I usually introduce him as "my husband, John" as a way of saying this is who he is absolutely (John), and relative to me (my husband). For me, I guess husband is convenient enough shorthand for "this guy I live with, who I am also romantically involved with, who I intend to stay with until one of us die die dies" (that being kind of a mouthful for strangers at cocktail parties). Husband/wife are not entirely accurate in their connotative baggage, but (to me) they seem to give a closer-to-reality picture to most people than some other terms we might use. I suppose I could introduce him as my monkey (mutual term more commonly used between the two of us), but most people wouldn't get that at all.
I can sort of see where you're coming from about the wedding invitations thing. I often get invitations for weddings of cousins I haven't seen since I was little, and I'm torn between wanting to believe that family is just trying to be kindly inclusive, and feeling angsty at what I see as an order to send them a gift.
For clarity, what I was getting to about the refusal of legal priveleges was that the people in question would have a wedding, use the lingo, but not file paperwork (we'll ignore commonlaw marriage, here... not even sure that still legally exists in most places). I suppose it makes sense that the cultural bothers you more than the legal... many of the legal rights can still be obtained through other (more expensive, more troublesome) channels, but there's not really an alternative route to the social status.
Good that you don't want to tell people what they should do. That would grate. I generally don't either, except in the case of policy-makers.
For me, there were big reasons for getting a marriage license and certificate... health insurance, someone I trusted having the power to make decisions if I was unable to, property or contracts that had to be in one name or the other automatically reverting to the other person if anything happened to one of us, assumption that any children I have are legally his. These things could be obtained through alternate channels, but based on my cousin's experience, the sum of legal fees for these separate concerns (neverminding the insurance situation) would certainly have cost far more than the portion of the wedding we two personally paid for (possibly more than the whole thing, though I can't say that for sure)... more than we could have afforded at the time. Yeah, that's making use of privelege. Yeah, it makes me feel guilty and uneasy sometimes, especially given that I am close to other people who want the same and can't get it through the same cheap and easy means. But, I'm not sure that my not being legally married would actually serve to help them in any way.
As for getting married and having a wedding, I think that had a lot of importance to me based on family culture and tradition. For whatever reason, that was one part of family socialization that stuck: finding someone to spend your life with and having a public declaration and celebration of that milestone seemed like good and important things, at least for me. If I'd ended up with a girl, I'd probably have still felt the pull to have a wedding, marriage, etc.. But, I never really bought into a lot of the ideas put forth in our Culture (societal level, here, not family) about marriage and weddings... that they are The End, that it's a necessary rite of passage, that insane amounts of money should be spent on a wedding or diamonds or whatever, that people should be obligated to buy us an expensive gift, that a woman should be given away, etc.. Some level of tradition and continuity appeal to me, though. Our ceremony was kind of emblematic of those views and our relationship, I suppose... we took what traditions we liked, rejected others we didn't, compromised on some things, and arranged it all into something personally meaningful to the two of us.
Dunno if that adequately answers the questions... probably only a partial answer, anyway, but there some of it is. Feel free to ask more... I'm all about an open-minded exchange on the subject.
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branchandroot
Re: Questions, questions... lotsa blah blah blah...
Date: 2005-10-12 08:13 pm (UTC)I can sort of see where you're coming from about the wedding invitations thing. I often get invitations for weddings of cousins I haven't seen since I was little, and I'm torn between wanting to believe that family is just trying to be kindly inclusive, and feeling angsty at what I see as an order to send them a gift.
For clarity, what I was getting to about the refusal of legal priveleges was that the people in question would have a wedding, use the lingo, but not file paperwork (we'll ignore commonlaw marriage, here... not even sure that still legally exists in most places). I suppose it makes sense that the cultural bothers you more than the legal... many of the legal rights can still be obtained through other (more expensive, more troublesome) channels, but there's not really an alternative route to the social status.
Good that you don't want to tell people what they should do. That would grate. I generally don't either, except in the case of policy-makers.
For me, there were big reasons for getting a marriage license and certificate... health insurance, someone I trusted having the power to make decisions if I was unable to, property or contracts that had to be in one name or the other automatically reverting to the other person if anything happened to one of us, assumption that any children I have are legally his. These things could be obtained through alternate channels, but based on my cousin's experience, the sum of legal fees for these separate concerns (neverminding the insurance situation) would certainly have cost far more than the portion of the wedding we two personally paid for (possibly more than the whole thing, though I can't say that for sure)... more than we could have afforded at the time. Yeah, that's making use of privelege. Yeah, it makes me feel guilty and uneasy sometimes, especially given that I am close to other people who want the same and can't get it through the same cheap and easy means. But, I'm not sure that my not being legally married would actually serve to help them in any way.
As for getting married and having a wedding, I think that had a lot of importance to me based on family culture and tradition. For whatever reason, that was one part of family socialization that stuck: finding someone to spend your life with and having a public declaration and celebration of that milestone seemed like good and important things, at least for me. If I'd ended up with a girl, I'd probably have still felt the pull to have a wedding, marriage, etc.. But, I never really bought into a lot of the ideas put forth in our Culture (societal level, here, not family) about marriage and weddings... that they are The End, that it's a necessary rite of passage, that insane amounts of money should be spent on a wedding or diamonds or whatever, that people should be obligated to buy us an expensive gift, that a woman should be given away, etc.. Some level of tradition and continuity appeal to me, though. Our ceremony was kind of emblematic of those views and our relationship, I suppose... we took what traditions we liked, rejected others we didn't, compromised on some things, and arranged it all into something personally meaningful to the two of us.
Dunno if that adequately answers the questions... probably only a partial answer, anyway, but there some of it is. Feel free to ask more... I'm all about an open-minded exchange on the subject.