I did not share them last year, as they seemed so personal, and I was especially vulnerable. But as I reflect on them now, I feel they are appropriate as a reflection on our marriage, and my love for Genevieve. Thanks too to our tribe of dear friends who made the wedding happen!
My Vows
This is the perfect wedding we could imagine, with our dearest friends, our tribe, our gathering of friends collectively exploring life’s blessings. Thank you! It is with your collective approval and embrace that we reframe our relationship today. Today, we move from the seemingly endless purgatory of being just fiancées in flux, to the bond of matrimony and formal devotion.
We have spent three years in our engagement, a peculiar period of incompletion and insecurity, a courtship extended by externalities. We did not want to plan our wedding until we were free to do so. Well, I don’t want to spend another day unwed to my Genevieve.
I am eternally grateful for having found Genevieve in this world. We share so much in our passions and joys that it feels like the resonant reverberation of mind and heart. Rather than looking at each other as static beings ensconced in a jewel box of perceived perfection, we share an embrace of a common process, an iterative algorithm — a philosophy of lifelong learning and a zest for exploring the frontiers of the unknown. In other words, I have been her greatest project of transformation, and I am blessed that she believed in my potential.
From roots in my childhood insecurities, I did not know if I had found romantic love. My core insecurity is that I do not believe I am lovable — that if someone truly knew me, they would not like what they see. So, I have spent my entire adult life projecting an image of myself and broadcasting my achievements as a surrogate for self-worth. This is emotionally crippling. I had never found friendship. For everyone in the room today, you only know me post-Genevieve. That is telling. All of you are here today because of Genevieve. We work well as a team, but without her, I would be a socially-isolated intellect eternally alone in this world.
So, all of you know me from my PG life — “Post-Genevieve.” You witness the warm afterglow of Genevieve’s effect on me, helping me blossom and metamorphose from the “love bug” as she called me, to a social-emotional butterfly.
Before Genevieve, I was sleepwalking through life, and a bit oblivious of what I was missing, how my core being was unfulfilled. I went 25 years without hosting a party, or even a dinner gathering like Friendsgiving. I drank a bottle of wine every couple days for a decade and thought nothing of it. Getting me to give up drinking is the most profound act of dedication and tough love that I have ever witnessed. I am trying to do the same with the smokers in our tribe, and I know how hard it is.
Many of you have noticed that we are always touching. We are always seated together. We are tactile creatures, yearning for more limbs, like the octopus. Her wide smile and propensity to laugh reverberates within me and those around us. And she is gracious and inherently maternal with my kids, and sometimes with me.
At Burning Man, we were awestruck by the placard at the base of a huge shiny statue of a loving couple. It read “In every lifetime, I will find you.”
We were meant to be together, and life has been but a test for us to find each other, in this simulation, and the billions of shard universes spawning around us.
I see vows as promises, and in a joyful sense, they are also privileges:
On this day, I give you my heart and my happiness. I give my promise that I will walk with you hand in hand wherever our journey leads us — living, learning, loving, together, forever.
With our pledge of devotion, I will work incessantly to bring you the safety and security of knowing that I am yours. Yours, and only yours. I will never leave you.
I will be your partner in parenthood as we rediscover childhood.
I will be your ally in conflict, your comrade in adventure, your consolation in disappointment, your accomplice in mischief.
I promise to love and care for you, and I will try in every way to be worthy of your love.
I promise above all else to live in truth with you. I give you my hand and my heart as a sanctuary of safety, a pledge of my love, devotion, faith and honor, as I join my life to yours.
For there is nothing we cannot face if we stand together.
For one lifetime with you could never be enough.
—
And to the love of my life, will you be my wife?
Mrs. Jurvetson, let this ring be a reminder of my love, and our promises made to each other, a circle made whole and a refraction of the beauty of our love.
(more wedding photos)
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