The other day I was reading a British publication - celebrity driven - and to get to the point here, the writer of an article basically said that the fact that Prince Albert II of Monaco's bride, Charlene, appeared to be holding back tears at her wedding proved she didn't want to go through with it and was regretting it already. Well, I thought that was ridiculous. I thought about how I am often stirred with emotion at weddings and shed some tears and how tears of happiness or feeling overwhelmed can be mistaken for tears of sadness or fear or regret. I imagine I would cry at my own wedding (though I have never had one.)
Yes, even though I personally have not married and don't think I ever will, I have been known to cry at weddings, even of weddings depicted in fictive films or on television. I'm capable of having empathy for someone else's happiness - or sadness.
I recently watched the film Four Weddings and a Funeral and enjoyed the humor.
Apparently in Britain one can attend a lot of weddings in a season, one after another. I enjoyed that attending weddings - the whole business of it - was depicted as boring and also that some wedding guests do NOT mind their manners.
I suppose the theme of the film is that even though weddings themselves can be awful and finding the right person to marry can be awful it happens all the time.
In real life I think that the idea that everyone gets married - that everyone finds love - is omnipresent. You can love and be loved in many ways and not live with someone or marry them. You can also make a commitment and find yourself in an experience where you can not or should not go forwards. Yet there are many people who might want to marry who never get the chance to for various reasons starting with:
DISABILITY : Sorry to say but mental illness and many other disabilities prevent some people from being economically viable or being a partner.
LOOKS (Beauty is in the eye of the Beholder but there are also trends. Cosmetic surgery wouldn't be as big as it is if it were not for the fact that people don't want their looks to stand in the way of their success. For most people the expense of it makes it not an option)
RELIGIOUS VOWS : While it seems that there are far fewer people joining priesthoods and nunneries that require celibacies, more people are taking celibacy as an option due to their own spiritual explorations, or as a "time out" after a break up or dating hell.
LACK OF OPPORTUNITY : A person may live in a place where there are few options or the girl or boy next door is already taken. Long gone is the village mentality that matchmakes widows and widowers or where everyone has to be married in order to exist. The matchmaker used to be an option and now it's using the internet to meet people.
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The main reason I cry at real weddings is that I see the chance taking involved, the idealism and the hope for a good and happy life that the couple are making. This is especially the case because we all know the rate of success, if we think of it in terms of the vows of "till death" that so many marriages are NOT successful. If we count long term relationships in which people do or do not live together without having a wedding or a legal marriage, we all know people who have been "married" many times. I've worked with or had friends who have had three to five long term relationships and have basically never in adult life been without a partner. I consider some of them to be OVERMARRIED.
As a result of all this, it's difficult to DEFINE who is NMNK!
Do I consider someone who marries for the first time at 38 and, in the last moments of their fertility has a child, NMNK? Not any more, but I did before.
Someone who was long married but childless, has been divorced for a decade and has not re-partnered? Probably.
Ultimately a person should APPPLY the NMNK to THEMSLEVES, rather than on others.
The label has a lot to do with you NOW.
For me, no "spinster's prayer" to find a husband. No dating clubs or meet ups. I have never worn a wedding band to tell the world I'm not available.
Am I capable of falling in love? If the past counts, apparently so.
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