The Queer Ultimatum
And why I knew I could never give one
While I put myself out there as “not the journaling type,” the reality is that I have several notebooks with page after page scrawled in random colors of ink, overflowing with random streams of consciousness. I’m not sure what compelled me to pull one of the oldest ones, with the crumbling cardboard spine, from the depths of my closet the other day. I guess sometimes it feels good to reflect back on how quickly a life can change.
The first entry in this not-journal is from October 2021. I describe myself as being at “the highest low I’ve been at in a long time.” My nights were filled with ominous nightmares of orange skies, grey/black clouds, and sand on a beach that was sucking me in like wet concrete. My days were filled with tears upon tears, dried long enough for periods of time where I’d have to pull myself together to have some good moments with the kids or my friends who had moved in downstairs to help me cover the mortgage.
This was more than two years after I had come out— my Self-Loviversary of July 3, 2019. It was the craniosacral therapy session that I talk about in my memoir, Perfectly Queer, that moment where I was finally able to accept my queerness, love that piece of me, and feel fully integrated into my body.
Here I was, two years later, having occasional meetings with my editor at Hay House as we worked on the most exciting project of my professional life. Here I was, being interviewed by Hulu for a documentary they wanted to cast on individuals who came out later and life. I was a solid year and a half into my long-distance relationship with my now-wife, Jen. But everything else in the world felt like it was crumbling down around me. I often forget how hard life was then and how things weren’t magically fixed in my life because I had written a heart-warming, soul satisfying final chapter of my memoir. Life still went on and in this moment it was pretty sucky.
That first journal entry, in my mental doomspiral, I inadvertently started a fight with Jen over the phone. Fear won and I shared with her that a part of me was terrified that she would never move from Pennsylvania to be with me and the kids in Florida. Not even two years together and I could so easily lose sight of the fact that her having to close a highly successful chiropractic wellness office and leave the place she had called home for the majority of her life was no easy feat. I was scared and I tried to make it her fault.
She was deeply hurt. I apologized. I wrote in my journal that, “Whenever thoughts would come up about us not being together, I knew I could never leave. There was never going to be an ultimatum with our relationship ending.”
The Queer Ultimatum
We sit here, curled together on our couch in our latest and greatest pair of sweatpants, watching the new season of The Ultimatum: Queer Love on Netflix. It’s fascinating and gratifying to see shows that feature only queer relationships— not just a side story. like in the movie we just rewatched, The Old Guard, or that gay couple and their group of straight friends, like in the remake of the series The Four Seasons. Representation is great, but having a show that fully centers around relationships like ours feels extra nice— even if it’s filled with all of the problems that come with “reality” tv.
Jen and I watch, as if we’re scientists studying specimens through the glass, trying to understand how they operate. How is it that they can give their partner an ultimatum when the stakes are so high? This is who they consider “their person” that they want to spend the rest of their days with… and also they’re willing to walk away if their person doesn’t conform. It doesn’t take long to see why some of these couples ended up here.
While the show has some questionable ethics, I see the point of the “experiment” (beyond ratings and voyeuristic entertainment). There is a difference between where Jen and I were in our relationship, and where many of these couples currently are— we were very clear about what we wanted in a relationship. We had individual visions for our lives, and those two visions intersected. We valued the same things in life. We knew that together, regardless of geography or our legal status, our life path involved us walking side by side.
On The Ultimatum, couples are split and put in new “trial marriages” with a different partner. Some seem to relate primarily on the physical level, while others (especially those who didn’t necessarily choose to be partnered) seem to develop a fun and supportive platonic friendship. In nearly every situation, though, the “trial partner” seems to help the individual gain clarity about what it is they want from a relationship. They have to figure out what really matters to them. They also get to see if what their relationship is lacking is truly a deal breaker or #nbd.
Vision Forward
There is a lot we can’t control in our lives. The current news cycle seems to remind me of that on an hourly basis. It’s hard not to get sucked in to the worry of the world around us— worry about what other people are going to do and how it impacts our lives. It reminds me of those dark days between 2019 and 2021, where I felt life sucking me down and I wanted to point at every single person around me and scream, “Why are you not helping me?!”
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It was in those times that I had lost sight of my vision. I wasn’t paying attention to the life that I wanted to create and all of the evidence around me that supported that I was, in fact, moving in the direction of the life I had always dreamed of for myself.
I had a partner in Jen who fit the vision of the person I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. I was fulfilling my childhood dream of becoming a published author. I had a roof over my head and friends who were helping keep it there. My physical, mental, and spiritual health was improving.
And while I tried to place blame on others for not coming to my rescue, the truth was that I was surrounded by so many people who were doing exactly what they needed to do for me— be there as a support, not a savior. There was nothing they could have done, anyway, that would have sped me faster toward my vision. That was on me to do.
Now, as I sit here on my patio with my wife, drinking our morning coffee out of our favorite pottery mugs and looking at the home space that we have created, I am in shock that my official “coming out” Self Lovivesary was only six years ago. So much can happen in six years.
I am in the home space that I had long ago envisioned in my mind, complete with a growing banana forest. I am doing the work that long ago I dreamed could someday be a real career— writing or ghostwriting a new book every four months or so. I am stepping closer into the role of mom and spouse that I had always hoped to be. I am reclaiming my health, both physical and spiritual, that I allowed to fall by the wayside.
I’ve had to dismantle so many stories of my identity, my feelings on success and abundance, my concepts of what makes a “good mom”, “good daughter”, or “good wife.” I continue the practice of learning to throw away “suppose to's” and “shoulds.” And I keep trying to cool my jets by reminding myself that everyone is on their own path and time table, no matter how much I wish they could just move on… on the reality tv show or in life.
My Self Loviversary is always my reminder of the importance of vision. To have it. To be clear on it. And to be flexible in the timing and manner of which it unfolds. It’s not about control. It’s more like a constant exercise in defining and refining what it is you want in this life and allowing it to happen in whatever way that occurs.
I remind myself of this with a quote I read daily…
“What is yours will not pass you by.”
No ultimatums needed.
