Lavender marriages: Why so many of us are now pining for platonic love

No one is having a good time dating these days. The backlash against the apps, bubbling up for years, has settled into a deep and lasting malaise. Every day brings troubling reports from “the streets”, and if romance is a long-running conflict, it appears that straight men are the chief antagonists: sexist, rude, demeaning, sometimes cloyingly pushy and others frostily indifferent. Is it any wonder then that some people on TikTok are pining for the "lavendar marriage"? Is this relic of an older, more repressed age finally due for a modern revival?

At the same time, we are living in a time of relationship experimentation, as though people are desperately trying to escape the confines of the traditional couple form. Polyamory is on the rise (although whether people are engaging in it as much as they’re writing articles about it remains unclear) and the “queer platonic relationship” has recently been touted as an exciting new model. I think we should go a step further: we need to bring back life-long relationships between straight women and a gay men, gay men and lesbians, or lesbians and straight men which are no less loving for being a sham. To any heterosexual women reading this, I have one simple question: will you do me the honour of being this gay guy's wife?

I am excluding lesbians from this proposal, but please don’t be offended – it’s a mark of respect. When it comes to relationships, you guys seem to be doing relatively well, so have no need for such a radical intervention. For gay guys and straight women, though, who have a shared interest in escaping the clutches of patriarchal power within their intimate lives, it could be mutually beneficial. Gay men are still men, of course, and still capable of misogyny (no one is claiming this is a flawless idea – that would be ridiculous!) but even still… wouldn’t it be better?

The lavender marriages of the past were in large part borne of necessity, a way of allowing closeted gay people (both men and lesbians) to conceal their identities. They were particularly common in social and professional spaces that demanded a high degree of public visibility and meticulous personal branding – most notably, Hollywood. One of the most famous examples of a lavender marriage was that between 1920s heartthrob Rudolph Valentino and the actress Jean Acker, who was herself involved in a lesbian relationship. While this sounds convenient, it didn’t work out well: Acker came to regret the decision, locked Valentino out of their hotel room on their wedding night, and the couple promptly divorced.

One of the most haunting depictions of a lavender marriage (of a kind) came in The Simpsons: in the 1996 episode A Fish Called Selma, down-on-his luck actor Troy McClure marries Marge’s sister Selma, in order to cover up a bizarre, fish-related fetish. When she finally realises what’s going on, Selma thinks she can make the arrangement work, not least because she enjoys the luxurious new life that comes with it. But when he tries to pressure her into getting pregnant for the sake of his career, she decides it would be wrong to bring a child into a loveless marriage and leaves him. 

A bleak tale, to be sure, but lavender marriages often led to relationships which were truly fulfilling – take the example of Maestro, Bradley Cooper’s Oscar-bait biopic of the composer Leonard Bernstein, which focuses on Leonard’s relationship with his wife Felicia (played by Carey Mulligan). While it’s not about a lavender marriage in the classic sense (which typically refers to a strategic, knowing arrangement), Maestro depicts a relationship which is ultimately happier than not. The couple really do love one another, they really do enrich each other’s lives. That said, while Felicia tolerates and tacitly permits Leonard’s habit of sleeping around with men, it still causes her a great deal of heartache. Throughout the film, as Leonard becomes more reckless, always on the verge of publicly humiliating her, she realises she is more vulnerable to being hurt by his affairs than she had previously convinced herself.

But that’s the old model, rooted in a historical context where being an out gay man was still ruinously taboo (and one which sadly persists today in many countries around the world.) The lavender marriage that I’m proposing – entered into with the full knowledge of both partners, not a means of remaining in the closet, and with clear rules of engagement – would be quite different. Perhaps Felicia would have felt differently about Leonard’s philandering if it was part of a frank arrangement which allowed her to seek sexual gratification elsewhere too. This wouldn’t have to be a marriage in the technical sense, but a deep, involved platonic relationship based on companionship and security.

But why, you might ask? What’s the point? Well, not to be too bleak about it, but a large proportion of relationships eventually become drained of sex and passion, even if that takes decades to happen. It might not be an inevitability, but it’s a likely trajectory. Some studies show that romantic love, as a chemical feeling, is doomed to fade after a certain length of time, and it’s common for marriages to turn into something like sibling relationships even when both parties are straight. Think of the last time you saw an adorable old couple in their eighties, sitting on a park bench, holding hands and beaming at each other as they shared a bag of chips: do you think they were still fucking with any regularity? Maybe so, but do you think that was the most important aspect of their relationship or the thing which sustained it?

In a lonely and atomised world, a lifetime of mutual respect and loving companionship is not a tragic outcome, but the best that any of us can hope for. This is true for gay men too: from Gore Vidal to Christopher Isherwood, many of the most famous queer figures of the 20th century eventually settled into the warm bath of a sexless friendship with their long-term partners, while spicing things up with the occasional fling on the side. It’s probably the case that there’s a lasting value to the intimacy that sex brings to a relationship, even if it fades away. But on the other hand, if sex and romance exist on borrowed time, why not do away with them from the very beginning, and save ourselves the pain of clinging onto them as they slowly but irrevocably ebb away? Why not get married to a straight woman or a gay guy? Provided you love and respect one another, it seems like as good a bet as any for a lifetime of happiness.

An old BBC news clip went viral on Twitter last week, which showed a beautiful young woman in 1964 talking about what she wanted in life. “As I don’t particularly want to be a mother, have children, for me I think it’s basically for a sense of companionship and security – and I think it’d be rather interesting to marry a homosexual.” A lot has changed in the last six decades – not least the fact that homosexuals can now marry each other – but the underlying logic makes no less sense: heterosexual marriage is still a raw deal for a lot of women, who find themselves bogged down in a disproportionate share of domestic toil. Who’s to say if getting hitched to a gay guy would result in a more equitable power dynamic, but it could hardly be much worse.

So would anyone actually want to do this? Canvassing gay guys and straight gals of my acquaintance, I found a degree of enthusiasm for the idea. “I believe I have a lot to offer a woman: fashion advice, emotional support, a certain talent for home-making and a bit of generational wealth. Who wouldn’t want that?” mused Toby, a young gay man living in London. “And while I’m sexually attracted to men, I enjoy female company exponentially more, so the companionship and commitment of a lavender marriage sounds quite good! I have several female friends I’d be honoured to share my life – and maybe even rear a child – with. Marriages are ultimately a partnership right? So why does a partnership have to be contingent on sexual attraction?” Well quite!

The women I spoke with were somewhat less enthused, but still open to the idea. “I am a big romantic and I love being in love, so at this age, I just don’t know why I wouldn’t have a conventional partner instead,” Sarah, 25, told me. “But if I was retired and on my own, that would be sick.” Jenny, 24, didn’t rule it out either. “I think I’d be reluctant to get married, but I’d be more inclined to enter into a companionate partnership, if it was someone I got on well with”, she said. 

So there you have it: the solution to the crisis of romantic love has been staring us in the face the whole time. Lavender marriages aren’t a real trend just yet, but perhaps they should be. While it’s not something I’ll be doing myself any time soon, let’s revisit the idea when I’m 60 years old, re-downloading Hinge and still living in a zone 4 houseshare where I’m not even allowed to have a cat. Whatever their gender, there are worse fates than getting hitched to your bestie.