Emma Beddington has spilled the beans on a hidden truth (The lavender marriage is back – but why, 19 October). The lavender marriage has never really gone away. It may not be performed for quite the same reasons as was the case in olden times, but the concept is still very much valid.
I am now in my 60s. In my early 20s, I had an ostensibly heterosexual marriage that was effectively a lavender marriage. I then went on to a same-sex relationship, which eventually became a civil partnership. Despite assumptions made by many, that too was pretty well entirely platonic, and lavender. Finally, after the death of my civil partner in 2013, I progressed into my current single-sex lavender marriage.
All these devoted relationships have been contracted to reflect a deeply caring spiritual connection, and of desire to entrust the legal niceties of next-of-kinship to a person with whom I share a set of values. However, all have been misconstrued by some as physical or sexual relationships, which none of them have really ever been.
The truth is that some of us are just not built that way. For us, companionship is what makes for a marriage, and sexual gratification is entirely irrelevant. Indeed, this is why I believe that those who rail about the incompatibility of single-sex marriages with religious morality are guilty of misjudging others by their own motivations. Just because the media, or your own lived experience, insist that sex is vital, it does not mean that is true for everyone. For many of us, our relationships and lives are largely or entirely chaste, but are no less caring, devoted and deeply significant for that.
Sometimes those whom the world wrongly imagines to be in some way kinky or perverted may actually be far more chaste and pure than they are ever given credit for.
Jenny Day
Glasgow
I have lived with my “platonic life partner” (I would call her my best friend) for many years. To friends and close colleagues I talk about her and our cat in the same way that they talk about their partners and children, and I feel equally valid, accepted and part of the group. The experience is different outside that circle. In small-talk situations, I find that women look for quick ways to connect and that tends to be about partners and kids – although gay women are much more accepting of our unconventionality. I have been immediately excluded once it emerges that everyone else has husbands and kids to bond over.
I think some people feel uncomfortable about single heterosexual women who are not looking for a partner, particularly as we get towards the end of our fertile years. There are vast layers of patriarchy, insecurity and sexism contributing to that. Men who are attracted to either of us have tended to take particular issue with our relationship. Otherwise there can be an assumption that we are closeted lesbians. This upsets me sometimes, but only because I wouldn’t be ashamed of being gay and don’t want to be thought of as someone who would feel shame about that. I do think my family might now have finally stopped waiting for me to come out.
Ultimately, I really don’t care what anyone thinks any more, and have a lovely life full of love and warmth and laughter. The article has made me think, though: financially we would be much better off if we just got married. This feels bizarre and archaic to say in 2025.
Name and address supplied
The best lavender marriage was EF Benson writing in his Mapp and Lucia books, when dear Georgie, casting aside the doily he was embroidering because both his hands were sweaty with nerves and he’d pricked his finger, proposed marriage to Lucia because they’d been best friends for ages and spent half of every day together.
Jane Page
Tavira, Portugal
