Meeting, affiancing and marrying Beloved.
Sep. 16th, 2007 06:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sparkindarknessMeeting, affiancing and marrying Beloved.Hmmm, caslayerboi asked about this and it occurred to me that, these AREN’T things I’ve journaled about. I’m trying to figure out why. It’s not because they’re too personal - I mean, I journaled my angst because beloved DID bring up the subject of marriage once (I‘m sure those who were reading my journal back then will remember the uber-silliness http://sparkindarkness.livejournal.com/32160.html), so it‘s hardly outside my comfort zone.
So I’m trying to think why. I think one point is that, in my head, Beloved has always been there. Even when I look back and remember, I tend to picture him in a corner somewhere, even if he wasn’t. Even if it was a time before we’d even met, my memory inserts a Beloved. And on some level, he’s always been the other half, the partner, the spouse, even when we were just friends and even before we signed the legal document. It just didn’t flip over and change anything
Also, a fair while back now I had my journal transition. My old journal (now abandoned) was my “life” journal and sparkindarkness was only ever supposed to be a place where I deposited my fiction. Except, a lot of RL people I know and (in some cases) don’t especially like (or, at least, I can’t trust their discretion) read it. So I kept secrets on it. My sexuality, my religion, my job, just about anything that could come back and potentially bite me. Of course, it reached a point where there was precious little I COULD actually post in my old journal. So I developed sparkindarkness into something more, but slowly over a longer period. So a lot of my personal stuff at this time just didn’t get journaled anywhere. It was a while before Sparky became my main and final journal and I was more comfortable having my life on paper (so to speak).
As to the actual wedding (and yes, I am legally Civil Partnered, apart from anything else, from a legal standpoint it‘s pretty daft not to be at this point). It’s freaky, I don’t know if I was hiatusing journal (looking in the archives, I WAS very non-contact at the time, for most of the month in fact. There’s a few work related posts which were probably written at work but not much else, which makes sense since I was insanely busy at the time). What I do know is that I spammed the forums I was on, message boards, private groups and email lists about it but it never reached LJ. Actually, I went back through my archives to check that, because it’s one of those “surely I did?” things that it turns out I didn’t. It’s only as more and more people expressed surprise when I referred to Beloved in a more official capacity than “boyfriend” (which I rarely do, because “husband” just, I dunno, feels a little odd? The problem with calling him “husband“ is that to many people that means I‘m calling myself “wife.” Which is just wrong, and “spouse” sounds like some kind of application form and “civil partner” is just silly.) that it hit me that I can’t have done. It's one of those things you think everyone knows then are amazed that someone doesn't.
Anyway, that’s why they haven’t really been here before - and here is them in actuality.
When did I meet beloved? I had just started college (a-level college), he wasn’t, but he was a friend of a friend (who we’re not actually in touch with now) and we met up. I liked him - he’s always laid back and happy and never had angst, never had drama, never got upset - he was like the classic Jamaican off the Malibu adverts, nothing ever ruffled him. But he wasn’t my type. Anyway, I was seeing Satan’s evil twin brother at the time.
(As an aside, “my type” has been a matter of much debate for years. I say it’s tall, muscular, dark, men, everyone else says that it’s short, boysih, blond men. It‘s complicated).
Anyway, I had one of my meltdown breakups (I’m GOOD at these) and most of my (admittedly not many) friends kept a wide distance, because at that age most people aren’t entirely confident of what to do with an emotional exploding (CLOSETED) gay guy. The coven was there - but Beloved, while not being major on the support at the time, didn’t run screaming for the hills either.
So, being one of my few friends who didn’t try to seek refugee status in Bahrain to get away from me, we become much closer friends during which time I worked at making him less boring. He was (is) always inclined to be too sensible, too frugal, too prudent for his own damn good. I dragged him out of the country for the first time (and several other times), introduced him to tequila, table dancing (in that order) and just randomly having fun without caring whose watching/how silly it is/how daunting it is. At the same time I guess he introduced a level of organisation and order to my chaotic (but workable) life, since I’d always been inclined to be impetuous with no long term planning. We worked really. In fact, even as just friends we’ve always worked.
Anyway, good good friends, we had different boyfriends (and bitched about them to each other) then I was in LONG TERM SERIOUS RELATIONSHIP. Which died, admittedly not messily, but still it wasn’t pretty and I did do some of the semi-falling apart thing because I’m GOOD at that. This time Beloved was the one picking up most of the pieces, which made us a lot closer. It also destroyed Beloved’s relationship with his not-quite significant other whose constant jealousy soared to new heights (to be honest, I’d sympathise with the jealousy because Beloved was spending a lot more time with me than him at the time - but the guy had ALWAYS been ridiculously jealous so it made it reaaaalll hard to give him the benefit of the doubt or understanding).
So we ended up extra extra extra close friends who talked about everything, discovered we shared the same kinks, discovered we found everything about each other amusing or irritating in an amusing way and generally just loved being together... and were now suddenly single and both a little upset (yadda yadda you know how this goes).
Of course my panicked reaction (because I HAVE to have a panicked over reaction, right?) was “Oh gods, I just used my best friend as the rebound guy.” I think this lead to most of my issues for the first year (and my above angst) because a part of my brain was always saying “this is a mistake. This is such a stupid mistake.” After all, everyone says rebound relationships don’t last, right? And everyone knows turning a friend into a partner is a bad idea, right? It took me a year before I finally got rid of that voice and decided that it didn’t matter what “everyone knows” this is working (then people wonder why I’m impetuous? Overthinking things NEVER WORKS!)
Betrothal never formally happened (which meant I never got a free ring, damn it!), the closest to it was the angst moment already journaled. Basically, especially as we campaigned more for gay marriage, and the more my silly overthinking died the more we wanted to get married - it was a less a “will you marry me?” and more a “Bloody hell, why won’t they let us marry?!” which lacks romance, I admit, but does contain considerable frustrated passion that comes from years of cohabiting. Being my lawyerly self we’d already prepared a vast dossier of legal paperwork to try and give ourselves the same protections. Less a proposal and more a mutual understanding and desire.
Then the law changed. It actually took us a couple of weeks to go from “Yay! Gay people can finally get married” to “hey, that means we can get married!” You fight form something for so long in the abstract you kind of forget the personal.
We got married (or civil partnered technically) something which still kind of stuns me now. It’s one of those things that you can’t quite imagine and still catches me by surprise when I think of it. Beltane 2006 was the date and the ceremony was small and private with immediate family only (which I kind of regret, maybe if the greater clan had been informed before the event they would have taken it more seriously than they do). The preparations were long and arduous with Beloved and I giving everyone our best “WTF?” face while mothers charged around doing complicated expensive things which we don’t understand to this day. Still, it was perfect, I have never felt so high as on that day and I’m still a little zapped about it.
We’ve now been married for over a year which means we’ve beaten several Hollywood couples. Despite instructions from the God Father of the Gay Mafia our marriage has so far failed to cause the massive destruction of heterosexual relationships around us
So, there, in one long ramble is the story of us. Did I miss anything?
So I’m trying to think why. I think one point is that, in my head, Beloved has always been there. Even when I look back and remember, I tend to picture him in a corner somewhere, even if he wasn’t. Even if it was a time before we’d even met, my memory inserts a Beloved. And on some level, he’s always been the other half, the partner, the spouse, even when we were just friends and even before we signed the legal document. It just didn’t flip over and change anything
Also, a fair while back now I had my journal transition. My old journal (now abandoned) was my “life” journal and sparkindarkness was only ever supposed to be a place where I deposited my fiction. Except, a lot of RL people I know and (in some cases) don’t especially like (or, at least, I can’t trust their discretion) read it. So I kept secrets on it. My sexuality, my religion, my job, just about anything that could come back and potentially bite me. Of course, it reached a point where there was precious little I COULD actually post in my old journal. So I developed sparkindarkness into something more, but slowly over a longer period. So a lot of my personal stuff at this time just didn’t get journaled anywhere. It was a while before Sparky became my main and final journal and I was more comfortable having my life on paper (so to speak).
As to the actual wedding (and yes, I am legally Civil Partnered, apart from anything else, from a legal standpoint it‘s pretty daft not to be at this point). It’s freaky, I don’t know if I was hiatusing journal (looking in the archives, I WAS very non-contact at the time, for most of the month in fact. There’s a few work related posts which were probably written at work but not much else, which makes sense since I was insanely busy at the time). What I do know is that I spammed the forums I was on, message boards, private groups and email lists about it but it never reached LJ. Actually, I went back through my archives to check that, because it’s one of those “surely I did?” things that it turns out I didn’t. It’s only as more and more people expressed surprise when I referred to Beloved in a more official capacity than “boyfriend” (which I rarely do, because “husband” just, I dunno, feels a little odd? The problem with calling him “husband“ is that to many people that means I‘m calling myself “wife.” Which is just wrong, and “spouse” sounds like some kind of application form and “civil partner” is just silly.) that it hit me that I can’t have done. It's one of those things you think everyone knows then are amazed that someone doesn't.
Anyway, that’s why they haven’t really been here before - and here is them in actuality.
When did I meet beloved? I had just started college (a-level college), he wasn’t, but he was a friend of a friend (who we’re not actually in touch with now) and we met up. I liked him - he’s always laid back and happy and never had angst, never had drama, never got upset - he was like the classic Jamaican off the Malibu adverts, nothing ever ruffled him. But he wasn’t my type. Anyway, I was seeing Satan’s evil twin brother at the time.
(As an aside, “my type” has been a matter of much debate for years. I say it’s tall, muscular, dark, men, everyone else says that it’s short, boysih, blond men. It‘s complicated).
Anyway, I had one of my meltdown breakups (I’m GOOD at these) and most of my (admittedly not many) friends kept a wide distance, because at that age most people aren’t entirely confident of what to do with an emotional exploding (CLOSETED) gay guy. The coven was there - but Beloved, while not being major on the support at the time, didn’t run screaming for the hills either.
So, being one of my few friends who didn’t try to seek refugee status in Bahrain to get away from me, we become much closer friends during which time I worked at making him less boring. He was (is) always inclined to be too sensible, too frugal, too prudent for his own damn good. I dragged him out of the country for the first time (and several other times), introduced him to tequila, table dancing (in that order) and just randomly having fun without caring whose watching/how silly it is/how daunting it is. At the same time I guess he introduced a level of organisation and order to my chaotic (but workable) life, since I’d always been inclined to be impetuous with no long term planning. We worked really. In fact, even as just friends we’ve always worked.
Anyway, good good friends, we had different boyfriends (and bitched about them to each other) then I was in LONG TERM SERIOUS RELATIONSHIP. Which died, admittedly not messily, but still it wasn’t pretty and I did do some of the semi-falling apart thing because I’m GOOD at that. This time Beloved was the one picking up most of the pieces, which made us a lot closer. It also destroyed Beloved’s relationship with his not-quite significant other whose constant jealousy soared to new heights (to be honest, I’d sympathise with the jealousy because Beloved was spending a lot more time with me than him at the time - but the guy had ALWAYS been ridiculously jealous so it made it reaaaalll hard to give him the benefit of the doubt or understanding).
So we ended up extra extra extra close friends who talked about everything, discovered we shared the same kinks, discovered we found everything about each other amusing or irritating in an amusing way and generally just loved being together... and were now suddenly single and both a little upset (yadda yadda you know how this goes).
Of course my panicked reaction (because I HAVE to have a panicked over reaction, right?) was “Oh gods, I just used my best friend as the rebound guy.” I think this lead to most of my issues for the first year (and my above angst) because a part of my brain was always saying “this is a mistake. This is such a stupid mistake.” After all, everyone says rebound relationships don’t last, right? And everyone knows turning a friend into a partner is a bad idea, right? It took me a year before I finally got rid of that voice and decided that it didn’t matter what “everyone knows” this is working (then people wonder why I’m impetuous? Overthinking things NEVER WORKS!)
Betrothal never formally happened (which meant I never got a free ring, damn it!), the closest to it was the angst moment already journaled. Basically, especially as we campaigned more for gay marriage, and the more my silly overthinking died the more we wanted to get married - it was a less a “will you marry me?” and more a “Bloody hell, why won’t they let us marry?!” which lacks romance, I admit, but does contain considerable frustrated passion that comes from years of cohabiting. Being my lawyerly self we’d already prepared a vast dossier of legal paperwork to try and give ourselves the same protections. Less a proposal and more a mutual understanding and desire.
Then the law changed. It actually took us a couple of weeks to go from “Yay! Gay people can finally get married” to “hey, that means we can get married!” You fight form something for so long in the abstract you kind of forget the personal.
We got married (or civil partnered technically) something which still kind of stuns me now. It’s one of those things that you can’t quite imagine and still catches me by surprise when I think of it. Beltane 2006 was the date and the ceremony was small and private with immediate family only (which I kind of regret, maybe if the greater clan had been informed before the event they would have taken it more seriously than they do). The preparations were long and arduous with Beloved and I giving everyone our best “WTF?” face while mothers charged around doing complicated expensive things which we don’t understand to this day. Still, it was perfect, I have never felt so high as on that day and I’m still a little zapped about it.
We’ve now been married for over a year which means we’ve beaten several Hollywood couples. Despite instructions from the God Father of the Gay Mafia our marriage has so far failed to cause the massive destruction of heterosexual relationships around us
So, there, in one long ramble is the story of us. Did I miss anything?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-16 05:51 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-16 05:55 pm (UTC)Given I met my husband and fell for him IC before OC, and was with someone else at the time, I can understand convoluted relationships... :P
(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-16 06:03 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-16 06:07 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-16 06:19 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-16 06:33 pm (UTC)So yeah, belated congratulations on the wedding, and from what you've mentioned I'm sure it'll be one to last a long time :)
(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-16 06:33 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-16 06:37 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-16 07:49 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-16 07:55 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-16 08:17 pm (UTC)*er, ok. perhaps there weren't that many. I don't remember very clearly but I'm sure I prob'ly said some stupid stuff, or at least some stuff that was based on an incorrect premise...
(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-16 08:32 pm (UTC)And I can't even read the whole post now because I have to get dressed and go and be tortured . .. er, go to group!
Bad Sparky! No smutty fic!
(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-16 09:10 pm (UTC)As to the rest, well, the "angst" moment I mentioned was back in 2003.
Thank you. :)
(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-16 09:14 pm (UTC)Now that is a new and interesting way of dating!
(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-16 09:15 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-16 09:16 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-16 09:16 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-16 09:17 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-16 09:28 pm (UTC)I married my best friend, too. We got together after he helped me through trouble with another friend, and he's still the first person I want to talk to when I'm in trouble. Even if he is the cause of it :-). Can't believe it's been nearly fourteen years already.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-16 09:29 pm (UTC)And I also blame WoW for providing a way to contact him... :P
And I came into your journal late, so I think I missed all that bit... :)
(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-16 09:42 pm (UTC)Despite instructions from the God Father of the Gay Mafia our marriage has so far failed to cause the massive destruction of heterosexual relationships around us - *snerk*
(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-16 10:03 pm (UTC)Thank you :)
(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-16 10:04 pm (UTC)Uh, yeah :)
How did you get from "as far as my family is concerned I salivate over Angelina Jolie, Elisha Dushku and the woman who plays Dark Angel. I'm soooo not wanting to send them an invite to a wedding with two grooms."
to
"The preparations were long and arduous with Beloved and I giving everyone our best “WTF?” face while mothers charged around doing complicated expensive things which we don’t understand to this day."
But your story explains why my own experiences of matrimony and marriage have been so disappointing - *you* took up more than your fair share of fun and love and romance, damn it!
(Not that I begrudge you any of it because you and Beloved deserve all your happiness, and you're clearly both such lovely people, all I can wish for you is many, many more years of togetheress and wedded bliss.)
And finally...awwwww!
(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-16 10:05 pm (UTC)It's amusing the questions some people ask "which of you works?" "Who wears the trousers?" "Who disposes of insects in the house?" It's amazing, these should have died out in the 60s
(no subject)
Date: 2007-09-16 10:06 pm (UTC)