Thoughts on Marriage

When I was a kid, I thought my life would be just like my mom and dad’s:  I would become a teacher like my mom.  At age 23, I would marry a computer scientist like my dad.  We would have some kids and live happily ever after.  In high school, my boyfriend and best friend, Gavin, told me he wanted to be a computer scientist just like my dad.  I thought it was a sign.  I was sure he was meant to be my husband, and we would live out the same life as my parents.

I was wrong.  Gavin and I have remained friends to this day, but our romance never blossomed.  And as we went to colleges on opposite sides of the mainland, my feelings about marriage and my future changed.  In my early 20s, I decided I didn’t ever want to get married.  I felt that I could never promise the traditional wedding vows to anyone.  I particularly took issue with the parts about “obeying” and “till death do us part.”  I know I’ll never blindly obey anyone.  And I can’t realistically promise to be with someone until the day we die, because things happen in life.  Things change.  It is important to me to keep my word, to not promise anything I can’t deliver.  And it’s also important to me to live my life to the fullest and always keep growing personally and spiritually.  If at any point it weren’t the healthiest and best thing for my partner and me to remain together, I wouldn’t want us to.  Too many people stay in miserable, abusive, and dead marriages, because they made a promise to be with their partner for life.  I think that’s tragic.  So, in my early 20s, I decided marriage was not for me.

And then I met Susan, an intelligent, kind, and beautiful woman.  I fell in love.  Not the “this is like my parents, so it must be right” kind of love that I felt with Gavin.  Not the “I’m infatuated with you, because you make me feel superior” kind of love, or the “I desperately need you, because you love me when I can’t love myself” kind of love, or the “I feel intense desire and lust, so it must be love” kind of love, like I felt in my past relationships.  Those really aren’t love at all.  Susan made me want to be a better person.  I admired who she was – her sense of justice and fairness.  We shared the same core values, and I felt we could learn a lot from each other and grow together.  And after being together for a couple of years, my feelings on marriage changed again.  I still didn’t feel I could promise the traditional wedding vows to anyone, but I wanted to be in a committed relationship with Susan.  And who says we couldn’t write our own vows?  Who says we couldn’t create what Gary Zukav calls a “spiritual partnership,” a marriage for the purpose of spiritual growth?

Well, it turns out that a lot of people do.  Marriage for gay couples is not legal in most of the world, including the United States of America – supposedly the land of freedom and equality.  Currently, gay marriage is legal in 5 states and Washington D.C. and banned in 30 other states.  Some states give gay couples all the state rights of marriage, but call it a “civil union” or a “domestic partnership.”  Still other states offer some of the state rights of marriage under these names or, like Hawaii, call it a “reciprocal beneficiary.”  All very unromantic names, aren’t they?  “Domestic partnership,” I think, is the funniest one.  It sounds like we clean houses together.  Even with full marriage rights in some states, most of the 1,138 rights that come with marriage are federal, and they are currently denied to all gay couples in the US.

So, now I want to get married, but because of where I live (Hawaii) and who I want to marry (Susan), I can’t.  Coincidentally, Gavin fell in love with a man and is dealing with being treated as a second-class citizen in the USA as well.  In the end, I don’t know what will happen.  Maybe Susan and I will make a commitment to each other one day, and maybe not.  But I believe in my heart that we should have the right to decide for ourselves.

Maybe Massachusetts

The other day, Susan said, “What about Massachusetts?” Massachusetts has legalized gay marriage, they have the closest thing to universal healthcare there is in the U.S. (from what we can tell so far), and we wouldn’t have to go through the trouble of becoming citizens of a whole different country.

A fellow writer suggested that instead of fleeing the country, we ought to stay and try to change things in the United States.

I don’t know if wanting to move someplace – whether it’s across the country or out of the country – is like chasing a rainbow.  Maybe I’ll never be able to capture what I’m after outside of myself; maybe I can only find true peace and happiness within, and moving around (or even dreaming of it) is a convenient distraction from that.

Then again, what if moving someplace in particular would somehow facilitate the process of discovering my own inner peace?

Sometimes I wonder how to tell the difference between true desire (which leads you on your true life path) and obsession, between resistance brought on by fear and resistance brought on by honest disinterest, between what is really good for me and what isn’t.

So, for the sake of trying to look at this practically, here are some pros and cons to moving to Massachusetts…  Susan and I have been looking particularly at Northampton, MA.

Pros:

• Gay marriage and adoption are legal.
• Massachusetts has a public option for healthcare.
• Seasons (sometimes cold ones, but the change can be nice…).
• Northampton has great schools – elementary through college – which means the potential for great jobs (as Susan and I both work in the education field) and a good education for kids down the road…
• Northampton has been called the “top town for a simple life,” the “#1 small arts town in the U.S.,” and (and I quote) “Lesbianville, USA.”  Three things that are especially appealing to Susan and me: simplicity, the arts, and an acceptance of our relationship.
• Cost of living in Northampton is definitely lower than Hawai’i.  We could even buy a house at some point!
• Bike trails and parks where we can walk our dog Jake.
• More social and political activism (to get us working on making positive change within the U.S. instead of fleeing).
• Friends and family on the East Coast.
• The ability to see my sister more often, as she often goes to New York on business.

Cons:

• Well, it ain’t Hawai’i – by which I mostly mean, it gets cold! Hawai’i's also got a laidback atmosphere we enjoy.  And beautiful beaches!
• We’d miss our friends Jill & Evelyn.

I’m sure I’ll think of more pros and cons as we do more research.  Right now, however, I’m thinking that Massachusetts may be a decent compromise to getting more of what we want without having to leave the country altogether…

Shopping Around for a New Country

Susan and I have been dreaming of moving.  I know, I know:  We live in Hawai’i – one of the most beautiful places on Earth, so why would we want to move? Well, we want to live in a place where:

1. We can get married.
2. We can adopt kids.
3. We have universal healthcare.
4. The people and the Earth matter more than profits.

Yes, we’re not talking about moving to the U.S. mainland; we’re talking about leaving the country. So far, based on the above criteria, we’ve found eight countries that could work:

1. Canada. We’re leaning towards this one, just because it seems most feasible and is closest to our friends and family.  (Don’t want to break my mama’s heart!)
2. The Netherlands. The first country to legalize gay marriage, and Amsterdam is ranked the #1 most bicycle-friendly city in the world.
3. Spain. Probably the warmest of all our options (which is a consideration after living in San Diego and Hawai’i my whole life!), and we do already know a little Spanish!
4. Sweden.
   
5. Norway.
6. Belgium.
7. United Kingdom. They don’t have gay marriage, but from what we can tell, they give same-sex couples all/most of the rights of marriage and call it something else.
8. Iceland. Same as the U.K. on gay marriage rights.

There’s still time.  We’ll be in Hawai’i until at least May 2010 as Susan finishes up her PhD at the University of Hawai’i – Manoa.  But a big move and even dual citizenship could be in our future…

Dreams Change

One thing I keep learning over and over again is that dreams change. When I began this blog, I set out with this dream of making $100,000/year to do what I absolutely love.  And that dream still remains, but a greater, more immediate dream has since stepped in:  To learn, grow with, and marry Susan (my awesome girlfriend of over 5 years). Yes, I began this journey mostly dreaming about my own personal career goals.  But since Susan’s herniated disc started to take over both our lives, we’ve had plenty of time to sit and talk.  And as we’ve talked, we’ve begun to dream together.

Susan and me on top of the "pillboxes" in Lanikai.

One big dream Susan and I have is one we each came up with on our own and then to our surprise, we discovered we had the same dream!  That dream is to take a full year off of work – to practice following our intuitions, gut instincts, passions, and insights.  To take time to truly discover who we really are at our cores and what we really want out of life (as opposed to being constantly caught by the need to merely make a living, please others, and “be productive”). We don’t know yet how we’ll pull this off, but we’re determined to find a way.  We’re saving our money and looking into caretaking as a way to live rent-free…

Another dream we have is to get married. This is probably a stronger dream for me than it is for Susan, since a former marriage left a bad taste in her mouth… but for the first time, she has said that she wants to marry me, too.  Of course, there’s somewhat of a challenge to this one:  the fact that in most places on Earth, gay marriage is not legal.  It isn’t legal in Hawai’i, where we live now.  So, to marry AND enjoy all the rights and benefits that come with marriage, we will have to fight for the laws to change here and/or move.  Once again, we don’t know how we’ll do it exactly, but we’re determined to make it happen.

So, there you have it.  My career dream is now on the back burner, and my love dream is taking center stage. I imagine our year off as the perfect time to build the foundation for a happy career anyway.  (Susan and I have talked, too, about starting our own non-profit organization, so maybe that is in the cards…)  So, until then (or until my dreams change again…), my energy is going into making our year off and our wedding realities.  Here’s an idea:  We get married, and then call our year off our “year-long honeymoon”!

Here’s to you and me and our dreaming, growing, learning, loving, and living together, Susan…