Someone recently told me if there was such a thing as fantasy
leagues for relationships they’d want me on their team. The breadth of my experience in this
department has been wide. In 25 years I’ve
been in six serious relationships. Two
of them ended because another woman came along. Two others ended because we
didn’t really love each other. I’ve been
engaged twice. With the first one, we
got married… and then divorced which was sad and has taken years to get over. The second engagement ended when our
connection with each other faded – I loved him though, wanted to work it out and
spend the rest of our lives together as we’d planned, but he suddenly “didn’t have
time” and stopped talking to me as if he’d never loved me or proposed to me.
I look back on these relationships with fondness. There’s also a lot of humor and irreverence
in the memories they offer. What felt
sad and tragic to me when each of them ended, now seems like folly. I was younger, naïve, foolish but mostly I
was hopelessly romantic. In the grander
scheme of what happens to us in a lifetime, these experiences are silly by
comparison.
What if you can’t look at your love life and see it as silly
though? What if you are in a serious, committed
relationship with someone and it garners consternation from strangers? What if you find yourself having feelings for
someone and they feel the same way towards you but your friends, family, and
your church tell you that you are wrong?
What if your relationship put your life in danger?
As marriage equality gets more attention, these questions
pop up. It’s hard enough finding that
person you connect with in life – the person you actually want to spend every
day of the rest of your life with.
Knowing what you want and then finding someone you trust wholeheartedly with
that, and having them love and trust you back is rare. If you’re lucky enough to find it, it can be
fleeting and change without warning.
Even if you stay together and make it work through the difficult times,
you will both be tested. You will have
disagreements and conflicts with each other. At times you will hurt each other. You will have to apologize to and forgive
each other. One of you may get seriously
ill and need to be taken care of. Most
certainly one of you will have to deal with the other’s death and all the loss
and grieving that brings. Even when love
for and from the right person happens, it is difficult.
The issue of same-sex marriage isn’t about making choices or
figuring out your sexual orientation. It’s
bigger than that. This issue is about equality. Hasn’t history the world over taught us that
any time you deny a person their basic human rights it will come back to bite
you in the ass? And it’s about love.
Human beings have a basic need to be happy. Happiness is a force that gives our lives
meaning and purpose. Happiness is shared
experiences with the people you love who
love you back. The point I’m making
is that finding your love is hard enough.
Staying together and making it work is even harder. I can’t imagine what it would be like if the
world at large told you that you can’t love the person you’ve been fortunate
enough to find. What right do we have to
deny anyone their basic need, and the freedom, to be loved?
LOVE. THIS.
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