From a young age, we’re taught there’s one way to have a family: get married to the right person of the opposite sex, buckle down, and settle in. However, this family structure isn’t right for everybody – especially queer people, perpetually suffocated by heteronormativity’s bind. Writer Nicole Lee, in this letter to the editor, discusses her personal experiences with queer family-building and resisting expectations.
I was married to Bret for seven years before I realised I was a lesbian.
I’d identified as bisexual since I was nineteen, but I only dated men. I’d spend hours every night watching YouTube videos of queer women couples and daydreaming about their lives until I read through the Lesbian Masterdoc and it finally clicked. My experiences with attraction were not aligned with bisexuality, in truth.
When I came out, many people in my life assumed my marriage was over. While divorce is an absolutely valid outcome for people who discover their queer identities later in life, it’s not our story. I never considered ending a partnership with my best friend and greatest supporter just because I was gay, but I did wonder what our future would look like.
We had long conversations about labels and identities: Lesbian. Asexual. Polyamorous. Platonic Partnership. Finding the words that fit was incredibly affirming and adjusting our dynamic to reflect our newfound identities felt easy, freeing, and relatively banal.
We both started dating other people and felt relieved to be able to be more honest about our dynamic to our friends, families, and each other. Finally, we were living authentically as ourselves instead of attempting to fit into boxes that never made sense for us.
In time, we’ve created the chosen family of my dreams.
Coming home in the evenings to cook dinner alongside my partners is the daily habit that brings me the most joy. It’s when I feel my safest, my most seen, at my most ease. And it’s when I feel the most aligned with myself and my own values.
I love the emotional safety, comfort, and stability that living together offers. And there are so many benefits – from the practical sharing of living expenses to the joy of being able to build a safe space for our friends.
And yet, almost every day, I’m reminded that my chosen family isn’t ‘normal’.
Whenever I casually mention my platonic partner in straight, monogamous circles, I get a lot of questions. Some people are genuinely curious and want to learn more about what our relationship looks like, but their discomfort and judgement often seeps through, especially after they learn that I’m a lesbian who also has a girlfriend.
Both my relationships are well established. I’ve been married to my platonic partner for twelve years, I’ve been dating my girlfriend for three years, and we all live together, but people struggle to acknowledge that we are a family.
I’ve been called greedy, weird, and a cheater by people I barely know.
I’m constantly defending and correcting straight people who struggle to understand our dynamic. When I try to explain my platonic partnership, I’ve had strangers dismiss this “arrangement” as a stepping stone between marriage and divorce – which is so frustrating. It’s incredibly difficult to convince people that their discomfort exists only because my relationships exist outside the heteropatriarchal model they’re conditioned to idealise.
Last year, we were able to buy a house and move into an established Dublin neighborhood where many of our neighbors have lived for generations. I imagine many of them were expecting a “young couple” to move in and were surprised, instead, to meet three adults in our late 30s.
Even though it’s incredibly common to live with a combination of friends, parents, and/or partners, social norms suggest anything that deviates from the traditional nuclear family has less value. Capitalist society was designed for nuclear families.
Each time I identify both of my partners as family members is an act of defiance.
It would be easier to skim over the details, sometimes. I could check ‘married’ and ‘lesbian’ on medical forms and flip a coin to choose my emergency contact, but I’ve learned that challenging these expectations and proudly calling my partners my family is an important act of resistance because it forces people to confront their own biases.
The hesitation to recognise my household as a family doesn’t only come from strangers. The same blood relatives who tell my sister they are ‘sending love to her whole family’ – meaning her spouse and their kids – send me an obligatory ‘say hello to everyone there,’ meaning my platonic partner and my girlfriend.
These differences are frustrating and hurtful, but not unexpected. My mum adored everything about my mediocre high school boyfriend. I know she imagined us progressing through the traditional relationship escalator of getting married, me taking his name, having babies, and quitting my job in the city to be a stay at home mum. Anything else would be a social failure.
Because of these expectations, I grew up believing that only one type of adulthood was ‘normal’: heteronormative, monogamous marriage.
I have several friends who did follow that path. Some of them are happy. Many of them feel socially isolated, exhausted, and trapped in an unbalanced partnership with their days spent caring for their husbands and their young kids and while neglecting themselves.
Meanwhile, truly, I’ve never felt happier, freer, or more supported. I get to live with two people who love me deeply. I have two partnerships where I consistently feel like the best version of myself. It’s incredible.
If I could, I’d go back and tell my younger self that those expectations are nonsense. Nuclear family systems are a product of capitalism. Instead, I’d tell my teenage self to invest in my friendships, learn how to cultivate community, and embrace a culture of communal living.
Perhaps most importantly, I’d tell her you don’t need to be romantically or sexually into someone to love them deeply. Platonic love is healthy and healing, but cultural norms teach us to abandon non-romantic relationships and under-prioritise friendships as soon as a potential mate comes into the picture.
I really don’t care who is sleeping together, but in an attempt to connect with me, I’ve had friends in long-term marriages point out that they don’t have sexual relationships with their spouse, either. “I guess our relationship is platonic, too.” This also feels like a bit of a misunderstanding, though, because I find myself wondering if these relationships truly are platonic. Do they deeply love and support each other? Are they close? Are they happy?
While I appreciate these attempts to make me feel ‘normal’, I don’t need validation that comes from a place of wanting to maintain the status quo.
Slogans like “love is love” suggest that queer relationships are exactly like straight ones. But I don’t want a love that feels like an obligation; I believe queer relationships are built to defy social structures. While plenty of people gravitate toward traditional family models with a spouse and kids, many do this out of necessity to fit in more than any innate desire. Those who structure their partnerships differently are free to choose what feels good for them.
Ultimately, living authentically queer means consistently resisting a world that was built for heteronormativity.
There are so many different kinds of partnerships and chosen families formed by couples, relatives, and friends. I just want more people to build their own families brick by brick, whether that means priortising non-romantic relationships, partnering with friends, and choosing non-traditional living arrangements.
For me, my ‘chosen family’ extends beyond my partners and includes a network of close friends. This year, I spent Christmas among friends and neighbors and it felt so lovely to know that we were there supporting each other. This kind of chosen family feels like mutual aid where we’re all protecting each other.
Chosen family is not a last resort or a consolation prize. It’s a choice to actually build a family that feels good to you. We’re a family, and I love the life we’ve built together. Our dynamic feels radical, authentic, and secure. Everybody deserves that.
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