Jonathon and I got married after 8 weeks of dating.

Well, actually, we probably get married after less than 8 weeks of dating. You see, the trajectory of our romance was to meet at Barnes & Noble for a “coffee thing”, then meet up a week later after I got back from Guatemala for a “dinner thing” (at which we made out like teenagers) and then to tell ourselves that we were just Friend-Fucking (that’s an Anjali original, don’t steal it) until one weekend away when we admitted our feelings to each other. And even after that, I had a freakout. So we probably got married after about 6 and a half weeks of dating, but let’s go with 8 for a nice round number’s sake: 8 weeks is the exact amount of time between our first true date – our dinner date – and our wedding. 8 weeks from our first kiss to our wedded bliss. (Go ahead, puke. I’ll wait.)

Since we actually got married after 8 weeks, and we were engaged for 3, that means we decided to get married after approximately 5 weeks of being “together” – whatever that word actually means. Because it wasn’t 5 weeks of coupledom, it was 5 weeks of Friend-Fucking and goofing off and occasional dates. It was 5 weeks of doing whatever the fuck we were doing, but falling madly in love doing it. Just 5 weeks.

So the question is as follows: are we nuts? Maybe, but I actually think we’re incredibly sane and in this blog, I’m going to tell you why. Here’s the crux of it: we went into our marriage knowing that we had everything in the world to learn and nothing in the world to rely on.

I’ll start at the beginning: I’ve never been a fan of the “American” path of dating to marriage, nor, truly, have I really been a fan of the “Indian” path. In the American culture, we pick a person, we date them for what we or they or our families view as an “appropriate” amount of time, then we get engaged, then we stay engaged for another “appropriate” amount of time as we plan our giant circus of a wedding, then we get married, feeling at least comfortable that we know everything there is to know about a person and that we won’t find any surprises along the way. We don’t actually analyze the similarity of backgrounds or possibilities of a marriage working from a logical standpoint. We date, in the American culture, for years, often 2 or more years before getting engaged. In that time, we think we’re learning everything there is to know about our partner. We think we’re seeing our partner at their best and worst. We think we’re discovering the skills and tools that we’ll need to live our life with our partner and that after our marriage, we’ll just be ready to put them to work.

We’re – and this is the long and short of it – wrong.

But let’s check out the Indian culture before we analyze that more: in the Indian culture, it’s the exact opposite. We (and I’m going to use the term “we” for both cultures because I am both Indian by heritage and blood and American by birthright and upbringing) don’t know our spouses at all, mostly. For the traditional arranged Indian marriage, we meet our spouse maybe once, but the decision of whether to marry is based on how similar their background is to our background, whether our families’ socioeconomic classes align and how beneficial the partnership would be for each of them, and whether we’re at the “marrying age.” Contrary to the American path to marriage, the Indian path is all logical, all analysis: there’s no love, there’s no spark, there’s just an almost business-like transaction of whether two people and their families would be a good fit.

We’re – and this is the long and short of it – wrong there, too.

Marriage, though it may at one time have had this luxury, is no longer just about blind love. And marriage, though it may one time have been, is no longer a pure business transaction.

Though this may not be the most romantic idea in the world, the truth is, it’s somewhere in the middle. Marriage, I think, should be at least a little bit about logic, and whether the two of you, and your families and your companion animals and everything else you are merging, can work well together for a lifetime. It should also, though, be a lot about blind love. After all, when you feel like you’ve met The One – even if you haven’t believed in the idea of The One for your entire life – shouldn’t there be a whole world of whimsy wrapped up in the decision to marry them?

My story with Jonathon, then, is equal parts wild, crazy, unbelievable love mixed in with a true partnership and the ability to see our lives merged successfully for our coming years.

So, what does this all does this all mean for the psychology of deciding to get married after 5 weeks of dating?

Well, because in my mind, deciding to get married after just a few weeks of dating is the perfect mix of my two cultures: you’re given the time and opportunity to realize someone is The One and to see how that spark feels, but then you’re also going in realizing it is actually the biggest transaction of your life – and that you know next to nothing about the person you’re about to call your spouse.

See, Jonathon and I had a least few significant, deep conversations before our wedding where we spoke about what we expected our marriage to look like. Some of those conversations were about real “adulting” issues: things like expectations for communication and space and family and friends and money and careers. Others, though, were just about the view we were both taking on our marriage: the view that we knew almost nothing about each other and that half of the adventure would be learning.

Jonathon and I never lived together before getting married. Jonathon and I barely spent any nights together before getting married! The best we did is a few days in a hotel, going to a rave and sleeping – not exactly real life. We did go on some dates before we decided to get engaged – but we didn’t spend any real time with each other’s families, we didn’t take any long trips together, we didn’t deal with anything that we thought was really, really hard.

What we did do is fall madly in love and realize that we were made just for each other, like two perfect little wholes creating an even bigger, better whole (I don’t subscribe to that “you’re half a person until you find our soulmate” bullshit – he and I were perfect, successful, individually cool people before we met each other and now, we just get to share that. It’s not like we were sub-humans before our coupledom!). And in realizing that we were crazy in love (emphasis on the word crazy), we also realized that we didn’t know shit about each other. We didn’t go in, having spent years together, with the false impression that we know everything there was to know about the other human. We went in looking forward to learning and growing and changing together.

We went in – and this is the critical part – knowing that we were going to find out things that we loved about each other, but also that we were going to find out things that were totally annoying about each other – and that regardless of anything that may come our way, we were going to wake up each morning and choose to love each other all over again.

We’ve been married for two weeks, so of course, we have no idea if the strategy will actually work. But objectively, as a lover of humans and relationships and connections, I think the idea of being ready to learn and deal with new things that come up is better than the idea of thinking you know it all.

We already decided to love each other forever. We also decided we’ll probably hate each other sometimes. And – importantly – we decided that both of those things are totally okay.

So, back to my original question: are we nuts? Well, back to my original answer: maybe, but if we are, it’s nuts in the best possible way, the way that skirts the edge of both sanity and insanity – we’re nuts because we made the decision to get married based purely on raw emotion, but we’re making the decision to stay married forever by accepting we have so much learn and the rest of our lives to do it.

Very rarely is it acceptable to be an outright asshole.

Most people don’t take super kindly to other people being rude or obnoxious or straight-up mean, with poor intentions. It’s normally clear how to react in those situations: shut it down.

That said, most people – myself included – aren’t sure how to react in the situation where someone isn’t necessarily trying to be an asshole – and therefore, may have decent intentions – but is coming off like a huge douche.

Over the past two weeks, since just before announcing that I was married, I’ve dealt with several situations where it’s clear to me that someone isn’t intending to be an asshole, but they are sincerely coming off like the world’s biggest one.

And it’s been about one thing and one thing only: my marriage. Surprisingly, many people in my life – both in my “real” life and my digital life – have seemed to have a hard time accepting that I’m married now. And that I have a husband, who is the most important human in my life.

And that – and this is the important one – I have boundaries.

I’m a writer. It’s sometimes what I do for a living and sometimes what I do for fun, but it’s always who I am. And I don’t write publicly because I love the process of getting up early, downing some coffee, and sitting down to pour my thoughts onto the page. I have a private journal for that. I write publicly because I believe in relating to people. I believe in taking down our walls and taking things out of the shadows, and putting things out in the open so that we can all start to realize how similar we truly are and that none of us are “freaks”. I write publicly because I believe in connecting with people, sincerely. I write publicly because I feel like sometimes, I may have some things to say, that are similar to things other people want to say.

I write publicly, truly, because I love getting the emails or Facebook messages or Twitter DMs or Insta chats from someone I’ve never met saying, “Thank you so much for writing about that. It’s something I’ve been struggling with too, and it made me feel better to know that I wasn’t alone.”

I write publicly because I believe that nothing matters at the end of the day except love – and that the way you get to love is through connection.

And these are all the same reasons that I believe in radical honesty: you can’t connect with another human when you have your guard up. You can’t connect with another human when you aren’t being 100% honest about you. And you definitely can’t connect with another human when you are trying to filter yourself.

So I write things. And I encourage people to reach out to me – constantly, whenever they want, about whatever they want. And I respond – constantly. And I love talking to people. And people are my passion.

But here’s the thing – I have boundaries.

Or maybe, let me rephrase and clarify: I have A boundary. 

Let me rephrase and clarify even further: I have A NEW boundary.

I have one really new, really big, really impermeable boundary that I have recently decided I need to be really clear about: Jonathon Richard Nowakowski. My husband. The man whose name I decided to take. The man who let me take his name.

And unfortunately, that hasn’t seemed clear to many people. Perhaps it’s my fault. It likely is my fault. I write about everything in my life – so how could I not write about the biggest thing in my life? I let people into things – my happiness, my sadness, my adventures – so of course, I wanted to let people into the greatest adventure.

But that has led to a situation in which people think that I actually have no boundaries. Because I let people in, it must mean that nothing is off limits, that everything is on the table, that there are no lines which must not be crossed.

Wrong.

There are limits. There are things off the table. And there are lines.

And one of them is my husband.

Over the past couple of weeks, people have made statements and comments and remarks that have not been very respectful of my husband. Or my marriage. Or me.

And people’s responses, when I or my husband ask them not to be so disrespectful or ask them what happened that they thought they could say something like that, have been to point to me, and my writing, and my views on monogamy. “Well, you don’t believe in monogamy so I assumed…” “Well, you wrote about this so I assumed…” “Well, you feel this way about this thing so I assumed…”

Maybe stop assuming. Because here’s the thing, not about me, but about nonmonogamy – and about my marriage: it still has boundaries. And here’s the thing, not about me, but about writing and writers: there are still limits.

Nonmonogamy doesn’t mean a free for all of flirting with me or my husband whenever you want – publicly or otherwise. Nonmonogamy doesn’t mean making derogatory comments about my marriage. Nonmonogamy doesn’t mean my husband and I are constantly searching for our next hookup, and that you can proposition either or both of us anywhere, anytime.

All nonmonogamy means is that we don’t believe that monogamy is the way to go. That’s it. That’s literally it.

And writing about everything, and letting people in to my life, doesn’t mean that people are free to take whatever they want from my life. Writing doesn’t mean that people are free to judge all of my actions – and then tell me exactly what they think. Writing doesn’t mean that people are free to view me as a character in a TV show – if I make a decision they disagree with, they are free to get angry at the writer.

If I’m being totally honest, I’ve wondered, over the past 24 hours, whether to stop writing completely. And whether to take my life offline, because as much as I have wanted to connect with people, it seems that many people don’t know how to connect without trying to take advantage.

We may have gotten married on April Fools’ Day. It may have been after just 8 weeks of being together. It may have been a surprise to some. Nothing about this may be considered normal to society as a whole, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be respected at the same level of the stuff that is considered “normal” to society as a whole.

Nothing about this marriage was done to entertain or impress or surprise others. It was done solely and exclusively to make myself and my husband the happiest we’ve ever been.

Just because I share my experiences with people – and this is my newest, greatest experience – doesn’t mean that the sanctity of my marriage shouldn’t be respected.

For any readers of my blog or friends of mine or Googlers of me, know this: it’s a really difficult thing to write about everything in your life so openly. It takes effort and time and mental energy. It’s done very intentionally, to connect with others.

And it’s disappointing when people take advantage of that, without first stopping to think whether or not they are being inappropriate or disrespectful or just plain rude. It may be done with the best of intentions, or it may be done as a joke, or it even may be done to push my boundaries and see which ones I actually have – but it’s still not a nice thing to do, at the end of the day, when it comes off as callously inconsiderate of something I really care about.

How I feel about writing or monogamy generally or sex or drugs or relationships generally or raves or swinger’s clubs or puppies or veganism or fitness or politics or racism or anything else you can think of is simply that: it’s how I feel about it. It’s what I’ve written about it. It’s completely open for you to ask me about and discuss with me. And I will literally never shut any discussion down about my views on things because I believe in love and connection.

My husband, though, and my marriage, are totally different topic areas. I write about him, I write about us, and I will continue to. And I hope people talk to me about it and ask me about it. But unlike the general topics I mentioned above, there will come a time I will shut discussions down. There will come a moment, if I’m engaging with someone being disrespectful of him or us, that I will say enough is enough. Just because I’ve written about certain things doesn’t give you an open pass to the most important thing in my life.

If you’re one of those people wondering about how to behave with a nonmonogamous couple where the wife is an open writer about all things personal: do yourself a favor and consider my marriage closed. No, we won’t be sleeping with you or flirting with you or discussing our life with you.

So for anyone that I may know in the digital world or in real life that may be wondering whether it’s appropriate to make shitty comments about my views on monogamy to my husband: it’s not. For anyone that I may know in the digital world or in real life that may be wondering whether it’s appropriate to hit on my husband while I’m standing right there: it’s not. For anyone that that I may know in the digital world or in real life that may be wondering whether it’s appropriate to continue to hit on me, just because of “how I feel about monogamy”: it’s not.

And especially for anyone that I may know in the digital world or in real life that wonders whether I actually have any boundaries: I do. And once again, his name is Jonathon Richard Nowakowski.

So I am going to continue writing about things that matter to me and I’m going to continue letting people in, because I believe strongly in it. In fact, even this post was a difficult one for me to write because I always want to give people the benefit of the doubt. I think most people are just struggling with their own shit and trying to do their best and I want to acknowledge that and help people grow and move forward, as I grow and move forward. It takes a lot for me to actually get angry about something and stop giving people chances.

I am a person that likes to push societal boundaries – but that doesn’t mean I don’t have my own. Everyone should feel free to push the boundaries of their own life, but also respect the boundaries that other people have.

So I’ll keep writing.

But from now on, I’m also going to be much clearer about where the line is drawn. I may have changed a lot in the past year of traveling and blogging and writing and my opinions on things may have grown and developed in unexpected directions and my marriage might be a thing that came totally out of the blue to some people, but to me, the line is clear: my husband, and my marriage, are off limits to your interpretation or your disrespect or your unsolicited opinion.