He Doesn't Believe in Marriage, But I Can't Let Go of the Hope

0:01My younger sister just got proposed to and the heartache that I feel it's so overwhelming. My partner of eight years is amazing. After multiple, multiple conversations that we had, he just doesn't believe in the institution, doesn't believe in the ritual, doesn't believe in the romantic side of it. And he made it very clear that this is not the path for us. And most of the time, I'm okay with that. I can't kill the hope, but I live happily. and those moments when somebody close to me experiences something that I deeply so much desire. I feel the pain really, really deep. My other sister, I'm the oldest of the three, also got proposed about three years, four years ago.

0:55And it was also a very difficult experience and I remember processing it in a little bit different way. I think I tried to just bottle my emotions and pretend that I didn't need it. Today it's a bit different. I feel like I want to let those emotions out. Growing up as a child from a different biological father to my sisters created quite a deep wound for me of being somehow not enough or different or just outcasted. Maybe this experience is kind of replicating this desire because I had multiple relationships and we always had that same issue where the person would be against it and I would drop the relationship.

1:38It's just without that ritual, without that jewelry, without that party, without that public declaration. But that pain, like I feel now, it makes me feel like maybe it will never go away.

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3:13I'm all ears. When I recorded the message, it was the very, the peak of the emotion. I still feel it like that. I think it subsided a little bit. But when I sent it, I don't even remember pressing the button to record it because it was so raw. It just had happened. And it took me by surprise. What took you by surprise? Your announcement or how much it pained you? How much it pained me because I thought I had already resolved it. within me and it just clearly showed me that it I didn't um can I ask you yeah a question about what you said when you say it hurts so much and there's something about it that taps into my need for belonging my fear that I'd want and what's the pain point for you it's embarrassment.

4:20It's some kind of shame. It's like a pain of being left out, a pain of somehow being not good enough to get into this VIP club. Somehow that there is something broken about me. Right, right. That's what I heard as well. Why can't I join you? What's it about me that I can't enter here, that I can't be legitimized in this way? Will I always be one down, one out? Yes. That's the fear and that's the feeling. Yes. Have you brought this at all to your boyfriend? Not with a request, but even just simply? Has he ever heard that message? Yes, he has, because I was resolving other issues of being different.

5:21And especially when I started exploring this pattern of me being from a different biological father, when I started to get into the topic through. So I have made the connection for him. Why is it so difficult for me? and I think he does truly understand but he doesn't really see how deeply it is affecting me. Wanting something that is beyond him and he has made it before that he said it will never be enough for you and he's not the first man that told me that the ring will never be enough for you. The ring will not be enough for what? to be fulfilled or like I've complete or feel like I've arrived or.

6:15Is that really the case? I mean, do you experience that too? It's not about is it true, but do you experience some of that? Do you wonder, is there something deep inside of me that continuously questions my sense of belonging? Or would this symbolically actually give you an experience of being welcomed into what you call the VIP club? I think it does feel like... It's both end? Probably both end. And also, I do feel that the public declaration, that means quite a lot to me. So when I imagine or dream about the event, it's usually what brings out the most joy is sharing it with people. And so we will be sharing it with my work colleagues or sharing it with my friends or my family, instead of something like two people experience together.

7:21Because I feel like I have all that. It's like I have the marriage. I feel like I have it. The relationship is close and we feel connected and we always think about growing old together. So all that I feel like I have. Right. Can I ask you to tell me a little bit more about the family constellation that you grew up in? Because what I'm hearing from you is there's a set of very deep and painful feelings that travel with you through life. And they originated in your family of origin. And then there is the relationship that you are in. And then there is the meeting between these two. And how one is telling the other, here are some things I need from you.

8:14How did you enter the family you grew up in? So it was always a taboo. It was a secret. I was never meant to know it. Okay. So we... Okay, let's hold on a second. Just sit with this. Because the secret is on the other side of the public declaration. It's important that we understand why this matters in the way that it does. Otherwise, it's just we're going to have, I don't believe in marriage. I don't believe in the institution. I want the ring. I want the white dress. There's a deeper story here that involves shame, that involves secrecy. It's about that more than about marriage. It's the stuff that marriage tries to cover up and sometimes succeeds and sometimes doesn't.

9:14So you were not supposed to find out. So there's a story here. Tell me, can you tell me a little bit of the story? Yes. So my biological father left us when I was two years old because he had another family. And my mom met my dad very soon after, and he adopted me, and they decided to never tell. But we lived in a very small town, and where people don't keep secrets very well yes and uh i started to hear it when i was seven first from the kids because they heard it from their adults in the in the neighborhood then they heard it again in school but i never told them i wrote in the diary in the separate color and i remember used to hate these pages used to flick through them but i i told them what they told me and you told who just that I never really told my parents or anybody about your diary I know a truth that no one wants to talk about but you did not approach mom or dad you called him dad yeah I thought he was your dad yeah and I didn't approach my parents to let them know that I had heard something and so how did you as this little girl seven years old live with that discovery that must have been so heavy so confusing it was very um heavy and it was so embarrassing and I hated these people I can see their faces now when I remember them saying it in their childish way really saying well I've heard that this is not your dad and but I somehow just pushed it away can you say it in the language it was said to you that's a Lithuanian and they would make fun of you when they would say it I felt like they pitied me I felt like That was exactly the words.

11:26Those were children or adults? Some older a little bit, some younger, some of my peers at different stages. When I was seven and 12, I think I remember two occasions that really stuck in my mind. But then over the years, I just never brought it up. And I brought it up once to my grandmother, but she said, oh, don't listen to them kids. you know they talk nonsense and that was kind of brushed off so I felt good in the moment but I still felt like there was something not right my my dad showed me so much love I never you know felt excluded if anything I felt like more probably paid attention to but then we had a big conflict when I was 18 and it kind of came out or was about to come out and I just said to him I I know what you're going to say.

12:22And he was very surprised because he couldn't believe that I knew. And I said, I knew all my life. I knew it. That's such a big thing to hold and carry all alone like this. Even from people who wished that you would just have a normal childhood, that you would never feel excluded. I mean, in a way, what they wanted so much to achieve by creating the secret is what they ended up creating. Yeah. They wanted you not to feel ashamed. They wanted you to feel like you belong. They wanted you to feel that your dad was your dad, that the man who raised you was your loving father. And yet, because you knew it, then what did you do with those two realities?

13:11I just, I feel sometimes that I had these feelings that my dad wasn't good for me. that somehow I was creating conflict with him. And I think over just past five years when I started to uncover this and the deep wounding that it has caused, I started to change the relationship with him and started to say more thank you for what he has done for me. And I know he was not perfect. He struggled to show love to any of us because of his own upbringing. and he was a bit distant so the household was run by the women by my mom my grandma so my sisters came a lot later than me and but now I I just feel like our relationship got a lot better since I have spoken about this openly but not to him I spoken to my mom who still struggles to go back to that time I still tried to piece together the narrative of what happened in those first two years but it's like pulling and pulling trying to get more and more information unfortunately my my grandmother who really wanted to tell me I think the story um she passed away before it I started to dig deeper into this um five years ago so five years ago is when you were 18 and it all came out?

14:45No, so I'm nearly 40. So five years ago, I actually started to check. What happened five years ago? Well, first of all, what happened at 18? What was this first revelation when you said to your dad, I know what you're going to tell me? And he realized that you had lived with a truth or with a secret. Yeah. that they thought they had been able to keep from you, hoping to protect you, but in fact it inflicted a big wound. If we had time, I would say what happened at 12, what happened at 7, and what happened at 18, and what happened at 34, right? Those are four major milestones for you, but we may not be able to get through all, so let's start with the 18.

15:39So after that, my parents were going through a very difficult time in their life, in their relationship. I think I was always kind of in the middle of this conflict. Obviously, he was distraught. He thought that he was going to lose me. And I just wanted to soothe them, say, it's fine. It doesn't mean anything. I know that you're my dad. I don't want to know anything. That was my 18-year-old talking. I'll take care of you, basically. Don't be sad. I will take care of you. Don't worry about it. I'm not going to hold it against you. And you were all focused on him. And mom, maybe more, even. And to mom, you said what?

16:21That I'm okay, that they don't need to worry about anything. And I was soon after left and never came back. So that moment of the 18-year-old just was, I never explored it. I never wanted to go deeper. I just wanted to make sure that they are okay and they're not making, I'm not making them feel worse. Because making them feel worse, meaning what happened? Your parents had their fair amount of conflict. But your mother always had to be thankful that her husband had married her when she already had a child. Yes. She had her own shame. She still has, I feel, this big, big shame. Because she was very, very young.

17:18I think my dad maybe sometimes used this situation with her. I don't know the full story. But your mom had a relationship with a man who was married. Yeah. And she was a young woman, and she got impregnated, and he disappeared. And she had the child alone, with the help of her mother. And father. And father. And they welcomed you. Yeah, it was so much love. I feel like my grandparents were, I adore them. Well, they're not here anymore. Yeah, but they welcomed you. Yeah, yes.

18:07We have to take a brief break, so stay with us. And let's see where this goes.

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21:55we lived in this very small household we lived in a very small space a lot of us so I was always protected and felt very loved and was your mother loved for having gotten pregnant with a married man? Or did the love come to you and the shame went to her? And then she just had to find someone to marry her and not wonder if that was the man that she wanted to be with or loved or felt loved by, that she just had to take whatever was going to be available to her or whoever would want her because she no longer belonged to the VIP club. yes and it was a small town it was a lot of shame in there especially in those years she had big support though from my extended family i think they really protected me every all of them they protected you and my question is did they shame her not that they needed to do anything very proactively that that behavior in itself she never expressed it but when I tried to talk to her a few years ago about this trying to find out the story and narrative she she feels so ashamed and she is she she cannot go there she struggles and I mean it's been nearly 40 40 years and right she struggles to go there so I think she still carries this big guilt or maybe shame shame more than than guilt and how do you think her shame for what had happened to her influenced how she related to you I think you say everyone else protected you how about her I feel like I protected her a lot

23:58I feel like her emotional state kind of was declaring my safety. So if she was safe, I was okay. Or if she was okay, I felt safe. And if she was very emotional throughout our lives, try to control a lot of the environment and I felt like it was very we were very codependent so it felt like we were talking all the time we were very entwined in our together and separate from from sisters more more so and I just felt like I needed to break that connection and reconnect in a different way because it felt too painful felt unhealthy it felt really like she was living her life through me in many ways I was always supposed to be the perfect one to go to get a degree to get to study to to be the first one to to achieve things all things that she had not been able to do I think so yeah so she was going to live vicariously through you I think she did until like these past years when we started to change the dynamic right in the family so you started a journey of differentiation yeah it was very painful but I made really big steps since COVID.

25:39COVID just opened the whole pot of it, really. That's when I started to feel again that shame that I was getting into relationship. Another one, a third one, where the marriage was not on the cards. And I felt again that I was going to drop and leave because that's what I always did I would get committed I would get to the point and I would leave and I didn't want to leave this time this time I wanted to because it so it was so obvious that it was happening again exactly the same story with a very different person and exactly the same story meaning that I get loving I get in a very good relationship we're very close we are very happy but then it's just not enough to to make that step to make that commitment like that public commitment it would always be something that stops it and I didn't know why and I always felt like no that's not working I'm gonna try again I'm gonna try with somebody else I spoke to my sisters and my mom and and how was your conversation with them it was very painful but I think they understood it my sisters especially because they felt like my and mom's relationship were very odd the VIP club that they couldn't enter yeah Yeah.

27:11Right? There are many VIP clubs in this system. So you and mom had a particular closeness that your sisters could not compete with and could not enter. And you wanted to decide on your own terms if you want to be in a relationship that may not materialize or evolve into marriage without having to feel that you are actually repeating what your mother went through. So every time you left, you were basically saying, I'm not going to experience what my mother went through. I never thought it like that when I did, but... I know. I saw your face. But it just adds another layer to this. It's that she too started out her story with someone who wouldn't be public.

28:08And it's, you know, it's not just that there was a secret inside of you, but you were a secret in this man's life. Yes. With mom, you were not a secret, but there was a secret about who you are and where you come from and all of that. And do you ever discuss the possibility of what you call the public declaration separately from marriage as a symbolic act of acknowledgement, celebration? I have brought it up not long ago. I think it's because I listened to many, many different ways of doing it. But that's when he said, I don't think that will be enough for you. But that's maybe not for him to decide.

29:02Yeah. I mean, that's a good answer to kind of say, I don't want to do something and it won't be good for you either, so we should do it. But we don't know. And even if it doesn't take care of the entire wound, there's something about the symbolic nature of just having a few people at a table or not at a table, wherever you want, for that matter, who recognize, acknowledge, celebrate, ritualize your relationship. If you celebrate your birthdays, you may celebrate an anniversary. You know, it may not fill the entire gap of the original wound, but so what? Maybe that's not the purpose either. Purpose is to do small gestures that respond to the shame.

30:02Shame is about hiding. When we feel ashamed, we hide. We don't want to see people. We don't want them to see us. And we think there's something wrong with me rather than something happened to me. When we make a public declaration, it's exactly the opposite. And you can do little gestures like that. They honor, they legitimize, they make it known, they're not hiding. Maybe little things. Maybe little things between the two of you too. It doesn't just have to involve the community. And because you grew up in a small town, you had the village. But basically you had the community at your doorstep, you know.

30:46And they came in even if you didn't want to. Here you would get to invite them. And you would choose who you want to invite. And so would he. And it would just, it doesn't need to carry a name even. it feels so strange I don't know it's um it's like as if I am scared to do it scared to it's not so much that he would not let me it's more like that I somehow don't want to do it say more um that's when I was thinking about this desire thing and obsession I feel sometimes that maybe it's me who doesn't want it it's it's that just thought that just came to my mind very like in the past maybe 48 hours me that doesn't want what to declare it publicly him us it it like the relationship that it's, I don't know, I have this feeling that deep inside is what he actually wants.

32:07That he would like that, but not you. Yeah, and I know it sounds twisted, but I don't get it. No, it's just the opposite of what you said before. But it's, you know, I like twisted. So tell me more. So if you had the voice that is the master of ceremony and that just creeps up right now, where's the resistance? That it's just not me. It's just not what I do. It's not, I never dreamt about it. I never imagined it. I never had, you know, even... I never imagined what? Any of these rituals. I never imagined ever in the dress even. I never imagined myself going through the ritual. Because I imagined what?

33:06How did I imagine myself? Just being okay with things as they are, being unique and different and kind of proving that I don't need this. They call me the daughter-in-law. So when your sister announces that she's getting married, your first response is loss. Yeah. Loss of a certain story, loss of a certain set of societal expectations that you won't be following upon, loss of the sense of homogeneity between you and your sisters. And then it switches from the loss and the sadness and the pain into I'm different, not just because I had a secret, but now I'm taking that difference and I'm turning it into how I choose to live and what I want to live by and which one of the rituals of our society I actually want to adhere to.

34:17So I turned the whole thing upside down. But that just happened 48 hours ago. Yeah, like very recently. I just don't even know why that thought came to me because I was thinking, I was preparing. do what you say and and all of a sudden it just kind of came that thought it kind of came as a question like do you really want to do this or is it just what you told yourself for past 10 years and then you added to it but i think he wants it more than me yeah because i said it's about he doesn't believe in institution but he is writing the wedding speeches for his friends, you know, as if it was his full-time job.

35:06And he loves attending all these ceremonies and all these... It just seems a bit odd to me that somebody who doesn't believe in an institution participates in it so wholeheartedly. Everyone, their contradictions. Yeah. So when he says to you, this won't be enough, what's he really addressing? because now you've conveyed, I say I want something that may not really be the thing I want, but I want something. So what is the it and the something that is not being properly named that he says, no ceremony will take care of it? And you both seem to never name this it. Or at least I have not, I'm not sure.

35:59I capture, but you seem to each know something that lies underneath. It's not so much my worth, but it's like a prize. It's like the final jewel, you know, in this whole thing. It's like a final piece of the puzzle. So I have this whole thing that works for me, but I'm missing that one little puzzle piece. maybe I thought that was that commitment that that ritual that ceremony would kind of put that piece in but I just don't now I say it and I don't think that it would can I suggest a thought for you just came up for me and you tell me if that adds some clarity when you talk like that I want to have a ceremony, I want to get married I want to have a celebration of that because I think it would officialize me, it would make a declaration and all of that on some level there is you don't mention him it's like he's being recruited for a part but it's not about him and I'm wondering if part of him saying, I don't want to do this, this will not add it, this won't fix it.

37:29It's because you're asking him to do something that isn't really his role. In a way, you're asking him to do something that your parents haven't done. You're asking him to legitimize, to officialize. And he's not the first person I asked that as well. But he's the one where you decided not to go.

37:57So there's a part of you that knows that there's certain things that you want from him, but it's not about him. And it's actually not about marriage either. No, I just don't know what I want. What is it really that I want?