Matrimania Gone Wild: Facebook and Random Baby Edition

(Also posted at The Unmarried Estate Blog )

I got married on Friday. The entire deal cost about $380, including the dinner, the cost of a new shirt and pair of jeans for me (yes we got married in jeans), and what it cost to pay our wedding official. The next day we woke up and did what we usually do on Saturday. We got up, ate breakfast, got dressed and prepared to start our day. We also both checked our e-mail and Facebook pages, as we do everyday, where we both updated our relationship status. Within moments our Facebook pages started blowing up with some of the most obnoxious, yet well-meaning congratulatory well wishes. Now, the people who know us well were cool. They knew that we are two of the biggest critics of marriage but that we had our reasons why getting married was the best option for us; one was a romantic reason,  the others were practical reasons.  But everyone else peppered us with questions and comments like:

“Why are you on Facebook on your Honeymoon !!!” (emphasis mine)

“Congratulations Mrs. X !” Not having bothered to ask whether I am keeping my birth name, which I am. We also received a piece of mail addressed to Mr. and Mrs. X, which pissed me off to no end.

When we arrived at my sister’s home to see my parents again before they went back to California, I was asked by my mother “So, how is the new apartment?” She knows very well that I have lived there for 2 weeks. The apartment was the same as it was 2 weeks ago when I moved in and the same as it has been every time I have stayed overnight. My husband has lived in this apartment for almost a year!

Then, some friends of my sister’s who recently had a baby came over. They are great people and I like them a lot but my mother went absolutely gaga over their kid. She was shoving the kid in both our faces expecting us to react to it in that insane way people react to babies, which he and I don’t do. Again, my mother knows full well that my husband and I have no interest in having children and do not particularly like spending time with them either. I think she thought “Well they are married now, maybe they feel differently…” Well let me be clear to everyone:

Fuck. No.

I feel exactly the same way about everything as I felt before I said “I do”.

This morning over breakfast, we were discussing how crazy people were acting. We couldn’t figure out why, because nothing about our relationship has really changed. Then it hit me. Something really BIG has changed: How other people view our relationship is what has changed. We have a status in our community that comes with certain ridiculous expectations that are completely inconsistent with both of our personalities. But people expect your personalities to change to accommodate these expectations. Let me say it again: Fuck. No. Most people have bought into this bullshit line that marriage is transformative and changes you into a different person. Well it doesn’t and it hasn’t.

And I’ll tell you this: These bullshit reactions from my mother and some of our Facebook friends is the one thing that kept this weekend from being perfect.

These people need to calm the fuck down.