As a child, I knew I would never marry. Even before I realised, at a tender young age, that I was a lesbian, I knew it wasn’t for me. I knew that weddings happened in churches, weddings involved kissing a man, weddings involved a sea of quiet eyes focussed on you, weddings involved kissing a man in front of a sea of quiet eyes focused on you, weddings made you a boring grown up, weddings relegated you to a life of school runs and taxes. This continued into adulthood – in past relationships, I have never felt the strong desire to marry. It just felt irrelevant to me – something other people did, and I was happy to leave it at that. The important thing about all this is that I have never felt that romantic partnerships inevitably led to marriage, that that was endgame.
The best way I can think to describe my desire to marry H is to refer to the end of Girl Meets Boy, by Ali Smith. There’s an elaborate description of an imaginary wedding scene, of every festivity and celebration imaginable, grandiose and raucous, and then “what I mean is, we stood on the bank of the river under the trees, the pair of us, and we promised the nothing that was there, the nothing that made us, the nothing that was listening, that we truly desired to go beyond our selves. And that’s the message. That’s it. That’s all.”
I feel about her like I have never felt about anything before. I don’t know what words to choose, because no words said to me before this could have conveyed it to me. I don’t know how to make you understand, but to hope that you will. The words I would choose would be – altruism, tenderness, softness, quietness, constant awe. Goosebumps, counting-down-the-minutes anticipation. I feel like I’ve found my co-pilot. We met on a tram. As per Eleanor Catton, “what’s the likelihood? That the one girl who makes my heart race is the one who wants me in return? That the accident of my attraction coincides with the accident of hers?” This serendipity, this grandness and the small moments. I told her I loved her on the riverbank, on a dark spring evening, as party boats cruised past playing party songs. I want my life to be linked to hers, my love to be linked to hers, through every ritual and antiquation I can find. I want the sea of eyes focused on us as ours are focused on each other. I want everybody to understand the promises I will make to her, even if I haven’t found the words yet myself.
We aren’t marrying for reproduction. We aren’t marrying to legitimise the sex that we have. We aren’t marrying for religion. We aren’t marrying for property. We aren’t marrying to isolate ourselves from our community. Our marriage will be feminist, a home for us to grow personally and politically, a safe place to view the world from. Our marriage will become part of the institution, perhaps slightly shifting what it means to be married. We will be married, and we will choose the parts of it that we want. There will be no aisle, we will not wear meringue dresses, we will not change our names, we will not wear garters, we will not have a professional photographer, we will not have a wedding registry. We will get married outside and then get drunk and eat tacos and dance to Womack & Womack with the people we love around us. – I write all this, forgetting that we won’t really even be married. Doesn’t that just prove my point? We’ll be legally married in New Zealand, but when we return to Australia it will be as if nothing has changed – except for us. We have talked about what it will feel like, being married – will we feel a cementing of our bond, a previously unspoken togetherness now closer through the speaking? Will we feel the same, just with a great party under our belts?
There are elements of succumbing to the mainstream. I never thought I would be able to give my parents this particular happiness. To them, there is nothing radical about my wedding. They are hugely excited. They were a little disconcerted by the lack of diamonds, but unperturbed by my female partner. We all live in different places. My mother was fortuitously in town from another continent when we decided to get married. We told her less than an hour later, in a Gangnam-themed Korean restaurant, and we held hands in a circle and cried over our bibimbap. Even in my broader family, I have only been asked “so who will be the husband and who will be the wife?” twice. This is privilege! I get to be mainstream because I am privileged. I default to it.
It’s important to establish that I don’t think marriage is the Issue of our Times. I don’t want to be part of some marriage crusade, bringing marriage to all the people, marching on parliament to cry emotively about the primacy of this as the last frontier we need to overcome. Things that are more important: trans rights, of any kind. Homelessness. The fact that so many LGBTI kids and adults, especially POC, are excluded from education and safety and work and housing and healthcare. What’s happening on Manus Island, to asylum seekers LGBTI and otherwise. Marriage is a false panacea, a keyword, a marker of false liberalism, a get out of jail free card for politicians. It should be exposed for that.
I think it’s wrong that married people are granted rights that people outside of it aren’t. – whether people do not marry by choice, or are in relationships that society does not extend the option of marriage to, why should they not be extended the same privileges? I think many things about marriage in its traditional form are wrong. I question the extent to which I am complicit in these wrongs by choosing to take this path with H. Can we do this as I hope, in a way that is not neoliberal and exclusionary?
It’s fucked up, it’s confusing.
Ultimately, I also think that there are bigger, more important things in the world to direct our outrage towards than queers accessing marriage.
Ultimately, I love her.
<3<3<3
Thanks for sharing!!
This was absolutely wonderful. Thank you so, so much for sharing it.
“This serendipity, this grandness and the small moments. I told her I loved her on the riverbank, on a dark spring evening, as party boats cruised past playing party songs. I want my life to be linked to hers, my love to be linked to hers, through every ritual and antiquation I can find.” This is lovely. Thanks for sharing.
I loved this passage so much – it gave me chills (good chills!).
This is wonderful. Thank you.
…Buying that Ali Smith book right away.
Its a very cute book :3
This is absolutely wonderful. I am feeling all the feels right now because my boyfriend and I just broke up this weekend. He said (and I agreed) that we were the best partners either of us had ever had, but he didn’t have those feelings.
And part of me is like “but a generation ago we would have just married anyway, and we would have been happy because we are kind and decent and make a good team!”
So tell me more, Toasties, about the difference between a solidly good team and someone you want to be your co-pilot. Because I need to believe that this story will happen to me too.
(Also I know I am derailing your beautiful story with something that is about me. But just for this comment sub-thread.)
For me, it’s the difference between resenting the intrusion on my tiny slice of precious “me” time and being excited to see the other person.
This. Someone I actually *want* to share space with, someone I’m always happy to see again.
i’m sorry. that’s a hard position to be in. it sucks.
i think the specifics of what makes a good copilot are different for many people. for me, i am getting married because he feels like home. because even when we both want to beat our heads off things in frustration, we always end up reaching out and aiming for understanding eventually. because our relationship is challenging but never unstable, and we both have an unshakable commitment to working on it even when it’s already doing great. because every time i think about doing something in my future the most exciting part is getting to share it with him.
This right here. I’ve been with my husband 12 years, married 6, and you’ve just described everything that’s good and right about our relationship.
Last night I dreamt that a hot movie star dude (Fassbender? Hemsworth? someone blond) fell crazy in love with me. It was very flattering, of course, to have this amazing guy be so into me.
But then he asked me to leave my husband and run away with him, and I just looked at him incredulously. Are you kidding? Leave him? He’s the best person I’ve ever met. He encourages me to be the best person I can be. He’s part of my foundation. So I blew off hot celebrity.
And this is how I feel about him in waking life, too. It hasn’t always been easy, and there are times when he’s demanding and annoying and inflexible and a giant pain in the ass, but it’s worth it. I hope with all my heart that you find your co-pilot, that person who loves all of you and makes you a better you. Hugs.
Thank you 🙂
Last night, I saw my ex-boyfriend for the first time in a while. We were together over five years, lived together for over three years, and have been split for 3 months. We broke up for a few reasons, but the final FINAL reason was because he decided it just wasn’t worth the effort anymore to keep it going. The feelings he might have had once were gone, and he felt they couldn’t be resurrected to the same heights, so it was time to end things. But, I had argued at the time, we make a damn good team! We helped each other through obstacles we never could have handled alone! Like you and your ex, we both agreed when we broke up that we were the best partners each other had ever had! How could he give up on this, when we worked so well together in so many ways?!
Last night, he stopped at my new studio to grab a box of his things I accidentally took when I moved out of the apartment we shared. He meant to stay for a minute, but one minute turned into staying for 10 minutes to pet the cat, and then staying for 2+ hours for dinner and conversation. In that conversation, he asked after my sister, who just had a baby. I caught him up on the lives of some friends of mine that he had met before but wasn’t particularly close to. He told me some funny stories about his new housemate, a kind man 50 years his senior, that made me laugh so hard I got hiccups. I gave him some advice on a situation he’s dealing with, and he seemed genuinely interested in hearing what I had to say. When he left, we hugged each other and I kissed him on the cheek, told him to drive safely and to take care, all while not knowing when I would talk to or see him again.
I don’t know the answer to your question. But, I do know this: last night I watched my ex-lover – my best friend of so long – walk away from my door for probably the first and last time, and I silently accepted that he was not and was never going to be my co-pilot. Sure, our conversation showed, we made a damn good team, and worked together so damn well in so many ways. But he was no Louise to my Thelma. If I had proposed that he step on the gas and go over that cliff with me, he never would have pressed the pedal. I don’t know what’s ahead, but to continue this metaphor I’d rather be driving the car alone and going over that cliff (or not), than be with someone who’s not in it with me 100%. I’ll find my Louise some day, but til then, nobody else but ME is deciding whether the pedal hits the metal or not.
I don’t know if this is helpful to you, but I felt compelled to share and I hope it brings you some measure of comfort. Hugs to you.
Thank you! I keep thinking too that I’m used to a lot of things being sorta-mostly-okay (jobs, apartments, etc.) and it would be nice to shoot for 100% WONDERFUL in at least one area of life.
And you absolutely should!! Because you are a wonderful, precious person and you deserve to have something that is 100% wonderful in all areas of life – but, I think, especially co-pilot, because everything else can suck if you have a co-pilot to plunge through the storms with (and conquer them in a manner befitting Storm or a weather goddess because that is what Toasties do). I think sometimes we have THE ONE for a bit of time, and maybe it’s not forever, so they’re not THE CO-PILOT ONE but ONE of THE ONES, and that’s okay and really quite profound and lovely to have someone be with you through part of your life, even if they don’t stick out the whole thing.
I have said goodbye to two people before now that I was very much in love with – and have seen them both since and are friendly if not friends, and it ached and was painful to see them and know that we’d had something so special and it made me so sad that we couldn’t make it work for different reasons. But ultimately, we couldn’t make it work (though they will always be special to me). I have found someone since who’s pretty freaking amazing as a person and in the way that he loves me, even though sometimes he drives me up the goddamn wall, and I have no idea right now if he’s a co-pilot or just ONE of THE ONES (I’m leaning towards co-pilot but we shall see), but the way we are willing to work with each other, even when we’re hurt and angry, is so different from the relationships I’ve had before it kind of blows my mind sometimes. I think maybe that’s it, the willingness to stick it out, because we think we’re worth it.
I guess the point is that having ONE of THE ONES who may not be a co-pilot is a painful thing to realize when they leave, but also such a rich thing to have in your life, even if now it’s in your past. You absolutely will find your co-pilot, and I believe you will know when it happens. I think some people can find the person they work well with who isn’t a co-pilot and are completely content and happy with that and make it work and don’t want anything more and that is a wonderful thing. But you can have more if you want it, and you deserve it, and I believe you will find it.
Relationship talk tends to get me all choked up dangit. Hugs to you and everyone else here who wants one.
HUGSSSSSSS
My grandmother told me you would know because when you washed his smelly gym socks, you wouldn’t even mind. I am also queer, and we each do our own laundry, so I cannot entirely vouch for this in practice. But I feel that if for some reason I needed to wash her socks, it would not be a big deal? We’ve been together 12 years. Take all of this for whatever it’s worth.
I can’t answer your question directly. But I think that an answer of sorts lies in the author’s mention of the serendipity of attraction. There are moments of chance, where the subject intense attraction is also intensely attracted.
To the article author; thank you for writing this. Despite being a female with a male, this is exactly how I feel about marriage and my partner with the exception of the “male” word in the kissing in front of lots of people part.
This is beautiful. (And Girl Meets Boy is one of my favemost books ever, go read it everyone!)
This is achingly beautiful, and also pours some light onto my hesitations about marriage that I couldn’t quite articulate. Please keep writing!!
This is lovely and poignant, thank you. I still vacillate on marriage – sometimes it seems unrealistic that we expect one person to be our Person for life – but I know I am lesser without my ladyfriendpartnerperson. She is my modifier: she doesn’t complete me, but she makes me better, stronger, softer, more compassionate, kinder, more open, happy.
Plus, she’s a total babe, like, “oh man, what is a girl like this doing with a girl like me” kind of babe. It’s unreal sometimes.
I don’t exactly know how I feel about this. It sort of reads to me like “Everyone’s marriage is fakey bullshit except mine, mine is *real* and *special* and *amazing.*” I’m glad writer is happy! But, you know, a lot of people feel like this about the person they marry? I feel like the real story here is “I said a lot of shitty things about marriage when other people wanted it, but now I want it., which is totally different.”
I don’t know, everyone else seemed really charmed by the piece, so maybe I’m the one with the issue.
I read it more as a response to/thoughts on two different things:
a) what happens when, after believing for a length of time that marriage is not For You, suddenly it is
b) the idea that there are more important things to be expending time/energy on than equal marriage rights, and if you’re paying insufficient attention to those things, you’ve done something wrong
I don’t know, it’s hard to articulate, in a way? I don’t think your read on it is invalid, though, and I agree with the points you’ve made. I’ll just awkwardly leave this here and sidle crabwise out of the comment box, don’t mind me.
agree – I think it is hard and weird for people who are Totally Opposed To Marriage Because Of Various Reasons Possibly Having To Do With Politics/History/Herstory/Not Wanting To Be Complicit in Heteronormative Patriarchal Bullshit And Traditions That Treat Women as Objects And Are Exclusionary To Queer People And Also Economically Sanctioned By The State Fuck You Patriarchal State (I haven’t thought about this a lot at all no [definitely had a wild outburst in my Rhymes With Witch Women’s Studies class about how Evil the Institution of Marriage is once and after that people were kind of afraid every time I raised my hand in class]), who find themselves with a person they want to marry, because actually marriage, when you divorce it (hurr hurr hurr) from basically all of its horrible and expensive traditions and stupid historical prejudiced bias, is really a lovely idea – committing to spending your life with one person forever because you love them that goddamn much and YOU WANT THE WHOLE WORLD TO SEE AND KNOW IT and affirm your love in every way available because LOVE THAT’S WHY LOVE. It’s weird and confusing, and difficult to reconcile with things you have thought before. And that’s how I read this. Though, as gripyfish said, I don’t think your read on it is invalid.
I promise I do not mean any of this answer to be flippant, I am on my second beer and I have a lot of feels about marriage that I am always trying to sort through so sorry here are all of my thoughts
Hello! I just woke up, so please excuse my sleepy writing.
I wrote this in response to feeling a bit like I was selling out in the eyes of some friends. I intended it in a “love/marriage is not fakey bullshit” way, rather than an exclusionary ‘only my marriage is not fakey bullshit!” way.
I’d say the real story was – I thought marriage was something just not on offer to me, or something that I wanted, because I’m a lesbian. Turns out it is – how great is that?
Plus what gripeyfish said.
I’m sorry it reads like that!
I don’t think you should be sorry! It’s very beautifully written, and like I said, given the overall positive response, I suspect I’m putting a lot of stuff on it that’s not necessarily there. I guess as someone who always liked marriage and had zero problem looking for a nice lady to marry, I’m just a little sensitive about seeing the same people who harangued me for years about my Heteronormative Patriarchal State-Sanctioned whatever — now lining up to get married. Like I guess in some weird way I demand an apology? From someone? Which doesn’t make it your personal responsibility to pitch only articles that are about my feelings, and I don’t think you should apologize for having written your own story that isn’t about that.
Love this article, it has that special, manic energy I hope awaits me each morning.
The truth about marriage. It’s a vast undiscovered country, but when you get there, turns out it’s just the two of you dressed really nice, on your way to a party.
How sacred, special, magical, enduring it is, depends on fate, each of you, and the two of you together.
I have spent all day working on planning for my big gay Jewish wedding. I shall now read this essay to my fiancee. Thank you so much for this.
I loved this. I spent so many years wanting someone to be a Co-Pilot, and finding acceptance that the very idea of a relationship like that was a narrative being sold to the masses was painful. And then surprise! Not a narrative! It’s a real actual thing!
I love the pushing back against the expectation that marriage is the natural ending to being in love and that being in love is always forever, but I ALSO love celebrations of love and of learning that something you always thought was maybe a little bit wrong!
I agree about the silly notion that marriage is the “natural” ending to romance (what do most people know about nature or Nature? Why is marriage some sort of celebratory Ending? That’s weird.).
But also, I hate the idea that you aren’t in a proper relationship unless married or “heading there”. One of my main reasons for disliking marriage is a mulish desire to live a committed marriage for life without an actual marriage. So there, sheeples! Bah.
A lovely piece! I’m currently in the “I’ll never marry” stage, which started when I was like 10 along with the aversion to enter any sort of relationship. During most of my teens, I thought I was a sort of nonfunctioning hetero (look at the boys, self: nothing! How about…the girls? Still nothing!) until I learned the concept of asexuality last year. So I’m always happy whenever I read vastly diverse POVs and experiences, like this. Thank you, and I’m glad for you!
A lovely piece! I'm currently in the "I'll never marry" stage, which started when I was like 10 along with the aversion to enter any sort of relationship. During most of my teens, I thought I was a sort of nonfunctioning hetero (look at the boys, self: nothing! How about…the girls? Still nothing!) until I learned the concept of asexuality last year. So I'm always happy whenever I read vastly diverse POVs and experiences, like this. Thank you, and I'm glad for you!
I started crying at two different points during reading this. You are a wonderful writer. I’m so happy for you two!
Love this article, it has that special, manic energy I hope awaits me each morning.
The truth about marriage. It's a vast undiscovered country, but when you get there, turns out it's just the two of you dressed really nice, on your way to a party.
How sacred, special, magical, enduring it is, depends on fate, each of you, and the two of you together.