WHEN EQUALITY CAME TOO LATE

Reflections on divorce, power, and parenting before marriage equality

I was in a long-term same-sex relationship before marriage was legal, before the protections people now assume were available. We built a family without a legal framework to hold it, and when the relationship ended, that absence mattered in ways I couldn’t yet understand. This is not a story about villainy or victimhood. It’s about power—how financial disparity shapes divorce, how mediation can both help and fail, and how children grow up inside dynamics that reward control and punish boundaries. I’m writing from the long view, years later, after doing everything I knew how to do to protect my children, and realizing that some costs only become visible over time.

I’m writing this now because I’m beginning to see the long shadow these dynamics cast. In the years after the separation, I was often afraid to say no—afraid of financial consequences, afraid of conflict, afraid of what refusing might cost my children. I agreed to things I didn’t believe in. I complied when it felt safer than resisting. Over time, that posture began to resemble service rather than partnership. What I’m only now understanding is how closely that mirrors what my children are learning. Saying no to a parent who controls resources, access, or approval is profoundly difficult. From the outside, it can look like favoritism or preference. From the inside, it is survival. They are children, doing the best they can inside a system they did not create—and this is where the story truly begins.

The absence of legal protection isn’t abstract. It shows up in very practical ways when a relationship ends—particularly for the parent who stayed home, relied on shared assurances, and assumed good faith would survive rupture. What I didn’t understand then was how quickly informal protection can evaporate once power consolidates.

I stayed home for nine years raising our children, with the understanding—spoken and formalized—that there were protections in place should the relationship end. A trust existed. There was reassurance. There was a shared belief that love, intention, and planning would be enough in the absence of marriage. When separation came, that trust was revoked. Overnight, what I thought was stability disappeared, and I was left without access to money, without the ability to retain counsel, and without legal standing that required contribution toward attorney fees—even though we had two children together.

I sold my commitment rings and any jewelry I had been given to pay for representation. I called attorneys who declined to take my case, not because it lacked merit, but because there was no clear mechanism for payment and no marital framework to support it. This came after years of fertility treatments, medical interventions, miscarriage, and hormonal cycles undertaken with the hope that building a family would also build security. What I learned instead was how quickly sacrifice becomes invisible when it isn’t legally recognized.