The Fantasy of Marriage and the Reality That Followed: A Teen’s Dream Turned Bitter

As a teenager, I often daydreamed about the perfect life ahead — a life where love was all-encompassing, where marriage was the pinnacle of happiness, and where I would find the kind of romance that would make all the chaos and messiness of the world seem insignificant. I romanticized the idea of being a wife, imagining a bond so deep and so beautiful that it would be the center of everything. After all, I had always been told that marriage was the ultimate goal, the ultimate achievement. You get married, you settle down, and you live happily ever after. Simple, right?

But now, as I grow older and begin to witness the relationships around me — the ones that should have been the most sacred, the most nurturing — I find myself grappling with an unsettling truth. Relationships, in their real forms, often don’t look anything like the fairy tales I once believed in. Instead, they’re filled with unspoken tension, resentment, and a palpable sense of sacrifice that weighs down everyone involved. I wish I could say that my experiences have been different, that I’ve somehow managed to avoid the inevitable patterns, but the truth is, they’ve been everywhere.

Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers by Adrienne Rich has come to haunt me in ways I never expected. When I first read the poem as a teenager, I…