Stephanie Lehmann and other stuff

After reading Stephanie Lehmann’s blog I decided to buy her book, You Can Do Better. It’s a fun, light, chick-lit/romance. In the first chapter the protagonist, Daphne Wells, accepts the marriage proposal of her live-in boyfriend. This is clearly a mistake on her part (and his). They’re not right for one another. So why did she say yes?

She says yes because when they first hooked up they were a good match. So good that she decided way back in the beginning of their relationship that this was the man she was supposed to be with. But then his priorities changed and they grew apart. Unfortunately she can’t quite get herself to let go of her initial decision. She can’t see their relationship for what it is, only for what it was.

This is the main reason why I strongly believe people (particularly people in their twenties) should date for a long time before getting married. Your twenties are all about change. At twenty I was attending San Francisco’s Fashion Institute of Design And Merchandising (FIDM). I then went on to New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology(FIT). I worked at couture boutiques, I did internships in buying offices and by twenty-six I was a department manager at Nordstrom.

Now I write murder mysteries for a living. Things just changed for me. I don’t want what I used to want.

A close friend of mine who married young (and divorced around eight years later) confided to me that she thought the traditional marriage vows needed to be rewritten. “They shouldn’t say: for as long as you both shall live," she said. "Instead they should ask: do you take this man for the next 60-65 years. If the minister had phrased it that way I think I would have thought about it a little more.”

I can honestly say that the problems I had in my marriage had little to do with “growing apart” but I’ve seen that happen with a lot of other people I know. Sometimes someone who swears they don’t want to have a child changes their mind (or visa versa) or they decide that they actually don’t like traveling all the time (even though their partner’s career demands it). Occasionally someone will convert to a religion that their partner is uncomfortable with (think Tom Cruise). So don’t rush into a marriage just because the person you’re with seems to want the same things out of life that you do. What you want now (and what he wants) may have little to do with what you’re going to want three years from now. I’m not trying to belittle your current passions. I spent an enormous amount of time and money pursuing a career in the fashion industry. That was a real and legitimate goal. It just turned out not to be a permanent goal, and that’s legitimate to.

Kyra Davis
http://www.kyradavis.com/
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