Vegas or Bust
Raising kids without being married worked — until it didn't.
by Madeline Holler
July 12, 2007
My husband Wayne and I made the commitment to forgo marriage after a pregnancy test came up unexpectedly positive several years ago.
"You do know this doesn't mean we're getting married," I said to Wayne, who had gotten down on one knee to get a closer look at the stick's two pink lines. I was face-down on our fold-out futon, nauseous and exhausted.
"Yes," he said. "I do."
From that day forward we honored, even cherished, our decision to bypass lawful marriage. We skipped rings and saved our money. We skipped wedding plans and saved our sanity. We skipped cashing in with a wedding registry and saved our dignity. (Though cooking nightly on less than All-Clad, I do regret that choice just a little.)
We passed on marriage for many reasons. We weren't young or struggling financially. Neither of us was particularly religious. We weren't beholden to our families regarding holy unions and public declarations of our eternal devotion (his parents had eloped decades ago; mine had divorced just months before). To marry for the sake of a child would have felt like a correction. But our daughter, born later that year, was hardly a mistake. Tying the knot seemed beside the point, once our DNA became irreversibly entwined.
Plus, we hated the exclusivity of holy Aside from the glamour of her mother in a strapless celadon bridesmaid gown, weddings simply didn't register with our girl.matrimony.
"Gays can't marry, why should we?" Wayne said.
"Are we any less of a family if we don't?" I wanted to know.
Naturally, others had opinions.
"Your child will feel different growing up," Wayne's father told him. What kid doesn't?, I wondered.
"I would want the security," my sister-in-law said. As if our lack of legal status made it okay for one of us to just up and leave home — or as if marriage could prevent that.
After we had the kid, and the heavens didn't open up, and our lives became unmistakably domestic, people eased up on sounding the alarms. My daughter asked about weddings — a theme that popped up occasionally in library books and events we sometimes attended, once even with me as a bridesmaid. She wanted to know why girls carried flowers. But she never really equated weddings with marriage or family. Aside from the glamour of her mother in a strapless celadon bridesmaid gown or the convoluted cartoon plots involving careless ring-bearers, weddings and their end-product, marriage, simply didn't register with our young girl in the context of her own family.
As for Wayne and I, we mostly forgot about our unmarried status. That is, until Wayne decided to change careers. The tech companies where he had worked recognized domestic partners in their benefits plans. I had switched to his health insurance policy when I put my career on hold to stay home with our baby girl and her younger sister, born four years later. We worried that a new employer would not cover me.
But Wayne wound up taking a job at a state university in Southern California, where coverage for domestic partners was included in the benefits package. Of course California treated all families equally, regardless of status. It's California(!), where a city mayor had been signing off on same-sex marriages the year before and where living together was practically invented. In California, we could remain unmarried for life, till death do us part, the state employee benefits program footing the bill for our sickness and health. Wayne signed the contract. We moved 3,000 miles.
Within a month, our unmarriage began to unravel.
©2007 Madeline Holler and Nerve Media
About the Author
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Madeline Holler is a writer and mother of two. She lives in Long Beach, California. |
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