Here We Go

For the past six years, it's always been just Sak and I. Sure, there's been family and friends along the way, but it is Sak that I come home to at night. It is Sak that helps decide what we eat for dinner, where we go on weekends, and what TV show we marathon next. It is Sak I see under the couch, re-wiring some part of the house, and it is Sak who follows me on his scooter when I go jogging late at night.

Introverted as I am, Sak fits right into my tightly wrapped personal shell, like an extension of myself. I can tell him what I'm thinking, no matter how strange the thought. I can switch my train of thought on a dime; he'll never miss a beat. I can get angry with him for something he said in a dream, and he'll just give me a hug and remind me that I'm crazy. He can't be held responsible for dream-Sak, after all.

Sak is my soul mate. My genius. My loyal companion.

He doesn't laugh at my odd-ball ideas. In fact, he's my biggest fan. And he can say things that only I will find funny. He encourages my creativity, but also keeps me grounded to reality. That way I won't fly away.

Sak is a robot, but he has a deep faith too. He lives to solve problems, but knows who to turn to when things are beyond human control. He prays for me every time I have to drive the car, because he knows driving is my biggest fear after spiders and killer whales. He'll take care of the spiders if I give him a napkin or tissue. And he'll change the channel if Discovery decides to do an orca special.

We dream together. We dream of having a home of our own, of round little babies, of laser etchers, of future conventions, and of seeing the world. We scheme together too - and like good engineers, go through various alternatives to see what might work the best. We fail together too, sometimes.

We are a team. Especially when we don't want to do something on our own. We are a team that does the laundry together. A team that debates what to say in response to difficult emails. A team that empathizes with each other after a less-than-ideal workday. A team that explores new things with equal amounts of awkwardness.

There are never adequate words for such strong feelings, are there? And for me, there is no adequate coherency either. Only know that marrying Sak is not a difficult decision for me. It's simply right.

So it is without trepidation that I board the plane today. It is with excitement that I leave the San Francisco fog. And it is with a deep breath and a prayer of thanksgiving that I'll greet the beautiful island of Oahu with the one I love the most. Come what may, I know who will join me in the next levels of this life-long adventure.
So until I come back with a sparkly new husband (but still the same treasured old friend) - this is Penga, signing off!

The Marriage Conference

Over the past weekend, Sak and I decided to take a small respite from planning to focus on our relationship. It wasn't easy to turn off the wedding-machine, especially now that there's only a few months left, but I think it was a really healthy thing for us.

We attended a marriage conference by Family Life, called "Weekend to Remember" down in Santa Clara (although they also have them all over the rest of the nation!). It covered many topics over the three days of classes, from conflict resolution to parenting to sex and everything in between. There were even a few sessions just for us pre-married folk. And of the 500 people that attended, there were couples from every phase of life: from not-yet-engaged to over-fifty-years-married.

I love the smell of a good convention hall.

Now, I came into the conference thinking that there wasn't much Sak and I needed to work on. We have all the same hobbies, we are educationally and financially equivalent, neither of us really have many friends to be jealous over, we hold the same core beliefs, and we dream of the same future. To me, there wasn't a whole lot that needed improving.

The perfect couple with absolutely no issues. ;)

So why were we there? In a few reasons: it was recommended by a friend that we go, we hadn't really done any other type of premarital counseling, and it would be a good way to point out any relationship "holes" we might have missed. Maybe we had neglected to talk about a certain big issue? We might as well cover all our bases. Every relationship needs a tune-up, even if the car seems to be working just fine.

There were a lot of good points made at the conference. A lot of heartfelt discussion between the two of us. And I was right - there were a few important issues between us, that we had glossed over before.

So here they are, everyone - a few of our personal issues, for your reading pleasure:

Issue #1 - Words of Encouragement

Or rather, the lack thereof. Sak and I are notorious for using sarcasm and random negative comments with each other. All the time. "You're fat," I'll start, just to get a rise out of him. "You frakking moron," he'll counter, taking the bait. Then we'll go back and forth, calling each other names with increasing ridiculousness. Does that make any sense at all, or serve any purpose whatsoever? No, not really. I'm not usually a moron, and Sak is underweight rather than over. Our type of verbal fighting is pretty ridiculous, so luckily it usually ends in laughter. Maybe that's why we don't really consider it a dangerous issue. But maybe it still is. Especially considering that we rarely ever use positive words with each other either. We've tried, but neither of us takes the other seriously when one says "you look nice today" or "thank you for picking me up from the station". Maybe we've spent so much time in negative-land, we've forgotten what a non-sarcastic comment looks like?

So we are going to have to work on complimenting each other, being polite, and generally just having a good attitude. It'll be hard to change a bad habit - but I think somewhere deep down inside, we'd both like to know that our hair looks nice, rather than that our breath has "the stanky rot of a morgue".

Issue #2 - Respecting your Spouse

Or, once again, the lack of respect. Sometimes, being too compatible has it's own set of issues. Usually, the husband might respect the wife's amazing talent at *insert skill here*, and the wife might respect the husbands ability to *insert skill here*. But Sak and I? Too many of our abilities, skills and talents are the same. So how can I respect him, when I think I do it better? And vice versa. We are both incredibly proud, independent people. But marriage is a partnership, a team effort. It shouldn't matter who has better soldering skills. It shouldn't matter who has a better pokemon leveling strategy. And yet for us, it often does. If I were to guess, I'd say a good 80% of our arguments stem from this competition of "I can do anything better than you".

So I need to work on letting things go. I need to let Sak have his moments, without my little judgements or critiques. Obviously I will not be a doormat on the bigger issues, but for little things, I should build him up and trust his decisions and strategies, instead of criticizing and second guessing his every move.

I know that neither of these particular issues will go away anytime soon, as I'm sure our habits are hard-wired into us at this point. However, we are at least aware of what the problems are, and we can start moving towards being nicer and less competitive with each other. Better to work on something while it is still tame and small, before it seeps and becomes a big, bitter monster later on.

Overall, I'm glad we attended the conference, it was definitely worth giving up a weekend of hardcore DIY-wedding work. We've all heard it before - that the wedding is only one day, while the marriage is a lifetime. That's true, so any chance we find to work on that marriage, I think we should take it.

Plus, I now have two more badges to add to our convention-badge collection! Am I the only one that keeps these things?

Have you done any pre-marital relationship checks - on your own, with a book, with a counselor/pastor, or at a conference?

Just a Little Vent..

The first piece of wisdom my mother imparted to me at the start of my engagement was this - "There is no such thing as a drama-less wedding".

But at the start, it's hard to take off the rose-colored glasses. We were so in love, our families were supportive, our friends were so excited for us.

But now, around the five month mark, I'm realizing maybe Mom was right.

Hello, drama.

Now to be fair, this is a one-sided monologue of a drama, as the angst and anger and disappointment lies solely with the bride.

A destination wedding. You never know who is going to be able to make it. So I invited pretty much all of California, hoping at least a few could come. There was no slashing of our list.

But I don't think it quite hit me then. That some of my loved ones won't be there.

As we build and prepare to send out our invitations, I'm scared. I'm scared of the "not attendings" we'll get in the mail. I'm scared that I'll take every "no" personally, and that the irrational part of my mind will convince me that it is because they don't like me, or don't approve of my marriage. I'm scared that I'll be planning a party for people I hardly know (Sak's side), and that I'll be the stranger at my own wedding.

Now Penga, don't be silly, right? It's Hawaii, people would come in a heartbeat if they could. It's not a cheap vacation. I'd be wrong to expect those that are not financially secure.

But what if the "no" has nothing to do with finances?

What if it's someone you've offered to pay for?
What if it's someone you know can make it, but they say they don't want to "deal with the airport" or they "don't want to leave their dog"?
What if it's someone how at first said yes, but now changes their mind because they "miscalculated their vacation time"?

How do you not take things like that personally?

I've lost a lot of faith in my friends and family. People I had assumed that would be there for me. But I shouldn't have assumed in the first place. I shouldn't have created that mental picture of our wedding day, with those key people smiling happily around me.

I need a new mantra - a pessimistic belief that I should expect no one is going to come. Like when you convince yourself you flunked a test, simply so you will be overjoyed when you get that C. I don't want any more disappointment. I don't want to think that we're putting our heart and soul into planning a party that no one cares about. I just can't handle that thought.

I apologize for the negative post. But sometimes you just need to lay your problems out there in the open so they can evaporate away. So you can come back to them later and realize how silly you were being. When the rational mind returns to tell you that maybe the sad excuses you've been given were just masks for some deeper, unknown problem.

I think I need a cheer-up-cream-puff today.

Just a Few Words

So I took a stab at writing my own little "letter" to read to Sak at our ceremony. My thoughts are to read our heartfelt sentiments to each other, then commence with the rings and traditional vows. I always love it when couples say something personal to each other. There's something that just seems so special about it.

(source)

Anyway, I think I came up with a fairly good little piece. It conveys what I feel about as much as words can express, and I tried to keep the inside jokes and anything else that might be prone to "dating" out entirely. It's honest, light on froof, with a touch of my own quirky spirit. I think Sak would like it.

And speaking of Sak, as far as I know, he hasn't written two words. I know he's not entirely comfortable having his writing compared to mine, as he has always been strictly a numbers guy. But I know whatever he ends up writing will still be from his heart, whether it's eloquent or not.

I imagine he'd say something like this:

(Manga image from Hot Gimmick, by Miki Aihara)

*Sigh* So here's the options -

Do I:

1) Share what I have wrote and look over his to make sure they are roughly the same length and seriousness? I mean, I've been to a wedding where the groom wrote completely beautiful things, and the bride's was one big light-hearted inside joke. It didn't mesh to us confused guests - but then again, the guests don't really matter when it comes to one's personal statement towards the other, do they?

2) Keep everything completely hush-hush and be in for a surprise.

3) Give them to a 3rd party to evaluate for us.

As much as I want to express how much my future husband means to me, I don't want him to have anxiety over this. Bad things happen when Sak has anxiety.

Did you or will you write your own sentiments? Is it a secret or are you well rehearsed?

Doubling the Deck: Religion

While I wait for my mom to upload 40 gigs worth of vacation/scouting pictures to her website, I thought I'd talk about the less physical aspects of wedding/relationship preparation - learning about another person and deciding how that person fits and complements your life.

Deciding to share my life with someone else is akin to owning a trading card collection and springing for that super-deluxe expansion pack. Suddenly (or gradually, depending on how much culture shock there is), your whole world doubles in size. While it's normally filled with common or even duplicate cards, your attention is always drawn to the one "shiny" foil-faced card, which stands out more than others.

(source)

(Shiny Charizard, for all you first gen Pokemon fans.)

For me, that shiny card of obvious difference was religion.

Sak was Buddhist when I met him.

(source)

I am a follower of Christ, with my roots raised mostly in the Baptist denomination.

(source)

Being somewhat-sheltered, I had a lot of misconceptions and generalized beliefs about his faith. But with his patience, he set me straight and taught me that there were many different kinds of buddhists in the world. For example, his kind didn't believe in reincarnation, or that Buddha is a God, or even Nirvana. The reason his church is called buddhist, he says, is because they follow Buddha's teachings on living a good life. And that's basically the premise, to live a good life, and to keep an open mind. So his religion was less one of worship, and more one of teaching and principles.

It's actually pretty interesting, how things all panned out. Sak must have been a good Buddhist, since his open mind led him to ask questions about my faith. Then several months after we started dating, he began joining me at the local Baptist church near our college. Half a year after that, he decided to accept Jesus as his Savior, becoming a born-again Christian.

As overjoyed as I was that the love of my life now shared the same beliefs as I did, I was honestly very worried. Did I pressure him into this? Is he just pretending to believe to make me happy? As important as it is to see eye-to-eye on certain issues, no one wants a relationship based on lies or force. In the end, and despite my concerns, I chose to try to trust him at his word. I say "try", since I was guilty of observing from the shadows, like a ninja!

And what I have seen over the past years has put my doubts to rest. He was being completely honest, and I know from his eagerness to practice and learn his religion, that it's for himself, and not for me.

Would I have still married him if he did not share my beliefs? It's hard to say. For me, it's like asking if you would still marry a man that had no desire to be a parent, when all you've ever wanted was children. It's a fundamental difference, for sure, but many couples do work around it. So I may have. And I'm honestly glad that I don't have to make that decision.

But I am thankful and respectful of his Buddhist upbringing. It helped shape the man I love into who he is today. He's slow to pass judgement on others, and he always keeps an open-mind before coming to a decision about something. I admire that. And learning about his different perspective helped open my own eyes, as well.

What is your "shiny card" - the biggest and most prominent difference your significant other has brought into your life?