Planning a wedding, as I'm learning, is both the most amazing bonding experience and the most confrontational experience of my life.
It's bonding because there are these people around me who just stepped up from Day 1 and have just been in my corner the whole time, helping me, encouraging me, getting me out of various ruts and funks...
And confrontational because every step of the way there are people who I feel are completely against me, against us, against this wedding, against me or us being happy, and against being out of control of this thing. And no matter how hard I've tried to not let it affect me, it does. From deciding on the guest list and having strong push-back about that, to having to deal with those who are not invited and the offense that causes, to people just generally invading our wedding by making plans for it without us, the antagonism of getting married wears a girl thin. Add to that the number of friends I've lost just by getting engaged? The ones who used to be close friends who have displayed clearly jealous behavior to me about it? Not to mention all the guy friends I've had to come to terms with losing (those terms being that they only wanted me for one reason and without that reason, I'm useless to them).
It's such a strange experience overall. I've come to terms with the choices I've made and I'm at the point now where I'm generally not very diplomatic about the things I've thought long and hard about, but there are still a few people who have the ability to really upset me, especially when they make unilateral decisions about our wedding without consulting us at all or, to be honest, when they're completely indifferent when they shouldn't be (or I feel they shouldn't be). It's like they're either happy for us or they're really not. There's no in between.
At the end of the day, all that matters is that I'll marry this guy and we'll be a team, but I can't help but feel that these issues are a symptom of other things. Will the invasive people grow more invasive with every life event we go through? Will the indifferent people be supportive in the long run? And the jealous ones- should I be bracing for a goodbye?
I guess it's about boundaries. If we don't set them now, we may be opening the door for these sort of toxic behaviors to rear their ugly heads later on. I'm not good at boundaries and I'm even worse with bullying (when it comes to me). I tend to retreat and shut down.
I don't want to shut down about wedding things, you know? So many times throughout this planning, I've hit that point where I shut down and I've told Mike I just don't want to do any of it anymore. He usually talks me off my ledge, but it'll happen again. And again after that. And each time, I know I'll react the same way.
The most irritating thing about it is when people are being utterly controlling and then at the end of it, they say, "It's your day." Really? It's our day? What about your controlling behavior points to you actually believing that?
One of these days, I'll learn to be assertive.
In the meantime, there's always blogging...
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