Love Wins? Facing a Gay Divorce after Gay Marriage

I remember being in the trenches fighting for marriage equality as early as 2008. At the time I was living in Florida, and the concept of gay marriage was a foreign one. Amendment 2 had just banned same-sex marriage, and as a young black queer person, I just assumed that marriage would never be something that was the legal option for me. Fast-forward a few years later, and I found out that individual states allowed LGBTQ people to get “married” under the term of domestic partnership, which granted certain rights and privileges to LGBTQ people. After a whirlwind relationship, I found myself in a domestic partnership in 2011. All over the USA, the fight for marriage equality was finally beginning to spread throughout all 50 states until the Supreme Court finally allowed for LGBTQ people to stop being considered second-class citizens and received the right to marry in the United States on June 26, 2015. But that victory for my gay marriage was short-lived, and in the words of Jane Lynch, “with gay marriage is going to come gay divorce.” After being so deeply invested in marriage equality, I found myself faced with the other side of gay marriage, a gay divorce.

As the mother to young children and someone who makes a living from access to the Internet I understand the saying that the Internet is forever so sadly there would be no gushy details as to why I found myself facing a gay divorce but despite the circumstances that brought us to divorce, the reality was there nonetheless. Life can be a funny, twisted thing that forces you to contort yourself into a box that you never wanted to be in. It will allow you to put up with stuff that in ordinary situations would be preposterous, and it will force you to stretch and grow, and change & mold yourself in ways that are unimaginable. Love can also be painful I can be spiteful and jealous it can be unashamed, and love can be cold.

When you decide to fall in love and marry someone you commit to spending the rest of your life with that person, you exchange vows that talk about faithfulness and honoring each other in sickness and in health till death do you part, but in reality, sometimes those promises cannot be kept. Sometimes the truth of the matter is that marriage can turn into a business arrangement especially when there are small children involved. You can’t just walk away from a marriage like a dating relationship. Marriages are complicated and intertwined, and so is divorce.

It is no wonder that there are so many stories when people pass on and you find out that they have only been separated from their spouse for decades never actually got a divorce. Divorce sucks, and for the longest time, I just decided that it would be easier to have a business arrangement where we could be financially stable, and our children could remain stable. It was just easier to be miserable.

That was until one day I woke up I realized that I was doing my daughters a disservice by staying in my marriage. How unfair of me to think that I was somehow shielding them from having separate birthdays, separate holidays, having to have two of everything in two different houses. How silly to think it would be easier to have them watch their parents be miserable sad and settling for a life that was not full of joy love and happiness.

Deciding to get a divorce wasn’t an easy decision. Even business partners can be best friends and have moments where life is good, but at the end of the day, I wanted more. I wanted sweet romantic dates and kind gestures, loving looks across the kitchen, gentle embraces after long and long days of screaming children, I wanted deep love, full laughter and a genuine feeling of happiness.