letter to my future husband

At 28 years old, I find myself childless, unmarried, living in a share apartment with my most pressing concern being the placement of my next tattoo. Such a stark contrast to the life I envisioned when I was in my very early twenties wherein I would by now be a domestic goddess with one young child and another on the way. And a husband.

Everyone is getting married. People much younger than me. And while I am not racing down the aisle, it is not uncommon for unmarried people my age to wonder if/ when they will ever get married. 

But while that has not yet to come to pass, here is a letter to the gullible man whom I will someday con into making me his life partner:

Dear future husband/ life-partner/ significant other, 

Congratulations. You have proven to yourself that you can stand up to my strong (often difficult) personality, and have decided that you can tolerate me for the rest of your life. I assume you have really thought about what you’re getting into. (If not, then you better think about it hard, son.)

You and I are about to walk together down a dark, fog-shrouded path known as The Rest of Our Lives. Dandandandan! (That was the first bar of Beethoven’s “Symphony Number 5 in C Minor”, in case you didn’t recognize it).

I’m sure you and I both have silly little married-life fantasies in our heads that will soon be squelched in the most painful way. For example, I expect you tell me I’m beautiful everyday, massage my feet every night, make me the perfect french toast every morning, and also to fry me up a good silog when I’m hung-over. (Don’t know what a silog is? Google it, as this is a nonnegotiable part of our marriage contract.)

You probably expect me to iron your clothes for you to which I should probably warn you now that though I am quite competent in most facets of domestic life, I suck at ironing. Sorry to disappoint you. 

I can, however, cook a really good steak. Charred on the outside and just pink enough in the centre. I hope you’re not vegetarian or my talents will remain unused forever. 

Let’s get back to The Rest of our Lives, say about 50 years from now. Imagine you and I on our smelly, stain-covered lazy-boys, watching bad television. You reach for my hand, and my heart still skips a beat after all these years. Or wait, that was probably just my arrhythmia acting up. The nurse comes in to check our blood pressures and see if our diapers need changing. 

Sounds swell, hey? Yep, that’s what’s waiting for us at the end of the path. So in between now and then, here is what I hope we achieve in our life of love, hate, and partnership:

1) A terrific sex life.

2) Wonderful, beautiful children (products of the terrific sex life).

3) That we learn to really, really confront each other, the good, the bad, and the ugly. A human encounter of the most genuine kind. A collision of this sordid can of worms that we both are. 

And after we’ve had it out over and over again, and realized how deeply flawed we both are under the veil of romantic illusion and sexual attraction, I hope we find that we genuinely like and love each other. Even when the oxytocin fails to kick in. Even when love can sometimes seem more like a choice than a feeling, and sometimes, a very difficult choice. Because in the end, love is a choice. Feelings are effortless, they come and go like clouds drifting across the sky. But love is an action, a verb, a doing word. (Wise insights taken from M. Scott Peck, thank you very much.) 

4) To achieve this, we will need faith. There will be times when we will simply not know the answers, and rather than be embittered, we must know how to bow our heads in reverence to that Great Mystery, to that Thing That is Too Big For Us to Comprehend, and hope for the best. That is faith. Because life will undoubtedly throw us some real hard times. As the title of a great Nigerian novel goes, things fall apart. Big time.

If you are anything like me, then you probably fear growing old. Who doesn’t? Through the years, many winds will undoubtedly endeavour to tear us apart. But hopefully our ship is strong enough to sail through all that. You must be my first mate, and I, yours. 

At the very least, we can look forward to growing old together, and reap the rewards of our seniority such grandchildren to adore, a pensioners card, and being able to lord our age over younger people. Or better yet, continuing to be creative, contributing senior members of society, sharing our hard-earned wisdom in whatever form of our choosing: paintings, cooking, knitting, poetry, the art of bonsai, self-recorded rap music. Endless possibilities abound 

5) I hope you have a fantastic sense of humour. Because when sh*t hits the fan, and all else fails, laughter, and a genuine fondness of each other’s company, will hold us together. 

6) And from all this, I hope to achieve with you a shared memory cache of the entire spectrum of life: great love, great joy, great sadness, and even great mundanity. On our lazy-boys, I want us to be able to fondly recount food we ate, songs we like, people we knew, and places we went to. Pictures that will play back in grainy slow motion in our heads as we sit in our wheel chairs. Memories that will undoubtedly be tampered with and coloured by our changing perception throughout the years.

And ultimately, I hope we can step back and look at the big, messy, imperfect picture we painted together and like it for what it is. 

But what do I know? I don’t know jack about what it’s like to be married. I am foolish and naive, with a head undoubtedly full of fantasies and delusions. Like many young people, I am selfish, and I have never really had to care about another person. 

I guess I’m just like everyone else… walking in the dark and hoping for the best.

I end this letter now. Ive got my next tattoo to worry about. 

Love, 

Your beloved future wife/ partner, and bane of your existence