(no subject)

[magistrate]

I'm asexual, though panphysical, and largely aromantic. I mistrust external significations made on relationships. I'm polyamorous, though I love slowly; I reserve judgment, I reserve trust, I'm not great at communicating my emotions to anyone, and I tend to dissect them interminably before going out and saying I have them. I dislike courting, I dislike the romantic ideals of love as a conqueror of all things or a supreme ideal to which all other ideals should or must be subjugated. I'm not interested in laying an exclusive claim on anyone, or letting anyone lay an exclusive claim on me. I don't believe that, having realized you love one person, the natural result should be that you cease to love all others. I don't think formalizing a relationship in the eyes of other people changes the truth of the relationship between the people in it. I don't think a relationship needs to be defined, formalized, or recognized, in order to be valid or profound.

I'm also, as of the 26th of December, engaged.

I'll understand if you have some questions.

.

In the light of all that, what's left for marriage to signify?

I think it's a bunch of small or subtle things.

For one thing, it's a publically-accessible (by which I mean understandable?) affirmation that Hey, This Means Something.

For another, there are legal benefits – like putting L on my health care. At least, there are in the states where people don't consider this arrangement something to be stamped out at the earliest opportunity.

But I think the biggest thing it is, to me, viscerally, is a formal alliance: we're committed to continuing to build the life we're already building together. To aligning our resources and sticking this out. We're presenting a united front to a world that occasionally wants to take us down, and by god, we're taking it seriously. Right now, there's a Me, an L, and an Us, and that Us is just as important as the individuals. Not more important, I don't think, but just as.

And it's a powerful, if not entirely accurate, sigil to the rest of the world. I like to think of it as an official exhortation for social and governing bodies to provide all reasonable assistance in helping us move forward as a team, and a way of saying "get out of the way" to various petty barriers like hospital visitation bans.

I keep thinking, as I look at my ring – a rather simple, pragmatic stainless steel affair – that it's a physical reminder that I'm committed to this course. I'm in it for more than myself. I'm looking after more than myself, considering more than myself in my actions, providing for more than myself. And while this is already the mindset I'd been existing in as our household grew and coalesced, the ring is becoming something of a meditation bead.

Marriage isn't going to change anything, except in the eyes of the law. What it's going to do is give a more concrete framework for what we're already doing. L and I are already ripping out a lot of assumed parts of that framework, but it's strange an interesting to have it to work with at all.

[ETA] Also there's the matter where I love L very much, but, uh, that was supposed to go without saying?

[ETA 2: Son Of ETA] Cepheid variables, I am bad at this.