‘So when will you get married, Nara?’

As I am typing this, my senior high school friend is marrying the girl from my junior high. My bestfriend, along with her husband, is attending her bestfriend’s wedding. My classmate is blasting her wedding invitation in my junior high class’ chat group.

Everyone else is getting married/planning to do so, and here I am contemplating about it.

I want to get married. I have been dreaming of my wedding since my childhood (and thanks, Pinterest, I am storing my fantasies) but seeing so many failures, even my own parents got divorced, starts to freak me out. I guess things would be better if I had a normal family and my current boyfriend never married before, but we are just not. My family has this weird expectation about marriage and my boyfriend was once married.

The reasons why my family keeps asking me to get married can be simplified into two. First is to stop all the sins we sinners have when we are ‘just’ dating, because dating is not a halal phase to my religion. From the other side of my family, it has become a sorta ‘tradition’ where the eldest is expected to take care of the younger, the burden my dad has to deal since he was young.

Then, my boyfriend’s divorce has set this high parameter for both him and his family, although he may not admit it himself. It is perfectly understandable, but how I wish I was those pure Javanese blood girls who praise their husbands like they are kings of the world. That would have made things easier, for both me & his family. Call me a fake but I just cannot act like myself without fearing they will scold me again with such rude words.

I really wish to get married, but the fear of it being ugly when it starts terrifies me deeper as the days go by. People say that as long as I love him, nothing else matters. I do love him but these things MATTER, because marriage is not only between two of us; it is more to marrying families. I once thought that after I was married, we would have had our world revolved around two of us, but my dear coworker fellow slapped me with ‘yeah I once hoped the same but truth be told, it was not like that. it cannot be like that.’

I dont know, perhaps it is only a childish wishful thinking, but I dont understand why. I cannot accept that if two people love each other and want to tie the knot, it has to be this complicated and messy and, sometimes self-inflicted, damages.

Convince me again why marriage is such a beautiful thing, please?