Brave Marriages

It’s so heartening to hear all of you talking about marriage and being a wife (or a husband) and what it means to you, and what it can mean for each of us, and about the ways in which we are *choosing* the life we want to lead. And the amazing emails just keep coming. After the discussion after the Crying In The Car post, the lovely lady behind Sapphic Housewife sent me this email that made me, well, cry. She articulated what I’ve been trying to talk about so beautifully, and in a way I never could. And, after the heartbreak in Maine this week, she reminds me of what we are fighting for. Because in the end, marriage equality is about all of our marriages. It’s about who we are, and who we want to become. So, without further ado, the Sapphic Housewife:

I know how I feel about marriage. I want children. I want to be a stay-at-home mother if possible. I want a picket fence (I was thinking yellow or green instead of white though). I’ve felt this way for years. Meeting and dating and falling in love with a woman may have changed a lot in my life, but it never changed any of that.

But the thing is, my traditional view of marriage tends to make me more instead of less adamant about people not getting forced into cookie-cutters after they get married. Nobody should get to tell somebody what she’s supposed to become. Nobody should tell a woman in a heterosexual relationship that “it’s time” to get married or have kids or take up [insert name of craft]. And I don’t feel like anyone should tell LGBT couples that “it’s not time” because “the country’s not ready” for same-sex marriage and adoption rights. I’m ready. I’m ready to be a wife and mother. I’m ready to not have to file state taxes as “married” and federal as “single”, dammit. And millions like me are ready to be loving spouses and parents.

I feel lucky that my partner and I live in a time that few people bat an eye at the fact that we’re two different races. But sometimes I wish people would ask when my partner and I are going to start having children, about as much as I wish people would stop asking my heterosexual married friends who feel pressured by the question because they don’t know yet. Because the same thing that makes my marriage invisible has the potential to make everyone’s marriage invisible. We’re told that marriage is being a woman who does x and a man who does y who both stay on timeline z. There’s no room in that for who the couple is and who each of the individuals in it are.

But maybe if people expand their opinion of what marriage can be, they’ll also broaden their view of who it can include. So here’s to brave marriages!

(And for today, I’ll let that be our rallying cry.)

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