Straight Female / 50
I turned 60. Since I was 20 I have always been with the same man, although he and I did not get married. My regret is not having children, an unmarried pregnancy in those days was out of the question, but not out of my mind. I dreamt of having my own babies but it was not to be. That is my deepest regret.
What happened was something that just could not be predicted. I moved in with him when I was 20, still a junior in college. I had a girlfriend, she was from Ecuador, and she was studying with us. Somehow, because even today I can't put the pieces together, somehow one day when she was visiting me in my apartment, my boyfriend put her on our bed and had sex with her. I was there, standing in the doorway while he had sex with her on my bed. I watched her, not him, I just watched her as she succumbed to him. When he got off of her, she just laid there until I went over and helped her close her legs and get dressed. That night she stayed with us and she slept in the same bed with us.
We became the equivalent of a couple, but it was three of us. We were one entity, just as he and I had been one entity until that night, then we became one entity the three of us. We lived together the last semester of college and lived together after we went to work.
Her one year work permit was going to expire and her employer wouldn't sign her up for one more year, so facing her deportation, we did the one thing that would keep her here. He married her a couple of months before her visa expired and we applied for her resident status.
The lawyer told us that if we were ever discovered, our lifestyle would expose her and she would be denied residency. We had to make it look real, including her name change, living just the two of them as man and wife, joint checking accounts, and a baby to make sure it was real.
It took four years for her permanent residency to come through, and two babies. Me, I felt she was just pretend married, he felt the same, but she did not. She was married, she was a mother now and all her family knew she had gotten married, and for her it was as real a marriage as any other. I was their best friend, sure she accepted that he and I slept together, which we did, and still do, but she was the one that got married.
And that is how we have lived, she is the married one and I am the other one. Because I wasn't married I never had a child. It wasn't until it was too late that times had changed and being an unwed mother didn't carry the stigma it used to have. It is just now that our sharing a life is even possibly accepted, and then only by a minority of people. It is still taboo for a man to have two women in his life, both women as much his wife as the other, because for me, I feel every day of my life that I am his wife just she is, except that for circumstances that caused her to get married and not me.
Just like that evening when he first took her to bed and I stood and watched, I can remember every second of the moment that she married him and said I do and the ring exchange with the judge. It is forever seared into my brain, watching her get married. And on every single word she said I said the same words at the same time. Except my marriage to him was not recognized.
We have been together for 40 years, and she has been a part of our life together for 39 of those years. I only had him all to myself for one year. I often wonder what would have happened to our lives if I had married him in that first year instead of shacking up. I know that I would have been a mother, that much I know, I always wanted kids, always, since my earliest memories growing up.
And that is my regret, never having had children of my own.
What happened was something that just could not be predicted. I moved in with him when I was 20, still a junior in college. I had a girlfriend, she was from Ecuador, and she was studying with us. Somehow, because even today I can't put the pieces together, somehow one day when she was visiting me in my apartment, my boyfriend put her on our bed and had sex with her. I was there, standing in the doorway while he had sex with her on my bed. I watched her, not him, I just watched her as she succumbed to him. When he got off of her, she just laid there until I went over and helped her close her legs and get dressed. That night she stayed with us and she slept in the same bed with us.
We became the equivalent of a couple, but it was three of us. We were one entity, just as he and I had been one entity until that night, then we became one entity the three of us. We lived together the last semester of college and lived together after we went to work.
Her one year work permit was going to expire and her employer wouldn't sign her up for one more year, so facing her deportation, we did the one thing that would keep her here. He married her a couple of months before her visa expired and we applied for her resident status.
The lawyer told us that if we were ever discovered, our lifestyle would expose her and she would be denied residency. We had to make it look real, including her name change, living just the two of them as man and wife, joint checking accounts, and a baby to make sure it was real.
It took four years for her permanent residency to come through, and two babies. Me, I felt she was just pretend married, he felt the same, but she did not. She was married, she was a mother now and all her family knew she had gotten married, and for her it was as real a marriage as any other. I was their best friend, sure she accepted that he and I slept together, which we did, and still do, but she was the one that got married.
And that is how we have lived, she is the married one and I am the other one. Because I wasn't married I never had a child. It wasn't until it was too late that times had changed and being an unwed mother didn't carry the stigma it used to have. It is just now that our sharing a life is even possibly accepted, and then only by a minority of people. It is still taboo for a man to have two women in his life, both women as much his wife as the other, because for me, I feel every day of my life that I am his wife just she is, except that for circumstances that caused her to get married and not me.
Just like that evening when he first took her to bed and I stood and watched, I can remember every second of the moment that she married him and said I do and the ring exchange with the judge. It is forever seared into my brain, watching her get married. And on every single word she said I said the same words at the same time. Except my marriage to him was not recognized.
We have been together for 40 years, and she has been a part of our life together for 39 of those years. I only had him all to myself for one year. I often wonder what would have happened to our lives if I had married him in that first year instead of shacking up. I know that I would have been a mother, that much I know, I always wanted kids, always, since my earliest memories growing up.
And that is my regret, never having had children of my own.
