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Hitched: The Go-Girl Guide to the First Year of Marriage - Softcover

Bourland, Julia

 
9780743444101: Hitched: The Go-Girl Guide to the First Year of Marriage
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0743444108 ISBN 13: 9780743444101
Verlag: Atria Books, 2003

Inhaltsangabe

If you're like most brides, you've spent more time pondering wedding favors and exotic honeymoon destinations than considering all the ways marriage will change your relationship. In HITCHED: The Go-Girl Guide to the First Year of Marriage, Julia Bourland provides the ultimate insider's guide to the joys, hopes, challenges, conflicting emotions, and endless compromises of the year that follows the "I do"s.
Drawing on dozens of interviews with newly married women, plus her own real-life experience, Bourland offers wise answers to crucial post-knot questions about sex, finances, friends, in-laws, and everything beyond, including:
• What to do when your libido soars (yay!) or sinks (eek!)
• How to keep important friendships -- and nourish new ones
• The pros and cons of name changing
• How to carve out personal space within marriage
• The best ways to divide household responsibilities
• How to start planning for your financial future
Candid, witty, and wise, HITCHED will steer you through the ups and occasional downs of newlywed life and set you on the path to a loving, happy, and secure future together.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Julia Bourland is the author of The Go-Girl Guide: Surviving Your 20s with Savvy, Soul, and Style. She is a former sex columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle and Women.com and has contributed to such national magazines as Bride's, Shape, and Parenting. She is happily hitched and lives in the San Francisco area with her husband.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Chapter One: Mentally engaged

The marriage initiation begins with an engagement. And an engagement, regardless of whether the proposal was over-the-top romantic, spontaneous (which is also romantic), or heavily anticipated, typically conjures up a hurricane of emotions -- enough to make a girl downright weepy when giving her best friend the blow-by-blow playback of the proposal, or downright bitchy when she finds out that the reception site she really wants is booked until 2010. Discussions with your mate about various wedding details will keep this hurricane of emotions active (but, hopefully, not too destructive) throughout your engagement.

Planning a wedding tends to bring out a couple's feelings about everything: money, religion, family, tradition. It's one life event that touches on every macro issue out there. Even if you consider yourself a low-key kind of gal, you may be surprised at the degree of passion you feel about every little detail that goes into your wedding. I certainly was. But what might be helpful to note is that this whirl of emotions is a normal mental state typical of many women about to enter the unknown alternative lifestyle of marriage. What follows is a list containing some of the feelings you might have during those engagement months when you and your mate realize that your lives are about to change forever.

dazed and confused

One of the first sensations many women feel after getting engaged is dazed. Lori, 34, of San Francisco, California, felt this spaced-out phenomenon immediately after her boyfriend popped the question (also on a hike overlooking the Pacific Ocean -- a popular engagement spot here in northern California).

They had bushwhacked to a secluded area. Hopping around and nervously fussing over everything they had brought, from the picnic to the binoculars, Lori had a gut feeling that the proposal was moments away (she had actually felt the outline of an engagement ring in her boyfriend's pocket on the way up the hill), and all her emotions were on the verge of eruption.

When her boyfriend took her hands and asked her to be his wife, she was instantaneously propelled into a daze. The emotional intensity was too much, she says, and she totally shut down. The best she could manage to utter in response was "Yeah, okay." Of course it wasn't long before shock turned to giddiness (thanks in part to the champagne her boyfriend had brought along to celebrate), but the dazed mode returned not too long after when her fiancé called his family to share the news.

Faith, 29, of Los Angeles, California, felt a similar shock when calling family members to share the news of her engagement, which happened while she and her mate were stuck in traffic on their way to Ikea. (His proposal wins the creative award, by the way. He asked her by suggesting they play the game of Jeopardy: "The answer is yes." Faith then guessed the question: "Will you marry me?" So, technically, she asked him.) But when they told relatives, she was bombarded with unexpected inquiries: "Are you pregnant?" (No, she wasn't.) "Are you going to share finances?" (The thought had not occurred to her.) "Are you going to change your name?" (She had no clue.) She felt invaded and irritated, primarily because she hadn't worked out all these things in her head and wanted her engagement to be more of a private time between her and her fiancé.

Important note: The dazed sensation will likely return again and again throughout your engagement, so get comfortable with it. Being in a state of shock is a natural response to the emotional overload that initiations such as weddings breed. Of course, the daze won't always be associated with shock. Some of it will come in the form of simple daydreaming. Rarely in life will you experience as many daydreams as when you're planning a wedding.

My dazed state of mind tended to hit me on my way to work, when I was sitting in traffic, disparaged by the long string of cars in front and behind me. There, I dreamed about the wedding ceremony -- our readings (spiritual and evocative), our vows (standard contemporary), the kiss (soulful), the music (harp soloist, playing Bach), my dress (a backless, biased-cut, 1930-style silk white gown), and my hair (help me!). Such daydreaming had a calming effect, especially when I was feeling particularly stressed about wedding planning. I suppose therapists would call this mental phenomenon "visualizing," but I'm (hopefully) over my therapy days, and daydreaming has a more romantic sound to it, don't you think?

Part of this spaced-out phenomenon may serve as a mental response to another common state of mind experienced by many brides-to-be during their engagement: confusion. I hope your confusion is not about your choice of husband. If it is, I suggest you calmly discuss your decision to get married with a therapist who will help you distinguish the irrational doubts and the internal devil-dialogue that accompanies all wedding-related panic ("How can I marry a man who won't initiate any of the wedding planning tasks, obviously indicating that he won't be a good father?") from real doubts about your fiancé's character or his ability to communicate or work out problems.

In most cases, confusion has to do with the tremendously overwhelming task of planning a fabulous and emotionally loaded party for your nearest and dearest, people you feel irrationally compelled to dazzle with your tasteful and graceful entertaining skills. Confusion will likely aim to damage brain cells not long after getting engaged, when your family and friends begin the barrage of questions on matters you likely haven't even begun to consider: When's the date? Where will it be? Who are your bridesmaids? When are you going to try on wedding dresses ("because, you know, you'd better start looking right this minute")?

Isabelle, 30, of Chicago, Illinois, had a mother who was particularly bent on adding to the wedding planning chaos. Her mom called her nonstop to ask if she had decided on invitations, chosen a band or DJ, did this or did that, all the while reminding her that the clock was ticking and she'd better get on top of all the tasks pronto! Near the end of all the planning, Isabelle could barely speak to her mother without yelling and then either slamming down the phone or running away from her (literally).

This might be an appropriate spot to mention the effectively proven mantra of wedding planning: When faced with questions that are stressing you out, the best response is to repeat over and over again: "I don't know." Admit that you don't have opinions about certain details, then change the subject. This may drive the traditionalists among your clan of supporters crazy, but eventually they will get bored and move on to sharing their opinions about the way you should conduct your wedding. When you get bored, it's time to focus on non-wedding-related conversation (if you and your tribespeople can remember what that's like).

Part of the reason confusion is rampant is that the wedding initiation carries with it a wagon-load of etiquette that most of us are completely ignorant of, having performed only occasional acts of gratitude since leaving home, such as writing thank-you notes to grandparents after receiving birthday checks. From the proposal on, there are so many etiquette details with which to contend: Whom to invite? Guests for single friends: yes or no? Which of your closest friends and dearest relatives should be attendants? And how to tell your other close friends and relatives that they are not?

Next, there are all the gritty, tedious details that must be dealt with when you're planning a wedding, most of which involve well-timed coordination. For instance, you must immediately book the wedding if your heart is set on a particular date, especially if that date happens to fall...

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Verlag
Atria Books
Erscheinungsdatum
2003
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0743444108
ISBN 13 
9780743444101
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
240
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Simon and Schuster Netherlands BV
info@simonandschuster.nl

Herculesplein 96
Utrecht
3584 AA
Niederlande