How do you know when a long distance relationship is ready to become a relocationship? Is there a rule like days together a month, plus time in relationship, divided by distance apart, equals June 27, 2006 you move in together or break up? This may require taking an emotional quantum physics class at JCC to answer.
The consensus is that I have defied the odds. Having enjoyed the sanctity of a long distance romance for two years is evidently way past the line for most. Many cannot trust, commit or sacrifice sex for that amount of time. Someone suggested relationship counseling because we do not live together.
On the contrary, the loving is effortless. Living together invites a mass of variables to the equation. It is the marriage part; they say that takes all the work. The problems seem to start after someone is carried over the threshold. I have done that and felt like I lost myself in figuring out if it was he, me or us when the problems started. That works if you want to avoid dealing with your own issues. It is easy to hide inside a relationship for all the wrong reasons.
My efforts not to do that may have pushed me too far down the aisle of self-development. It takes a well defined sense of self to survive and I was shopping for it when something I always wanted found me. When I tell people how wonderful it is to have a full time love, two homes, personal time and romantic time, their reaction is “When are you moving?”
I thought that as gay men we had dispelled the notion of convention. Then it was suggested that it is important to demonstrate our worthiness of legal marriage by conducting ourselves as if we are married. When I was a boy, I never got the doll I wanted. I made evening gowns out of dishtowels for my sock monkey; that did not make him Barbie. I am not convinced that congress will be swayed by my simulated married life. I want my people to have the right to marry, even if we don’t exercise it on schedule.
Whenever the math works out on this and I do get married; I might return from the honeymoon to this house. Happily married and peacefully alone, I might read or walk the dog. Make art or watch the episodes of Project Runway that I missed to see if they designed something for sock monkeys. This way the honeymoon lasts for years. It’s not that I don’t want more. It is about wanting nothing less.