This week marks two years since I married my guy Daniel. It feels funny to say it’s our second anniversary because this kind of neglects the whole nine years of hanging out without rings on our fingers that came before. But those are the rules; the dating was just foreplay to the big event.
Small confession: I almost forgot the whole thing and accidentally made plans with a friend to see a comedy show on the eve of the anniversary. Then my parents and in-laws started asking us what we were doing to celebrate #2, and I realized that a 10 pm clown show without my husband may not be the best answer.
I’m told I’m too young to forget important dates as such, but to be fair, I’m pregnant, and I will use this pass for everything I possibly can for as long as motherly possible. Still, to make up for my egregious mistake, I’ve decided to dedicate the entire anniversary evening to my dear husband and also spend the week thinking about our love and learning about the history of marriage and anniversaries.
For starters, I wanted to know: what’s up with the whole themed anniversary gift thing? Surely, this is yet another capitalist scheme tricking us out of our paychecks by guilting us into believing the only way to properly display our deep devotion is by purchasing a WestElm wood stool on year six or that gorgeous lapis lazuli anklet for #9.
That hunch was correct, Hallmark and friends know a good thing when they sniff it, but that’s only a part of the story. Historical records indicate that gift-giving to commemorate anniversaries dates all the way back to Ancient Rome and Medieval Germany, though the details of what that meant seem a little muddy. However, the image gets a little clearer in 18th century Germany, where it was customary for friends to give the wife a silver wreath to celebrate the couple’s 25th anniversary and get upgraded to gold if they made it to 50! Thus, we’ve crowned these milestones as the Silver and Golden Wedding Day.
We English-speaking folk, however, didn’t seem to do the gift exchange thing until the Victorian Era, when the “love match” idea began to take shape. Before Jane Austen and the other romantics, the concept of sharing your life with someone on the premise of shared attraction and love was a generally strange and senseless luxury. Farmers needed help on the farm, bakers in the bakery, and influential families needed good relations with other influential families to amass power and safety.
A pretty epic example of this was Cleopatra—the hot Queen of Egypt. Before diving into famous marriages on this anniversary mission, I thought of Cleo as a seductress who looked amazing in gold and inspired the erotically phonosemantic femme fatale archetype—but her story is far more interesting. Long story short, she was married to her younger bro, as per the Egyptian custom of royal sibling marriages to consolidate that power. They fought, as siblings and spouses do, so she started an affair with Julius Caesar, and they had a baby boy together named Caesarion—aka Little Caesar. (Is that where the name came from that made way for the delightful personal pizza for hungover college students?! History can be so fun!)
Where were we? So it was really key that they had a babe together because that meant that they had claim to each other’s thrones. Huge. Then, Julius was killed on the Ides of March by a bunch of senators and even his buddy Brutus. At the time, Little Caesar was still too little to rule, so when Cleo formed a partnership with Mark Antony—a relative and ally of Caesar—they were able to rule together. This was initially quite advantageous for securing their thrones and sharing resources, making them a true power couple. Sure, it all ended with Egypt getting entangled in Roman civil wars, both of their suicides, and Egypt falling under Roman domination, but the plan was solid for a while.
Still, this kind of practical partnership makes a lot of sense to capitalize on, so you can imagine that once this love trend started to emerge, it was met with some skepticism.
Author and historian Stephanie Coontz explored this relatively new trend of love being the basis for marriage over economic gain and stability in her book Marriage, a History and how it was a tough sell over the centuries in gaining widespread popularity:
The Greeks thought lovesickness was a type of insanity, a view that was adopted by medieval commentators in Europe. In the Middle Ages, the French defined love as a ‘derangement of the mind’ that could be cured by sexual intercourse, either with the loved one or with a different partner.
Classic French, believing we can cure love with sex!
Coontz explains that even as love-based marriage began to spread around the world from the 18th century on, celebrations and gifts were generally focused on the wives due to traditional gender roles enforcing the idea that it was the wife's work to make the marriage succeed.
Though women, of course, will always have a special kind of historical pressure to do it all and make their partners happy, I feel blessed to live in a time that doesn’t separate gender roles so rigidly and unevenly. This also means that marriage has, in many ways, gotten a lot harder.
Psychologist Eli Finkel felt the weight of this challenge after the birth of his first child and thus embarked on the journey of writing The All or Nothing Marriage. Initially, Finkel had the intention of explaining how we’ve simply put too high of expectations on marriage today; a spouse went from being a business partner to being a therapist, best friend, lover, house cleaner, chef, money-maker, and ideally, accountant. Finkel argued that this modern picture of marriage has introduced a greater risk of suffocation into the relationship as we’ve moved from marriage historically placed towards the bottom of Maslow’s pyramid (survival/safety) to the very top, the pursuit of self-actualization.
Eventually, Finkel realized that he was only looking at one side of the equation: marriage is harder for many reasons, yes, but it also has endless potential for happiness and personal growth when fostered with intention and care.
Or, as Esther says:
For another confession: I used to share some of Finkel’s skepticism about how truly fulfilling marriage could really be. I always thought it was a good idea to pick a partner and start a family together, but I didn’t necessarily understand how people wouldn’t inevitably get sick of one another. In my mind, there were two groups of married couples: one that cheated and one that wanted to but had the willpower or laziness not to. So when I started to get serious with Daniel, I told him not to worry about the whole proposal thing and that I’d take care of it when the time was right. This wasn’t because I didn’t believe he was the guy I wanted to do laundry with for the rest of my life. Perhaps it was a subconscious savoring of the dreamy time together before things got… stuffier.
Fast forward eight years into the relationship and the middle of a pandemic, and I realized that I should probably follow through with my promise.
Even though I couldn’t wait to throw a big party for all my friends and family, the concept of becoming an “old ball and chain” still lurked in the back of my mind. I grew up listening to a lot of comedy and watching TV shows that painted wives as nothing but a pain in the ass—the poopers of all the parties.
It took a lot of reflection and therapy leading up to the wedding to realize how this story had seeped deep into the cracks of my psyche. I did not want to poop on parties.
Along this contemplative voyage, I came to believe that the ball and chain idea did not need to feel like restriction but could rather serve as a means of grounding and aligning with one another and the world we create around us.
All of that work was beyond worthwhile as it led to the most connected and joy-filled weekend of my life, during which I didn’t fear going from “bridezilla” to someone’s “old lady.” Instead, it became a prompt for fun and special ways to commemorate love and connection, family, and community and to focus on these things we all say are the most important but rarely find the time for.
The months leading up to the wedding and every day thereafter have taught me that what’s challenging about committing to a person is not that you can’t hide from them. It’s that you can’t hide from yourself. As long as I am willing to stay with myself and work on all the sticky parts that come to the surface within the context of my relationship, then I think I have a real shot at this whole love-match marriage.
Watching our wedding video on our anniversary has become a tradition (which I almost didn’t want to bother with at all as part of my angsty bride phase). I cry every time, not just because no one thought to fix my hair after it absolutely poured as I walked down the aisle, but because that didn’t matter at all.
I cry because I realize that the work we do to commit to each other doesn’t make our lives harder: it makes us live harder.
Such a fabulous reflection on love and marriage. May you two always continue to have the joy and love you shared on your wedding day. xoxo