Here's How Young Queer Couples Are Redefining 'Straight' Marriages

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By Michelle Garcia


My starting week of college, I let myself totally own my first girl crush. I watched her walk across the dining hall, holding her tray as she floated from the fruit salad bar to the soda fountain. “Who is she?” The words spilled out of my mouth across the table to my roommate and brand-new companions. “I have to know who she is.”


several months later, I met The One, and my relationship with him, frankly, freaked me the hell out. I completely, by the way) envisioned a whole future with each other, which seemed daunting to someone not even old enough to vote, let alone someone coming into my own — specifically, as a queer woman. I worried: Will the person I am becoming be forced to shrink to be half of a whole? Would my burgeoning queerness have to hide to avoid somehow undermining my partner?

Will the person I am becoming be forced to shrink to be half of a whole?

Two cities, six apartments, a dog, and one baby later, the response has been a definite no. I rapidly learned that a solid partner doesn't force you to shelve parts of yourself. Rather, they help you express your full self, individually and as a couple. For instance, we met doing improv comedy, and he was the opening male partner who loved it any time As soon as I would be funnier than him. And today, he helpfully corrects others who assume I’m straight at every chance he gets. He’s generally the initial person to ask me what my plans for Pride are per year, before I can even totally form them.


While we all have hesitations once it comes to relationships without consideration of our identities, these fears are compounded for queer and bi people in seemingly heterosexual relationships: worrying that a partner will fetishize you, make you hide, or will be suspicious of every move you make. That's why Whenever I noticed someone who accepts and loves all of me, it felt a little like winning the relationship lottery.


it may feel organic, then, to imagine marriage, at least somewhere down the line. However the restrictive and patriarchal norms of the institution often feel like exclusionary deterrents to people whose experiences with love don’t fit in the standards of heteronormativity. Coupled with the fact that Millennials and Gen Zers are more likely to be in debt and much less likely to own a residence, we may balk at the prospect of mixing debts — despite how much we love our partners.

There’s no doubt that the institution of marriage was due for disruption; for queering.

Therefore, as Millennials and Gen Z include the largest population of LGBTQ+-identified people — all of whom grew up any time the very question of who was allowed to marry In America had been publicly waged — there’s no doubt that our interpretation of the institution of marriage would necessarily include disruption; and for queering, even in seemingly heterosexual partnerships. Deciding to marry, as a queer person, has also often meant actively upending a societal norm that has been weaponized, in some historical contexts, to oppress girls and marginalize LGBTQ+ people. By questioning marriage’s stodgy ideology, everybody wins.


The greater societal shift away from the shame or stigma of bi and queer sexuality has been aided by our generation's attitudes on marriage shifting. A 2019 survey conducted by MTV Tips noticed that 85 percent of millennials wish to get wedded someday, although, we're tying the knot later and putting off the commitment of “‘til death do us part” for the exploration of ourselves. In the event of Canadian political advisor Joseph Uranowski, 31, it was to make sure he and his fiancé felt financially sound. They're getting wedded a little bit older than all of their parents at 31 and 26, respectively, yet this is mostly a result of [when] in our lives we began dating,” he says. For comparison, in 1980, because the oldest millennials were being place on Earth, the average marrying age for boys was 24, according to the U.S. Census. For girls, it was 22.


But little ladies of the ’80s and ’90s in particular would soon grow up with a message of achievement and self-expression, not just hitching their wagon to a nice guy with a good job. As Valeria Encarnacion points out, today’s young females aren't graduating "high school knowing they’re gonna get wedded in several years." As a substitute, they are encouraged to have objectives in back of being a partner and mom to a couple of kids.


females can be mothers and work at the same time right now, which is how it should be," she adds. And little males were a lot more likely to be taught that their future spouse would have life aspirations that were just as critical as his own.


"[We’re getting married] because it's something we really hope to do, not because it's what we're supposed to do,” fitness producer Jordan*, 29, says. “As queer people we inherently question those things. For a while, getting wedded wasn't an alternative for all of us, so it wasn't necessarily in everybody's 10-year-plan."


Once Jordan met her partner, she says she finally had someone “who didn't let my sexual identity make him insecure or change the way he saw me. Which then really let me open up about that and many other pieces of myself. It felt rare to be completely accepted, at least in my own experience, and was incredibly refreshing. Right now I won't accept anything less."


Sex and relationships writer Tawny Lara, 33, says her exes have been intimidated by her sexuality. Yet her current partner, she notes, "loves and celebrates me for being my proper self."


It is key to remember that marriage doesn’t change one’s queer identity, even if the outdoors package of your relationship looks like a heterosexual couple. In particular, bi erasure any time the legitimacy of bisexuality is questioned or denied is a thing, and only 28 percent of bi people report being out to companions and family, compared to 71 percent of lesbians and 77 percent of gay males. Coming out to a partner, then, can also be difficult; it might even involve having to defend your own identity.


For Sarah*, her relationship of 20 years with her now-husband and her own identity are nicely intertwined. "I came out to him the same time I came out to myself," she says. "He's been around as I've grappled with it, especially feeling ‘not queer enough to hang’ since I was devoted to him — something normal among so several other bi folks I know. He's habitually accepted it about me."


For some folks, queerness is a tool that informs the way they think about and navigate their relationships, creating a possibility to push the restrictions of gender roles. "My spouse and I are equal partners, and we actively work to deconstruct and move past a lot of the expectations placed on heterosexual-appearing marriages,” Sarah says. “We split household duties based on interest and aptitude, not gender. My partner actively tries to take on emotional work alternatively opposed to letting it all fall to me. That has certainly been a challenge and doesn't habitually happen, although we want our marriage to be mutually advantageous and to both give and receive."


Yet some institutions still have their benefits, even if on paper only. Particularly because the rights of LGBTQ+ people to live and work openly continue to be threatened, the legal advantages connected with marriage can be appealing to young queer couples.

Deciding to marry, as a queer person, has also often meant actively upending an institution that has been weaponized, in some historical contexts, to oppress girls and marginalize LGBTQ+ people.

“For some reason, because marriage equality was upheld by the Supreme Court, a lot of well-meaning people seem to think the deep roots of homophobia have been overturned,” says 22-year-old Frankie Suarez. “That just isn't true at all.” Though Suarez, who works in the food industry, feels marriage is for now off that it’s not on her radar, she recognizes the protections it offers, “like, if a longtime partner gets very ill and wants to will their possessions to me before passing. Or if I'd like to have children without the fear that CPS [child protective services] would take them away if my partner and I hit some financial trouble. My queerness does factor in, in that sense, because so much of the history of queer people is about protecting one another.”


Survival is key here because so much of being out still includes the risk of alienation. “The issues that concern me surrounding my identity are matters of generic survival. Most of my companions are, or have been, one paycheck away from being homeless,” Suarez says. “Many people in my community, including myself, have lost our relationships with one or more parents immediately after coming out.”


While I came out totally to the world in my mid-twenties, I was old enough to know I could survive on my own, yet still worried about abandonment or alienation. A (temporarily) mad family aggressively asked me if my spouse was aware that I was bisexual, as though it would have been the nail on the coffin. “How does he feel about all this?!” They demanded to know.


I told them the truth: “He’s known the whole time. And he loves me for who I am.”


*Last name has been omitted for privacy.

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