RELATIONSHIP Poem: MARRIAGE, by Andrew Lechner

I would love to get married.
I’d love to have someone to love and who might love me back.
A partner.
Someone to build with.
To breed with.
To grow old and die with, especially since my generation might one day be renamed the centenarians.

But please, don’t ask me to care about wedding decorations.
I can pretend to care about many things out of a sense of politeness, a sense of duty, and a sense of shared interests.

But I do not have the capacity to care about the China patterns of plates the extended family I rarely see will eat off on the day I get married.

Bunting or no bunting?
Roses or carnations?
Pino Noir or Malbec?

I am sorry, I don’t have the capacity to pretend to care about these things.
I do not know what bunting is.
Flowers die, so let’s skip them altogether.

Who am I marrying?
Am I marrying the woman I fell in love with?
Or am I marrying a banquet center, along with my future wife’s family and all their childlike expectations of a fairytale wedding paid for with my father’s money?

And, of course, my family will pay, right?
They are rich.
They are in that 1% who cares about the estate tax.
Certainly, we can buck tradition and make the groom’s family pay for everything.

It’s the unspoken negotiation between me and my bride’s family of 9 aunts and 50ish cousins, all of whom seem to have a vested interest in helping my wife and I plan “the most important day of our lives.”

When she visits my parent’s house, you can see her eyes drift about, measuring the drapes and rearranging the furniture in her mind.
When I ask, just as a joke, I’m filled with dread when she tells me her detailed design plan for the home she hopes to inherit.

The entire thing turns into a celebration of spending other people’s money or money that people don’t have.
The in-laws came to us with a delinquent mortgage and maxed-out credit cards.
Shelly marrying me was their lottery ticket, and I can see all the “things” they hope to get out of “the most important day of my life,” dancing just behind their gaze as if they are scrolling through Amazon while talking to me.

Except I couldn’t pretend to care about a Kentucky log cabin or the Forest Park Pavilion.
I couldn’t care about bunting or the correct number of tines on the forks our families would eat off on “the most important day of our lives.”

Does it matter?
Until today, I’ve never said “tines” twice in a single conversation.
Now, it seems their number might seal our happily ever after or condemn us to a life of misery.
We must make the right choice, she says.
I tell her the right choice is any choice that doesn’t require me to use the word tines twice in a conversation.

And I’m told that I don’t care that I’m emotionally unavailable, that I’m cold and unfeeling.
And my head hurts because I can’t possibly think of a rational argument for three tines over four. It seems she ruled out five already, although I’m unsure how.

And so, I tell her that the best I can do is a bad imitation of someone who might actually have a reason to pick one over the other and that I’d be happy to do my best if it would make her happy. And she tells me I don’t respect her or her family.
Neither of us knows I have autism yet.
And so, we did not get married, and I was spared having to fake enthusiasm for overbuilt expectations of a fairytale wedding.
And I didn’t have to disappoint them all with the news that there is no happily ever after.
People grow old and die.
Sometimes happy.
Sometimes sad.
But in the end, always dead.
And the most two people can hope for is to go through it together