March 1, 2008
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The First Year
Jerjonji wrote about the first year of marriage and it got me thinking about mine.
My wife and I were married in the summer between our junior and senior years of college in Tokyo. It was complicated because we had to deal with my parents who were against our union. I remember a lot of heated international phone calls where my mother would end up crying or yelling. My father also was not happy. My cousin also suggested that my wife was a fraudster who was using me to get to the U.S. We went ahead with the marriage anyway. We flew out to the American Embassy in Seoul and an intake clerk officially married us - no family or friends, just the two of us (we still haven't had a ceremony).
In hindsight, I can see why a parent would oppose our marriage. We were both students and we didn't go through the usual community process of involving families and friends in a ceremony, wedding shower, etc. There were a million reasons why we shouldn't have gotten married. And there is no doubt that my judgment was clouded by naivety, youthfulness, and rashness. But I would do it again in a heartbeat. To live is to hurt other people, whether intentionally or unintentionally. We can have the most compassionate and benevolent of intentions, but the limits imposed on us by human nature are such that some degree of friction is inevitable. Don't we ultimately live alone and die alone? Aren't you, alone, ultimately responsible for the choices you make in life? In my opinion, it is folly to let anyone, even parents, interfere in such a personal decision as to who to love and who to marry.
As you can tell I take a rather liberal view of my relationship and duty to my parents. I probably don't honor them to the extent required by conventional wisdom. I value their input but do not take orders from them. But I love them in my own way and I will not let anyone disparage the choices I made and lessons I learned during that First Year.
All things considered, I'd like to think that things turned out pretty well, but that's just me...
Comments (3)
everyone was against us getting married too- and his mother called my father and asked him to try to stop us, and there were a lot of frustrating conversations as well... but we got married and they all attended (mostly bc my father didn't attend my brother's wedding either and had learned his lesson). i think learning to make our choices work was an important part of growing up. how old were you when you got married? we were barely 19!
wow! you can make a movie out of ths story.
Wow, that's both romantic and touching.
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