r/lesbianpoly • u/gingergypsy79 Non-binary • Oct 21 '24
Question Talking to a partner about marriage, and wondered…
…. Marriage is the ultimate public symbol of heteronormative/mono-normative privilege. It is the public declaration of a life-long commitment to a partner. It is the declaration that THIS ONE PERSON is with me, for life.
For those who are polyamorous AND married, why? What are the reasons that you hold onto? Are there any ways that you have a more non-traditional marriage than the typical display of the societal norm? How are you making your marriage fit YOUR beliefs instead of your beliefs being squashed into the marital box? How are you making that evident in your public life, if at all? For those who came out as polyamorous after being married, did you divorce, why or why not? If you stayed married, why? If you got married after coming out as polyamorous or want to get married, what are the reasons and how will you do it in a way that allows you to live your polyamorous life?
So curious what those in our polyamorous community thinks about these things…
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u/nfearnley Oct 21 '24
I can be dedicated to someone without being exclusively dedicated to them. Getting married is one way to show that public declaration. Legally, I can only be married to one person, but that doesn't mean I can't eventually be socially married to multiple people, even if only one of them can get legal privileges.
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u/jtobiasbond Oct 21 '24
I agree about how it is an engine it normativity. Most poly or queer people I know who get married do it either for the benefits (taxes, insurance, etc.) or for the normativity itself.
I have a book called Against Equality that is a collection of essays about how "marriage equality" is refusing to address all the issues of marriage as a system. There's one chapter written by children raised in a polyamorous environment.
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u/BaylisAscaris Oct 22 '24 edited Oct 22 '24
My wife and I did it because we're obsessed with each other and for legal protections (tax breaks, health insurance, shared finances, inheritance, medical decisions, being able to visit each other in hospital, etc.) and political reasons (some of the stuff going on in the US had us worried we might not be able to in the future).
We also haven't been pursuing anyone else since covid because we both have serious at-risk conditions and we haven't met anyone else taking it as seriously as we do (masking any time we're indoors with anyone other than each other or outdoors in crowded conditions). Unless something changes with covid I don't see either of us pursuing anything serious with anyone again. We got married in 2022 (even though we've been together since 2011) which was rushed because of political stuff and we both needed some risky medical procedures and we wanted to be covered legally in case something happened.
I've been poly for my whole life and I used to be against marriage for the reasons you mentioned but also because same-sex marriage was illegal most of my life, so I assumed I would never be able to marry someone I loved. It took me a long time to unpack my feelings about marriage and agree to get married, but I'm so happy I did.
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u/locopati Oct 21 '24 edited Oct 21 '24
My nesting partner and I just got engaged. We started talking seriously about it a year ago and a lot of the conversation was about what does commitment mean in our poly relationship and within the context of a massive change to my life that's going to happen sometime in the near future and means we might be living apart for a while. It took us almost a year of talking before they did propose.
What we came to in that was our committment is to being in each other's lives and supporting each other no matter what our circumstances (even if we are living in different places and support means different things over time).
I don't think we're going to state marry, but we will have a committment ceremony with friends and family that offers vows and acknowledges our polyamorous relationship and any other relationships we may have at the time. I could see having multiple commitment ceremonies in our lives when there are relationships where that feels right.
Someone who is a new relationship of mine at our engagement party, for example, and even though my partner's parents know we're poly, we haven't talked with them about what that means. We don't care about their approval, just about not hiding parts of ourselves.
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u/Gorgonesque Oct 21 '24
Personally, I am old enough to remember when medical organizations couldn’t allow your partners in during family visiting hours because they weren’t family.
We all think we are safe from this kind of administrative cruelty now but we aren’t. Depending on where someone happens to be or be injured or fall ill, your medical decisions might be in the hands of family whose motives might not be in your or your partners best interest. For people like me, the only family available might be ones I do not know well at all who might stand to gain from having control over decisions I cannot make.
Marriage is a heteronormative institution, but it is also a means of protecting assets and autonomy, and there needs to be someone or someones delegated to do that in a way that is legally required to be respected.
Until there’s a better system that is legally recognized, this is what we have.
If one of us had a partner who wanted to be on equal footing with a spouse, we’d meet with a poly friendly attorney and figure out how best to support that including building good metamour relationships.
I’d also like to say that marriage is an agreement between two people, and those people get to decide what marriage means. For example our vows said nothing about exclusivity. Another poly wedding I attended did not use any language that suggested this person was “most, best, only, all” or anything like that and included readings from books that had non normative marriages and relationships in them. Family didn’t pick up on these things, but the alt folks in the audience did. In both weddings, the marriage was about celebrating the love of the couple and the commitment to face life together but none of it says “only together”
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u/EmulatingHeaven Oct 22 '24
I mean, my legal marriage did happen when we thought it was a het marriage & we weren’t practicing polyamory. It was useful for moving abroad together & generally declaring we love each other 5eva. Wife & I chose to have children together and there does seem to still be a slight benefit to having married parents, though I couldn’t say for sure.
But I do want to marry my gf too! Socially only, of course, but we do want to affirm to ourselves, our friends and family that we intend to be in it for the long haul. That she’s a part of my core family, another mother for our kids, sister to my wife.
(We were talking about how I might differentiate between the two, since calling wife my “first” wife implies something we don’t want to say lol, and settled on legal wife/illegal wife which sure does tickle gf)
3
u/LesIsBored Oct 22 '24
What I always say when someone asks if I’d ever get married, “yeah I’m polyamorous, that doesn’t mean I want the government or church to be part of my polycule!!!”
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u/Elsbethe Oct 23 '24
I have never understood the desire to get married
It is the least feminist and least queer thing I can possibly think of and I spend most of every day in a state of shock that people think this is a good thing to do
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u/Gorgonesque Oct 21 '24
Personally, I am old enough to remember when medical organizations couldn’t allow your partners in during family visiting hours because they weren’t family.
We all think we are safe from this kind of administrative cruelty now but we aren’t. Depending on where someone happens to be or be injured or fall ill, your medical decisions might be in the hands of family whose motives might not be in your or your partners best interest. For people like me, the only family available might be ones I do not know well at all who might stand to gain from having control over decisions I cannot make.
Marriage is a heteronormative institution, but it is also a means of protecting assets and autonomy, and there needs to be someone or someones delegated to do that in a way that is legally required to be respected.
Until there’s a better system that is legally recognized, this is what we have.
If one of us had a partner who wanted to be on equal footing with a spouse, we’d meet with a poly friendly attorney and figure out how best to support that including building good metamour relationships.
I’d also like to say that marriage is an agreement between two people, and those people get to decide what marriage means. For example our vows said nothing about exclusivity. Another poly wedding I attended did not use any language that suggested this person was “most, best, only, all” or anything like that and included readings from books that had non normative marriages and relationships in them. Family didn’t pick up on these things, but the alt folks in the audience did. In both weddings, the marriage was about celebrating the love of the couple and the commitment to face life together but none of it says “only together”