I have waited about 24 hours to make this post, and am still not sure what I want to say. Only that having the whole subject of same sex marriage in the news constantly has made me extremely depressed.
Lest you think I'm an extreme right winger, I will say right off the bat that I am not. I think it's great that people can marry whomever they want. And no I don't think allowing same sex marriage will undermine heterosexual marriage. What I do think is that allowing same sex marriage will force many same sex couples to re-evaluate their current relationships.
One of the wonderful things about so many same sex relationships (and probably a lot of opposite sex ones, too) is that they don't fit into a particular mold. Many many gay women, for example, continue to have an ex-lover or ex-partner as a "significant other". And gay women (and men too, often) are more likely than opposite sex partners to have an ex-lover as a close friend. I have known a few heterosexual women who did this. One was divorced by her husband because she didn't want to be an obedient little stay at home wife any more making dinner, but went to college at night instead. A few years later, after legally divorcing him, she became re-involved with her ex-husband, including having sex, but without the ties. They did not live together and it was off limits for him to tell her what to do with her time and money. The other stayed legally married to a husband who was chronically unemployed and chronically ill, but had lovers and often traveled alone, with a lover, or with a friend. She continued to financially support her husband in a house she had bought for the family because she decided it was cheaper than paying alimony.
Even if my partner and I were still a couple in the traditional sense, I can't imagine wanting to marry her. Like many men who have never had, shall we say, a "friendly relationship" with paid employment, she is not "marriageable". If we married the advantages would all be on her side, basically. Although really not. I am 15 years younger, so it really would do her no good to be able to collect my Social Security (which will be twice what she collects) because unless I get shot or run over by a bus, or have a fast growing type of cancer, I will probably outlive her.
So really there would be nothing in it for us. Which is about the national norm. There have been numerous magazine and newspaper articles (too numerous to try to link to here) about how lower income people are less likely to marry and less likely to stay married. Marriage is, after all, primarily an economic arrangement. If you want to have children, it is about making a family, but even then in many ways it is an economic arrangement. It is also an economic arrangement set up to benefit couples where there is an older, richer, partner who will probably die first,as the case that toppled DOMA bears out. The amount Edie Windsor paid in taxes is more than my entire net worth, and about 15 times my partner's. Lesbian solidarity aside, it is just hard for me to identify with that type of a problem. I have more identification with people who are worried that they will lose their food stamps because of the Sequester. My partner in fact is one of them.
So many things are whirling through my head. If I think of my partner and I as "spouses", I feel like a failure. I failed to "make a good marriage" as women, particularly women of my generation who got trapped in low-paying professions, were urged, if not by our own mothers, then by the larger culture, to do. I must not be an attractive woman if I ended up stuck as the household breadwinner for over 35 years.
When my partner and I were having a hard time (in fact we broke up, so in my mind if not in hers, she is an ex) I got a lot of help from a group called the Well Spouse which is for people whose spouses or partners are chronically ill. It helped me "reframe" my partner as, rather than a spouse, lover, or partner in the traditional sense, a beloved family member for whom I have promised to be responsible.
But I know, somewhere in her mind, are the what ifs. She is angry that I wouldn't even consider marriage, and no I wouldn't. So much as I think legalizing same sex marriage was the right thing to do, I would really rather be talking and thinking about something else.
I have said before, that I really don't want to marry anyone, the only exception being someone with a lot of money. Marrying rich is a win-win situation if you play your cards right. You get taken care of when you're married, and you get taken care of after your divorce.
If I don't think of my partner as a "spouse" I can feel good about being generous, rather than feeling like a patsy who has failed at the mating game.
So let's hope something else is in the news tomorrow and we can move on.
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