woe is me, I’m too decisive and imperious.

Over the weekend, I spent about three hours sitting at the computer and working on the wedding. I racked my brain for every detail that needs settling, and I wrote a long, long email with questions etc. to my mother and MM. Then I set to work on the music. The first draft of the playlist for the wedding is finished, and it’s 5 hours of music. That’s how long the reception is, which is convenient, but I’m sure many things will be added and deleted. One of the things that this task reminded me is that there’s not much music more sublime than Phil Spector‘s girl groups (“The Boy I’m Going to Marry”, “And Then He Kissed Me”, “Be My Baby”, etc). Another is that my taste in music is really all over the map. I tried to give equal time to 80′s songs, current dance music, and disco, and I weighted more heavily to big band, swing, and 20′s-30′s music. I also added the few songs so far that BF has told me he wanted in. This ended up being 5 hours, and if I’d included all the songs that I love but that I didn’t think everyone would love, it would have been a hell of a lot longer.

As I was driving in this morning, singing along to Spector’s lyrics, I thought, you know, I think I might just open up the reception with “The Boy I’m Going to Marry”. It’s perfect for the occasion, sets the tone for the reception, and how can you not like it? I nodded my head, there, and turned my mind to wonder (again) about what song would be good for the pie-cutting. Warrant’s “Cherry Pie” might be good, but it’s not the best that hair metal has to offer by a long shot, and anyway BF’s pie is strawberry-rhubarb. I stopped mid-thought to remind myself that BF had to approve “The Boy I’m Going to Marry” before I could be certain I could put it in the opening spot. Other-Hand Brain piped up to tell me that BF wouldn’t care, that so far he has shrugged and gone along with all of my music suggestions and discussion. I chose the song that will be our first dance, and he agreed. I told him I wanted mostly 40′s-50′s music for the dancing part, and he agreed. I picked the recessional song, a song which is kind of a daring choice, and he agreed.

The old guilt flooded in. Guilt that has been hanging around since the early days of my relationship with BF, and that never seems to go away. If we’re going out to eat, BF asks where I want to go, and he sometimes suggests another place, but mostly we just go where I want to go. If we go grocery shopping, I make up the list and we buy the food, with which I subsequently make meals that look good to me. He never complains about any of this, and in fact is always happy to try and then usually devour whatever it is I’ve cooked or chosen. But it doesn’t seem like we ever do anything that’s his choice, or his idea.

I always offer him the opportunity to choose. But I have also always tended to be bossy, all the way back to the age of five. I’m afraid that my offers are really sham, and that I do little in this relationship but impose my personality and wishes upon the person who’s supposed to be my partner. The wedding music is just the most current example. He asked me what song I wanted our first dance to be to, and I told him my idea. We don’t really have an Our Song, so my idea stemmed from how he proposed to me via one of the things I like best in the world, and it’s also a song that I have thought was romantic since I was about 10. He thought this was fine, and so it was settled. He seemed not to have any ideas that he liked more than mine. But it was still primarily my choice, you see, without input or negotiation from him.

All the choices for the wedding seemed to have been mine, from the location to the size to the food. Through much prodding, he gave me input on our vows (of which I wrote the first draft, most of which are still the same as the first draft), and we worked on them together. I still feel like there wasn’t enough together-work, that it was a lot more me. I know that BF is happy with my taste and my decisions, but I still fear that I’m smothering him and his wishes with  my personality. This feeling has never been more acute, because I’m doing so much of the decision-making for the wedding without him. (When I ask, he shrugs and says okay.)

It frustrates me that I have to pester him for his opinion. The need for actual pestering, instead of free and bold opinion-giving on his part, has led to me going on and making decisions, consulting him later, because he genuinely seems to have no opinion about so many matters. I protest that this is impossible, and ask him what decision he would make if I weren’t around to make it for him, and very occasionally he will tell me something different than what I would have chosen. But his reasons are always practical rather than preferential. If I have a preference at all, he tells me, we should go with that preference, because his preferences are so much less forceful than my own. This is a nice way of saying that I am pickier and bossier than he is, I think. I’d like to be less so, I really would, but it seems like the dynamics of our relationship are pressing me into these characteristics, no matter how I question and resist them. This is how I get around the argument of “if you’re worrying about [bad quality], you’re probably not doing it”: I can see that I’m doing it. It might be consensual, but I’m still doing it and I know it, it’s a pattern.

This is my single biggest issue in our relationship…and it’s really not something we argue over, it’s something I feel rotten over and don’t know how to solve. BF says that I should solve it by ceasing the guilt, because he doesn’t care and is happy to eat whatever I want to eat and dance to whatever I want to dance to. He says that he would speak up if he really wanted something, or if an idea bothered him such that he didn’t want to do it. This happens in 0.00001% of the occasions in which I suggest what to do, so it’s one of those things I see so rarely that I begin to doubt its existence.

Some of this can also be remedied by reminding myself that in many things, he and I are of one mind. The wedding size is due to a policy on our guest list that we both feel strongly about, and because neither of us really wants us getting married to be the center of very many people’s attention but ours. We both love food, and love similar kinds of food, so what I cook is likely to be suited to his appetite.

It might be that he just likes virtually all of my ideas about everything. But that seems colossally unlikely. It might also be that he prefers to let someone else handle most of his decisions for him, an idea borne out by years of behavior. But this seems unearthly to me; I can’t bear the idea of everything I do being decided by someone else.

So I guess this post was just me working my shit out about this particular situation, rather than a real wedding update, and for that I apologize. (Not that any of you wanted a real wedding update.) It’s just been bothering me for so long and has been coming up in so many ways lately that I needed to lay it out. I do feel better. So thanks, internet, for being there as my shoulder to analyze on.