My partner and I have been together for almost seven years. In May2011 we had a civil partnership. One hundred of our family and friends travelled to Spain and celebrated the love we share for each other.
In the past six and a half years we have loved and supported each other every day. We have shared births and deaths in our families. We have celebrated christening a, birthdays and weddings. Wework, we pay our bills. We go shopping,go for dinner and socialise at our local bar.
We have supported each other in sickness and in health. We have been in the richer but lately a bit more at the poorer end of the scale. We plan to be together until death us do part. We are happy. We are in love. I don’t think I could love or respect anyone more than I do my partner. We listen to each other. I hear her and she hears me.
We are a couple, a team, and a partnership. Does the fact that we are two women make us any less of a couple than a married heterosexual couple?
Does our relationship impact on our neighbours? If it does we have never been made aware that it does. We leave the house to go to work and wave and smile at them as we get into the car. We mow our lawn and wash our cars in the drive on a Saturday and chit chat with the local kids playing on the street. We have bbq’s in the summer and shovel the snow in the winter. We call into our neighbors and they call into us if they are short a hammer or some sugar.
Does our sexuality impact mycolleagues? I can’t imagine why it would, I go to work. I arrive on time and I am there to assist my colleagues at every turn as they are to assist me. We laugh, we joke, and we work very hard for the money we earn. We listen to eachother. We go for lunch and we go home.
When I get home, my partner is there. She has cooked me dinner. We eat and share our day’s adventures. We sit, sometimes we chat and sometimes we are quite happy to sit in silence. Welaugh. We watch T.V. and joke about how crappy Eastenders is getting, but we never fail to miss it. We go to bed.
What I’m trying to say is that we do what every other married couple does. We are a normal healthy loving couple who just want to be together. What is so wrong with that? What we ‘do’ does not impact on anyone but my partner and I. I was raised by two heterosexual parents and have two heterosexual siblings who love me and who I love more than the air that I breathe. They have provided me with a beautiful niece and two handsome nephews who do not have a problem with their aunts.
We are lucky to be supported by our family and friends. I can’t imagine what it might be like for someone who is so terrified to ‘come out’ to people who are important to them. Everyoneneeds support. Gay couples, heterosexual couples, co-habiting couples, single people all need to feel supported. Gay couples need to know that society supports them. Many gay couples are holding out for their right to marry. I couldn’t wait. I wanted my family to know what my relationship with my partner meant to me. If we could have gotten married, we would have. But that option wasn’t open to us. I am of the opinion that marriage will one day be accessible to gay couples. It’s inevitable. Why not sooner rather than later. What difference does it make to you? How does it affect you? It doesn’t really.
The constitutional convention will discuss the issue of marriage equality on the weekend of the 13th and 14th of April.
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