We band together like cattle the moment we are married. It's like that aisle and the white dress leads us to a quick stop at the altar and then we're granted a ring on our finger, a pair of blinders and sensible shoes. We are unavailable, contented, self confident married women. Our goals are different than those single heifers now.
We seek them out, those women with a ring on their finger. Finding a new girlfriend who is not married breeds unrest in the marital herd. We stick to our own kind.
No longer distracted by the bulls in our pen, we married girls are looking ahead to new achievements, like bed linens and childbirth. We leave our keg parties and wild nights at the bar behind for civilized dinner parties. We set our dining tables with silverware and limit our guest list to even numbers. We toss out the red party cups and learn to trust our guests with glassware. Not only has our manner of dress altered, no longer highlighting our most female characteristics while carousing about in the night, but so has our manner of speech.
We are more refined, we join book clubs and garden parties. We trade our one night stands and kiss and tells for chats about throw pillows and salad tongs.
We are married women. We have babies, we lactate. We digress to discuss hormones and feeding schedules.
And then, after years of contentedness, we encounter a woman, a mother with a career, a potential friend who can relate, who knows where we've been and sees life from the same side of our fence and who is (gasp) DIVORCED!
Well, okay, we tell ourselves, no big deal. She's still in the same boat. She's one of us. She has kids and a job. It's not like she's dating-she's a mother for god sakes!
But she is dating.
She's dating the hot young teacher at a school across town. He's tall and handsome. He's intense and eclectic. He rides a motorcycle. He's ten years younger.
The married heifers set their sights on her. They start to notice things. She's got a bounce in her step and a new zest for life the rest of us have forgotten about. Our marital blinders slip just enough to get those gals thinking. To get them remembering.
The thrill of a new love interest. The excitement of a first date. A first kiss. A late night phone conversation.
And all this thinking leads us back to ourselves. Our own lives. Our own marriages. We reminisce about the moment we fell in love with our own husbands. The bounce in our step that slipped away with the weight of a wedding ring. We live the memory of our first kiss. The joy in that first date. Our focus shifts from marriage to ourselves. The body we once flaunted, that we handed over to our daughters with every swelling trimester. We stare down at our sensible shoes. And when we look back at our life again the blinders are on once more.
We look inside ourselves for a lightness in our married gait. We find delight in our beautiful children. We buy a pair of sexy shoes. We ask our husbands on a date. We kiss, for the first time, again. The blinders are on, but we find a new way to walk.
We seek them out, those women with a ring on their finger. Finding a new girlfriend who is not married breeds unrest in the marital herd. We stick to our own kind.
No longer distracted by the bulls in our pen, we married girls are looking ahead to new achievements, like bed linens and childbirth. We leave our keg parties and wild nights at the bar behind for civilized dinner parties. We set our dining tables with silverware and limit our guest list to even numbers. We toss out the red party cups and learn to trust our guests with glassware. Not only has our manner of dress altered, no longer highlighting our most female characteristics while carousing about in the night, but so has our manner of speech.
We are more refined, we join book clubs and garden parties. We trade our one night stands and kiss and tells for chats about throw pillows and salad tongs.
We are married women. We have babies, we lactate. We digress to discuss hormones and feeding schedules.
And then, after years of contentedness, we encounter a woman, a mother with a career, a potential friend who can relate, who knows where we've been and sees life from the same side of our fence and who is (gasp) DIVORCED!
Well, okay, we tell ourselves, no big deal. She's still in the same boat. She's one of us. She has kids and a job. It's not like she's dating-she's a mother for god sakes!
But she is dating.
She's dating the hot young teacher at a school across town. He's tall and handsome. He's intense and eclectic. He rides a motorcycle. He's ten years younger.
The married heifers set their sights on her. They start to notice things. She's got a bounce in her step and a new zest for life the rest of us have forgotten about. Our marital blinders slip just enough to get those gals thinking. To get them remembering.
The thrill of a new love interest. The excitement of a first date. A first kiss. A late night phone conversation.
And all this thinking leads us back to ourselves. Our own lives. Our own marriages. We reminisce about the moment we fell in love with our own husbands. The bounce in our step that slipped away with the weight of a wedding ring. We live the memory of our first kiss. The joy in that first date. Our focus shifts from marriage to ourselves. The body we once flaunted, that we handed over to our daughters with every swelling trimester. We stare down at our sensible shoes. And when we look back at our life again the blinders are on once more.
We look inside ourselves for a lightness in our married gait. We find delight in our beautiful children. We buy a pair of sexy shoes. We ask our husbands on a date. We kiss, for the first time, again. The blinders are on, but we find a new way to walk.
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