Normalise building your life with a non-romantic partner.

I'm not saying this is for everyone. But like, it shouldn't be weird.

ALSO: it's ok to have a romantic relationship turn into a non-romantic, familial sort of relationship.

There can definitely be grief in that process, and it depends on the relationship itself and the people involved. Not everyone is ok with continuing non-romantic relationships that used to be romantic, and that's ok too.

My situation is that my sexual and romantic orientations changed after I'd already been married to Derek for years. But we still work really well together. We still love each other, it's just not the same kind of love.

It WAS hard for me at first. I had grief for the romantic parts of our relationship, and the way society frames romance and partnerships really didn't help.

"The romance is gone" is seen as a universally tragic thing, rather than part of the natural development of some relationships. The idea of having a partner who you're not romantically involved with is practically nonexistent in our culture.

The default assumption seems to be that if you get married and then figure out that you're gay, you'll get divorced. But like, why would we do that? That sounds awful.

I mean, that's the right choice for some people, and that's fine. But it's not the right choice for us. We're great partners. We're family.

Probably the biggest thing that stresses me out about the idea of coming out as a lesbian to the people in my life who don't know (mostly Derek's family) is that they'll think Derek and I are breaking up or something.

There's so little room in people's heads for unconventional marriages, you know?

I'm also worried that people will think it's unfair to Derek and hold it against me.

I wish that people were more accepting of marriage as found family, rather than a strictly romantic thing.