In one month my husband and I will have been married for two years. I don’t know what that means; I can’t believe it has already been two years.  It has been even longer then that because we lived together for two years before we were married. The main thing we have had to adjust to is the way our relationships with other people have changed. Why do people act as though you’ve grown two heads, or become a different person when you get married? Our relationship has not changed that much; of course, we were living together before we got married.  There were a few things we had to adjust to in living together.  We had to get used to the fact we have slightly different living styles.

Scott had to learn to share his space more.  He hated having piles of paper around.  Well, he hated when there was a pile or two of paper that he did not make. Also, he occasionally has cleaning fits, (not that I’m complaining), when he just starts rearranging and throwing things away. I don’t have a problem with someone suddenly having a huge burst of energy and straightening and cleaning everything in my house, but I do have a problem with my things being moved where I can’t find them, or thrown away.  The main thing I think he had to get used to with me is projects.  I like to start projects, but not necessarily to finish them. Unfortunately, I like to leave projects out that I plan to finish.  I definitely am a woman who takes up space.  I also tend to have about 10 ideas about what we could do or should do over the weekend.

     Since, I come up with the ideas I expect someone else to decide which one we should do, or should do first. Sometimes, I come up with so many ideas, or think to much about how much we have to do that I get completely overwhelmed, and want to do something fun for a little bit like go hiking. Scott finds this very amusing. He also used to find it disconcerting. None of this compares with how our relationships with others changed.

     To explain how things changed, I have to go back to the beginning.  When Scott and I fell in love, we fell fast and hard.  We had been friends for a few months; I was trying to have a year where I didn’t date, so even though he was obviously nuts about me I was trying to keep it just a friendship. Then I noticed him flirting a couple times with other girls. I was so jealous and this was not like me at all!  I decided that I really did not want him to hook up with someone else, so I throw away my plan and we started dating.  We automatically fell in love and suddenly all I wanted to do was cuddle and spend time with him. My friends, who I used to spend every other day with, now saw me maybe once a week.  All my dearest friends were angry.   Holly, and Aaron, who I had spent the last couple of years with all the time were angry with me and hostile to Scott. It was not just those two; most of my roommates and friends were guys who were overprotective of me. Scott was in shock, he had spent the last couple of months running around with my group of friends and now these people who had been his friends kept threatening to beat him up if he hurt me! Everyone kept telling me to cool it with him, that I was going to get hurt again. His friends acted weird as well.  Most of his friends would not look me in the eyes. I found this very odd and worrisome. In addition, his friends got kind of quiet around me, like they didn’t know what to make of me. Then we moved in together, and things got worse. 

     He lived in a small town out side of the college because the rent was cheap. It was cool at first we spent so much time together because we were practically living together anyway, but it started to feel sort of surreal to me. I was deliriously in love, which is weird enough, and at the same time I was missing my friends, and I kept getting sick.  My friends hardly ever called anymore.  They almost never came over. My emotions were on this crazy see saw. 

     I thought his friends hated me.  We went almost everywhere together, so he almost never hung out with his friends without me.  They hated this.  Most of his friends still would not look me in the eye.  Were they afraid that Scott would beat them up for looking at me?  Were they shy around women they didn’t know?  I know that one of his best friends was shy, but most of
the way they acted is still a mystery to me.  Most of them were from small Southern Illinois towns where everyone knew everyone. One of his friends who wouldn’t look me in the eye was married and always bad mouthing his wife. I really did not like that guy; his wife seemed really nice to me, and he was always complaining that she expected him to do as much work as she did.  His friends stopped calling as much.  It was as though the more involved we got with each other the more our friends pulled away. The more serious we got about our relationship the more our friends built up a wall between them and us.

          Then we got married.  One of my best friends named Terri, was one of my oldest friends, who got pregnant around the time Scott and I got engaged.  She was not married and had kept hinting that she wanted to be the Maid of Honor, so I gave the position to her.  Terri never showed up to help me with anything.  She was too embarrassed to be the maid of honor, and
she was jealous that I was getting married. So we decided that she should just be a bridesmaid.  Terri still would never show up to help pick out or try on a dress, so I told her she was no longer in the wedding party.  It turned out to be a very good thing that I did that, because she didn’t even show up for the wedding, although she left a present on my doorstep. Our friendship has never been the same since. My oldest friend now that I am married almost never calls me.  We still go out, but I have to call her, or one of our mutual friends has to arrange it.  All of Scott’s friends behave this way, except for Aaron, who I used to be closer to then Scott. Luckily, we’ve made some new friends who are in couples.

    I have heard many theories as to why this kind of thing happens.  Friends want to give you some space to do the family thing, or their jealous. Maybe these things happen sometimes. Perhaps they look at us, how we are together, and wonder how we can be this way, and if they really know us.  Sometimes, I completely blame myself. I know it is at least partly my fault,
because I got so wrapped up in the infatuation that I neglected my friends, and kept Scott from spending alone time with his friends. Yet, some friends like the ones back home I did not neglect when I was in my hometown I spent time with them just like always, but the way they treated our friendships and me changed. One friend thinks that people act this way because you
can be more open with someone who is single, because couples have this space these things that they share just between them and you can’t be involved in it.

This answer seems to have some merit, but isn’t any relationship like that?  No one can be in a friendship between two other people and know exactly what the other tow friends think and feel about each other. Sometimes I think that single friends are worried on some level that marriage is like a disease and if they get to close they might catch it.  I wonder if it is just our culture.  Do other cultures have this problem?  I doubt it; some cultures do not even define marriage in the same way that we do.  I saw a show about this group were the women get married when they are 14, and the men at 28 or so, but that it is expected that the women and men have occasional affairs. Once a year they even have some celebration where everyone who wants to have sex with anyone who is willing does, and it is practically an orgy.  I do not think this is a better way to run a society (especially the marriage at 14), but it makes me think.  What is marriage? What is love? Should marriage be something that is expected to take up most
of your social life? How healthy is a society that isolates people in groups of two or three?