The legality of the marriage doesn’t even say much anymore. The fact that my German fiancé and I will soon be going from boyfriend and girlfriend to husband and wife doesn’t make it any easier or less time consuming for him to get a UK visa so he can live and work here.
It won’t get us a better deal on auto insurance. It means nothing to the custody of our child if we break up. Indeed, there are few places left in the modern world where a marriage certificate will grant you meaningful privileges (random exceptions include some parts of the Middle East where you can’t book a shared hotel room without one).
I don’t even think that two people who are no longer happy in a union, despite their best intentions and not because they haven’t tried, should stay together just for fun, which is really the whole point of marriage, and what the vows are all about. By that convention, if I had been born a few generations ago and thus married my first or second boyfriend in my early twenties, I would still be married to absolutely the wrong person.
Indeed, it took me until I was 35 to find a relationship that was as happy as the one I’m in now, and thank goodness I kept it up. Before him, I hadn’t deviated from men more than ten years older than me, all dark-haired and cranky, with big jobs and gigantic egos; unfortunately not all of them are single – and another reason why I am cynical about the sanctity of marriage.
Which brings me to my fiancé Julius (a blond pilot six years my junior, with an infectiously sunny disposition and no situational baggage) and the improbability of his proposal, given my established position on the matter. It was the day after my birthday in February.
We were on a flight to Australia, I was four months pregnant with the son which represents a far greater commitment than a wedding ever could, en route to his first meeting with my father. There was no ring (he correctly assumed I’d like to pick mine), but instead handed a notebook with some really sweet pages he’d written detailing why he wanted me to be his wife.
The Qantas flight attendant was much more ecstatic in her response than I was: “In all my years with this airline, I’ve never seen a proposal!” she screamed—and the rest of the passengers cheered. I may not be the kind to openly cry or put out a press release on social media, but I can’t deny the genuine happiness I feel to be engaged to this person.
Why? It makes little sense. I still don’t hold the concept of marriage in high esteem. Even if we had money to throw around (we really don’t), I wouldn’t want to mess it up in a ceremony, especially not in a church. I will not change my last name, although I have no problem with our son taking Julius’s.