After the Toast!

I've been thinking alot about marriage these days, whether its because the hopeless romantic in me keeps trying to rear her annoying head, or because I am surrounded by married people, I don't know.

When I got married 800 years ago, I dont remember ever thinking that if I married that man, it would change him into someone better. On the contrary, I was actually happy with the person that he was and that is who I wanted to marry and spend my life with.  But I've watched something happen to people when they say "I Do", it's like a jekyl and hyde movie right in front of your eyes sometimes, other times, it's in slow motion, just happening over time until one day you wake up and look at the person and think to yourself, "when did this happen and can I get a refund?"

We go into marriage with some silly expectations, don't we? I mean, if you're dating someone who has issues with commitment and faithfulness right from the start, do you really think that will change with a wedding ring? Do you know how easily they come off and can be slipped into a pocket? I've watched men do it!
A long time boyfriend, and habitual liar and cheater, once told me that if I would marry him, all the nonsense would stop and he would be faithful because the sanctity of marriage meant something big to him. Excuse me? So, you mean to tell me that you will cheat on me now, because we are only verbally committed to one another, but if I legally join my life with yours, you will just change all of a sudden & respect me enough to be faithful? Wow, how thoughtful! And what a crock of BS! 
I don't believe that people change like that just because a piece of paper suddenly says your lives are tied together by a legal contract. If you can't honor someone's heart and feelings way before that, then you sure as hell are not marriage material in my book!
So, we get married hoping and praying that the person will change whatever behaviors annoy us, make us mistrust them, and just generally create doubts in our minds. Wrong answer.

Then you have the other group that dates, thinks they know one another, get married, and WHAM! Suddenly you're married to this person you have never met before! Is it in the champagne? Something in the catered food, perhaps? What makes a person think that its okay to be kind, compassionate lisa today and then say I DO and turn into evil, obnoxious Lisa tomorrow? I've been there, trust me, that is NO fun! 
Why do we do these things to each other?  Isn't it just more work to be someone fake, than to just be YOU?
In the years after my marriage went up in flames, as I was meeting people and dating a bit, I made up my mind that I wasn't going to be phony. I wasn't going to dress in clothes that I normally would not wear, or slop on make-up that I would generally not wear, or be anyone other than the woman I knew myself to be, and if he liked me and we hit it off, great! If not, well, hey nice to meet ya, don't let the door hit ya in the ass on the way out!  I just refuse to present myself in an untrue way because I don't want to be loved for who you want me to be, or think you can mold me into, I want to be loved for who I AM.

I guess the point of this rant of mine is that if you meet someone and the warning signs are all there, the red flags are slapping you in the face like your in the middle of a windstorm and the people who are closest to you and love you are telling you over and over what they clearly see happening right in front of you...you might wanna ask yourself a few things before you take that hike down the aisle. The only people we have any right to change is ourselves, the rest is out of your hands, wedding ring or not.
If he/ she doesnt love you faithfully and honestly now, a ring and a piece of paper isn't going to change that, and sometimes no matter how much fun we have with someone, no matter how mindblowing the sex might be, if the warning signs are there and the seeds of doubt have been imbedded in your mind about that person, perhaps it's time to step back and re-evaluate things. We all have this inner voice of intuition, we just choose not to pay attention to it all to often. Learn to listen to your voice, your intuition, and when it's all telling you to BEWARE, your best advised to do just that!