When the issue of same-sex marriage made a headline some six years ago, my partner Jim asked if I’d want to marry should such a law be enacted. I flippantly replied, “Oh, I already did that for thirty years. I guess not.” I thought of marriage as being a non-issue in my relationship with this Taurus-signed man who holds such a different take on ownership than do I as a laid-back Cancerian. I have almost no need for possessions and derive little joy from the fact that I own anything. And early on in our wooing I remember clearly stating this warning: “I can’t be owned.” In my response that day I forgot to ask him if he wanted me to marry him because I couldn’t conceive that he’d want to cede half of everything he owned to me or anyone else.
Then last month, my partner and I were invited to join another male couple who were celebrating their 25th anniversary. They got married officially under New York State law about a year ago, but for them, this May date was their real anniversary celebrating when they first got together as a couple.
Relationships without societal rules make their own sense of things. Surely this simple perception and constant insistence signals something important about marriage, about all things called marriage whether under civil law or religious tradition. When it comes to plain and simple language, marriage, wedding, and union are synonyms. It’s that simple; but of course, it’s never that simple. Nothing is that simple. In so declaring, I realize I have branded myself a liberal, an educated, sophisticated snob, and an ivory-tower thinker—one of those people who tries to confuse meanings in order to destroy the sureties of common life. Well, so be it, but I tell you I learned this way of thinking at a Bible college, a small enclave of rather conservative thinking, yet one dedicated to revisiting ancient documents (particularly the Bible) from the point of view of John Locke’s philosophy (firmly settled within the views of the Enlightenment). This task of finding ancient truth within newer structures of thinking opened a door in my imagination. Eventually I progressed beyond 18th century views opting for more contemporary ones that would present whatever truths could be gleaned from ancient traditions to inform and enrich current expressions of human life and meaning.
But back in the old days, my young adult days, I used to define marriage in this way: go to bed with one other person and you’ll wake up married. I guess back then I thought of marriage as a relationship blending sex and metaphysics. I was never very ceremonial in my approach to life. My casual take on things was almost as simple as a caveman bonking someone on the head and dragging them home to serve as a mate. For me, the issue is neither as tradition-bound with ceremonial oaths spoken before a judge or altar nor as clear cut as many folk would hope to think. Remember, I matured and married in the 1960s where ‘casual’ reigned. Now rather than argue any issues, I will simply tell my story, a story of marriages of several sorts.
At the ripe old age of twenty-one, I married a fine woman. Our personalities meshed. We were both dedicated to life and ministries within the church, which for us was a small denomination that refused to think of itself as a denomination, a non-sectarian, non-creedal collection of churches in which we both were reared. We were excited about the increasing self-revelations our marriage would entail and saved ourselves, as it were, for the marriage bed. (Of course, I had an introduction to sex years earlier from another boy with whom I had practiced kissing and intercrural bliss.) The marriage with Myrna provided satisfying experiences and opened us both to a wide range of interesting people and cultural activities. We loved one another and lived together a life rich in relationships.
Eventually I provided myself a dietary supplement to that marriage in the form of a long-standing affair with another man. I use this expression supplement because my vocabulary didn’t go beyond monogamy, bigamy, and polyandry. I didn’t have words for what I experienced. No one did. I didn’t take formal vows with my man partner but would have had they been available. I did assume responsibility in this new relationship. I deeply loved this man. I already realized what I wanted in life, what I had in my life with Myrna and my children, and honored what he seemed to want by way of a family. I kept our relationship warm but with some important distance. I soon enough realized I didn’t want to live with him. That would have been economically a disaster to say nothing of the costs to our careers, families, and dreams. Still I wanted a deep friendship with erotic communication. So I lived a kind of love that wasn’t simplistic, not love and marriage going together like a horse and carriage. What I wanted was love from him, and persisted nurturing it with him. That love has endured although its nature has changed over the years. All marriages experience such changes.
I didn’t explain all this to my wife who I judged would have found it just too odd. While open to life, she was a bit more traditional than I. Still, we had many levels of commitment to one another. When we moved too many miles distant from my husband, I realized I needed another one, actually several others. A man, who was a friend of my wife, assisted me with a deeply significant introduction into gay sex. We had fun. I had already told him I loved him (I’m sure it came across as simply the statement of a friend), but when he warned me we could play together but there had to be no feelings involved, I happily accepted his rules. Our dalliance would work better that way. I had no thought to leave my wife.
When that affair cooled down, I wondered whether he was beginning to experience too much feeling on his part or if he had already got from me what he had come for. Then another man presented himself. We developed an intensely emotional attachment, one I recognized and initially resisted. My wife noticed this affair with great trepidation. She and I weathered the brief relationship but not without a sense of loss within our marriage. My wife and I moved away to another community; my third husband got a new partner. Emotionally Myrna and I entered a time of uncertainty. We had plenty of work to keep us occupied. I did not find another man to love or play with. Sadly, we couldn’t solve the problems my affairs had raised. Eventually there was a separation. It took me a couple of months to gather my wits enough to schedule my removal from a career of thirty-two years, but that decision led to me having a short fling with a Baby Bear in Tulsa, a man I didn’t intend to get involved with. Now who was playing the games? I never felt the love in this relationship although I did assume some temporary heavy-duty responsibilities.
I escaped to Denver to become a gay man. I was inventing something new for myself although I was still legally yoked to my wife and emotionally connected to at least three other men and had one who felt emotionally and hopefully connected to me. (I was learning that the gay life could be rather complicated, but I’d always thrived on complications.) Eventually I met another man who took an interest in me. Our mutual delight helped domesticate me again. We enjoyed living together, exploring intimacy and playing house. I loved this man; he loved me. We never talked of marriage; we just lived it. He was ill and essentially owned nothing; I didn’t particularly need taking care of. I did take care of him as he died and mourned his passing with deep feeling.
Then there was another man, the one I met at a bus stop, the one who thrilled me, the one who seemed so thrilled with me. We felt deeply important to one another: he the revealer of emotions I’d never experienced, I the provider of a stable love he had never found. He was the homebuilder insisting that my apartment was my office; his apartment our home. We loved one another and built a relationship of great satisfaction. I helped him meet his death and mourned his passing. I felt adrift although I knew I would be okay.
Into the vacuum created by these losses entered my current partner, a really nice man about my age who already had a life and knew how to manage his money, who had worked for many years in his career as a salesman and did own property. He offered a kind of stability for me, the over-tired caregiver. He’s the one who asked the question about marriage. I’m the one who flung away the idea as if it wasn’t important. I’d already had a marriage, a successful one with a most interesting person. I’d already had a separation with all its decision-making and drama. I’d already had a divorce, which was amicable and uncontested (the advantage of owning very little). I had warned this nice man I had no money; I also told him I had no debt. Since he rarely comments on much, I never knew what he thought of these revelations but felt pretty sure both were important to him. We haven’t married. He’s never again brought up the subject. Perhaps living with me all these years warned him away from the idea, or perhaps he was only making rare conversation the day he did mention the topic.
Marriage? I doubt I’ll ever enter into it again formally even though this story already defines the relationship with Jim as a marriage. But in general, I’ve decided marriage seems too much like love. The word never means the same thing to the two people professing it. And the images they pursue are rarely-discussed assumptions that eventually sour the prospects of the happiness they envision. People in a marriage don’t experience the same thing either, yet they persist in thinking they are supposed to or that they want to. It’s all become too complicated for this old man.
© 25 November 2012
About the Author
He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot
No comments:
Post a Comment