Real, Live Fiance

I picked Adam up from the airport on Monday night. I hadn't seen him in person in nine weeks, twelve hours, and about thirty minutes. But he's here now and--as far as any of us are able to foresee--here to stay...

Despite the hypocrisy of my position, long distance relationships still aren't something I condone or encourage. They turn your beloved into two separate, sometimes irreconcilable people. I'm engaged to two Adams: a flat, distant, sometimes Adam and a very real, dynamic, right-here Adam. Every time I see him, I have to bring the two together, like trying to force double vision back to the way it belongs in the middle of a bad headache. The experience isn't now and never has been pleasant.

Flat, distant, sometimes Adam has his advantages. It's difficult to get into a serious argument with him. It's easier to get things done--like writing regular blog posts--when I only spend an hour a day with him. And when we've spent the other twenty-three hours apart, it's often easier to come up with things to talk about.

Most of all, though, it's easier to put myself before sometimes Adam. I decide how important it is to talk to him. If I'm tired or if I've got something I'd rather do, we don't talk. I have more self-determination about the way I spend my time. I set priorities differently when Adam isn't around to set him first.

It isn't that right-here Adam is controlling. Far from it. It's that, without him around, there's no presence to constantly remind me to put other people first. I'm more selfish when he isn't around. If my vocation is to marriage, being in a relationship where marriage is the ultimate goal enriches who I am, makes me want to be a more loving person to him and everyone I meet. It's just that constant, self-imposed moral pressure like that is a little difficult to get used to every time we've been apart.

There are other benefits to right-here Adam, too. Right-here Adam can hold me and kiss me. He can make me feel loved and appreciated in ways sometimes Adam never, ever could. He can be a helpmate--he spends so much time reading with me, helping me cook, comforting me when I'm sitting in traffic... These are things sometimes Adam just isn't capable of.

So, in the end, I always have to remember that I love both Adams. The fun, witty sometimes Adam I talk to on the phone and the deeper, more loving Adam I see in front of me now every day. It's just that right-here Adam is more dynamic, more human. I'm very grateful for that and look forward to spending the rest of my life with a guy of his depth.

What Does Engaged Mean?

Last night, Adam and I discussed applying for an apartment. My job for next year is more nailed down than his is, so I may need to apply alone for the time being. Of course, many apartment complexes require a certain amount of money in the bank as a kind of collateral for their residents. After two years at Oxford, I don't have a dime. Adam's response? "That's okay. I'll just give it to you."

Whoa. It suddenly hit me just how much more seriously Adam takes engagement than I do.

I would be dishonest if I said I didn't find my commitment to Adam serious and binding. But in my family, debate isn't over until both parties have said "I do." We celebrate how a father reminds his daughter, just before her big procession, that the marriage doesn't have to go through. Engagement is just a period for wedding planning.

It's not that Adam would try to take me through divorce proceedings if our relationship fell apart in the next three and a half months. It's that, for him, asking me and receiving my consent seems to have made marriage a pretty "done deal." We're not just wedding planning. We've started our lives together. Marriage is the next step on a journey that will last a lifetime.

For someone like me, always a little afraid my friends will figure out how annoying I am and leave at any moment, Adam's attitude is extremely liberating. He loves me and he's already serious about spending the rest of his life to me. Which is good, because I'm serious about spending the rest of my life with him, too.

Waiting...

Most literally, an engagement is "an arrangement to meet or be present at a specified time and place." But right now, in England, that time--August--far away and that place--the US--isn't even visible on the horizon. Most of the time, I'm grateful to have many months to prepare myself spiritually, emotionally, and physically to marry Adam. Still, there are days when it feels like the day will never come.

I have to confess that this week, with papers worth half of my degree looming, my marriage to Adam seems impossibly distant. It's difficult to see past the deadline, now only three weeks away, to the happy day I marry Adam. Perhaps this is just another moment when I must remember life doesn't stop just because I'm engaged...

"Bride Alison"

One of the consequences of my five-year student life has been the creation of several different "versions" of Alison. There was the "DC Alison" who worked on the Hill, helped write speeches, and ran around feeling generally self-important. There was "Teacher Alison" who swung on the swing set and planned medieval fairs. They're both on hiatus, but there's still "FDW Alison" (who works as a mediocre, low-level office gopher for a high-class, high-pressure law firm) and "Graduate Student Alison" (who stares at centuries-old books and writes about them all day). Each existence has become almost discrete in my mind, like a being from another life--or another world.

In this context, being a bride-to-be has been especially bizarre. In Oxford, so far from the Adam and the family who will celebrate with me, it's hard to believe that "Bride Alison." "Oxford Alison" doesn't choose china patterns or shop for apartments--she spends five hours tracking the rhyme scheme of an obscure medieval saint's life. I love my life, but it feels like the life I love is so different than the one "Bride Alison" loves when she's talking to her mom or excitedly picking her flowers.

I guess I expected my engagement to be life changing in a way, I now see, it can't possibly be. "Bride Alison" was supposed to be the Alison that united everything, the one that superceded all the others. My expectation may be just another sign that I've bought into "wedding culture" all my life--I'm not sure that, if I were home, it wouldn't lead me to shop endlessly for the perfect dress or build my registry to several hundred gifts just to feel more like a bride.

My life probably won't change as much as I expect, even after my wedding. But at least I'll be something, someone, metaphysically different. Adam and I will be a sacramentally-bound couple, of one flesh. "Married Alison" is the one Alison I'll be forever, until death do us part.