Do you read the New York Times Vows section?
(Back when I lived in NYC as a single woman, my male bosses referred to it as "the girls' sports section." GRRRR. But I digress...) I still check it out, every week. It's fun to see page after page of photos and announcements of couples married the day before -- where they got married, how they met, what their careers are. What grabs my attention most are the weekly "State of the Unions" articles, in which a Times reporter revisits one of the couples whose weddings were featured. Sometimes the pieces are depressing, about how couples drift or divorce. And some are downright sweet -- like last week's by Jane Gordon Julien. Stuart and Alexandra were married in October, 2001, at Coney Island, a special spot to which they still make annual visits. |
The bride was a marriage skeptic. She just wasn't sure about it
Then she fell, hard, for Stuart, "the purest soul I've ever met."
But marriage was important to Stuart -- he wanted it: "it was saying out loud to everyone and especially ourselves -- individually and collectively -- 'I choose you.'"
"It's agreeing to be a willing participant with another person permanently in addressing and solving problems."
This dramatic change in Stuart's priorities had a "cumulative effect on Ms. Mann's opinion of marriage."
"I am now a marriage poster child. The joy that it brings me is unfathomable," says the wife.
Isn't it inspiring for you all, as brides-to-be, to read this, as you're on the threshold of your own marriage?
To think that in 13 years, your husband could potentially say this?:
"Marriage is fun. It's joyous. It's really exciting. And it's a sheild against everything that's out there.
It's safety and security and a refuge from the noise and the confusion and the disenfranchised and the difficult."