Virginians will vote on several constitutional amendments this fall, including one that removes the Commonwealth’s ban on same-sex marriage and replaces it with an affirmative right to marry for LGBTQ couples. But that right also includes another potential side of marriage: divorce.
“There’s a reason I married her, it's cause I love her," said a Richmond resident and formerly one-half of a same-sex marriage. "And I still love her; it’s just in a different way.”
We’re not identifying her due to the personal nature of her on-going relationship struggles. She was married to another woman for five years and had a child through insemination with a sperm donor. But the couple separated three years ago.
“A lot of people our age were impacted by their parents' unhappy marriage so I think we actually did the best thing for our child and for our friendship," she added. "Cause now we’re friends.”
When the couple’s separation turns into a divorce, they won't be the only same-sex couples in Virginia to split.
According to data from Virginia’s Department of Vital Records, there have been thousands of same-sex marriages, and hundreds of same-sex divorces, in the Commonwealth every year since the practice was legalized in late 2014. A department spokesperson noted there could have been more as their data only includes marriages and divorces performed within the state.
Opposite-sex divorce still makes up the lion's share of divorces, about 98%. But Milo Wilson, a licensed clinical psychologist at Transformations Counseling in Richmond, isn’t surprised to see decoupling in any kind of relationship.
“Same-sex and opposite-sex couples want to have love and intimacy in their relationships. They want to have better communication," Wilson told Radio IQ. "They want to have shared value and be on the same page as their partners.”
And while many may enter the polling booth this November focused on voting yes or no on protecting same-sex marriage, Wilson said such legal protections strike both ways.
“Marriage gives you the legal protections of joining two lives together and divorce gives you the legal protection to separate two lives and gives a model and a legal pathway to disentangle lives, finances, property, custody issues," he said. "Without that it creates a lot of entanglement and challenge and additional difficulty.”
Virginians head to the polls to vote on constitutionally protecting same-sex marriage, and divorce, November 3rd.
