Yesterday night, I was having a conversation with a friend and my mother and partners were present, too. I mentioned how different the relationship between my mother and my partner was when compared to my mother’s relationship with my grandmother, my mom’s mother-in-law. I told her how differently your son-in-law treats you as compared to how you treated my grandmother.
And she instantly retorted, without a moment’s hesitation, or concern for feeling or reality, “He is not my son-in-law.”
“Huh?” I was shocked. “Then what is he?”
“Your partner,” she snapped back.
Of course, in my head, a relationship that has lasted through twenty-five years amounts to more in my head. For me, marriage is not a piece of paper or standing before any god and promising to be together. It is love and concern that keeps us bound together. Unfortunately, a heterosexual mother wont really understand that.
I immediately wanted to retaliate. “Your daughter’s marriage that has barely passed two years of age amounts to labels and tags and, more importantly, respect, but my relationship that has seen us struggle to be with each other despite all odds, family, work, staying apart and then together after 6 years, coming out as a couple, standing up for each other, making our own lives together, braving hurdles of conflict and affliction, deserves nothing?”
But all I told her was, “my sister has a husband since two years because they are “married” and my relationship of 25 years is nothing?”
I haven’t been able to look at her since then. But it is not just her. It is my best friend who has suddenly become closer to my sister because they have the similar bond of talking about their husbands – which I could never have. Despite the fact that all my relationship secrets she has been privy to, she won’t ever be able to understand – because we don’t base our judgements of equality on love itself, but on gender, on sexual orientation, on what society expects of us.
Maybe someone with a deeper understanding of how things are and what emotions truly mean to someone, may get it. May. But then even if they do, they won’t really understand our throuple. Because polyamory is still a far way to be understood even by the gay community itself.
Today I woke up and read a post by a gay friend. He is one of my oldest friends in the community, and he had a post about gay marriages and in the comments section someone mentioned if it was possible in India. He replied with a list of couples and neglected to mention my name with my partners. Of course, it is because he sells the idea of gay marriage. I don’t fit the bill with two partners.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not against gay marriage. You see, my point is I am not against any marriage of any kind. If there is love and concern and respect, any relationship between people is a marriage to me. But when the gay community falls back upon a heteronormative standard, it seems ludicrous.
We are not the same, we are different. Our sexuality ranges a whole spectrum of colour. We are gays, lesbians, bisexuals, trans, pansexuals, demisexuals, non-binary, sapiosexuals, asexuals, and a host of others. How can we fit ourselves into the normative standards of man and woman? We are not as simple as that. If any relationship can be simplified, that is.
I do not think that the human race is equipped to understand differences. Even if they accept them to be socially cool, they will never really understand them. Because you see, people do not understand love. If you get the nature of love, you will accept it in any form.
Most people understand what is different, because all of those differences cater to the five senses. Love becomes an abstract concept that can only be felt. And the brain insists that there is only one kind of abstraction. The way someone looks at a dark person or an over weight person and forms an idea of what he or she or they must look like. People look at love as they grow up and think that’s the way all love should be.
In order to simplify things, they actually create chaos. Accepting all forms of love becomes so simple. Love is love, after all.
This also then brings my self to my attention. I got stuck on a label, too. A “son-in-law”, what is that but a heteronormative label. And technically, though my mother didn’t say it in this way, she is right: He is my partner. Not any son by law, because neither does the Law accept our relationship in this country, nor does she treat him like a son. The sad part is that he treats me like his husband and lover and treats her like she is his mother.
And that is what shall keep us together for another 25 years.
Hearts Still Care 