#6: Starter Marriage

And at least three reasons not to get married ...

I became Mrs. Dash on August 5, 1995.

I wasn’t “salt free”, but I was betting that I would soon be free “of me.” What I wasn’t betting on was the true cost of that freedom.

Hindsight is 20/20 they say … now that I am nearly 30 years removed from that interesting day, I can confirm that I got married (the first time) for three reasons:

1 - To extract myself from a cult of despair.

I had stridently rejected everything I was raised to believe over the previous 2 years, even though I still knew deep down it was all true. I just needed to bring myself back to equilibrium and didn’t trust myself to do it alone.

2 - To start my own family.

I’d just found my birth mother. My mom really hurt by my decision, and I was really hurt that she was really hurt. Alas, I was lost and needed to be found. I didn’t trust myself to do it alone, so I decided to get hitched to someone who could help me.

3 - I thought it was my only chance at love.

As I got closer to the wedding, I started to have some doubts about whether Brian and I were a good fit for each other. I made an appointment with the pastor of our church, the man who would be marrying us.

I’ll never forget his words:  

Kelley, I believe this is the man God has for you. If you don’t marry him, you may never find the right husband. He is your soulmate. 

That was not what I was expecting to hear, but I respected him and his opinion, so I went with it. I didn’t tell anyone, I just put my head down and started to plan. I assured myself it was just cold feet.

As an aside …

If you know anyone looking for a list of reasons not to marry someone, please show them this. Each reason comes with about 10 RED FLAGS screaming DON’T DO IT!

You see, I was young, scared, and missonless.

I’d lost my footing in college and didn’t have a clue how to get it back. I simply could not reconcile the worldview of my childhood with the worldview I was learning in school and my confusion wasn messing with my head.

My Christian worldview was too strict and no fun (so sayeth my teenage self). It would be many years before I understood why boundaries mattered for my own good, especially for the safety of my heart.

The Materialistic, or Atheistic, worldview I was studying represented freedom, at least on paper. It not only provided, it mandated, unfettered license to challenge all external sources authority and govern one’s life according to the dictates of the self. All I could think of was ….

Remember, also, this was the early 1990s, some 30 years after Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique, so second-wave feminism was in full swing and there was abundant literature to sink my teeth into. 

My mom was a housewife and full-time mom, the very thing Friedan critiqued.

I began to wonder … 

• Was my mom subjected to some horrible existence at the hands of my dad?

• Was she, too, struggling with the “problem that had no name”?

• Was she pretending to be okay when she wasn’t?

• Was my dad part of the oppressive patriarchy?

These were questions mom and I would discuss in detail over many years, but, I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t really stressed out trying to make sense of this at 19. I was staring down two extremely different paths without any visible points of convergence. I did not yet understand the concept of life being a marathon, not a sprint, so I felt a lot of pressure to choose something … and quick. 

Considering my “consequence-less” feminist life was not working out so well (so much for freedom), not to mention the fact that most of the women I studied had committed suicide for various and sundry reasons (no bueno for a manic-depressive like me), my choice seemed pretty clear. 

—

Before I even met Brian Dash, I decided that being a wife and mother was the priority and that I could figure out the whole career thing over time. At that moment, I was interested in pursuing a PhD in 17th Century Dutch Art History (Vermeer = yes, please), or Linguistics (I learn language by ear), so I had some time before I’d actually have to walk the walk and make the hard calls. After all, I could easily be a professor, linguist, translator, and/or curator and a mom at the same time, right? That would be pretty radical, but I could do it if I put my mind to it, right? 

—

Back to the wedding …

I loved Brian.

I was IN LOVE with the idea of getting married and being a wife. I was certainly craving something safe and warm. Marriage meant that we were legally required to provide safety and warmth to the other, right? After all, this was going to be my one and only wedding, so I wanted to be sure I did it right. 

There were some important details to address before we got to safe and warm.

Brian opposed me taking Women Studies and Gender Studies courses. He told me that I had to choose that “stuff” or choose him.

I dropped out of college and chose him. I became a Bakery Assistant at Wegman’s. Not exactly what was expected of the girl voted Most Likely to Succeed in her high school class just a few years before.

In fairness to Brian, the Women and Gender Studies curricula were anti-Christian, anti-marriage, and anti-nuclear family (it’s patriarchal and destructive to girls). Check out Kate Millett’s Sexual Politics if you want the full manifesto!

Had the shoe been on the other foot, I probably would have made the same demands. My studies were in direct opposition to the promises I would be making to him. I was living a conflicted, bifurcated, double-life.

My professors were shocked and disappointed. 

None attended my wedding.

–  

My wedding itself was … interesting. :-)

I tried to combine debutante style with a K-mart budget. I’m pretty crafty, so I pulled it off (in a very 1990s way), but that meant the reception had to be a pot-luck at a church member’s farm, complete with a pig on a spit. My mom nearly lost it, it was so “not what she wanted for her little girl.” She cried through the entire day. I don’t know if I have pictures anymore, but if I come across them, I’ll share.

After the wedding, Brian and I remained in Erie, PA, and mom, dad, and the family went back to Orlando, my hometown. It didn’t take very long before I felt anything but safe and warm. My starter marriage was a total bust.  

I called my mom on October 4, 1995, just 2 months after the wedding. I admitted that things weren’t going well. You see, Brian and I were fighting daily and things had gotten violent a few too many times. It was the beginning of the end of my life as Mrs. Dash …  

A few years later I told my mom about the pastor’s admonition that I go through with the wedding. She was furious with that man, but was so grateful that Brian and I escaped each other and didn’t have children to tether us for life.

Brian was as much a battered man as I was a battered woman. I was damaged goods, a broken woman. He, too, was damaged goods, a broken man. I’m not proud of my part, but I must own my part.  

It was not my finest hour.

–

I left Erie and headed for Orlando on New Years Day 1996. I never saw Brian again.

I was 22 and my life was a mess. I was a college drop out, separated from my husband, and was heading home to live with my parents. There was no light at the end of the tunnel. There were a lot of broken pieces that I would need to make sense of and then figure out how to make them mean something.

Three weeks living my parents was enough to light a fire under my backside …

That story, and a tie back to the reasons I got married and that awful advice from my pastor, are coming up next!

—

Thank you for being so supportive and generous with your time and attention as I’m finding my rhythm in this new endeavor.

xo,

Kelley

December 29, 2022