Thighs-n-Eyez commented in the shoutbox:
I love you both! May I ask why you didn’t get married before you lived together? Also, what made you want to get married to CG, MCB after you guys were already living together?
We decide to respond in a post since the answer is more than 500 characters.
Even when we had separate places, we didn’t spend very much time apart, so, it didn’t seem to make very much sense to do anything else. It seemed almost like “hedging or bet” which wasn’t how either of us felt. Plus, neither set of parent’s approved off our relationship, so a wedding which is typically for family and friends was difficult to arrange. Everyone wants their wedding to be special, and we were no different, so, even though it was something that we expected, it was very frustrating. In a way, because our relationship was so controversial, we didn’t receive a lot of pressure from our parents to “do the right thing”. And, remember, by the mid to late 1980’s living together had lost the stigma that it once had and was becoming much more widespread, especially for people of our generation.
We got married because we both like having a spouse. There is a sense of commitment and permanence that living together doesn’t have. It may just have been in our minds; but it was important to us. I liked the idea of proposing and trying to make a special moment to California Girl. We like having an anniversary to celebrate. Unlike a lot of men, I always wear my wedding band, probably even at times that I shouldn’t. We ended up having a small wedding; but it’s still part of our shared history together. We like to focus on the positive; but were a lot of external things gong on that made our life much more difficult. We’ve always made our own way without muchany help. In, fact, I was just mentioning to California Girl about an event that happened around that time that I consider a watershed moment in my personal history. We make decisions more for ourselves and each other than almost anyone that you will ever meet. We wanted to get married so we did.
But we really did sleep for a bit. Afterwards we got up and went out for our new favorite restaurant for a sumptuous dinner. It’s very expensive; but we love eating there for special occasions.
