Happily ever after
Despite the potentially campy take on the institution of marriage, in no way was I trying to disparage it; I invited all the couples — including my 51-years-married parents and an aunt and uncle who’d been married for 61 — to dance to an old tune I’d always dreamed of having played at my wedding, “True Love” by the McGuire Sisters. As it happened, among the pairs on the dance floor that night were several gay couples, including a male cousin and his spouse, who told me that my unwedding party marked the first occasion in their 22-year partnership that they had danced together in public. Providing a safe and accepting place for them to do that was the highlight of the night for me.
I sat out the couples’ dance, and ended up hugging and crying with a friend in her seventies whose husband had died just a few weeks before. Although she had enjoyed a wonderful marriage to a great guy, I did not, to my surprise, feel envious of her or any of the couples on the dance floor. Five years ago, I think an unwedding party would have seemed to me the height of self-pity — and some of my guests may have been motivated by pity to attend. Yet that night I felt contented with my lot, and was thrilled to be surrounded and honoured by people from every phase and corner of my life, several of whom flew in from a great distance, paid for hotel rooms, dressed up for the occasion and even brought their kids.
I don’t feel that sense of contentment every day; I go through phases during which I struggle under a crushing load of loneliness, fear and the certainty that I’m a failure. Sadly, I know plenty of married people who go through similar phases. In the end, life is what it is — why not celebrate when we can? On what turned out to be the most important night of my life, I was simply pointing out that human beings deserve to be honoured in all their varied circumstances, and that single people have a significant role to play within families and communities.
Happily ever after
When a teenage friend who attended later wrote me to say that my party had shown her she didn’t need to snag any old boyfriend just for the sake of having one, I knew I’d done the right thing. Surely if singlehood weren’t perceived as a fate worse than death, if singles weren’t excluded and infantilized and pitied, fewer people would feel compelled by terror to become involved in unsuitable matches, and everyone would be a lot happier.
As I later described my unwedding to a young former co-worker who’d recently moved to Montreal and couldn’t attend, he said, “Damn, I wish I’d been there.” And then he ventured that he had kind of proved my point. “I’ve travelled back to Toronto several times this past summer for various friends’ weddings,” he admitted sheepishly. “But I didn’t make the effort to go to yours.” I reassured him — I’m not a long-time pal of his from school, it wasn’t a real wedding, anyway — but I loved that he got it.
In the future, when my niece and nephews grow up and leave their parents’ homes, I’d like to throw “showers” for them, whether they’re leaving to get married, to go away to school or simply to live independently. There’s more than one way to become an adult.
This article originally appeared in the November 2008 issue of More
