To Wed Or Not To Wed?
Him that I love, I wish to be free -- even from me.
-- Anne Morrow Lindbergh
So, Danny and I have been thinking about getting married. No, it does not mean we are about to do it; it means that we are, for the first time, seriously considering it. The people who know us for a long time know that we always firmly opposed to getting married. So, did we change our mind? In a single word - yes; we had a few strong reasons to oppose marriage, but recently we discovered that a) one of them doesn't hold water b) there are pretty good reasons to get married (that we haven't considered before, or that weren't important to us before). Unfortunately, our other reasons do still hold, so we are a bit torn on this right now.
The main thing that was not so important to us in the past, but that we came to realize as very important is: to send the right message to the world about the nature of our relationship.
Danny and I are family.
We have been together for nine years now, sharing a home for eight and half of them, and we have one of the most blissful relationships I have ever seen. And whether we like it or not, the language that our society uses to denote this kind of relationship is "husband and wife". "Boyfriend and girlfriend" are simply not taken as seriously. Even when people realize how long we are together, they still think that if we are not married, it means there's something wrong - which couldn't be further away from the truth. All this time I used to roll my eyes at how people "just assume" things; but then I realized that it's partially my fault. I can't ignore the accepted language and then complain about being misunderstood! If we want to announce to the entire world that we are a family, by far the simplest way to do it is to just get married already.
And speaking of family - families receive lots of substantial legal benefits. These come in two broad categories: 1) Precautions for if shit happens 2) Money.
The second one is simple - we could have tax deductions, health insurance benefits, and many similar things which in the end simply translate into more money for us if we are legally married. And it's pretty big money. We definitely want it. The "shit happens" refers to one of us dying or falling seriously ill (or committing a crime, although that's less important :-)). I want Danny, not my mom, to make medical decisions if I'm not capable to. I want Danny to have hospital visitation rights. When I die, I want Danny to inherit whatever is left, and I want him to take care of my remains the way I would want to (I know that my parents would not abide by my wishes on that one). We kind of ignored all these things before, but they are quite important.
One of our major reasons not to get married was: we have an open relationship; so despite being together, we are both romantically and sexually available. We didn't want to send the wrong message about this. But we came to realize we were very wrong. Let's separate it into two cases: the message we send to the non-monogamous community and the message we send to the rest of the world. To the non-monogamous community, I suppose it doesn't really matter. I think it is mostly because the non-monogamous people know how misleading the labels can be and tend to make a lot less default assumptions about other people's relationships. They know that relationships come in many forms and flavors, and you never know what exactly is going on until you actually talk with the people involved. But I guess that even for this community, marriage is a simple way to state that we have a deep, intimate bond and consider each other family.
The message that we send to the monogamous people is more important. Firstly, because there are many more of them :-) And secondly, Danny and I have to deal with the fact that for the vast majority of people around us, we are the only polys they know. One of the reasons we were never in the closet is that poly will not be considered normal until people start to see more polys around them - especially among their friends and family members (much the same as homosexuality didn't begin to be considered normal until more gays started to come out). And the more people make themselves visible, the easier it becomes for others. But until then, basically, it falls on people like Danny and me to represent polyamory to the outside world. And one of the most basic and immediate mistakes that people make when first hearing about open relationships is: they assume that an open relationship just can't be serious. Usually, stating that ours has nine years is sufficient to cause surprise and cast some doubt, but this fact is not as easy to slip in as casually mentioning husband/wife; besides, they then take the fact that we are not married as further evidence that we are not serious (or that we have problems). In the beginning, I used to think that it's just another myth that I want to dispel (that "serious" people want to get married), but I discovered that combating two stereotypes at once is a bit too much. Besides, as I said, it's about the language. The main message I want to send is: Danny and I love each other, are blissfully happy together, and plan for this happiness to continue indefinitely. There is a commonly accepted language for all that. It's called marriage.
Now, our other reasons for not being married.
The first has to do with the concept of commitment. People use this word a lot in the context of relationships. It's not easy to pin down its meaning, because it means a whole slew of things. A "committed relationship" is often used as simply a synonym of "deep, intimate bond that the people regard to be a very important part of their lives". It also means that if problems or obstacles arise, the people will try hard to overcome them rather than to just end the relationship. It also means that the people trust each other deeply, and provide help and support to each other. All that is certainly true about Danny and me; but it avoided the elephant in the room - the actual, literal meaning of the word "commitment".
Commitment is a very important concept in the business world. Basically, it means "obligation". A person committing to something is willingly accepting an obligation, restricting his freedom of choice. Why would someone want to restrict their own freedom? In many contexts, it is extremely useful. To put it broadly: this is the only acceptable price one can pay in order for the transaction to succeed in the cases where one has an incentive to "pull out early". For example, a company offers their employees a cool course which will improve their performance. But in return, they need the employees to commit to keep working for that firm for the next two years - or else. Why is this a reasonable demand? Because the firm is investing into these people, and if they pull out early, it will lose money; and the firm recognizes that they have an incentive to do exactly that. They can take for free a course for which they would pay good money outside, increase their market value, and then go get a better paying job elsewhere. So in this case, the firm is right to demand some commitment before providing the goods. That way it ensures that no matter what happens, it won't lose money.
Now let's go back to romantic relationships. How did commitment get in there in the first place? Well, back in the old days when women were property, marriage was a business transaction with exactly the same incentive game going on. Women provided the goods (sex), but after having provided them to someone, the market value of a woman sharply decreased. Women did not work; they were totally dependent on the financial support of men. Therefore, it was vital that in order to gain access to the goods, the provider had to commit; otherwise, after having the sex, he would have a good incentive to run off and save money. Also, the market value of a woman decreased with time. It was a common understanding that, as a woman ages, the man will invariably want to trade her for a younger one, and commitment is the only way to try and prevent this from happening. So, basically, in the old days commitment was necessary, because otherwise women would die of hunger.
But now all that has changed. Now, both women and men work and provide for themselves. Now, the value of a person as a partner does not decrease after having had sex. Now, when two people have a child, they are both required by law to provide for it, regardless of whether they are married or not. Now, if the relationship ends, the people are left in a symmetric situation, not depending on their gender. Now, in a relationship, people provide "goods" of similar value to each other, there is no imbalance of a woman making a big initial investment, which the man has then to gradually match. So, I ask: what's the point of commitment now? Is it still necessary?
Let's leave children aside for now. Do we still think that unless a guy is married, he will want to run off? Do we really honestly believe this when saying the "I do"s? That unless we make him sign this legally binding contract with some terrible "or else" clauses during a publicly witnessed ceremony, our partner will want to leave us?
I don't think that people really think like this. Because if they did, they'd see that the reasoning doesn't work. What I mean is this: if Danny ever wants to leave me, I want him to be free to do it. It really doesn't work if he stays just because he had to, because he was committed. I want him to be with me only if he really, honestly, currently, prefers being with me to not being with me. Otherwise, his presence is worthless. Of course, as I said before, both of us are pretty sure that if we ever encounter problems, we will want to work on them rather than just split (duh!), because our relationship adds a huge amount of value to our life. But suppose some unbelievable shit happened that made Danny not want to try and fix things. Suppose some really unfixable shit happened, and now he just wants to run away. Would I then want to hold his earlier feelings against him and make him stay? Also, do I want him to pay money to me if he goes?
Children are a huge commitment, of course. The ultimate one, actually. But I still don't see how marriage helps in this, commitment wise. There are cases where the couple decide to stay together only for the sake of the children. So, does the reasoning go that if they were not married, then they would make a different decision? With the same children? I don't get it!
So that's why I always was (and still am) proud to call Danny my boyfriend - because this title means that he is completely free with me. It means that the last thing I want to do is to trap him, to use his current feelings as leverage against him in the future. It means that he is with me because he so chooses - every day anew. No commitment required - in its economic, original sense.
Well, and also, I have to admit that one of the reasons not to get married is because changing our mind after so many years of smugly declaring how we were firmly against it will feel like giving up :-) We will feel stupid. The people who know will laugh at us! But that's a very wrong reason not to do it, and I'm writing it down in an attempt to emotionally separate it from the other reasons. Changing our mind and feeling stupid are positive things. They mean growth.
So, to sum up, we're still torn. On the one hand, we want to publicly declare each other family, because that's who we are, and we want to send the right message to the world. And we want the benefits. But on the other hand, we also want to send the right message that we are both free in this relationship and nothing keeps us in except for the fact that we totally love it every day. We want to send the right message that we are both romantically and sexually available. But on the other hand, we want to send the message that we love each other, are very important to each other, and our lives are joined at the hip - so any other relationship will have to take that into account.
I think I'm leaning towards doing it after all. It all boils down to redefining what marriage means.
Click to viewTrue, both being married and not being married are not labels that fit us 100%. But that is true for a lot of people, and nowadays this variety becomes more and more a part of the meaning of marriage. And that's a good thing; it's a process I want to take part in. Each marriage is different; the meaning and the rules are determined by the people involved. So, I guess, although it will be choosing one option of the two, in reality it is the middle ground solution - use an accepted label in order to help redefine it.