For some reason, this year’s wedding season has me thinking about weddings that were supposed to be mine but for more than one usually sound reason, never took place.  I don’t know if it is age, overdue maturity, the world going to absolute hell all around us, or what that is causing me to think about these phantom events that I thought had been washed away in the disinfectant of time.  But they are on my mind all the same.

The first possible wedding could have happened with a guy I met when I was 21, going to summer school, living in a fraternity house with a mélange of people the likes of which I had not seen before and fortunately have not seen since (save one woman from Britain, who remains one of my closest friends).  Some of us in the house got it in our heads that it might be a really excellent idea to sell our plasma for some extra partying cash.  So I was at the plasma center one day, freshly bathed so no one would think me a wino, when a perfectly charming medical student phlebotomist attended to my veins.  He was not my usual type, being of the blonde, All-American, former professional baseball player type and a boy not in possession of a mop of dark hair, hawkish eyes and an interest in politics or economics.  But we soon entered into the kind of frenzied and rather stupid summer romance you can have at 21 when you mix fraternity house life with plasma sales.  He was most keen to get married to someone, and when he proposed to me after six weeks, I said yes.  I don’t even remember how he proposed but he did and I know I said yes.  I had been raised to get married and so I said yes.  It was when I moved back home at the summer’s end that I realized that hell, I did not sacrifice a ton to work myself through university just to marry a guy I hardly knew.  Plus, there were too many other boys at work with mop dark hair and hawkish eyes to look at and more.  Thus the evaporation of Almost Wedding #1. 

Then when I was 24 and getting started on the career I had always wanted, a career of the type that was unavailable to, as well as unwanted by, my mother and most of the girls I grew up with, I met a doctoral student who was intelligent enough, cute enough, and far too young and in thrall to his mother to have a serious relationship with anyone.  Was I also too young and immature for a serious relationship?  Oh definitely.  As such, we had a fairly tumultuous time for more than three years.  I thought I wanted to marry him for most of the three years, but when I caught the eye of a highly coveted, dashing physician more than a decade my senior (who in the hallowed and historical ways of Players, put me aside within about three months like used Kleenex), the doctoral student said he wanted to marry me.  That said, and even though I had been ditched by the doctor, I did not want to marry the guy, even though he pursued me for months after the breakup.  It was then that I realized that I probably didn’t want to marry anyone just yet.  Even though I was certain, at least for a while, that I wanted to marry some of the men I met in the years to come. 

Shortly after the doctor had moved on to other willing young pastures, a guy with a penchant for 18^th century style fancy dress parties asked me several times to marry him despite the absence of any, and I mean any, romantic or sexual content to even one of our meetings.  That was a pass.  I’m still stymied as to why he thought me so marriageable since the 1960s are more my style costume party theme. 

Then there was a barrister I met in England who was smart and elegant beyond words and wrote the most incredible letters.  I remember that I liked him enough but for some reason, neither one of us put the kind of effort into effect that can get one, well, married.   Even though there was a time when he told me he felt closer to me than to anyone.  Five years after our last phone conversation, I tried to find him, only to get another great letter from him, this time telling me he had married, was soon to be a father, but that I must visit him when I was next in Britain.  I hear from him on occasion.  The last time we corresponded he told me he still remembers our letters and phone conversations. 

After the correspondence with the barrister ended but before I learned he was married, I met an older, never married man with an extremely settled and scheduled life and a history of improperly treated depression (that I only learned about in full about six months into the relationship).  After a too brief long-distance courtship that gave new meaning to the phrase “he was on me like white on rice,” he also proposed to me.  At the time I was in my mid-thirties, which can be a dangerous age for many single women as well as men who not only can feel every tick and bong of the biological clock as it whacks their internal organs, but also are having trouble coming up with clever answers to the “why aren’t you married yet?” questions.  I accepted, thinking that doing so would stop the questions and the clock and that stability might be a good thing for me.  But after 15 months that were pure, unadulterated hell in different ways for both of us, I was thrilled to get out, unmarried, in possession of a dress to return to Lord and Taylor, and pledged to friends that I would indeed seek counseling so a similar situation would never happen again.  

A short while later, I moved to Washington, D.C. and pursued career dreams that I had dreamed for years, never thinking any of them might actually come true.  Some of them did, and that was fine.  Really fine.  And yes, there were many opportunities to meet all sorts of men, including guys of genuinely decent character.  It’s true, a couple or so such men do live in Washington.  Only one really caught my attention and we have been in and out of each other’s lives now for several years.  He’s recently talked about wanting to marry me and while he is not a bad guy (though he does not have a mop of dark hair), I know that I am not in love with him, he doesn’t love me, and saying yes to marriage just so we don’t have to end life as a spinster and a confirmed bachelor would be a big mistake.  

All of this said, maybe I’m thinking about these non-weddings because I’m finally ready (after having the exciting career that, dang, did provide lots of adventure and some money but did not smile at me when I came home at night) to meet that love-of-your-life someone I could actually marry for the right reasons.  I don’t know.  Friends who are happily married say it hits you like a tsunami when you meet the right one.  They swear by it.  If that is true, maybe I just have to stay on the beach, not escape upstairs, and wait for the wave to come ashore.  And maybe not think too much about the past anymore.