Our decision :)

After months of discussions with friends, family, strangers, and experts, Maxson and Emily have made a decision. And, we are announcing it here in our final episode!

To all of you who have been a part of our journey, thank you. We are so grateful and happy.

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Booyaka Sha.

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Type of shit.

SPEAKER_03 0:03

Here it comes. The last time we are doing the introductory sequence. Welcome to Should We Get Married.

SPEAKER_02 0:14

My name is Emily Carter.

SPEAKER_03 0:16

My name is Maxim Gerecki.

SPEAKER_02 0:18

And in this podcast, we're trying to figure out if we should get legally married to each other.

SPEAKER_03 0:23

Or stay dating forever.

SPEAKER_00 0:26

What's up with people playing?

SPEAKER_02 0:28

It's so cool these days. Today's guests are me. And me. We're the guests because this is our last episode.

SPEAKER_03 0:38

Because we have made a decision.

SPEAKER_02 0:40

Made a decision. Are you excited?

SPEAKER_03 0:45

Yeah, I'm excited. I'm really excited. I feel like we are we have gotten what we wanted out of this project, which is we had a question, we like doing research, and we succeeded in doing our research and coming to a conclusion. Like little scientists.

SPEAKER_02 1:04

Little scientists that could.

SPEAKER_03 1:07

Well, before we get into announcing our decision, I think there's a couple of things that we wanted to say. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:15

In addition to all the amazing people that we talked to and learned from, I feel really grateful this project has brought me back in touch with so many people from my life and past. And sharing this on Instagram and realizing that so many people are asking similar questions has just been really fruitful in terms of people it's delivered back into my life, old coworkers, Bridget, who ended up being a whole episode. So many people reached out and I think resonated with what we're talking about. And I just feel really happy with the social implications of this project too.

SPEAKER_03 1:45

Yeah. People really came out of the woodwork on this and opined and shared, and it's been really great.

SPEAKER_02 1:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:54

Okay. So, Emily, we made a decision. What is our decision? Do you want to announce it for the both of us?

SPEAKER_02 2:03

Yes. We have decided that we indeed should get married. The bucket is full of pebbles. The bucket is full of pebbles.

SPEAKER_03 2:16

That's right.

SPEAKER_01 2:17

Which is very exciting. It's a big deal.

SPEAKER_03 2:20

It's a big deal. We love each other when we're excited to one day get married to each other. And that happened because of this investigation and our focus on the question. And it feels really, really good. How do you feel?

SPEAKER_02 2:36

I feel great. I feel that this project was a very pragmatic look at marriage. And at the same time, we were having a very intensely special and connective month of figuring out if we're meant to be. And in both situations, we decided yes, we are meant to be, and yes, we want to get married. So that feels really nice. It's nice that they aligned. Yeah. And I've seen this project as sort of like the practical container of the love that we have. And I feel that marriage fits the love that we have and the life that we want to have together, which is nice. Yeah. How about you?

SPEAKER_03 3:12

I feel like I really did my homework. I guess that's the that's that's a big feeling I have. I feel like I don't like doing stuff just because other people do it. And I felt so understood and seen by you to have you engage on this project with me. And for us to really have this cool corner of our life this year has been really special and brought us really close together. I think the information we learned has truly been really impactful in terms of making me understand really what the legal construct is. But the coolest and kind of most powerful thing over the last year as we've been doing this is I feel like we started out saying, oh, we 100% want to be together for our lives. It's just a we're just trying to figure out the marriage thing. And then going through this, we actually encountered some challenges in our relationship and how we were relating to each other. And then it was not a guarantee that we wanted to be together. And you can hear some of that in like the Rachel episode, you can hear some of that in the Bridget episode, but it stopped being a no-brainer that we were supposed to be together. And I feel like this project opened up a pathway for us to have really serious conversations about our relationship. We weren't doing that necessarily on the show all the time. We really were thinking critically about if we should be together or not. And that was like scary at times because you and I had both thought that it was like a no-brainer, but then it stopped being a no-brainer. But, you know, a bunch of stuff happened like in our personal life. We were both going through challenges. I was able to really show up for you. You were brave enough to tell me what you needed out of our relationship that I wasn't giving. And I was able to rise to the occasion and you were able to really accept that from me. And here we are many months later, I feel at the height of our connection and the height of our wanting to be together. And then separate from that, we also did this logistical sociological investigation into marriage. And we happened to want to do it based on what we found. But it was just, it was cool that both of these journeys were happening at the same time. And I'm really happy with how that much more important journey of do we want to be together has gone.

SPEAKER_02 5:23

Me too. I feel so connected and so sure of our love, which is such an awesome feeling. And I feel like it meant going through something hard and questioning it and really having some hard conversations to be like, I really know this person, and I really like how they approach these moments where things feel a little shaky or scary or different. And I've just been so moved by how you've shown up these past couple months for yourself, for me, for us, and the progress we've made in the last four months is like quite astonishing. And I feel super proud of you. And I feel you becoming an amazing man and partner and future father and husband. And like you just I have way more information and I'm like stoked about the hard parts. I'm totally down for them. And that doesn't mean our life is not gonna have them. That doesn't mean we got it all out of the way. But I really uh respect how you do, how you show up and how we communicate. And that just feels yeah, I'm down to take this big adventurous risk with you.

SPEAKER_03 6:34

We set out to figure out if we want to get married. We have landed on we really want to be together and love each other and feel extremely committed to being long-term partners, even though that was a question that we thought we had already answered. We have we went through a period where we didn't know the answer to that. And now we do know the answer to that. And then weirdly, separately, but somewhat relatedly, but kind of separately, we like figured out the answer to if we want to get married or not, which is yes. So I'm curious to hear from you, Emily. Why did you decide that you want to become legally married to me at some point?

SPEAKER_02 7:10

I believe that we learned so much. And signs point to it being a really smart and thoughtful decision. And whatever bug in my brain I have about it is a little bit more borne out of not wanting to do it the way that I see it done a lot. Um, and I feel really confident that we can make it our own and perhaps inspire other people to do it their own way too. And I think between your German citizenship and having more flexibility in where we could potentially raise a kid for a couple years or live, um, financial protections and going through the process of deciding how we would want to break up and what that would look like.

SPEAKER_03 7:49

Financial protections, like you want to have financial protections. If we separate, you still will have be have be financially supported. Or vice versa.

SPEAKER_01 7:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 7:58

Or vice versa. Interesting, because you were also hot on like maybe getting a prenup, which would eliminate some financial protections for you or for me. So that's kind of interesting.

SPEAKER_02 8:07

Well, I don't know. We don't know what it would look like. We could make it have more financial protections than most people have. That's true. I don't feel like we have any concept of the yeah. Absolutely true. That's true. And I think this idea of having a hurdle to separation, having it be uh financially and logistically complicated, require lawyers, require contracts, separate assets. Like I like the push to keep working on something. That feels like something like I think we will know if it's time to not work on something anymore. I trust that. And so I believe that will only help us stay together in moments where we might need that extra push. And I don't fear that it will keep us in something that is like toxic or bad, if and hopefully it does not ever become that. But in the world where it does, I trust us both to recognize it and decide that it's time. So, Maxon, why did you decide that you want to get married to me? What have been some of the more impactful pieces of this decision?

SPEAKER_03 9:05

I think there's my answer is in two different buckets. There's like a bunch of logistical stuff, and then there's like some kind of illogical stuff that I've made my peace with. So, in terms of the logical stuff or the logistical stuff, I want to be able to live and work in the EU with you. If we ever wanted to do that, I want to give you my German citizenship or residency, whatever. I became way more comfortable with the idea of getting divorced from you. I feel like you and I would fingers crossed if we do have to get divorced at some point, we would do it nicely with each other. I'm excited about the societal stamp of approval on our relationship and the brand of being married that we talked about with Isabel early on, like liking the brand of being married, being like a married person, and being like, this is my partner. I understand that we can have that without getting married. We'll just, but like there's always that like little speed bump. And for me, I'm like, hey, I don't want the speed bump. I don't want that. I just want to be like whole hog, like we are married. That's sick. And all the stuff that was like weighing me down is kind of gone. I wanted to do my homework. I feel like I did my homework. We got into all the details. I feel we like took our flashlight, looked in all the weird corners of this institution. Like, yeah, it's got a funky history of like, you know, passing people as property. Well, that's just not what it is now, and I'm okay with what it is now. And okay, you have like a contract with the government about, you know, how you're gonna deal with someone. Okay, I'm like okay with it, and I'm also feeling comfortable with us adjusting it if we want to. So that's like the pragmatic, logistical stuff, which I feel pretty good about. Then there's the emotional, maybe illogical stuff, which is I like the idea of just linking up with you and kind of throwing caution in the wind and being just, hey, like we're gonna embark on this adventure that many people before of us, before us have done. And even if it goes sideways and it like hurts my life financially and logistically, I don't care. I feel like super romantic about it. Which is funny because I did not start out that way. I feel like most people have the opposite journey where they start out like really romantic and they're like, oh, like being married's so sweet. And I started out being kind of curmudgeonly, and now I'm like, I literally I don't care about any of the stuff that I learned. I just want to be married to you because I love you and I'm want to blink my life up with you, and I think you're so special, and I'm like would love to do life with you. And even if that's hard, I just feel like I'm I'm down for it. So I feel yeah, really, really excited about it.

SPEAKER_02 11:38

Me too. I feel like we both had a bit of a 180 on tradition and sort of looking at the tradition of it and being like, ugh, it's so laden with history and expectation and gender roles and various things that don't feel us. And the more we thought about it, it was like, wow, there's a whole lineage of people that came before both of us that made us exist. And they all did this and went through this ritual. And there's so few rituals left in life that link us to anyone in the generations before us, and what a loss to not do it.

SPEAKER_03 12:11

Yeah. Yeah, I think it's so nice. I've I we made this decision like about a week ago, and it's been a cool week of settling into this. But this is not an engagement. Don't text us. Let the record show. Don't text us saying, Oh my god, congratulations, you guys. You can text us about the show and your feedback on it. Text us about the show. Yeah. And Emily, do you want to like explain why we're actually making this distinction?

SPEAKER_02 12:38

I think my main reason is really wanting to have a moment around our engagement and have it be a really personal special time between us and our friends and our family, and maybe have a gathering and uh just start like intentionally figuring out how we want our engagement and marriage and uh married life to look. And I want to keep that moment precious and special and decide what we want it to look like and feel like together and not have it be something that's in front of a microphone or in front of listeners. And I just want to have this be the decision that yes, for the question of should we get married, yes, we would like to do that. And then to have that decision be a little more personal and special and between us. So I want to protect the possibility for like a real moment that we can look back on in our life and tell our kids about and have a date that we decided. And this is not exactly how I want to do it.

SPEAKER_03 13:30

Yeah, as counter-cultural as we are, we kind of want to propose to each other, maybe and I don't know, have like a party and like celebrate this moment our own way with our special people. And yeah, we wanted to say that on the show because that that's like important for us to be making that distinction. We have decided that we want to be married to each other, but we are not getting engaged, and we're not saying like when we want to do it. But it's probably but we have talked about wanting to get married next year.

SPEAKER_02 14:00

We talked about wanting to get have an engagement party this autumn.

SPEAKER_03 14:04

Yes, in the autumn we might have an just sort of save the general date of autumn. So if you're thinking to yourselves, wow, these guys invented a fake podcast to try and have a fake marriage, we probably might do something in autumn. Yeah, we might we might. So also we might not.

SPEAKER_02 14:18

Yeah, we also might not, but we probably will.

SPEAKER_03 14:21

Anyway, sorry, just to close this moment, that's our decision. We want to get married to each other. We freaking love each other. We learned a lot from doing this. We think that the logistical and practical benefits of marriage outweigh the negatives in our situation.

SPEAKER_02 14:36

And we'll be selling um pebbles and buckets on our merch store. The buckets are 250, the pebbles are 100 each, and you can get as many as you want. Um, they are custom pebbles.

SPEAKER_03 14:48

Yeah, you can you can get us also for speaking engagements. We do speaking. We we do speaking engagements as well.

SPEAKER_02 14:54

We do speaking, we do comedy.

SPEAKER_03 14:55

Anyway, so just to close that that chapter of what we're talking about, that's what we want to do. Thank you for being with us. Uh Emily, you mentioned that a great, beautiful highlight of this project for you has been the people that it's reconnected you to. Something for me that's been really powerful about this project is developing a relationship with Ramoy, our producer, who, in my opinion, is simply not on the show enough. He's so sweet. He's so funny. He's a more of a behind the camera kind of guy. But I want to give him a huge shout out for being with us through this process. It's one of the most unusual relationships that I feel like you and I have ever had, where we are working with someone who is deep in the weeds on a project that we're doing. But but by nature of the project, he is literally deep in the weeds of our relationship and is he is like the fly on the wall for us having all these conversations. Ramoy, thank you for doing this with us. I feel so touched that you lent us your time, that you lent us your expertise. And just as someone who's a burgeoning storyteller and interviewer of people to have learned from Ramoi, who is the GOAT at audio storytelling. I'm so grateful that we got to have a witness in him for this whole journey, which has been so unusual.

SPEAKER_02 16:15

Thank you, Ramoy. You've been so, so, so amazing. And as Maxon said, so in the weeds with us. Imagine all the things that we decided not to include because they were too personal. Ramoy knows them.

SPEAKER_03 16:26

So he knows those things. He knows those things. He knows how he knows all those things. Yeah. Yeah. At a price, he will say what those things are. It's about as much as the bucket. And then last piece of business, you, the listeners, you have been with us on this journey. We never expected to have a response like this to the show. So many people have listened to this and checked in with us and sent us a note or DM'd us on Instagram or left a comment on the show or rated the show or came to our launch party.

SPEAKER_02 16:55

The response to this has been so amazing. And the messages we've got from people, the ways that we've heard this is impacting couples, conversations we've heard people are having, conversations we get to have with strangers because of this podcast. It's all been so connective and really, really validating that we're doing something that a lot of people are thinking about and caring about. And I just feel super grateful for everyone who's engaged with the show in any way, shared it with a friend. There have just been so many people along the way who have helped make this such a success. So thank you to all of you.

SPEAKER_03 17:25

It's cool to live this part of our life more publicly and have it be received so kindly and nicely. I feel really grateful for that.

SPEAKER_02 17:32

Maxon. Yeah. What are you planning to do after this?

SPEAKER_03 17:37

Uh it's a good question. I don't know. I loved making this show with you, and I really like talking to people. And I'm not sure what the next thing is going to be, but I'm really, really curious to see what emerges. I've there's a couple other projects that I've been thinking of and topics that I'm curious about and ways of speaking with people and connecting with people. So I don't know, but I want to do more projects. And I've really enjoyed doing this, especially with the help of Ramoy and especially with the response from everyone. One last thing. I think that it'll be really cool for our children to one day go through all of our episodes with all of our guests and hear all of our conversations and see us in real time, fall in deeper love with each other, understand each other better, do this investigation together, and they're gonna see what we looked like and hear what we sounded like and saw how we related to each other. And it'll be so different then 30 years from now if we still get to be together 30 years from now. So I feel really excited about that too. So for a million different reasons, I'm so happy that we that we got the opportunity to do this together. And I'm so so grateful that you were my partner on it, and we really got to do it, and it was like it was so fun. And I love you.

SPEAKER_01 18:50

I love you so much. Yes, little kids. Your parents are a little crazy, but it's okay. We love you.

SPEAKER_03 18:57

Yeah. Marriage was an institution that existed until 2040 when it was outlawed because it was fill-in-the-blank joke to complete the joke.

SPEAKER_02 19:08

One more thing, one more thing.

SPEAKER_03 19:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:10

Just kidding.

SPEAKER_03 19:14

Nice. Well, we don't want to end. I literally feel like I don't want to end the recording because that'll be like the end of the thing. Story of my life. Story of my fucking life, man. Oh no, but you're done though. You're finished. Yeah, I'm complete. Right. But I've had an amazing time, though. But notice that when we're talking about what's next for Max, and Emily and I were not like in our next show, there ain't gonna be no next show for sweet, sweet Emily. She had her time in the sun. She is not interested in doing more.

SPEAKER_02 19:46

I am drained by the microphone.

SPEAKER_03 19:48

She is drained by the microphone. You put you you you you put her with no microphone in front of a group. She is a chatty Kathy. She's cooking. You the second you put a microphone in front of her, she is, she her energy starts waning, waning, waning, waning, waning. So no, she's not gonna be really part of, she's probably not gonna be part of the next batch of projects, but man, she's gonna be a big cheerleader for me, aren't you? Big cheerleader. That's so nice. That's so nice. Okay. Well, with that, should we get married ends in a resounding yes.

SPEAKER_01 20:21

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 20:22

We should get married.

SPEAKER_01 20:23

We should. Exciting. We love you.

SPEAKER_03 20:27

Bye.

SPEAKER_01 20:28

Lucky bye.

SPEAKER_03 20:30

Should We Get Married is an original series by Easily Wowed and Bad Cooley Productions. This episode was created by me, Max Intorecchi.

SPEAKER_02 20:38

And me, Emily Carter.

SPEAKER_03 20:40

And our producer, Ramoy Phillip.

SPEAKER_02 20:42

Theme music is the song Fake Romantic by the band Melt, logo and brand design by Madeline Vogue.

SPEAKER_03 20:48

Sound design and mixing by Ramoy Phillip.

SPEAKER_02 20:50

There are so many of you out there who are asking these exact same questions, and we don't all have to investigate marriage on our own. Subscribe to Should We Get Married and learn with us as we make our decision.

SPEAKER_03 20:59

See you next time.