the binding is made.
We promised to cause pain and add burdens to each other. We have done so. We promised also to ease the burdens and share the laughter and love of life with one another. We have done so. Privately we promised to stand back to back against zombie hordes if the end of the world comes. Don't mess with us, we're both trained in weapons.
I speak lightly of pain and violence, but I want to be clear that we have never let our anger spill into physical violence. One or the other of us may walk away, far away. But we always circle around and come back and talk some more. That's not nothing.
I will say we've definitely gone to bed mad.
Hi, my name is Jennie, I have a temper and hold a grudge forever, (Leo.)
We go to bed mad all the fucking time. Usually though, it's the same bed. From the twin mattress on the floor of our first house, through co-sleeping with milk/pee covered babies, through surgeries, illnesses and fights and everything else, we sleep together. Sometimes, I wake up still mad, *shrug* I don't owe anyone de-escalation, and if it's not right, it's not right, and I'll hold on to my anger till it is.
I thought I was marrying someone who could handle the heat. And mostly, I was right. Sometimes, I wake no longer mad. Love has a way of crowding anger out of a heart when it blossoms. And sleep has a way of showing the absurdities of arguments based on toddler-parents-being-tired.
I'm trying to think of other tips to share. Our arrangement is so unique in some ways...
Most of our baby-time was spent with Dave as our stay-at-home-parent. I feel like American society has come a long way in that department. The kids' docters and schools have always handled it gracefully, I thought, Dave may have other impressions. If anything, it was parenting support groups that didn't support the arrangement. So many were "Mom" specific, that Dave often felt isolated. Reach out to your Dad friends, they could probably use a kind word from a friend.
We eat together a lot, as a family as often as we can. Although, this is another spot where America stacks the deck against us. Most of the time there's only one of us feeding the children the meal in question, and the other of us is working. Dave feeds them Breakfast and first lunch, I feed them second lunch and Dinner. Because, the only way we can make ends meet is to work opposite shifts. That reached its peak right before Logan started school, with Dave working overnights and me working days. I cannot stress enough how horrible that was. If there's anything the past 10 years that I can unequivocally say it almost ended our marriage, it was that period. If you are considering such an arrangement, don't do it. Find any other way possible, and don't do it. I'll go even farther and say that as a country we need to seriously reconsider how many of our workers we're asking to work overnights. It's not just emergency folks anymore, and it's not healthy for a society to stress so many workers in this way. But I was speaking of dinner. Our family dinners don't look like the ones I had as a child, but we work with what we've got. And if I walk the kids down to Dave's store for dessert afterwards and good night hugs, that's America for ya.
We don't get a lot of date nights. All the marriage advice says to make time for them. We would have loved more dates, but there was often not enough money to pay for a sitter and a meal out. So they often didn't happen. I'd like to say, we did stay-at-home dates! They were wonderful! But it's not true. If we stayed at home we had an often-interrupted tv show, perhaps a drink for one of us, and one or both of us passed out asleep before finishing either the drink or the show. That's not a date, that's Tuesday night. This continues to be a challenge as we pass the decade mark. America doesn't value child care or parenting breaks, so as a society it supports neither. When the high schoolers want 10$ an hour to watch the kids, and one of us doesn't make much more than that at work, it quickly becomes absurd to try to go out when we realize we are spending most of a week's pay to go out for an evening. We joke that it would be nice to get a divorce, so we could go out more often. But it's half way not a joke either. The parents we know that have time for dates, have an ex-spouse (or two) to drop the kids with. (Or retired, healthy and close parents.) That's not a sustainable way to save a marriage. It's a struggle.
I'd love to explore more non-nuclear-family living arrangement and see if my hypothesis about more adults bears out. Co-house with another family. Add another adult to our marriage. Live with an adult sibling or cousin or nephew. Something, anything, that increases that adult to child ratio and see if that eases the raising-children burden enough to allow for healthy marriage upkeep. If I get the opportunity I'll keep y'all in the loop.
Finally, speaking of family arrangements, I know some of you clicked through because you are curious if I would say anything about the open part of our marriage. We consider ourselves Polyamorous. We've both had other partners over the last 10 years. Some more serious than others. I was poly before I started dating Dave, and he had had poly relationships before me. I've never really been monogamous as an adult. More than that, I am a woman who spends most of her time with men. I work as an engineer in the construction field, it's a rare day when I'm *not* the only woman on the job site. I'm the only woman on my engineering team. I'm a dancer, and I mostly dance with men. This was true before my marriage and I was clear that all of that would continue to be true after marriage. So jealousy and possessiveness are not traits I have the time or inclination to deal with. I love freely, bigly, and muchly. My love for my second child doesn't decrease the love for my first born. It's the same with my adult relationships. Does it make things more complicated? Yes, it occasionally does. Is it worth it? Yes, I believe so. Love is always worth it. It has gotten more interesting as the kids age. Now they ask questions and want to know what's going on and they form their own relationships with our metamours. I find it endlessly fascinating.
Life will of course continue on. Our eldest will hit 10 next spring, the crushing weight of baby care and toddler raising are behind us. (While my body may occasionally ache for another baby, I refer you to the previous mention of the economic disaster that is childbirth in America. As science is my witness we will be having no more babies.) The more cerebral challenges of middle school and teens are ahead of us. Hopefully we have at least another decade of loving and laughing together to look forward to. Even if we don't, if one or both of us grow away from this partnership, I have no regrets about loving Dave.
It's been a hell of a ride babe. 💓💖😍
