on long-term hetero marriages
For the last year and a half, my marriage has been going through a massive metamorphosis. It’s been everything you’d expect. Some observations in no particular order.
One. We are in a major overhaul of how we are with gender, sexuality, partnership. Heteronormativity is thankfully being deconstructed. I don’t know any couples (small case study to be sure) who have been in long-term hetero marriages, especially the kind that started young and probably in the church, that are happy (vague descriptor I know). There is something of this framework, all the overt and the subtle rules, what you’ve been told you’re entitled to expect from each other, the foundation that began the whole thing, that very often seems to squeeze the life out of the love that fueled the endeavor in the beginning.
Two. So the options are/have been - do the hetero marriage as it’s been handed to us. Or don’t do it at all, i.e. get a divorce. The don’t do it at all seems as in line with the old rules as doing the marriage. It says there’s only one way to do this. It feels like a huge and often heart-breaking failure of imagination. What if we still want to do it? What if it’s not exactly about wanting a divorce? But it HAS to become something different for any version of it to continue? I’m positive there are long-term hetero marriages out there doing this imaginative work. I’m waiting for more and more of these stories to filter their way into the collective, for so many reasons but right up at the top there, because I need them. I need their creativity and wisdom.
Three. I have made some unanticipated discoveries in this process about the culture of feminist and spiritual women as I experience them. It seems - from where I’m sitting - that it’s not 1) the feminist thing to do nor 2) the spiritual woman thing to do to want to stay married to a white cis hetero man who’s not totally nailing it in almost all moments. The standards have gotten unbelievably high. Of course there are good reasons to raise the fuckin’ bar in our partnerships with men, good reasons to go, good reasons to not get into the partnership in the first place. But if you’re in one and you want to stay in it, this feminist spiritual space that I am fed by in so many ways has left me hanging. It has not helped me get better at loving this imperfect man I’ve been married to. It mainly seems I’m supposed to go and good fucking contemptuous riddance.
That’s it. I have observations and I have making-it-up-as-I-go. Wish me luck.