WE ARE NOT SO DIFFERENT

This morning at work I had an interesting conversation with a co-worker about marriage. He and his wife have been married for a few years. He is a young man with a young son. Our conversation was spoken with humor and sincerity. We both came to the agreement that marriage is made up of two people that love each other and are committed to each other. Also as long as one of them says "Yes Dear" at the appropriate times then all is good with the world as we know it and it just so happens that both he and I have that in common within our marriages. We are both the "Yes Dear" ones.

He said that sometimes his wife makes him feel that he has some power to make decisions for them by "allowing" him to make dinner plans for them. After he makes a few suggestions of  places that they should go to eat she seems to make many different reasons for not wanting to go to these suggested places that he has made so they end up going to where she wants to go. His reply is "Yes Dear" that sounds like a great place to go eat. I told him that is pretty much how our relationship works within our marriage. I said that Kathy is our social director which works out great for us and as he nodded his head he said "yup that is pretty much how we do things to."

Just this past week Kathy and I have many hard and difficult conversations and disagreements concerning many different issues that have come up. We handled these through both going to therapy together and talking them out with Andrea {our therapist} and by keeping the love and respect that we both have and feel for one another in the forefront. This we do as a married couple having the love and commitment of our marriage vows which are {I promise to talk to you, to work out our differences, to listen with my mind and heart,to share my joys and fears,to love you into the unknowable future with spirit,laughter and grace.} These vows we took are ones that we live by every single day within our marriage.We take them seriously and to heart until death do us part.

I said to him that I feel that marriage is marriage no matter if it is same-sex couples or opposite sex couples. We all have the same type things that go on and the same type issues that come up and the same basic relationship. He agreed. It made me feel good to have this conversation with someone like him because it made me realize that with him being a straight young man and me being an older lesbian we both felt comfortable talking about this topic and with agreement. It gave me hope and delight all at the same time. Hope that people will see that marriage is marriage no matter if it is same sex couples or opposite sex couples and delight that we had a civil conversation about marriage.


Let us keep this conversation going between all of us so that we all will realize and understand that we are not so different afterall. LOVE + COMMITMENT = MARRIAGE. No matter what the sex of the couples are. PLEASE VOTE AGAINST AMENDMENT ONE SO THAT WE DON'T PUT DISCRIMINATION INTO OUR NC CONSTITUTION.


These are my thoughts and feelings from Jillsville.