Weddings as Warnings in “Jennifer Johnson is Sick of Being Single”
Once upon a time, I dated a smart, dark-haired computer guy. We got engaged, set a date. I bought a dress and planned a ceremony and reception. As the wedding date approached, the relationship got worse. He said if I didn’t convert to Judaism, he wouldn’t go through with it. If I didn’t agree to having a kid right away, it was a deal breaker. He asked me to lie to my employer and say I wasn’t leaving after I was accepted to grad school. We fought. We said mean things. We cried and yelled a lot. Things got so bad he moved out and we postponed the wedding. Then, a surprising thing happened.
People kept asking us when we were moving back in. People kept asking if we’d set a new date. Not one person asked how we were doing, or if we needed help, or if canceling the date had maybe been a sign. Everyone knew things had been rocky, though not the extent or the details. The only person who didn’t encourage us to move ahead with the wedding was my psychotherapist, who waited patiently for me to figure things out on my own. It took me a few months, but I did. The relationship was over, only no one wanted to acknowledge it. Not him, not me, not family or friends. Instead of noticing the disintegrating relationship, everyone obsessed about the wedding.
I thought about my “postponed” wedding a lot last week as I read Heather McElhatton’s clever and surprising Jennifer Johnson is Sick of Being Single. Jennifer is single and miserable. Her sister and her ex are getting married, both on Valentine’s Day, to twist the knife a little deeper. She’s in an unfulfilling cubicle job, and the only dates she gets are so bad they’re almost surreal. Then she meets Brad–handsome, rich Brad, who asks her out. And keeps asking her out. As their relationship unfolds, it’s not great, but not entirely terrible, either. But the hope of a pretty, shiny wedding is very alluring to Jennifer, as well as to her family, Brad’s family and co-workers. The pressure for their relationship to succeed is tremendous. As many couples would, Jennifer and Brad begin to buckle beneath the weight of all those expectations.
McElhatton does an exceptional job of skewering the soap bubble that is the wedding dream. She unveils the process for what it is: a machine-like industry, meant for couples to go in, get bounced about and homogenized, then sent out into marriage with nary a clue. The book wonders, again and again, what happens when people get what they think they want. Weddings are just one example of how characters in the book distract themselves from the realities and unpleasantries of everyday life.
The book recalled my fumbled first wedding attempt all those years ago (more than fourteen, now.) I was in a flawed relationship; planning the wedding created more pressure than it could bear. The wedding, its details and particularly its fripperies, were like anesthesia. They were distractions from the relationship, rather than accessories to celebrate it. Once I realized that, I was done. I broke the engagement and ended the relationship. He moved out and away, and I moved on.
A few months later, I met a cute, smart, dark-haired guy into computers. We dated. We got engaged. We got married. We moved to Minnesota. Several years after that, when I combined our comic book collections, he said he finally felt like maybe he wasn’t just the rebound guy. (NB: I organized the comics AFTER we had our first child.) My second engagement, and the second wedding I planned, were very different from the first time around. This time, I knew to focus on the relationship, not the wedding. McElhatton, in Jennifer Johnson is Sick of Being Single, advocates the same thing. In an interview with The Onion AV Club, she said:
This book is a sleeper cell. I know it’s going to end up on the chick lit tables. I know it’s going to be packaged that way. I’m slipping one in there. I’m really hoping this breaks up some weddings.
It might sound mean spirited, but speaking from experience, I think she’s onto something. Had I gone through with the first wedding, I doubt the marriage would have lasted very long. This weekend, my husband and I will celebrate 11 years of being married. I’m glad I got it right the second time.
September 28th, 2009 at 2:58 pm
Having planned a wedding and gotten married just this summer, I thought so much of what you wrote here was right on the nose. Thankfully our relationship didn’t undergo much wedding-related stress (at least if we exclude the week leading up to the actual event, which I think is fair), but it is amazing how draining and absorbing the entire thing can be (I almost referred to it as an ordeal… I do still kind of want to). I’m glad I love my husband and our relationship is strong, because man do I never want to go through a wedding ever again!
Also, I saw this at the used bookstore yesterday (they actually had two copies), but I wasn’t sure that I wanted to shell out $7 (just because I pretty much never pay more than $3 when I’m at the used bookstore). BUT I am first on the list for it at the library, so if I read it and love it and think I will want to re-read it, now I know where I can get it for a decent price!