How A Text Message Made Me Doubt That I Am Ready To Get Married

My friend texted me that her cousin had had an anorexic "episode" shortly before her wedding, after a lifetime of struggle with anorexia, and had left the wedding before the cutting of the cake due to a fainting incident.

Let me just say: I had NO IDEA HOW TO REPLY.

See, here’s the sitch: It is my immediate thought to display my boorish insensitivity by saying that anorexia, fainting episodes, and the like are silly and theatrical because there is no medical helplessness surrounding grown women who decline sustenance, and because furthermore such women are acting primarily for an audience. I think spells, especially fainting ones, are designed to solicit pity, reassurance, flattery and approval. We are likely to be universally less interested in our own persistent self-doubt than we are in another's opinions, and for this reason public and private spectacles are only further manifestations of the anorexia.

But what do I know? I feel uncomfortable even thinking these things; they make me suspect myself of intolerable insensitivity and lead me to believe that I am unqualified for friendship and all of that. I don't mean to disrespect poor Cousin Sandie (or whatever her name is), and I don't know her and I have no idea of what she has gone through; I'm just saying that she is representative of everybody.

I am not really sad that she cannot eat, because she has the tools (the wheat toast and the concord grapes and the shaved asparagus and the pulled pork) to fix it when eating is, of all the choices in the world, maybe the most obvious.

If I knew Cousin Sandie well I would hurt for her, maybe even ache, but when I got the text all I could think of was sadness because Husband John Doe is now responsible to Cousin Sandie for all of this. Marriage means that no longer is this her problem; marriage means that when Cousin Sandie is sick her husband is, for the rest of his life, inextricably linked to her problems and everything he ever does is either a contribution to her failure or a part of her healing.

Isn't that terrifying?

Isn't such weighty and inescapable responsibility a deterrent to marriage? My own imperfections, every single bad choice I ever make, will be my husband's problem, and I will share in consequences for all of his sins. It is so critical to marry the right person, but no amount of vetting can account for the devastation of fallen humanity. God's grace alone must sustain Cousin Sandie and Husband John Doe in these days ahead, when he married a girl who is in the middle of the worst of this sickness. I am sorry, because love sometimes hurts, and because hope is so important on the day of one's wedding.

Was that completely inappropriate to say? Anyhow, it made me doubt that I am ready for marriage.