Weirdness #5: The Marriage Problem

I am the kind of person who upon meeting someone immediately imagines myself married to him. Sure, I consider dating first, imagine what that would be like, where we’d go on our first date, what we’d eat for dinner on Wednesdays and the conversations we’d have over breakfast. The details are different for each person, and I weigh the pros and cons of this imaginary relationship that likely will never come to be.

I never knew this was odd, until I compared fantasy notes with my friends and realized that most people do not do this. I’m not sure what fantasies are normal, but it isn’t about marriage, that’s for sure. What’s weird, is I don’t even think I am obsessed with marriage the way some people are (random flashback to my semester abroad when one of my roommates told me about “Senior Panic” at her college when all of the girls in their senior year who don't have boyfriends panic and scramble for the last eligible bachelors because the only reason a woman would go to college would be to find a husband). Sure, I like weddings and all, because they are pretty and involve white dresses and flowers and Japanese lanterns and floating tea lights and rose petals strewn along the aisle, but not to the point where I’d need to think about it all the time. Maybe I am just forward thinking and like to plan ahead to the point where I don’t even need to date people since I’ve got the relationship figured out in my head within 5 minutes of the first introductions.

Anyway, as much as I think about the kind of pancakes my imaginary husband and I’d both prefer (blueberry and chocolate chip), I’ve never considered what this guy would do for a living. It came to my attention that in between playing MASH (Mansion Apartment Shack House)and passing notes in study hall, everyone has imagined the perfect profession for them to marry. And people’s moms have piped in on the subject as well. I have friends whose parents picture them with doctors or teachers, architects or photographers. Apparently everyone has thought about this but me.

And although I’d like to think that it is because I am so open minded I could be happy with a person of any trade, the real truth I haven’t factored employment into the marriage equation is because my secret (not so secret) dream is to marry someone independently wealthy. Then we could travel around, buy the island next to Diane’s, and support charities by throwing galas and donate our time through volunteering and make the world a better place.

But, since that is fairly unlikely, curiosity got the best of me and I asked my mom and sisters who they’d thought I’d be good with, profession wise. The results were mixed. My younger sister couldn’t come up with a profession, but thought I needed someone who liked to travel. My older sister thought I’d be good with some kind of professional, but could also see me with a carpenter. My mom of course had a lot of options-- including engineer, writer, a chef but then I’d become overweight in a “messy kitchen,” and she vetoed people like rockstars, jugglers, and escape artists. A doctor was a definite no, architect was a maybe, a lawyer was questionable.

What did all of this tell me? That although it was interesting to hear what my family had to say, in the end everyone’s two cents added up to a whole lot of nothing. It’s fun to think about who I might end up with, but I have to meet someone first. In the meantime, I will keep dreaming of my knight in shining armor who is going to whisk me away to Italy at which time I will become bilingual and eat lots of pasta. We will get married on Cinque Terre and have a cake with a thick layer of snow white frosting and we will serve pesto foccacia on silver plates to our guests, as the sun sets over the turquoise waters of the rocky coastline.