When you’re gay and get married, sometimes it feels like coming out all over again.
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I get a lot of interesting questions about my relationship now that I’m married. Before, there wasn’t a universally accepted term for the fourteen-year couplehood we enjoyed. Now we’re suddenly among the pioneers claiming a familiar familial status for a nature that has until recently been quarantined on the outskirts of society as an alternative lifestyle, if not actually a psychopathology.
“So how does it feel…?”
One of the first questions I got after we came back from our honeymoon was, “So how does it feel to be married?” It’s something I’ve been paying attention to, because I honestly wasn’t sure what to expect, if anything. But the most accurate answer I’ve come up with was the one I gave my sister when she asked: “It’s idyllic,” I told her, “just the same as it ever was, but with gold rings and a sous-vide.”
(She knocked us out by getting us a professional sous-vide for our wedding, if you can imagine that. I might just have to write something separate about the impact that marvelous device is having on our cooking and shopping routines. But I digress.)
As it turns out, the little gold rings are actually a very interesting new component in our lives. We chose flat shiny ones that would develop a patina as we wore them, and we ritually wear them everywhere except in the shower. Clinking them together is a private message of love I like to imagine we share with married couples all around the world. And as they sparkle on the street, I’m noticing that the message they’re sending to strangers is more often than not a misleading one.
“Who’s the lucky lady?”
It’s fascinating to see how many people in my life just don’t realize that I’m not straight, no matter how obvious it seems to me, and how relentlessly I strive to make it general knowledge. A friend I see almost weekly, and have known for several years, caught sight of my new ring the other night. He congratulated me heartily, and then asked me, “Who’s the lucky lady?”
That was a real surprise, but only because I usually make a conscious effort to come out to friends early on. I replied, without taking the slightest offense, “Actually, it’s a gentleman.” I think I managed to handle it without making either of us uncomfortable.
The public nature of marriage first confronted me as we were picking out our rings in the first place. Letting the world know you are married is a lot like letting the world know you are gay or straight. Like sexual orientation, marital status is something that could be hidden just beneath the surface of any adult. Coming out as a married person is a choice that has to be made affirmatively, over and over again, for the rest of your life.
When I first started telling people I wasn’t straight, I didn’t realize that coming out wasn’t something that happened all at once, but a life-long process. These rings we wear are a shorthand symbol of belonging, intended to affirm our affiliation with a select group who would recognize the significance of the display. For those who pay attention, and those to whom it makes a difference, the rings will save us the trouble of coming out as married people.
It’s kind of cool to realize that my marriage is even increasing the intimacy I have with existing friends. The ring attracts more discussion about my relationship, and invites questions and revelations. It’s a practical public display of affection, and I get to wear it on my hand everywhere I go.
“Did you marry a boy or a girl?”
Most of the people who wear wedding rings tend to be in heterosexual marriages. As a result, I’ve had casual acquaintances who knew I wasn’t straight, but who haven’t met my husband before, ask me questions like, “I hope this isn’t impolite, but did you marry a boy or a girl?”
That one’s always best answered by batting my eyelashes and confessing, “I married the man of my dreams.”
Do you think there’s some alternate universe in which such an innocent question could be misinterpreted as impolite? I certainly don’t take it that way. After all, it’s no more or less offensive to be mistaken for a straight person than it is to be mistaken for a gay person, right?
I know I’m vastly outnumbered, even in San Francisco, and most especially among the married folks. And I’m not so oblivious to social convention that I can pretend that the character of my marriage is something private and personal that shouldn’t matter to anyone other than myself and my spouse. My wedding ring now invites a different and more resilient automatic assumption about who I am.
Ambassador of Good Will
There’s an implied obligation to be an ambassador of good will when you are among the first to introduce a new twist on a time-honored convention. That seems perfectly natural to me, and I hope I’m up to the challenge.
We are all part of a larger social organism. We all have to choose constantly and actively to belong. And if there isn’t an obvious existing role that matches who and what we are, it is up to each of us to find a way to make what we bring to the table add value to the whole. I think it’s incumbent upon each of us to be solid role models for others who share our special qualities, without denying our true nature by assimilating into something easy, familiar, unthreatening, or false.
It’s great that the people I encounter are comfortable asking what’s on their minds. I’m pleased if my wedding ring provides a new opportunity to draw the world around me into a reflective conversation about what it means to be different, and how we all can find ways to fit into society without denying our true natures.
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Originally published: Medium
Photo: Jeff Belmonte/Flickr
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