This is what three years of marriage actually looks like: the occasional misstep and the actual apology and the moving on. Not a continuous perfect pitch of attunement. The attempts, the failures, the corrections. We are still learning each other, and probably will be for a long time, and that is, I think, what a real marriage is.
## The Question I Keep Getting Asked
A few people in my life — friends, a coworker, my cousin Dana who called after my mother called her — have asked some version of the same question: why didn’t you just let Elise have it?
I want to answer this seriously, not defensively.
The short version is: because it was mine. Because ownership is real. Because you do not get to decide on someone else’s behalf that they will be okay with giving up something they own, even if you love them and even if the person you’re giving their thing to also loves them.
The longer version includes some things I’ve had to admit to myself. The dress is not the only thing at stake here. If I had let my mother and Elise proceed without addressing it — if I had swallowed the upset and told myself it was fine because Elise is my sister and it would make her happy — I would have been confirming to my mother that this approach works. That she can decide in advance what I’ll agree to, skip the asking, and trust that I’ll come around. I have come around to things before, and maybe that pattern had taught her something I didn’t intend to teach.