My girlfriend and I hit three years together in August. I’m 25, she’s 23, and I finally brought up marriage as something we might actually do. I figured we’d talk it through. Three days later, she sent me a document. It was six pages long. I’ve read it nine times, which is more attention than I gave several things I was graded on.
She wrote about what she wants to have in place before she becomes anyone’s wife. The first thing that stuck with me was the money. She has a specific amount she wants to save on her own. I’d known that being able to support herself mattered to her. I hadn’t known she had a number in mind.
Then there was a paragraph about her parents’ marriage. In it were two things she’d never told me in three years. I read that paragraph slowly. I could imagine her getting halfway through either of those sentences out loud and deciding she’d rather talk about something else. On the page, she got to finish.
The last section was headed “none of this is about you.” It ran three paragraphs. I spent an embarrassing amount of time trying to figure out what the length of that section meant, as if the third paragraph might have been a clue she put there for me to find.
My friends think getting a document from your girlfriend after you bring up marriage sounds cold. I can see how it sounds when I tell it that way. Then I go back to the paragraph about her parents and think about what it must have taken to put that in writing and hit send.
After nine reads, I have a much clearer picture of what she wants her life to look like before she gets married. I still can’t tell whether she pictures marrying me. I want to ask her. I just don’t know how to get the question out without making it sound like I read six pages looking for my name.
