As your heterosexual friends get sucked into matrimony like pigeons into a jet engine, you will find yourself increasingly looking at marriage as the natural Stamp of Permanence which all long-term attachments will eventually receive. This translates into a slight, yet perceptible tendency to treat couples who are not married as if their relationship is somehow temporary and makeshift. While this may in some cases be true, when it comes to your gay friends it will just as often be the case that they are not married only because it is not possible for them to get married. In fact, in some cases they will actually have gone through a commitment ceremony and consider themselves married, using terms like "husband," "wife," "ball and chain," etc. As a helpful straight person who wants to keep these people as friends, it is your duty to not be like Congress and to recognize these relationships as the permanent, stable commitments that they are.

Part of this involves remembering to do the little things that you would do for your married friends, like remembering to address holiday cards and such to both partners, making it clear that your friend's partner is always included in your invitations, and steering potential homebreakers away from your friend by pointing out that s/he is permanently off the market. It also involves not being surprised when you see your friends:

• Buying property together
• Getting a joint bank account
• Drafting wills
• Thinking about the pitter patter of little feet
• Saying "No thanks, I promised Katy I'd stay home and paint the garage Saturday morning" a lot

It's important for your friends to feel that you recognize their relationship and treat it as just as important and sacred as you would a heterosexual marriage. If you don't consider heterosexual marriage important or sacred, well, they probably understand this about you and won't take offense if you view them the same way. But remember that you are among the few people who are willing to treat this relationship with the dignity it deserves, and doing so can really help your friends out.

Also, don't assume that because your friends haven't had a commitment ceremony that doesn't mean they really consider themselves married. Some long-term couples decide not to have them, either because they are waiting, as so many are, "to see what happens in Hawaii," or because they think it would be silly to go through a ceremony that has no legal or social meaning outside the community, or because the thought of having a wedding and being unable to invite the family makes them sad, or whatever. If they've been together for multiple years and you don't think either one is goin' anywhere, you've got what Texas would call a common-law marriage, if that kinda thing were legal down there. On that topic, we may as well point out that because society works so hard to make homosexual love impossible, gay relationships are harder to keep going, on the average, than straight ones. Just as your dog is really 7 times older than his chronological age, your gay friends have been together 3 times as long as you think they have. Take this into account and treat them accordingly.

If your friends do decide to have a commitment ceremony, it behooves you to attend (if invited), and afterwards, to use the right terminology--"spouse" is generally the safest, since some people will not like the connotations of "wife" or "husband," patriarchy being what it is (and animal husbandry having given the word a bad name). But don't keep calling your friend's partner his boyfriend.

And, since we've been asked this question more times than you've had hot dinners, we may as well tackle it now:

"What do you call a gay person's significant other?"

Well, if they've had a ceremony, call him/her a spouse. If not, find out what your friends prefer and use that. No one has ever come up with a truly satisfactory answer to this question that satisfies all parties. For instance:

Your friends have probably figured out which of these terms is least problematic for them; listen for what they use and adopt it as your referent of choice.

For every up there is a down, for every rose there is a thorn, and where there is marriage, there will there be divorce. It happens to everyone, and occasionally it will happen to gay couples. Often the heartbreak of this kind of cataclysm is exacerbated by the sense that nobody else understands how devastating and life-destroying an event this is. You can help.

Remember that when two people who have been living together for 6, 10, 15 years decide not to be partners any more, that's not just a breakup. That's a ticket to a multi-year joyride through living hell. The fact that this relationship was never legally ratified does not make ending it any easier. In fact, it makes things more difficult, since neither partner has a legal claim on anything and arguments about who really owns that coffeetable are more likely to be settled with a chainsaw than with a court order. If there are children involved, the person whose biology was not involved will be doing some serious wigging out, since even if the other partner realizes the benefits of allowing him/her visiting rights, these will be dependent purely on the goodwill of the ex, and if s/he should enroll him/herself and the offspring in the Hari Krishnas on a whim, the nonbiological parent has no legal recourse.

Be prepared, then, if your gay friends break up, to deal with everything you would deal with in a friends' divorce--in spades. As with any such event, getting overinvolved is not a good idea. But there are things you can remember to do:

• Use good judgment when planning social events, and don't invite both if you don't think they can handle meeting on neutral territory.
• Do not rush with unseemly haste to fix your friends up with other people. Allow the corpse of the marriage to get cold first.
• Be prepared to do a certain amount of listening to each partner bitch about the other, but try not to egg them on.
• If you see either of your friends exhibiting unwarranted irritability, bursting into tears on slight provocation, ripping peoples' heads off for no reason, or otherwise acting bizarre, remember that this may be the root cause and treat them appropriately.
• Do not say things like "Oh well, at least you don't have to pay a lawyer to do this." This sort of thing does not come under the heading of "looking on the bright side." It rather comes under the heading of "making this process seem even less dignified than it already is."
• Have Kleenex handy at all times.

And onward to Chapter Four: Weddings and Other Nightmares

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Copyright ©1996 The Plaid Adder. Do not reproduce this material without the express permission of the author.