With This Ring I Thee Wed

I like going to my friends’ weddings. I like being witness to my friends combining their lives into one. I take comfort in the certain rituals that are common to all the weddings I’ve been to. We’ve been developing new rituals as well. All the new babies had their joint coming out party as well. Some of the new significant sweethearts appeared as well that may lead to future weddings. The family of friends is growing and the weddings are a rich affirmation of that.

I rarely get to show it, but one of my numerous sides is a romantic. Some marriages lack the love that will sustain them. The type of love where you share yourself with the other soul. The type of love that creates more energy than what the two need to put into it. The type of love where you can leave yourself vulnerable with your flaws exposed, and the other will still love you. The type of love where you think in terms of ‘we’ and not ‘you and me.’ Too many of my friends didn’t experience that kind of love.

Yet with this marriage I feel good about it. It has grown for years. It has survived moves to two states and two different law schools and as too many of us know; school is a destroyer of relationships, not a creator of them. You can see the subtle difference in personas when they’re around each other. You can see the passion and compassion of their love. You can see the synergy between the two that is far more than the sum of their parts.

The rituals of the wedding are one step in watching the strong foundations of a marriage being created. Maybe one day I’ll get to experience it myself. I hope so.