RSVP WOE
Yes, No and a lot of Woes. Navigating your boundaries, protecting your wedding and dealing with everyone's crazy, especially when you are!
In January I tore my ACL skiing. It was the last run of the last day on the hardest stretch of mountain that I had already skied once before. I was hungry and wanted a glass of Grüner. And I fell. Bad. As the Austrian mountain man strapped me into the rescue toboggan asking me to point to where it hurt, all I could cry was my wedding is in four months! Thank God he didn’t speak English.
Eight weeks in a brace was the least hard thing about my wedding season.
I debated writing about this for a few reasons, first and foremost being, I’m deeply grateful. My wedding has brought me so much closer and connected with people I love most. It’s been an incredible bonding experience with my in-laws as well as deepened my relationship and understanding of my parents. I’ve been overwhelmed with the great lengths, time, money and above all – energy – spent on me. I’ve been so surrounded by love that it’s made those who haven’t been able to show up in a place of love, glaringly obvious.
My guy friend sent me this Ask a Therapist column by Lori Gottlieb in The New York Times, and asked if SO AND SO had written it about me (as a joke).
The question came from a single woman whose best friend was getting married, and she didn’t want to go because she was single and unhappy about it.
One of my dearest friends is getting married next summer. It will be the second marriage for both my friend and the groom, and we are all in our 40s. The date is likely to conflict with my annual getaway to see my favorite band in one of my favorite cities, a vacation that another dear friend and I have done together for years.
I think that I should go to the wedding, because it would hurt my friend if I don’t go, and I would feel guilty about not going. But I would also feel guilty about hurting my other friend by bailing on our concert weekend — and resentful at missing my favorite weekend of the year for a wedding, an event that is loaded psychologically for me.
I am single, and loneliness and heartbreak have been near constants in my adult life. Last year I experienced a nightmare scenario at a group vow renewal ceremony. It was painful to hear multiple professions of love and commitment when my own journey has been alone. After that experience, I told myself I’d never go to another wedding.
As someone who was single for essentially the entirety of her adult life and not only attended countless weddings, but was in the bridal party of nearly ten (and by the way was never happy about it) I feel somewhat an expert in the space to weigh in here.
Regardless of being a bride, I found this advice to be completely whack, so I’m offering a counter.
