So I think I’d better clarify my earlier statement about divorce. I am more in love with T than ever. We had a great 10th anniversary celebration the other day and are very excited about our future together.
I have two reasons for wanting a divorce.
From my previous post you will see that I believe my wedding day and marriage was a shambles. I do not look on the event with fondness. I would like very much to purge Mormonism and especially a marriage linked with polygamy out of my life.
The second reason and in fact the reason that first got me thinking about divorce is this: Until the LGBT community is awarded the same rights with marriage that heterosexual people have then I do not wish to have anything to do with the institution of marriage.
I personally would like to forfeit my marriage as a way of offering some small act of solidarity for the LGBT community.
For now these are just ideas I am spinning around in my head. If it were just up to me I would go right ahead and do it. I have mentioned the idea to T and he seemed to understand but he needs time (understandably) to think about it.
I have even been thinking about having a lovely celebration for the event. It would be in stark contrast to my wedding day. Whilst THAT day was fraught with weirdness and loneliness my divorce would be a joyous occasion with family and friends, sun and sand… Oh, and of course my one and only who I look forward to spending the rest of my unmarried life with in great peace and happiness.
Brad Pitt is famous for saying he won't get married until the GLTB community legally can too.
ReplyDeleteHey TGIAA, shows how much I know about celebs, I hadn't heard about this statement of his. Good on him though.
ReplyDeleteMy husband and I, once we have saved a bit of money, are planning on having a second wedding since the first one was such a heartbreaking disaster. As I said before, it felt like my marriage didn't really belong to me, and I've been anxious about my relationship ever since. My therapist thinks it would be a good idea to have a second wedding, a secular, romantic wedding exactly the way WE want it, as part of the healing process.
ReplyDeleteBefore we got married, I toyed with the idea of getting a civil union with my husband, just to piss all of my right-wing family members off.
Sounds like a great idea Allison. I had thought of having a second wedding for our 10th anniversary just recently but we were not in a financial position to do that, plus we only left the church at the end of last year so we're still sorting through things to do with that.
ReplyDeleteI definitely think a ceremony that you and your partner can plan together will be very helpful for you. I've never been a big fan of lavish weddings but I think that a wedding is a good opportunity to express a bit of yourself and to celebrate love in a joyous way.
I would like to see the LGBT couples to have the opportunity to express their love for each other in a meaningful wedding ceremony and marriage also. I believe that it will happen. The old ideas are dying out. Younger people will soon be able to have their vote and I reallythik that it won't be too long before we see this change. I wish it could be sooner.
Since leaving the church I have been surprised by how often I find myself thinking "Oh, I can choose for myself now... so what is it that I really want? what is it that I really like/feel/think?". It's actually been quite amazing to realise how stifled I was.
I can totally understand the desire to rebel there with pissing the R-wing family members off. I think that part of the reason I want to be un-married is to break away even further from traditional ideas, from conservative ideas. I am pretty frustrated to discover as I have come away from the church that there are plenty of other people/organisations out there trying to control and take advantage. I grew up feeling pretty caged in and now I have a great thirst for freedom.
(Oh, Kaleidoscope girl and Bowie - I'm thinking of some kind of bird or maybe a few small birds for a tattoo, probably on my forearm. The bird representing freedom).
my sister is a tattoo artist! She recently did a koi fish for a young mother of identical quadruplet girls on a rare day off (her partner left her!)
ReplyDeleteI think you are a brave person, just do all divorce petitions online, save a lot of money.
ReplyDeleteAnd when you have your big celebration don't forget to invite the press. If you are going to make a statement you want as many people as possible to know about it.
Thanks Nicola, I really didn't see it as being brave, I just really found myself feeling ill about the institution of marriage especially considering that the LGBT community is being treated so poorly by being denied the right to express their loving unions in the way that heterosexual people can do without fuss. If it's not for everyone then I don't want to be a part of such an exclusive institution.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the tips about getting the message out and doing things online if we go ahead with it. These are just my thoughts out loud for now but we'll see how T feels about it. You know, now that you mention bravery, I have been feeling a little scared about the idea. Maybe that's where the bravery is going to come into it. It is such a big thing to do, challenge something that many people feel is like a pillar of our society. Well, I think our society is currently weakened by it's stance on marriage and would benefit from extending the right to marry to the LGBT community.
Hmmm. Lot's to think about.
Oh and TGIAA, what a trooper your friend is! that's one of those stories that brings me back down to earth, realising that I've got it pretty easy really. Koi huh, that would be cool too.
ReplyDeleteOr, you could do what gay guy and sex advice columnist Dan Savage recommends.
ReplyDeleteHere's what I think straight couples should do in the meantime, HTRC: Get married, make a donation to the fight for marriage equality, and encourage your guests to do the same.
If gay marriage equality is a big deal for you, get married again, renew your vows, what you may call it. But include in the programme some kind of message: "We're glad that we can get married. We wish all Australians had this opportunity. That's why we're [ donating to | marching in | say, what ARE you doing? ] and we encourage you to do the same."
It would be great! Provided T is comfortable with the idea.
I really feel for you. You are suffering in ways that I don't think I have. I suppose for myself I had been questioning for so long that in the end it was almost and anticlimax to leave, even moreso because I had been worried about all the mormons calling me and inviting me back, etc, etc,....and that never happened! I'd been gone for monthes before someone other than my VT or a personal friend called me. It did make it a lot easier to leave. I had also already worked through a lot of the things that I didn't believe and worked out what I do believe. I have also had those reactionary feelings of wanting to strike out and do something dramatic out of...frustration? My advice would be step back a bit, breathe and relax. The church is wrong and it will be wrong for the rest of your life, so you have plenty of time to make a stand if you end up deciding that is really what you want to do. I also could never get my head around polygamy. I tried for many many years to get my head around it, and my husband always told me I didn't really understand it because if I did I wouldn't be upset. I asked if polygamy meant he would be sleeping with another woman, sharing his hopes and dreams with anothe woman, cuddling another woman, laughing with another woman...and of course that is exactly what it is, so I did understand and I do understand. He would say that I would always be the "first wife". What the hell is that supposed to mean? If there is some special treatment afforded to the first wife, then by definition it means the other wives are not treated as well. Even as a first wife, that is something I could not abide. So I could not accept it from the position of a first wife, second wife, or any wife. All the years I spent trying to understand and rationalise it, only to realise that it was either JS was very disilluioned but meant well, or that he was a libidinous fraudster who wanted to shag other woman without his wife being able to tell him off. Personally, I believe the second explanation is more plausible. I don't for a nanosecond believe that it ever came from "God."
ReplyDeleteThat's the other thing I made peace with too - my beliefs. Now that I am free of mormonism I no longer feel the need to categorise everything. I believe there is something bigger than me and that we should all try to be good people. What is that something, I hear you ask? I'm not interested in defining it. If I am talking to a religious person, I will define it as "God", but in my own heart it is perhaps God, maybe the universe, possibly the collective consciousness...I don't know and it does not affect my life or me as a person. It's like the old debate about the pearly gates - do they swing or slide? Doesn't matter. I see now the religious obsession with labelling everything and the endless "study" of "church doctrine" as being something that is a distraction from what we should be doing, from our true purpose. And I true purpose is.....to be a good person. That's it. Life is so much easier without the rules, doctrine and definitions, most of which didn't make sense anyway. Not to mention the fact that after a lifetime of being told that our church had all the answers, I was never able to find anyone who could answer my questions other than the sort of gobbledygook that my teenagers try to serve up to me when they are trying to avoid the issue. That is what the "answers" from church leadership felt like. And when I dug further (FARMS website) to see what the church big guns said it was the same thing. Goobledygook and a lot of it contradicting what other people said, or the BOM, or the Bible. I came to realise that the church didn't have any answers because it wasn't true, and that I would need to work out my own relationship with God, the universe, universal consciousness, whatever. And once I got to grips with that, it was pretty easy.
ReplyDeleteSo the point of all this is just to say, hang in there Maureen, it gets better. And they same as they say never to go to the hairdresser when you've had something monumental happen because you might regret it, don't do anything now. Talk lots, think lots, and you'll get there in the end.
geez you guys give great advice!
ReplyDeleteThanks so much Anon. for talking some sense into me. I do tend to get a bit theatrical I think.. can I call it passionate instead, makes me sound better ;)
I'm having a really good think about what you said about not trying to define everything. Maybe that is one of the things I picked up in my years as Mormon, feeling some need to pigeon-hole everything. Ok, so I'm going to have a go at relaxing about things and just letting myself walk this new path without labeling everything.
Daniel, I read that link and I feel good about Dan's and your suggestions. I will give it more time and thought. Either way you can expect an invite sometime... will probably take a while to afford/organise but it's something I am looking forward to.
hey maureen, just wanted to let you know i not only like your way of thinking i also admire your following through.. when i read your post regards divorce i can understand fully where you are coming from and even tho i personally have not been engaged in organised religions and my wedding day was in no way related to any religion whatsoever i strongly feel the paradigms of relationships are shifting and conventional marriage as an 'institution' is not going to be around for all that much longer.. i kinda feel it's something 'made up' by religions in the first place.. anyway.. i loved reading about your idea regards a 'ceremony' as the two of us have been planning ours to take place later this year.. and altho we are separated and not together like you two are we are still very much involved in each others' lives.. see ya tomorrow.. this message jus could not wait ;) thanks for opening up the doors and windows of lots of peoples thinking..
ReplyDeleteOh this is fabulous news Viv! I see it too. People's lives and relationships and desires and goals are changing (they always have been!) and I think that you are right. I think that we will see a lot more people expressing their own style of commitments to each other in their own creative and thoughtful ways. I consider my own wedding day to be just a bunch of stuff that we had to do to be able to move on w/our lives together. I look forward to having a ceremony of our own in the future that will encompass how we really feel about each other and about life. I shall have to sit down w/you under the picnic tree at school and have a big chat about it all :) xo
ReplyDelete