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Transcriber: Nadine Hennig
Reviewer: Ilze Garda
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When I was growing up, there was this song
we used to sing on the playground,
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and it went like this,
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"Tracy and so and so,
sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g,
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first comes love, then comes marriage,
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then comes baby in a baby carriage."
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And I'm like,
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"OK, that's it! That's how you do life.
That's how you do a relationship.
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Love, marriage, baby carriage. OK, got it!
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(Laughter)
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Then I grew up, and this is
what my life turned out to be.
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(Laughter)
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Slightly more complicated, right?
(Laughter)
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Love, marriage, divorce,
dry spells, love, marriage,
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co-parenting, another marriage,
another divorce;
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you got the picture.
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(Laughter)
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(Applause)
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So if you're good at math and/or
a fast reader, what you've got there
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is that I've been married three times.
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Yep, three, and divorced.
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What that is supposed to mean is
that I'm a total failure at relationships.
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And that is one way
to look at it, but not the only way.
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Because what I think really happened
is that I kept marrying the wrong person.
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No, it's not that I didn't--
it's not that I chose bad guys.
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My first two husbands were amazing men
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who are now married
to wonderful women who aren't me.
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(Laughter)
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And my third husband, well,
we're friends on Facebook now.
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So, all is well that ends well, right?
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After the collapse of
my third marriage in 2005,
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I realized that I've been marrying
everyone in sight,
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except the one person
that I really needed to marry
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in order to have a great relationship
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and that once I married that person,
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all of my relationships would be
successes, even the failures.
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The so-called failures, actually.
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Since we're talking today
about women inventing,
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I'm going to talk about
inventing relationships.
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What I've found through a lot of trial
and obviously, many, many, many errors,
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to be the thing that has
transformed my life and love,
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and that is this idea
of marrying yourself.
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So what does it mean to marry yourself?
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It's a big idea.
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It is as big as marriage itself
except, if I could just summarize it,
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it would be that you enter
into a relationship with yourself
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and then you put a ring on it.
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(Laughter)
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In other words,
you commit to yourself fully.
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And then you build
a relationship with yourself
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to the point where you realize
that you're whole right now,
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that there is no man, woman, job,
circumstance that can happen to you
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that is going to make you more whole
because you already are.
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And this changes your life.
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By now, I'm sure at least
some of you are wondering
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why you should be listening
to a three-time divorcee
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talk about marriage?
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(Laughter)
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Even to herself. And I understand that.
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Here's what I have to say about that:
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what I've learned and my experience is
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that the places where you have
the biggest challenges in your life
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become the places where you
have the most to give
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if you do your inner work.
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I kind of want to say that again:
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the places where you have
the biggest challenges
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are the places where you
have the most to give.
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So let me tell you a little bit
about the person I truly needed to marry:
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myself.
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I am from Minneapolis. Wooh!
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(Laughter)
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My mom was a prostitute and an alcoholic.
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She put me in foster care
when I was three months old.
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My dad was a criminal;
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he was a drug dealer and a pimp
with a heart of gold
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- actually, they both had hearts of gold -
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and he spent more or less
my whole life in prison.
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He just got out of prison
after his most recent sentence
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which was 20 years.
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Until the age of nine, I was probably
in two dozen foster homes.
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The thing you need to know
about this story
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- there are a lot of details, obviously -
but the thing you need to know
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is that I came out of that childhood
with one goal: to never be left.
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The way I was going to do that
is that I was going to get married.
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That was the way I was going
to accomplish that goal.
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So I got married the first time
to a guy I met when I was 17.
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We got married a couple
of years later, when I was 19.
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He was a really good guy
from a great family, he had an MBA.
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I mean, it was like,
you know, marriage material.
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You know, I was thrilled.
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I was like, "I have a family.
I belong somewhere. This is wonderful."
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And then after five years I left him.
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Then ten years later, I got married again
to another wonderful guy,
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who is the father of my
now 16-years-old son.
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We still have a wonderful relationship.
He is a really good guy.
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But after four years I left him, too.
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And I am not proud to say that I did that,
but in order to really marry yourself,
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you have to get sometimes
very painfully honest with yourself
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about what it is that you've done.
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So I'm not proud of that.
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Then eight years later,
I got married again, when I was 40,
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and I was like, "OK, this feels right!"
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Let me tell you what felt right
to a girl who was in 24 foster homes:
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a guy who started to date
after nine months of marriage;
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essentially, he started dating
a 21-year-old girl.
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OK, I mean, it would be funny,
if it weren't so tragic.
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You have to have a sense of...
that is why we're Facebook friends.
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So, here I am looking
at this person that I just described
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with a terrible track record
of relationships,
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and I'm like, "I'm supposed to marry her?
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This is the woman
you want me to marry?"
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And the answer is yes.
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Because here is the deal:
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the thing about marrying yourself
is not just like cohabitating.
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You're not just going to date
for a while and see how it turns out.
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You are going to do this
till death do you part.
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You are going to take vows.
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So here are the vows.
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Number 1:
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you are going to marry yourself
for richer or for poorer.
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This means you are going
to love yourself right where you are.
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You don't say to yourself, "When you get
to the corner of Hollywood and Vine,
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then I will marry you."
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You don't say, "When you lose
ten pounds, then I will love you."
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And you don't say, "If you hadn't
married that loser, I would love you,
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but since you did,
I'm sorry, I think it's over."
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When you marry yourself,
you walk yourself down that aisle
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exactly where you are.
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And paradoxically, I found
that loving myself exactly where I am
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is the only way to get where I am going.
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Number 2:
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you are going to marry yourself
for better or for worse.
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What this means is that most of us
are willing to love ourselves for better,
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I mean, sure, I am having
a great hair day today.
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I love me.
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(Laughter)
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That's not what I am talking about.
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I'm talking about for worse,
you know, the big life disappointments.
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Maybe you don't own a home,
you didn't get the career you wanted,
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maybe you didn't graduate from college,
or get the relationship you wanted.
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Maybe it hasn't turned out--
maybe you fight with your mum,
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maybe you watch too much reality TV,
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whatever it is, it doesn't matter anymore.
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Because when you marry yourself,
you agree to stay with you no matter what.
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Third,
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you marry yourself
in sickness and in health.
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What this means is that you forgive
yourself for your mistakes.
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A mistake isn't actually a failure
unless you don't learn from it
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and unless you don't grow.
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There is a saying, "You ask for patience,
and what you get is a line at the bank."
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(Laughter)
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What that means is that life
does not give you what you've asked for,
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it gives you the people,
places, and situations
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that allow you to develop
what you ask for.
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And the thing is if you don't get it
right the first time,
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life will give it to you again.
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(Laughter)
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Because life is very generous that way.
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It's like I didn't get it the first time,
in the first marriage,
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and I didn't get it the second time,
maybe the third time I'll get it.
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So inside that terrible experience
of that third marriage,
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I learned something
about "in sickness and in health".
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What I learned is how to sit
by my own bedside,
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and how to hold my own hand,
and how to nurse myself,
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and how to comfort myself.
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What I learned is that I am
a person that I can count on.
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Last but not least, you marry yourself--
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when you marry yourself,
it's to have and to hold yourself.
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What does it mean to have and to hold?
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Well, I think it means
that you love yourself
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the way you want
someone else to love you.
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I had always been going
through life with this sense of lack.
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I felt like I was kind of half a person,
and that I was missing something.
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I went into my relationships
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hoping to solve this feeling
that I had my entire life:
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that I was not whole
unless someone loved me.
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The truth was
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that I wasn't ever going to feel whole
until I learned to love myself.
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So this business of marrying yourself
transforms every area of your life:
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your business, family relationships,
kids, social relationships, friends.
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Because when you marry yourself,
this huge thing happens:
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you become able to love
in this whole new way.
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You become able to love other people
right where they are, for who they are,
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the same way you're already
loving yourself.
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And of course, this is
what the world needs more of.
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So when I married myself, and I realized
that I already had everything I needed,
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I started seeing it as my job
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to basically just light up
my little corner of the world.
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That's my new job.
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Because I don't need anything,
I already have it.
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So when I take meetings,
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it's all about how can I help
this person achieve her goal?
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When I'm in my social communities,
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it is like what can I bring
to this that only I can bring?
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When I go on dates,
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it is like how can I just discover
another person maybe for just one hour
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which, of course, brings me a full circle.
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Because people always asked me
about my love life; they want to know.
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(Laughter)
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You know, the answer is,
I am still working on it.
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Aren't we all?
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So this is where I am right now.
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About three months ago,
I went on a first date.
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About 30 minutes into the date,
I found myself paying attention
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not to whether he liked me,
but how I felt in his presence.
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I noticed that I was light, happy, joking.
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As I reflected on the date afterwards,
I was like, "Wow, I got really excited!
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Look, this is how committed
I am to myself."
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I am not even on this date
trying to get someone to like me.
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I am more interested in how I feel
about me than how he feels about me,
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not because I am selfish,
but because the only relationship
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I am ever going to have
with another person
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is the one that I am
already having with myself -
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just going to have it with them now.
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So it turned out he liked me,
and we are still together.
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It's cool and amazing,
but I've been married three times,
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so slow down!
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(Laughter)
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The thing is that I am not trying
to get security from him through marriage,
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and, God forbid, a baby carriage.
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I am only here to
just be in a relationship.
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I am not dying to hear the words,
"Will you marry me?"
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Because even though
those words are very powerful
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- and very powerful to a person like me -
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I don't need them to hear it from him
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because I have already
heard them from myself.
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The way I see it is like I took myself
to the top of a mountain,
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or maybe to the bottom of the ocean,
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and I got down on one knee,
and I said, "I'll never leave you."
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And now I am married to the one person
I really wanted to be with all along,
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myself.
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(Applause)
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Thank you.
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(Applause)
