Marriage is changing, let weddings change too

The role of marriage is changing in society and I am embracing it. Marriage in the coldest sense is useful as two people can support each other emotionally, sexually, financially, physically and psychologically. This idea will probably prevail over time, which is good. Marriage in the oldest sense was those descriptions but under the terms of "creating a household" and maintaining it. So the traditional man working and woman cooking & cleaning is pretty much dead. Sure, women are more inclined to be stay at home moms still, but that is also on the premise that people in marriages have children.

The idea that having children sanctifies a relationship is dead. If you want to have children, go for it, but I don't need offspring to justify my relationship. My fiancé and I help each other in all of the ways married people do. There are big steps and big ways we are helping each other everyday. We do the type of stuff that would probably be a good idea to have a prenup for right now, despite the fact that we are not married. I suppose we are common law now? I think we are. I don't even know.

We were supposed to get married this year on September 3rd, but we are not now. I am beyond annoyed at the reason why, which I will get to soon. Before I explain why I am so upset, let me clarify a few things. I don't want a wedding. Sure, when I first got engaged I looked over my already-pinned pins on Pinterest and added more, as a matter or fact, I made a lot of different boards for my wedding. Then it went on to actually planning the wedding. I couldn't find the perfect place for the perfect price, I kept looking, I kept trying, and eventually I just didn't care anymore. I don't need a wedding. I don't need a big wedding dress (though I already have one). I don't want to have people watching us as we get married, that is so weird.

A wedding is not a performance, but everybody thinks that it is. It is a performance to all that each other's families have done for each other. Parents are thanked for raising the kids, friends and siblings are thanked for being there for them as they grew up, blah blah blah. So in a sense, weddings really do set up to seem like funerals for past lives too. Weddings were created to unify two families together. That is why I want a marriage and not a wedding. I don't want to unify anything. I have said this many years ago on my blog, but families are dead. Sure, they raise you and usually are "there for you" but you don't choose them. Yet, you never "break up" with your family members. Usually when there is an estranged family member, that's all they are. They are still a member of the family, they just did something that the rest of the family can't bare and are embarrassed to have the same last name and shared blood.

Hell, even friendships can have breakups more intense than families. I guess it's the sense that you once chose that friend and now you can un-choose them. Family you can't really do that to. I don't mind my family, they're okay. My mom is there for me and I love a few other family members but most of my family I have no idea what they are up to and I don't care. They don't ask about me, I don't ask about them, there is no need for a reunion.

So why the hell should these people be involved in the relationship that I chose all on my own with nobody's help? We weren't set up, our mothers have met once, our families are not close, why do we need to bring them together?

There is no reason for this bullshittery.

So the reason why I am mad? I planned a wedding. I had finally done it. I was excited, I was extremely pumped to get married and have a wedding with about 20 close family and friends, but the problem: his mother didn't feel included in the planning and she has no more holidays to take time off of work to go to the wedding. Fuck that shit. I planned a wedding, I am not planning another one. NOBODY NEEDS TO PLAN MY WEDDING. I don't even want a wedding! So I gave Nick an ultimatum, since he is the one who wants the wedding, not me. Either we get married on September 3rd like we both wanted, we elope (just the two of us) or he plans a wedding for us dated next year before the summer is over. He chose the latter.

The funny thing is that this September 3rd wedding was an elopement. It was barely a wedding. I was working with a company that specializes in elopements and small weddings.

This is just one of the differences between Nick and I. Although he is not a big "family man" he definitely values family more than I do. I value my mom for what she has done, but I don't "value family". Marriage is about two people. Unless your life is Everybody Loves Raymond, that is.

Anyways. If anyone can think of good ways I can convince Nick to elope with me, that'd be great. His reasoning that he doesn't want to is that "people have to be happy with our wedding for the rest of our lives and he doesn't want people resenting us". Well as true as that is, my wedding I just planned got cancelled, so let's hope I don't resent that either. I doubt that I will, but I guess we will just see what pans out.

Does anybody else share similar feelings about family to me?

Liquered up Logic!

So I decided to finally change my blog title and link. It used to be dadcanihavesomecrackerjacks.blogspot.com and called The Caffeinated Philosophy Experiment. Now it is Liquered up Logic! I chose this title because not only do I love alcohol and logic/philosophy but I think it is pretty funny as well, since most of the time drunk people are not very logical.

I just want to give a quick update on my summer, basically I have had one month down and three more to go until back to school. I am so pumped for next year because I am taking more philosophy courses than usual, it is about half philosophy and half psychology, since I am doing a double-major. I considered dropping my psychology major because I enjoy philosophy a lot more than psych, but my school is pretty much rundown so it may not even be possible to complete a philosophy major... actually I know it would be possible, literally JUST possible to complete it, but I don't want to risk more courses being cut next year.

My school is not the smartest around, but I love my professors. It is just the admit/finances that are thrown off. It still offers a major in philosophy and for first year students entering this year: there are not even enough courses available for this major unless they add more philosophy courses in later years for them.

Anyways. One month down, and three to go. I am not in a hurry at all, but I am looking forward to August. I get my inheritance then (oh my I sound so fancy and rich but I am really not). I need the money so badly. I am only getting 12-20 hours at my job currently. I got a second job recently but I haven't started yet. I am waiting for my police background check to go through. Which I think is ridiculous that I had to do one, but I understand why. That job is only 12 hours a week, but at least thats more than what I was getting before. Either way, I need the hours badly right now. Nick and I both need more money, and he is working full time and earning more than minimum wage right now.

My favourite thing with people my age is being excited when "earning more than minimum wage". Full-time work and earning minimum wage is $22,880 a year, which is nothing. In Ontario minimum wage right now is $11.00 an hour, which is way more than when I started work. The thing with minimum wage is that people are trying to raise it... and it does raise in October up to $11.25 an hour. That brings yearly earnings up to $23,400. Sure, every little bit helps but come on. I pay $4500 in rent (and I have low rent) and I do not even have full-time hours... you are LUCKY to find full-time, especially living in a student city. I applied for 3 jobs that I am 100% qualified for, sales which I have over a year of experience in, barista work which I have experience in and library work which I have 4 years of experience in. I got the job at the library but I didn't even get the best highest paying job out of the three jobs offered. It's rough out there.

Anyways. I am looking forward to August. I am also looking forward to September 3rd... which is when I might be getting married... (but you didn't hear that from me). So Nick and I have been engaged for maybe 10 months now, and I have been trying to plan the wedding the whole time. The problem is that we don't want to spend more than $5000, and are even trying to keep it under $2500 and we were booking too early at first for a wedding next year and then we decided we wanted to get married this year and it was too late to book. I finally found a place I like and is priced reasonably and I am working on booking it for September 3rd, a thursday. Just before back to school. But for those who know me, don't be surprised if that date changes. It has changed about 10 times already. We are either going to have 20 guests or 40 guests, depending on how cheap we can find food. The 20 guests we are having are basically our 5 closest family members and 5 closest friends each. The extra 20 include coworkers, people's partners and distant family, if we choose to invite them.

Everything depends on cost all of the time in our lives and it is driving Nick and I crazy. We are going to be in so much debt forever. If things pan out in our lives education and job wise, we will be fine, but the likelihood of that happening is slim. If Nick gets into law school and gets the perfect jobs and whatnot along the way, we will be fine. If I get into a masters and Phd program in philosophy and get into a university teaching and get tenure, things will be fine. But these two things happening are not super likely to happen. I will probably end up with some kind of office job in a school earning a good $50,000 a year while he will probably end up becoming a computer tech of some kind because that seems to be where he is heading, despite his law-school career that he aims for.

Life, eh?

If you told me 4 years ago that this would be my life right now I would've laughed you away. In the best terms possible without putting myself down too much... I was basically assuming I was going to be a single slut all through university. I didn't want to settle down... ever, and now look what I am doing? I met a guy a few days before school started and now we are getting married.

Anyways, I am rambling on. Thanks for reading this if you did. This is an atypical post for me, usually I talk about other things, I just figured that I would give a life-update type post with my blog-update post.

Money is bogus, am I right?

Why get married?

In my philosophy of sex and love class we had a discussion about why people get married (specifically should homosexual marriage be legal, the consensus was yes) but of course, the conversation got off track.

As the only person engaged in the class (there were married people but the professor for one reason or another didn't want them to engage in this discussion...), she tended to pick on me to justify it.

I first answered why I wanted to get married based on two things: the first is what everyone expected: "I love him, I see a good future together, I want to have a life partner" yada yada yoo. My second reasoning was half expected, I answered because of politics, essentially. It's easier for tax purposes to be married. The main thing I argued was the fact that I found out once my fiance and I get married, that we will both get $2000 more each/year of educational loan funding from our province's program.

Marriage is encouraged. I am not saying get married because quite often people get married without knowing why. I am just saying that politically it makes sense because that is how we are trained to think.

But I know for a sure fact that a marriage license won't change our relationship too much. At one point I used to see it almost as an insurance policy, that we will not leave each other. It will be harder, since divorces are hard to go through rather than just splitting ways, but I still think that a marriage license is that last little thing there that makes you try a little harder to make it work. Notice how I said not to force it to work.

Anyways. Our professor asked the class "Who here is going to get married someday/ wants to?" Almost all of the men actually raised their hands, except 1.5 guys. Only about 1/3 of the female population of the class raised their hands.

What did I expect in a mostly gender studies major class?

Marriage is not death, but it is also not a really necessary thing to achieve in life. My fiance and I are basically married already, to a degree. We live together and share everything and love each other just as much as we would if we were married.

The second question my professor shot at me, specifically this time, was why I was going to change my last name (only about 3/40 students raised their hand saying they would change their last name). Since she knew I was engaged, she asked why. I again, argued something political. I also argued I am not connected to my dad's name. My last name right now is my dad's name. I don't feel like it's mine. Even though my mom has the same last name, I don't feel like it is mine. A lot of people probably do, but I don't. Honestly, if I could have my last name be anything, I would have my fiance and I both change our last names to something new, but I have no idea what and that is not necessarily an idea I see myself following through on. My fiance said he would hyphenate his name with mine, but I would much rather save us both the extra characteristics by just having once last name, his. It's traditional, but fuck, when am I ever traditional? Let me have this one thing!

I feel like everyone in the class thinks I am the stuffiest person ever for getting married so young, and the people who don't think I am think I am too young to be getting married.

But the thing with marriage is even though my fiance and I see each other being together for the rest of our lives, we recognized that people change and maybe someday we would fall apart. You never know what will happen. But what we do know for sure is that we want to be together and we want to try. My point is that if our relationship lasts 5 years, 2 minutes or 50 years, it will be an experience.

I hate when people see a marriage or any event as a waste of time. No, it was a memory and a learning experience. So your 15 year long marriage fell apart? But the first 12 years were amazing? Just because the last 3 sucked does not mean that the last 12 should be discredited.

That is a huge part of your life!

It's hard, I get it. If my fiance dumped me point blank right now, I would fucking hate him for it. I would be so mad, confused and upset. But I wouldn't think the last few years of our lives were useless.

Whatever.

What do you think of marriage?

I think if marriage was no longer a thing, politically, and all marriage certificates were just discredited and marriage became illegal, that that would be fine. A relationship is a relationship. Sue me for going through the motions and wanting that license. 

I got my wedding dress & I am beginning to hate weddings

Firstly, I apologize because I typically do not post girly things like this. If you are a regular reader, this is a different type of post. Although you might want to stick around for the end of the post because I get into a ranty mood about the wedding industry. Enjoy!

I went dress shopping for the first time last Sunday and I was determined to get my wedding dress then and there because I didn't want to keep looking at other shops forever. My actual wedding isn't going to be for about a year and a half or so but I went dress shopping early. Why? This is why: http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2014/11/11/liquidator_hopes_for_a_bridal_wave_with_wedding_gown_clearance_sale.html

I don't live in Toronto, but I am about a 4 hour drive away. $52 of gas was totally worth getting my wedding dress for $199+tax. I won't be posting a photo of it because I do not want most guests and my fiance to see what it looks like. Well, actually, I do. I really do want my fiance to know what it looks like, but apparently you're not supposed to. Which is dumb.

I tried on approximately 18 wedding dresses. I had a specific dress in mind, lace sleeves, tight and long, no train, maybe backless, maybe a corset dress. Well, I didn't find that. But I did find one that I like. It had a train. I HATE dresses with trains. I don't know if I am going to get it altered to not have a train yet. It isn't super poofy but it does stick out, I might get a layer of the poofiness removed as well and just hope that the main layer of fabric sits the same.

Anyways, how did I select that dress from all of the others? Whenever I tried on a dress I would walk out and look into a mirror. Frequently I would look at the dress in the mirror and think "that's a really nice dress" but then I would look up at my face and my entire body and hate it. Weird, huh? The way that my face looked in the dress determined the dress that I got. Many dresses looked good on my body and many of them were beautiful but until I looked at my self as a whole in the dress and I liked what I saw, I didn't choose a dress.

Although I do regret getting the dress that I got. It is kind of a vintage-modern type of dress and it is very gorgeous and too extravagant. I regret getting it because it is too extravagant. I am most likely going to be planning a small wedding and it not be very low key. I was very inclined to buy a second dress I tried on which was lace t-shirt style on top with a belt at the waist and then dropped down with no train and was chiffon. It was only $199 and I should've done that. But I didn't.

My wedding is not going to match my dress. The dress I got looks way better on me than the low-key dress, so I will rock it. But I do regret this.

But I honestly don't care anymore. I'm starting to get fed-up with planning a wedding. It is annoying. I don't want anyone else to plan it because I don't want to be unhappy with it. But things are already starting to happen that I don't want to happen. My mom insisted on buying me a veil (she also paid for my dress) and I do not want a veil. Yes, I agree the veil looks nice with the dress and pulls it all together but I also hate the idea of a veil.

I really am starting to hate the whole industry. I want to sell my engagement ring (even though it wasn't very expensive) and buy a slim band for my engagement and a slightly thicker one for the wedding.

I want to sell the dress and get a more low-key dress.

But I won't be doing these things because of all of the pressure I am feeling from everyone around me. Heck, even the groom doesn't want to elope!

But he is right. I might regret not having a nice wedding. But at the moment it's too much. I could delay the wedding to be years and years from now but I want to be married soon and it is kind of backwards to get a marriage certificate with no wedding and then having a wedding years later.

It's all dumb.

But anyways. My dress is cute so whatever, right?  

Homophobia or Opinion

First of all, allow me to clarify myself. I am not homophobic. I am not a gay rights activist. I believe that gay marriage should be legal, and members of the LGBTQ society should have as many full and equal rights as others who are not.

Homophobia, to my understanding and by my definition is the hatred of and/or fear of homosexual individuals.

Opinions, to my understanding and by my definition is the belief by an individual or group that can be based off of fact or can be based off of no fact.

Why am I defining all of these things? Because I think there are two types of people who don't believe in the legality of gay marriage.
1. Those who are homophobic.
2. Those who do not believe in "homosexuals".

Just because someone has the belief that all people should naturally be paired guy-to-girl, and that two members of the same sex cannot have a natural/normal relationship, does not make them homophobic. That is their belief, that is their opinion. Some religions do not believe in homosexuality, some people do not believe in homosexuality.

They have a right to their opinion and belief, just as I have a right to my belief that homosexuality is a natural/normal relationship.

But people can be homophobic and have their opinion/belief. For example, let's say Bobby-Jane believes homosexuality is a sin, okay, that's fine, that is their opinion, but if that person goes out of their way to spread hate, for example, spitting on homosexuals, or giving them dirty looks, that is homophobia.

Although a person can also be homophobic and not really have the belief/opinion. These are the people I am most worried about, because they are the people that will do the things like spit at homosexuals, or give them dirty looks, but they don't have a motive behind it, they just do it, just because. Kind of like how some people are just mean to other people, but don't have a reason behind it.

My point here, and the reason of my blog post, is because I was reading some comments/blogs by some members of the LGBTQ society and they were calling everybody who doesn't believe in homosexuality, homophobic. This is not true. Many are, not all are.

Some people simply believe it is wrong, and I don't blame them, since scientifically the purpose of life is to reproduce, yet some humans (and even some non-humans) have relations between the same sex, people just see the relationship as perhaps unnecessary or just "wrong" because that is their belief.

I personally believe society has over-romantisized everything and society itself is the purpose of life.

In my belief system, life has no meaning, I believe naturally, humans have no purpose of being on earth, but I think throughout our development and time on earth, we have created societies, and within these societies, is filled with a whole lot of... allow me to call it "bullshit" like love, affection, emotions, etc. I'm not saying emotions aren't natural, I just think that they have progressed so much with the creation of languages, and pop culture. Everything is about emotion. On twitter people are "sad", people state their emotion like a thing "I am happy" "I am excited" "I am feeling creative". In the past you didn't really do that. Now it's a thing.

What does this have to do with my blog post? I think that homosexuality has been romanticized. Sure, I believe that individuals can have physical/sexual and/or emotional connections to people of the same sex, I believe this can come naturally, yet as I stated earlier, it is also natural to reproduce. I think this is where the belief that homosexuality is a psychological disorder stemmed from. Which honestly, I think is a completely valid opinion/belief/argument. Where I believe this belief reaches homophobia, is when in the 1950's those ads about "stay away from homosexuals" came from.

Like this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmqNiFJyI28

Overall, I'm just saying that even though a person doesn't necessarily believe in gay rights, doesn't make them homophobic. If that was true, then the fact that I am not jewish and don't believe in judaism would make me a nazi.