Weddings, Lemmings and Poison Darts

3 Apr 2008

Dear Miss Kitty,
My finance and I are getting married this September. Long before we set the actual date, problems started. We had always talked of a small (30) people event and now, because her mother is calling all the shots, the wedding looks more like the opening ceremony for the Olympics. Lisa and I talk, decide one thing and then the next thing I know, Lisa and her mother have planned something else. Is this whole wedding thing just a “chick thing” and should I just go along for the ride to keep the peace with Lisa or should I tell her mom to back off? After all, in the long run, I am marrying her not her mother.
Michael S. (Carpinteria)


Dear Michael,
Did you check in with Lisa’s mother in your choice of ring? Did she give you inside information on the perfect way to propose to Miss Lisa? Going back even further, did you ask mommy dearest if you could ask Miss Lisa out on a first date and promise to get her home by 9:37pm? I hope and suspect the answer to all the above questions was a resounding “are you kidding me?” Unless Miss Lisa is doing this wedding with a proxy bridegroom, why in the world would you abdicate the decisions regarding YOUR wedding? Why in the world would you give up any say in that first day that you are a legally recognized, official tribe?

Making your own tribe is fun! The two of you can go to an outdoor mall, drag home a large tree trunk, which makes an excellent couch. This can be paid for it in very easy terms in 18 months from now, with a trout and a bag of acorns. You can carve hearts and your initials on all the poison darts you are going to need as you set up your cave together. Every day will is brimming over with all the ways you can get sick eating possible food stuffs and making up cute names for every new experience.

Regardless of all the fun and games, the biggest challenge of all is not letting the ways of the previous tribe, things we have once accepted as correct, comfortable or even truly- rotten- but- understood, go the way of the lemming.

What happens when we quickly shove all our prior ways over a cliff to perish in the chilly sea below? Can the resulting shock and conflicts, conscience and unconscious within us, rebound and cause havoc within the newly made tribe of two? With all the changes that come up in making a couple a couple, private pow-wow’s are as necessary as daily kisses, so we can not only think, but feel our way into finding our tribe’s comfortable, best paths.

When the old ways have been chucked out and ditched, without clear and well discussed meaning, life does not feel peaceful and easy anymore. Discussing whether to paint a bison or a tiger on the wall becomes a test of wills. As the paint dries on brushes that haven’t been touched, the patterns of our former tribes remerge as we call them forth in our private thoughts. We call them forth to comfort us in this new and unknown territory, we call them forth to reinforce our position of no position. In ghostly form, these old patterns haul their semi -frozen bodies back up the side of the cliff and make their way and their presence loudly known in the form of conflicts within the newly formed tribe.

Before the old ways can be assimilated into the new tribe, (by choice not by hair pulling), the old ways are used, most ungraciously, as fighting fodder. Like a kid’s game of Red Rover Red Rover, each example of our family of origin’s patterns should be racked over semi- hot coals by the trial counsel. With each member, in equal standing, decisions are made to cast aside, resurrected or comprise old standard behaviors. When thought not bluster goes into such decisions the past is morphed into something that works really well for the new tribe’s ultimate good, and best of all, there are no bad feelings.

Dear Boys, Girls and Michael, finding our way to make a new tribe strong and committed to it’s goals, starts with leaning up against the stones of our history and seeing what works, what doesn’t and what could work, if it was rearranged a bit. The most important part of making a new tribe is letting the old tribe know (nicely please!) that you are working out your own ways in private and serious counsel.

Remember those poison darts I spoke of earlier? Have plenty in reserve so you can keep mommy dearest asleep while you and Lisa begin to work out just what you want on your cave walls. Just kidding! If you choose to honor your future, start by honoring your past, together. Respectfully integrating it within the boundaries of the new order is your best opportunity to be respected as a couple, by the tribes of your past.

Have a naughty day!