on wedding invitations, playing the victim, and trying not to

There was a piece in Slate last week about a study that looked at adults and children, bullies and victims, and the different ways they interpret harm.  Adults tend to understand that intent matters, and that the way we respond to harm depends on the intent (or lack of intent) of the person causing it.  Young children generally don't understand this difference:  to them harm is harm regardless of intent.  Bullies apparently understand these nuances but just don't care.  And perennial victims, well, in some ways they stay children forever, and are sometimes prone to seeing victim-hood in situations where there was no underlying intent to harm.

Something about this study resonated with me, and I found it deeply disconcerting.  I had my own experiences with being bullied back in the day at good old George Washington Elementary School, as I've mentioned here before.  Sometimes I worry that those days have affected my ability to trust other people, or rather my confidence in my own reading of other people.

I have a rather unbecoming tendency to assume that people are out to get me, or if not necessarily to such an extreme, that the people I care about don't care about or think about or love me in the same way, don't see me as being smart enough or pretty enough or interesting enough or generally worthy of their time.  Silly, I know, but there it is.

I got an invitation in the mail a few days ago to a friend's wedding.  I have known this friend for a decade now, ever since he and my brother lived next door to each other in their college dorm.  We ran in the same circles for awhile, back in the day when there was a great big crowd of us spending lots of time together.  As everyone graduated and got jobs and moved around and all that post-college stuff, many of us have gone partly or largely our separate ways.  We still overlap now and again of course -- when my brother's in town, when one or the other of us has a party or dinner party or show of some sort, when a group of us flew to my parents' place for Christmas a few years back.  We've rarely been one-on-one friends, if that makes sense, but still there has always been a lot of mutual affection

The invitation arrived on Saturday addressed solely to me, and this threw me into a bit of a tailspin:  were partners not invited?  He does know I have a boyfriend, right? Of course he does, he and his fiancee came up to our place last winter and partook in Evan's cooking.  He met Evan ten years ago when he and Nathan lived next door to each other.  We brought a delicious cab franc to their engagement party! Was I not supposed to bring him to the engagement party? Have I already committed an unforgivable faux pas?  Do I really have to go to this thing by myself, maybe share a table with my baby brother and his wife, the ex-boyfriend and the woman (okay, now wife) he left me for, all those other happily married friends and their partners? Why do I feel like I've been relegated to the kids' table, my relationship not deemed grown-up enough to be taken seriously?  Is this really happening?  Couldn't they cut down on the "black-tie-ness" of it all and include everyone that should be included?  Meaning my boyfriend?  Why do they hate me so much?!?

I thought myself in knots, twisted and turned and grew increasingly upset, to the point where I couldn't fall asleep and sat up till the wee hours scribbling in a notebook.  In the morning, over cups of coffee, I poured out this hurt to Marianne and declared my intent to abstain from the whole sorry affair.  Marianne just gave me one of her patented Marianne looks and said, "Don't be ridiculous, Em. You've known him forever.  You love him.  Of course you'll go."

And of course she was right.

I finally worked up the nerve to email him later that morning, just to clarify that partners really aren't invited, and that I should let Evan off the hook as far as having to suit it up for this black-tie affair.  And he wrote back later that evening saying to the contrary, that of course Evan should come.

This made me feel a lot better about things.  I'm still not convinced that I have not committed yet another egregious faux pas, but I am happy and relieved that I get to have my boy with me.  And if I should ever end up getting married there will be a little shindig, perhaps in Mom & Paul's back yard if they'll have me, or perhaps at the lake where I grew up if it'll have me. And it will be totally informal and unconstructed so as to avoid any stress or confusion. There will be Bermuda shirts and birkenstocks and dresses and jeans.  There might be platters of oysters and ice chests of cold home-brewed beer if I'm lucky, and mounds of cookies and gallons of gazpacho and twinkly fairy lights festooned across trellises and tree branches.  And maybe a knitted lace canopy just for the hell of it, even if I'm not Jewish and can't lay claim to a chuppah.  And if someone should ask whether or not they can bring their boyfriend or girlfriend or long lost third cousin twice removed from Kansas or that hot chick they met at that bar last week, I'll say sure.  Just pick up an extra bottle of wine on your way over.  Or, you know, maybe some cupcakes.

In the meantime, I'll be working hard at not creating situations of victim-hood where there are none, and will be looking forward to getting all gussied up (this seems to be a theme these days) in preparation for these friends' big day, possibly even to the extent of getting a pedicure. In pink. Shocking, I know.