Doesn't it kill you when you see someone flouncing into a bad situation with a smile on her face, and nobody can stop her?
A young, smart, ambitious, attractive undergrad we know has gotten engaged to a guy her age. In the plus column, he's good-looking and has a trust fund. In the minus column, he's prone to violence (and loves to brag that if "another guy even looks at my girlfriend, I'll rearrange his face!"). He doesn't go to school, doesn't have a job, and he usually sleeps until 2PM.
Did I mention he's good-looking and has a trust fund?
And while the young woman's mother is desperately trying to jam the breaks on this wedding locomotive, the guy's mother is hitting the gas. We suspect she figures that a goal-oriented wife (who's working toward a doctorate) will derail her son from the track he's riding to loserdom.
She has offered to buy the couple a house. She wants to pay for the wedding. She has taken the poor lamb she intends to sacrifice to her son to look for not one but two wedding dresses (the trend, she insists, is to buy one dress for the wedding and another to wear to the reception).
Red flags are flying all over the place.
But the impressionable young woman doesn't see them. I asked her worried mother why she's so eager to get married before she's had a chance to achieve her dreams. "She wants to be a grown-up. She's also caught up the fairy tale of being a princess for a day."
Unfortunately, the fairy tale doesn't even last a whole day. It really lasts about six hours. After that, this poor kid will be legally bound to an anger-prone sluggard whose mother has bought and sold her.
If she tries to keep things interesting by introducing a child into the equation, things will just get worse. If she can't get the guy out of bed to find a job, she's not going to get him to change diapers. The responsibilities of parenthood may squash her plans to earn a doctorate.
I wish women would stop buying into wedding industry propaganda and keep their eyes on bigger prizes:
1) Careers that pay handsomely and make use of their talents
2) Men who love them and take pride in their successes.
Women need to remember that realizing their ambitions is crucial to their physical, emotional, and mental health. Marrying the wrong man for the wrong reasons is the surest route to a lifetime of being depressed and powerless.
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3 comments:
You are so right in your assessment of what ultimately makes a woman happy in life. I hope the young woman changes her mind before the "big day", but my guess is she'll realize one way or another -- before or after her "big mistake" day.
The power of prayer has been attested over and over throughout time. Let's pray for this young lady so that she will awaken out of this fantasy/nightmare. Let's help her find her own gold, rather than depend on someone elses.
It's truly a shame, but since we were young girls, we've had the fantasy of Prince Charming indoctrinated into us, bit by bit. You know, where he comes along on his white horse and Rescues us from the doldrums of our own life and we live happily ever after....this myth is so embedded in the collective conscious that it's hard to escape it's web. And yes, the advertising sector plays out this drama to a tee...they're no dummies. What if we make up our own fairy tales, where the *right* man comes along, proves his mettle, thus, earns his way into our already fulfilling, exciting lives? The princess will have her own castle, and her Queendom is incontestible. Our motto will be, "Cinderella WHO?", along with, "Who's this Snow White character?"
wow.........terry you are so right.i wish more of my friends would read your advice before deciding to get married.
thank you so much for this great advice.i'am honestly inspired by it.
In my society there is so much pressure to marry and settle down and yet no one seems to focus more on the girl's career,her ambition,what she wants with her life and wether she infact ready.
its always the presumption that if you don't marry by a certain again you will loose out on life,or miss the right guy.I believe in taking one's time and finding yourself first.Its taken me 25years to actually start loving and appreciating myself,for some it just comes naturally...
thanks for taking time to give all this advice it does make a world of a difference.
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