Why Fairy Tales End at Weddings

When you have a three year old, you revert back to the world of fairy tales.  The preschool world is inundated with tales of cute.  However, there is a pattern.  Most, if not all, tales of princess struggling through life to meet prince end with a beautiful wedding gown and the closing line of how they lived "happily ever after."  The book closes, the child smiles, and they drift off to sleep, dreaming of fairy tales.

It's somewhat ironic that the story ends right when life begins.  While a wedding day can be the fairy tale one dreams about, it's not really surprising that a book would end there.  Marriage, the book that starts the day after the fairy tale book ends, is not as beautiful on paper as glass slippers and colorful gowns.  No one wants to see Cinderella, in sweatpants, with 10 week old roots in her hair, sitting over a pile of bills, laundry in the corner, dishes in the sink, husband in the basement, sobbing because somewhere along the way the reality of what she thought things would be like clashed with what life actually is.

Ok, so it may be a slight exaggeration (maybe it's only 8 week old roots). However, the idea rings true.  We end fairy tales at the wedding day because the actual day-to-day life of marriage is messy.  It doesn't leave for very good story telling to write about the struggles, the fights, and the trauma that marriage can be.  The fairy tales wouldn't be tales anymore.  They would become true stories that would leave a bitter taste in one's month.  The truth is, if you know beforehand how much pain you would go through in marriage, you'd think twice before taking the risk at signing that dotted line.  Let's paint a picture.

At any wedding, the bride and groom repeat the vows "for better, for worse, in sickness, in health, till death do us part."  Looking back, they simply sounded like a beautiful promise.  Instead, they are the road map for a successful marriage, given to the couple as the cement to hold the marriage together.  After the vows are over, the champagne is poured, the couple is toasted, and dances are had, and each couple is given a box.  It's imaginary, but, it's still there.  This box is completely empty.  The reception places a few wonderful memories in the box as the guests leave, however, the box is still theirs to fill.

As the marriage begins, the couple spends time filling the box.  They create memories, they learn to live with each other.  They buy a house, jobs go right, they laugh, they plan, they dream.  All of these things are placed inside of the box.  Then, as things come up that they disagree on, or if there are fights, they draw on the box.  They take out things.  Sometimes, they might feel like throwing the items in the box across the room.  However, if a box is wonderfully full, the small things that are taken out don't really make a dent in the actual marriage.

As the marriage continues, life begins to get in the way of happily ever after.  Financial struggles can come in a variety of forms.  Someone loses their job, or one spouse has difficultly controlling their spending.  One spouse has severe anxiety, and the other doesn't know how to help or cope, leaving the anxious spouse even more anxious.  Personalities clash in different ways.  You learn that your spouse has difficulty controlling sadness, anger, or jealousy.  All of these draw from the box.  Each of them causes stress on the marriage as a whole and on each of the individuals.

These are common struggles however, Relateable.  These are the struggles you can talk to your friends about and they understand because they are in the same place in their marriage.  These commonalities help couples stay together because they know that they, at least, are not alone.  Everyone fights, everyone struggles, everyone has problems.  We are, after all, only human.  And when two humans come together, they have human problems together.  So, couples forgive, make up, and continue their marriage.

Except, that sometimes, the struggles are bigger than common struggles.  Sometimes, there are very few who understand what you as a couple are going through.  Sometimes, you feel like you are the only one that understands.  Infertility, child loss, child illness, child death, spouse illness, family traumas.  These can all leave couples feeling isolated and alone.  This leaves the couple to draw heavily upon their box.  They reach down deep into the corners to help them overcome the sorrow that has consumed their marriage.  The box is low on things to draw on because so much of their time is consumed with juggling the trauma in life.  There is no time for the couple.  They spend their time trying to support the spouse that is struggling, or taking care of their child, or trying to work and balance home life.  The box becomes emptier and emptier.

Until it is.  Until one day you are standing with your significant other and the box is between you.  The box that was given to you with the vows you made so long ago.  The box that started where the fairy tale ended.  Between you is an empty happily ever after.  You look at your box and you start to think, what I would give to go back to before.  Before we knew that we'd fill and empty this box.  Before we knew that we would suffer through miscarriage, loss, trauma, death, disease, and the insurmountable pain that each one of those brings.  The empty box brings couples to one of two choices.  Start again, or let the box go.

There is a reason fifty percent of marriages end in divorce.  Someone lets go of the box, or both do.  Sometimes it's for safety, sometimes it's out of anger, sometimes it's out of total loss of hope.  But, fifty percent of marriages don't end in divorce.  Fifty percent of couples holding an empty box don't let go.  Why?  Why are they holding on to an empty box?

Some are holding on for religious reasons, some out of stubbornness, and others out of hope.  They hold on to the box because it's the last thing left from the day they said "I do".  And the cement kicks in.  "For better, for worse, in sickness, in health."   Into the box goes the nights they suffered together through finding out the baby they hoped for wasn't coming.  Into the box goes the memory of holding an infant that will never open its eyes.  Into the box is placed days of hospital trips in the middle of the night.  Trips to doctors to discuss options and prognosis.  The list is endless, but the box begins to fill.

Somewhere, in the middle of the most difficult part of marriage, the struggles of the marriage help to overcome the greatest obstacles.  Marriage becomes a different kind of love story.  A couple begins to use their pain, their suffering, and their strength to work together through the toughest times.  They look back together as if to say "look at where we've been, let's dream again about where we'll go."  There is a side where the box is full again, even if it takes years and years to get there.

For us, our "imaginary box" is our toasting flutes.  They were placed on a shelf, representing the first memory we made as a married couple at our reception.  They were never filled, as neither of us drink champagne.  So, they sat, pretty and empty.  Until we received flowers for the loss of our child at 19 weeks in utero (our second miscarriage).  We had nothing but memories and flowers for our child, and I cried at the thought of not being able to hold onto at least some of the petals.  I looked around, trying to think of what to do with them.  There were our toasting flutes, empty, pretty memories.  In went the petals.  Miscarriages number three; more flowers, more petals.  Miscarriage number four followed the same trend.

Now, almost four years later, looking back on our wedding day, knowing everything that came with signing on the dotted line, would I do it again?

Absolutely.

And we will live happily ever after.

Our box is full.