When I was 11, I was walking with my friend Erica to my house, and I mentioned that John and Sam would be eating over that night.
She said, “Aren’t they ‘funny?'”
“Funny?” I was confused for a moment, and she did the limp wrist. “You mean gay?”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah, they are.”
“I don’t think I know any gay people.”
I was flabbergasted. “How can you not know gay people? They are everywhere!”
That was my first realization that not everyone lived the way I did.
—
About ten years ago, when I was talking with some friends about marriage equality, a friend of a friend piped up, and said, “Why would it even be worth it? There are not long-lasting gay relationships.”
I was reminded of that earlier this week when I saw this:
My Aunt Betty (Grandfather’s sister) lived with “Aunt Patty” until she died when I was 26. I visited them in California, played with their dogs, swam in their pool, lost on their Galaga video game, and went to Disneyland with them for the first time when I was 7.
They had been together for 15+ years at that point.
But, hey, no gay relationships last that long, right?
—
These are both cases of people not being able to imagine that others live the same kind of amazing, wonderful, fucked up complex lives that they do, but with different beliefs, orientations, and physical attributes.
And the same thing happened two days ago, when someone says, “There are no Golden Year anniversaries in poly.”
Except that that’s not provable, is it?
Since poly has been kept mostly on the DL for so long. Who knows who has been poly for their 50-year marriage, except those close to them (and maybe not even them)?
The bigger key is, though, who cares?
Does a 50 year marriage mean that your relationship is then somehow valid?
Does the 26 years that a poly couple I know spent together not matter for another 24? Is their joy and happiness together negated by their lack of longevity? Would it make a difference if they hadn’t met until they were in their 30s? Or if one of them was a widower?
What about two of my dear friends who’ve been together for more than 20 years and are not only poly, but active in the local kink community?
I’ll be sure to tell them their love doesn’t matters, because they have nearly 30 years to go before poly certification.
Some relationships are best not lasting 50 years.
And while relationship commitment can be measured by longevity, I don’t believe that is necessarily an indicator of quality.
I was with my ex-husband for 15 years. At the time, that was nearly half of my life. My relationship of 6+ years now is of a FAR higher quality than that was at it’s best.
If it ended tomorrow, that would still be true.
A Challenge
Can anyone prove that there are NO 50-year anniversaries between poly people?
Can anyone prove that there is at least one 50-year anniversary between poly people?
Image by PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay
One Response
There were two pairs of women living together in the small village I grew up in. They owned the houses they lived in, also. I used to mow the lawn of one of the couples. One of my great uncles was the hired hand of the other two ladies, running the farm for them. All four of those ladies was well known and respected in the community, also. I have no idea how many years either of those relationships existed, but they were well past ‘retirement’ age when I knew them.