holy matrimonies

Urgh, I've been neglecting you! I've been in a really strange head space ever since the wedding, which is honestly a pretty unexpected outcome. It's not as a consequence of getting married either, to be clear, it's just a strange overlapping of different changes. Haha. I'm going through some 'Changes.' Anyway.

I've been thinking and talking with people a lot lately about how we communicate with each other. Especially how our attempts at communicating are really distorted by the way we've been brought up. It seems tangental I guess, but it isn't really, because agreeing to put effort into understanding each other and honestly trying to be fair and good to each other is what commitment is. It seems as though marriage is supposedly the expression of this commitment - of agreeing to be together and work together at having a good and mutually-beneficial relationship. But marriage isn't what does that - it's honest effort.

To reiterate - I'm not talking about my marriage here, haha. Trevor's a great guy, we're not having relationship problems. It's actually in the context of my other friendships that I'm thinking about this communication stuff. Which is interesting in itself because there's also this expectation sometimes that the romantic relationships require all this work, as though your other human relationships don't.

I'm not really proposing anything here, just trying to put together some of the thoughts that have been pinballing around my skull for a while. I guess the way that I'm thinking of the importance of clear and caring communication (haha, inspirational alliteration) in reference to the marriage stuff is less about how the two individuals who are married communicate and more about how we as a culture treat each other generally, and talk about things generally and more importantly, how we don't talk about things.

What I'm most excited about coming out of Wedding #1 is that I've been having so many good conversations with people about it, and not often in the context of 'what makes this art?' Which is amazing and so much more than I could ever have hoped for. I'm aware that there are a variety of opinions about the project, and that's great, because ultimately the point for me is that it's a conversation worth having. Anyway. I would really honestly like to thank everyone who has been talking to me lately, and I'm blown away by how affected I am by it. See ya at the divorce party.