Taryn de Vere writes about her unconventional version of marriage, with separate houses, finances and multiple ceremonies.
I've been married eight times. My first wedding was reasonably conventional in that it was huge, required meticulous planning, cost lots of money, and caused loads of stress. My marriage was conventional too, and while I was in the marriage I assumed that that would be me now for the rest of my life, with my husband and my life neatly sewn up.
It came as somewhat of a shock to discover that my husband didn't feel the same way, and two years and nine months after we married, he left. I started seeing a counsellor to help me understand my emotions and process what had happened to me.
Through counselling I began to realise that my married life hadn't been all that fun. I'd never questioned this due to my idea that once you're married, that's it, there's no room for anything else, it just is the way it is. I think I felt that if it's uncomfortable or not fun then that was probably just part of the being-married experience.
As I began to look closer at my experience of our marriage, I came to understand that I'd almost been a passive participant. I hadn't questioned anything, I'd just done things the way I'd seen other people do things.
I was, in a sense, performing being married. It wasn't coming from a "real" place. It wasn't that I didn't love my husband, I did, it's more that I didn't stop to ask myself what I really wanted. A few weeks after our marriage split up I found myself feeling grateful to my ex for being brave enough to end it.
I assumed that that was my brush with marriage over until a few years later I met my second, third, forth, fifth, sixth, and seventh husband. My relationship with Andrew has been primarily a space dedicated to supporting each other's growth and self-discovery. When we decided to get married we spent many hours discussing what kind of a marriage we would like, and if we could ignore society's view of marriage and start from scratch.
We've always lived in separate houses (sometimes separate counties) and had separate finances, so that was important to include, as well as a sense of freedom and free will. Neither wanted to feel any sense of obligation in our relationship. We wanted to offer to each other only out of a sense of willing love, never out of a feeling of being obliged to.
We created our own ceremony and vows based around our own idea of marriage, one that is unique to us and our needs and desires. We don't believe that there is any power greater than ourselves who can declare us married, so we had no desire to bring in any legality or religion to our wedding ceremony, or our marriage.
We also get married again and again. While lots of people write their own ceremonies and create their own vows, not many people repeatedly re-marry.
The reason that we began to marry over and over is that we are committed to growing and changing as people. So the me of now is a different person to the me who last married Andrew. As I am a changed person I ask myself if the new me, the me of now, still chooses this relationship, and if so, do I still choose the marriage?
It's not dissimilar to the old Brehon law way of marriage in a sense, in that after a year of marriage the couple would ask if they still wished to remain married, and then every seven years after. We don't have set times for our weddings though, we just decide between us when we feel we have changed enough from the last wedding.
Our weddings are simple affairs, usually held in a park or public space. Shortly before the wedding we walk the streets inviting strangers to attend. We choose a celebrant from the strangers who choose to come. Our vows are written to convey the love we have for each other and often people get very emotional during our weddings.
Many of our guests have told us they found the experience profoundly changed the way they think about love or marriage. Andrew and I are both artists and we see these weddings for strangers as both real weddings, and as a type of performance art. Each of our weddings are a piece of a larger, infinite continuum of union and celebration where our lives embody our art and vice versa.
It's been a few years since our last wedding and we've both certainly changed a lot of late so I anticipate another wedding is imminent. It looks like it might be in Dublin, so I shall end this piece by inviting you all to attend and witness one of our weddings for yourself.
- Written by Taryn de Vere. Taryn de Vere is an artist, writer, and joy-bringer based in Donegal.
