Category: Family

So I have been rather quiet on this blog lately. In part, I have really not had much to say. The situation with my family had not changed in the past month–week after week I held my breath but no questions about the wedding every came about. And we were still tying up loose ends with the venues, so there wasn’t much to report there. And frankly, I was getting tired of planning the wedding and talking about the wedding. It seemed for a while that every weekend activity was centered around the wedding, every conversation was about the wedding, and every time I saw friends (including some that I see on a weekly basis), they asked about the wedding. So I decided to take a break from it all and enjoy some downtime from the planning and from the blog.

But a lot has happened in the month since I last wrote in this blog. We now have all four venues finally nailed down. Town hall, drinks reception, lunch, and then the pub. So now that the macro-level arrangements have been taken care of, and the dates are set, it is only the details that remain to be filled out–and we still have 5 months to do so. (Yes, I know those 5 months sound like a lot, but they will pass really quickly!)

But most importantly, my brother just informed us that he is coming to the wedding! It will be his first visit to London and I am excited to be able to see him on this side of the pond. Unfortunately summertime school schedules and challenges surrounding food allergies and travel for my youngest nephew means that my sister-in-law and two nephews will not be able to come, but I am sure they will be here in spirit.

And it was my brother’s decision to come to the wedding that has had the further consequence of causing my mom to finally mention The Elephant In The Room during my recent conversation with her. This was a huge relief for me, as I was going crazy waiting and was going to just bring it up myself (and thereby breaking the promise I made to myself to wait it out). He had just informed her the previous weekend that he was going to be making the trip–and that in turn was the catalyst that finally thawed the ice.

You see, it turns out that the wedding had become compartmentalized for various reasons. Compartmentalization is something that I also do very well (and I have an amazing capacity for that, according to my old therapist)–but I cannot even begin to fathom the full complexity of what goes through my mother’s mind. I had thought her reticence was due to a sense of shame and her not wanting to acknowledge something publicly that she perceived as something to be hidden away. But I now think that a major part of that reticence was my mom’s reluctance to acknowledge that I’ve grown up and am no longer her baby.

Marriage has that effect on people–it’s one of life’s milestones that most people experience and can relate to. Along with moving out of the house, going to uni, getting one’s first full-time job, and having one’s first child–getting married is one of the major ways that people level-up. And yes, in the conversation, she did refer to the event as a wedding (in Chinese, of course)–and there might not even be any alternative names for it (I wouldn’t even know where to start with defining “civil partnership” in Chinese). But our upcoming wedding has had a most profound effect on my family. It tells them that my relationship with Chris is real, and is lasting, permanent, and lifechanging. Interestingly, my last relationship, which lasted 14 years and was a marriage for all intents and purposes, never quite had this level of gravitas in my family’s eyes, perhaps in part because we never formally got hitched. (And this is another reason why having a dual system of “civil partnerships” and “marriages” is inherently un-equal). Being in a committed same-sex relationship is one thing–but being married is another thing altogether.

I’m still thinking about the details of my conversation with my mom, and I may write about it later. But I do need to thank my brother for being the catalyst that broke the ice, and in advance, for coming to the wedding. And my new promise to myself is to try to include my folks in the wedding discussions as much as possible, now that the impasse has been passed. In fact, they may even get sick of how much I will talk to them about the wedding.  8)

I’ve been commuting to work by bicycle every day for the past few months. I love it–the freedom of movement, the fresh London air (well, as fresh as city air can get…it’s infinitely fresher than the stale air pushed through the tube system anyways). It’s also free and environmentally friendly, and I get the sense that I am in control of my own path and daily destiny.

But I was late to start cycling in London. In fact I only started last August, despite my five years in London and the two-plus years in my current flat. Granted, I spent the first three years of my life in London living close enough to the office that I walked every day to work (yes, a real luxury, I know). But the real reason why I didn’t start cycling earlier was that I was terrified to do so.
 

So many times, I’ve seen close calls between cyclists and buses, taxis, cars, pedestrians, and even other cyclists. This city wasn’t built for cyclists and what few bicycle paths exist are laughable. And as a result, the very thought of cycling in London filled me with dread. So I stuck with the tube and bus system, which was safe, familiar, and convenient. But that also meant that I knew nothing of the joys that cycling would eventually afford me, and so I lived my life by the set path of the London tube system’s map, stops, and schedules.

And so of course with this upcoming wedding I have been thinking about my past and my own path through life. There was once a time that I was similarly terrified of coming out of the closet. Like many others, I thought it was just a “phase” at first. And I convinced myself that once I scratched the itch and got “it” out of my system, I would go on to do what I had been brought up thinking I was supposed to do, which was to eventually get married (to a woman) and have kids and carry on the family name. I was 18 at the time.

That first itch I scratched, while I was still in university, turned into far more than a flight of fancy. It turned into a 14-year relationship that unfortunately did not end well, but which I do not regret one second of. I’m still friendly with my ex and his family, and without their love and support throughout those 14 years (and beyond), I would certainly not be where I am today, nor the person I am today.

But back to my terror…The closet was a safe place to be, and I was not at all comfortable with the thought of stepping foot outside of it for a really long time. What would people think? How would people judge me? So survival mechanisms kick in. You learn to create all sorts of lies to your friends and family about who you are with, how you spent your weekends and holidays, and even who your friends are. And with each lie you spin to keep yourself “safe” (and yes, sometimes these lies can get quite elaborate), you slowly start to forget who you are inside because of the competition with the facade you project to the outside world. And also with each lie you tell, you start to hate yourself slightly more, knowing full well that each lie is destroying a small bit of your soul.

And eventually the duality of life that you find yourself living becomes so unbearable, that you feel like you have no choice left but to burst out of the closet. Or at least take a big step out of it. And then, if all goes well, you can start mending the relationships with friends and family that have suffered because of the fences and walls that you have put up for “safety” reasons, and allow people to know the real you. And only then can you start living a full, open, and honest life that can close the chasms you have inadvertantly created, and which involves everyone that is important to you, and who deserve to know you in your entirety.

So this was pretty much my experience, especially with my family, who I didn’t allow to share in my personal life until my relationship with my ex was already 5 years old, and who, when I finally did come out, unfortunately, weren’t fully willing to share in my joys with that relationship for close to another 5 years. (see my cat story). But that did gradually change, to the point where they learned to share in the highs of my life and the eventual sorrows when they occurred.

Although the relationship that Chris and I have with my parents now is pretty much as good as it had been when I was with my ex, I can’t help but identify with the terror they must now be facing with the threat of our wedding thrusting me well out of the closet, and therefore dragging them out as well, if their friends and relatives were to find out about it. What would people think? How would people judge them? I’m sure these issues are going through their minds even though they refuse to talk about it or even bring up the subject.

And so I feel a great sadness that their self-exclusion from our wedding, and hence from an important milestone in my life, will mean that they will not be able to experience the full joys of life outside of their individual closets. They will never experience their family as a whole both inside and outside of their home and closet. And I will never just be their son, but will continue to be the duality of the gay son they hide inside their closet and the facade of the one they portray to everyone outside of the home. And they will continue to trick themselves into thinking they are perfectly happy while portraying me as the picky and busy son who just hasn’t found the right woman yet (or whatever other lies they are spinning).

However, unlike my parents, I am now done with that phase of my life spent spinning yarns. I will instead be happily spinning along on my bike, going places, and moving on with my life.

We’re just on our way back from a great visit with my parents in Snowdonia, where my folks celebrated our engagement with a nice bottle of bubbly, and really made a fuss of Donny – making sure he knows he’s part of the family. I’m really privileged to have parents who have been on their own journeys with figuring out this whole gay thing, and who are at the point now where they are excited about having a new son-in-law.

It’s a shame things aren’t working out  the same way with Donny’s family – but it is what it is. Donny’s parents have been nothing but friendly and hospitable to me on my visits over there, but I don’t think they could ever see me as somehow ‘joining their family’. I have always been a welcome guest, but I don’t think the wedding is going to change me into anything other than that.

But it could be so much worse. Donny could have lied to his parents about being gay in order to spare their feelings, and so in my visits over there I’d have to stay with friends or in a hotel – nothing more than another white face in the crowd. We are spared that at least.

Last night Donny and I watched The Wedding Banquet – a 1993 Ang Lee film about a gay couple (one white, one Asian) where the Asian guy undertakes a sham marriage in order to please his parents. Watching things in the movie spiral out of control, I was very glad that Donny and I don’t find ourselves in the position of having to pretend to be ‘housemates’ in our own home. (Having said that, I did have to pretend to be ‘the friend from London’ with Donny’s aunt and uncle in Singapore, and watch on in frustrated silence while Donny was set up with a girl – less than two weeks after we got engaged. But that’s a whole other blog article.)

Back to The Wedding Banquet. Although we are now benefitting from Donny’s early honesty with his parents, when I saw in the movie how much the marriage meant to the parents in the film, and how close the mother became with the daughter-in-law, it did make me realise how tough it must be on Donny’s folks. In Chinese culture, a wedding is not just about the bride and groom. It seems to me that it’s a social event for renewing bonds of family, friendship, business and community – where the parents have as much say in the planning, if not more so, than the couple. After all, historically a wedding ceremony would have been the symbolic culmination of a financial transaction, where the bride is transferred from one family to another. How does that work when there’s no bride?

With us they won’t be getting any of that. If they do come they will be honoured guests, but they’ll just be guests without any say in how the day happens. Donny’s parents and my parents will meet and shake hands, but they will have little in common, little to talk about and little common language to talk about it in. There will be no sense of two families becoming one family – our parents will go their separate ways and probably never see each other again.

And so I will carry on being a welcome guest in Donny’s parents’ home. And that will be fine. But although they won’t be getting another daughter-in-law added to their family,  I really hope they do eventually warm to the idea of having me as a son-in-law.