Deconstructing Relationships

I used to believe in soul mates. I carried around this rather depressing view that there is only One True Love for everyone, and that not everyone is lucky enough to find their soul mate in their lifetime. I used to believe this quite strongly, and I still find this ideology lurking in the back corners of my mind every time I find myself falling in love.

Let's not mince words. The idea of 'soul mates' is fucked up! It perpetuates this false hierarchy of romantic love being better/greater than any other form of love, which then gives people excuses to behave like horrible human beings to the other important people in their lives (I've just finished watching the entire Twilight saga, and Bella Swan I am appalled!). And it creates this vicious cycle of rather unnecessary pain when a romantic relationship ends. It's hard enough saying goodbye to a relationship with someone you've cared about... having that ending imbued with these bullshit ideologies that either a) the love you experienced in that relationship was not as grand as it could have been, or b) that you will never experience a love as grand again... Can we all see how incredibly unhealthy that is?

While I don't think I've ever officially outed myself as a nonmonogamist, it's no secret that I'm not big on monogamy. Like with my sexual identity, it's one of those things where I had the feelings and ideas, but not the language or the conceptual framework to make sense of it for a long time. It's really only been in the past couple of years that I've started to explore what alternate ways of doing relationships can mean.

For a long time I've envisioned myself - my future, adult self - as a fairly independent person who is not tied down to a single, committed relationship, but who has intimate friendships and sexual relationships with lots of different people around the world. And when my last relationship ended, I decided it was time to become the future me that I have longed to be. The funny thing is, after making that decision I pretty quickly realised I already am.

When I was at the IASSCS conference in Buenos Aires, I was introduced to the term 'Relationship Anarchy'. This concept appeals to me because it does away with the idea of relationship hierarchies and acknowledges the value in all different types of relationships. It is a thoroughly queer way of relating! What appeals to me most about this concept is quite beautifully described on The Thinking Asexual blog (linked to above):

What relationship anarchy hinges on the most, for me, is the equality it seeks to create across the relationship board, so that sexual relationships are not superior to nonsexual relationships and “romantic” relationships are not superior to nonromantic friendships, and that equality means that a nonsexual and/or nonromantic friend has the same amount of access to love, intimacy, physical affection, support, etc. That means a nonsexual/nonromantic friend is just as likely to become an RA’s life partner or one of their life partners. Relationship anarchy provides the kind of respect, security, opportunity, equality, and love that a celibate asexual needs, especially if they are single or they’re not necessarily looking for just one romantic life partner to fulfill all of their major needs in a traditional romantic relationship.

When I think about my life and how I have done relationships, this is what I see. I see the friendships I have had that have provided me with more support (emotionally and materially) than any romantic or sexual relationship ever has. I see the joy (and the pain) that romantic connections have provided me. I see the fun and the playfulness that my sexual relationships have given me. And I see that all of these things overlap; that their boundaries are not clear and that I don't want them to be clear.

The most obvious example of Relationship Anarchy in my life is my relationship with my BFF. Thus far, that has not been a sexual relationship, but it's been pretty much every other kind of relationship. We used to jokingly refer to each other as our life partners, but that's stopped being a joke. That is what we are. We love each other, we support each other, we accept each other for the flawed individuals we both are, we challenge each other to grow, we even go out on cute dates. Our relationship will never be exclusive; we will never limit each other's ability to connect with and develop relationships of any type with other people. We will always be of importance to one another, even though we may not always be the 'primary' person in each other's lives.

I think that there is too much emphasis placed upon the form a relationship takes, and not enough emphasis upon the content. Increasingly, I am trying to focus on what it is that I get from my different relationships that I enjoy. What pleasure do I derive from having someone in my life? I am trying to acknowledge what that is more, even if only to myself. And in doing so, I am hoping to make myself more open to the possibilities of those relationships expanding. To finding support, to being nurtured, to giving, to growing. Instead of saying "Oh, I don't have a boyfriend/girlfriend!" and looking for that type of relationship, I am thinking about what ways of relating I feel are missing from my life and considering how I can fulfill my emotional needs for those particular kinds of relating.

For instance, currently I have a longing to have a connection where I can be both emotionally and sexually vulnerable. There are people in my life that I am emotionally vulnerable with, and people I am sexually vulnerable with (being vulnerable is a good thing, btw, perhaps a topic for another day!); but it is harder to find somebody who can offer me both of these things, on an ongoing basis anyways. (Life is complicated! Getting two adults to sort their shit out so they can build something together is actually a pretty big ask.) While I want to have that kind of a connection with somebody, I don't need for them to be my 'partner'. And I certainly don't need for us to share our emotional/sexual vulnerabilities with each other exclusively! There is no reason for that connection to be the most important connection in my life; it is just one of many ways of connecting, and happens to be a connection I currently don't have but would like to have.

The thing is, life is fluid. Relationships shift and change, and the emphasis we place on any relationship does not stay constant for the duration of the relationship; especially in long term relationships! To illustrate, I have one close friendship that is over 20 years old. At times that friendship has been pretty central to my life, and at other times it has been peripheral. The content of our friendship has certainly changed as we've gone through life! We started out as quite different people, found ourselves leading parallel lives for awhile, and are now pretty much polar opposites of each other. This friendship has remained important to me, but of course its role in my life is different now. How we can offer each other support is different now. This friendship has less emphasis in my life, less energy put into it, right now. Because it's not what either of us needs right now. And that will change as it needs to.

I think that people get that about friendships, but act like it is somehow different when it is a romantic/sexual relationship. But why would it be? Emotions might be felt more intensely in a romantic/sexual relationship, but they are not somehow immune to the ebb and flow of life and individual needs. When two people decide to commit to each other in a romantic/sexual relationship, it is not as if they suddenly become one person; they are still two separate individuals with unique emotional needs and life circumstances. They are both on their own life journeys, even if they are each other's travel companions.

As I said at the start of this blog, I am not immune to the ideology of One True Love. I do not think that forming romantic/sexual partnerships is a bad thing, nor do I think that it is bad for that type of relationship to be of primary importance in a person's life. I think it is incredibly problematic to idealise that type of relationship though; to treat someone as if their life is incomplete for not having that type of relationship in it.

I don't know how I'll feel the next time I find myself falling in love. I think it will be different, because I am redefining what relationships mean for me and look like in my life. I have stopped looking for particular types of relationships. Instead, I like to meet new people and just see what develops with them. What sort of chemistry do we have? What can we share with one another? What journey will we go on together? I have found that this has made me open to a lot of different possibilities and has lead to some really beautiful experiences.

Along with forming relationships in new ways, I am also trying to engage with them differently when they end. I like to focus on what was good about the relationship. What pleasure did that person bring to my life? What joy? What did I learn from them? How did I grow? I am choosing to honour those memories, to think kindly of the relationships that are no longer in my life. To remember their beauty and to let them go, thanking them for what they gave to me for however long that lasted. I think we focus too much on the pain and the hurt when relationships end, and that's not helpful. I try to remember that all relationships are temporary, even if they last a really long time. Focusing on the good doesn't make the hurt go away, but it helps. Because any amount of beauty and joy that something brings to your life is a positive thing.

The Pleasure of Stillness

The past few months have been pretty chaotic for me. I have been busy with my thesis, busy with work, busy with travel, busy with boys, busy with housemates, busy with housework. Busy with so many things that I have not had time to be still.

But this weekend, almost unexpectedly, I've found myself with nothing pressing to do. And it was lovely! I feel like a human again. And I'm sure that Stressed Out Future Joni will greatly appreciate the freezer full of veggie lasagne she now has!

My thesis is about applying Foucault's theory of ethics of the self to a particular concept: young people's negotiation of their love/sex relationships within the context of 'new media environments'. The lines between my thesis and my personal life - to borrow from that terrible song - are blurred. But unlike that awful song, it's kind of a wonderful thing.

I'll spare you a detailed explanation of the theory (if you wanna know about it, you can read my bloody thesis! Or the 3 volumes of Foucault's The History of Sexuality). Basically, ethics of the self is about developing a particular relationship with yourself. It is about critically engaging with social norms that tell us how to be, and with knowledge that claims to speak the 'truth' about who we are. It is about reflecting on who you are and who you want to be and why. It is about learning to find the boundaries, the limits, of your 'self' and exploring those edges. It is about growing and changing and challenging. But most of all, it is about care. Care for yourself and care for others.

It's been a really beautiful experience for me, doing a PhD on reflexive engagement with the 'self'. Because a PhD is a horrible thing to do, so caring for yourself while doing it is really important! I have learnt so much about myself in this process, and have grown and changed, and am really happy with the person that I have become (though I am not actually happy with my life right now, but, that is a different story).

If you were to read volumes 2 and 3 of The History of Sexuality you would find a rather lengthy explanation of various practices that the ancient Greeks and Romans engaged in as part of their self-crafting. The point of describing these, for Foucault, isn't to give us a 'how to' list, but to show how an active, reflexive engagement with one's 'self' can transform a person into something new. What the actual practices are is of secondary importance; it is what these practices do - what they produce - that matters most.

Finding balance in my life is something that I think I've always struggled with. Doing a PhD has made that struggle a lot harder. There have been times when it has broken me. I have had to stop working on my thesis, in the past, because if I didn't I would lose what little semblance of mental health I still had. I still struggle with finding balance, but I am a lot more aware of what I need to do to care for myself now - to prevent the balance from tipping too far into a place that is dangerous for my well-being.

This has meant learning things about myself and respecting those things. And some of those things have been unexpected. For instance, I've found that while I was working on writing my thesis I required a lot of external stimulation. I needed to maintain an active social life to balance out the intense thinking work I was doing. But as soon as I finished writing my first draft, I didn't want to see anybody! I needed to recharge, and being an introvert, that meant being away from other people.

I have learnt that it is really hard for me to live with other people. I am both more productive and happier when I am living on my own. It's not possible for me to live on my own right now, but this has become a priority for me - to have my own place by the time I turn 32. I'm also happier when I have an animal companion, so, along with my own apartment I will be getting my own cat. Though I'll feel bad about leaving my current feline companion... who spends more time with me than her owner!

Those are big things though, and care of the self can be about really simple things. Like having a weekend to do nothing. Or wearing nail polish. Or alphabetising my DVDs. There are a lot of little things that I have learnt to do to care for myself; I am not going to list them all here. The point is to figure out what those things are for yourself. What makes you happy? What makes you feel better when you're down? The point is to do those things for yourself. Because they are necessary and important! Because what is the point of going through life without enjoyment of it?

The Q in Alphabet Soup

Apparently yesterday (or today, depending on your time zone) was International Bisexuality Visibility Day. Personally, I'm not a fan of the term 'bisexual' and I cringe every time it's applied to me. It feels dated and incredibly limiting; 'bi' implies a duality and when it comes to gender and sexuality, there are a helluva lot more than two options! Also, I feel like it's an identity that has been co-opted by this fantasy whereby bisexual ladies (and their nubile friends) are seen as eagerly available to fulfill all your sexual desires.

I don't say this to be dissing on any bisexuals. If that's how you prefer to identify, that's up to you. I'd be interested in having a conversation about why bi, though, given that 'queer' and 'pansexual' are also well established options (though I have an uneasy relationship with pansexual too because I feel like it presents all sexual desire as being on an even field and is therefore quite reductionary of sexual desire).

I identify as queer. Queer is something of a catch-all phrase, though not in the way it is often used! While you can say that a lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, intersex, etc identity is a 'queer' identity, each of these categories are identity categories onto themselves - and contain their own plethora of subcultures and ways of being which may or may not be 'queer'. What I'm trying to say is, these categories are overlapping, yes, but distinct. A lesbian is not necessarily queer. And yes, my eye does start to twitch every time I hear someone using the term queer interchangeably with other identity categories in the rainbow flavoured alphabet soup.

The reason that queer is a catch-all phrase, and why I identify with it so strongly, is because it is about a lot more than who you fuck. Sure, that's a part of it, but you can be staunchly heterosexual and still be queer. Queer is about critically engaging with the politics of gender, sexuality, and relationships. For a start. I'd say it's also about engaging with the politics of class and race, but as a middle class white woman whose academic focus has tended to be on other middle class white people, I'm going to leave that discussion for people who actually know what they're talking about. (Sometimes I feel like it's narcissistic to be so focused on deconstructing myself. But, firstly, it's my blog and I'll do what I want with it! And secondly, the only thing I can really claim to be an expert on is myself.)

So, to clarify, I feel that it is incorrect to identify as 'queer' on the sole basis of having sex with someone of the same gender as yourself. Being queer is about challenging 'normativity'. You know, that thing where women and men are supposed to like each other and get married (to each other) and be monogamous and have babies. And that thing where boys and girls look and act in certain ways, and those ways are different from one another. Or, you know, the idea that certain ways of doing or learning or creating are more valid or productive or useful than others.

The reason all this is on my mind as of late is because my life underwent a pretty big change a couple months ago, and it's taken me down a rather unexpected path. My girlfriend and I broke up, and I decided to start seeing men. It's...complicated and I don't fully understand how I went from being adamantly disinterested in men and happily committed to a beautiful woman to falling out of love with said woman and becoming happily uncommitted to some wonderful men. But it happened fast. Or, it didn't. At any rate, the turn around from being devastated about the breakup to being really fucking happy with my life happened incredibly fast.

Have I magically turned straight? No, definitely not. Am I still into women? Yes...no...I don't know. After a 7 year hiatus from men it's just feeling really nice to be in the company of men. This whole thing has left me with more questions than answers, but, for the most part I feel like the answers to the questions I've got are pretty much irrelevant. As long as the answer to the question "Am I happy?" is "Yes." Which it is.

Which is funny, because, for a long time I felt like I couldn't be happy with men. Because 7+ years ago I was really, very unhappy being with men. But... a lot has changed. What I realise now is that it wasn't men, as such, that I was unhappy with, but heteronormativity. The expectation that I would conform to particular ways of being gendered, sexual, and in a relationship did not sit easy for me. Especially in Calgary, which, in case you didn't know, is a very conservative place! Nonconformity isn't exactly encouraged in Calgary.

But, I've spent the better part of past decade gradually developing my queerness and now feel quite comfortable to be myself - in all my normative and non-normative glory - across all my relationships; be they with friends, family, colleagues, lovers, strangers, housemates, or service providers. My relationships with men now are quite different from before. For starters, they occur on my terms or they don't occur at all. I feel quite free, actually. Even more so than when I was just dating women. Because now, other person(s) consenting, I can have whatever kind of relationship I want with whomever I want. My reflections on queering relationships and the problem with monogamy are probably best left for another day though!

I will just say this: I really am happily uncommitted. And I really do feel free. I'm very nearly finished my PhD, and I have absolutely no idea what kind of a journey that's going to take me on. It was wonderful to have a partner for a good chunk of this last push to finish my thesis; I will forever be thankful to my ex for the support she gave me in what was a very difficult and trying period of my life. A lot of the happiness I feel now I owe to her - both for being with me and for breaking up with me. I want to be focused on myself now. I want to be able to pursue whatever interesting opportunities come my way in this next phase of my (professional) life, without having to negotiate that with another person. And I'm very thankful that I get to do that.

Life After Thesis

For the past 5 years I've been working on my PhD, which culminates in the writing of an 80,000-100,000 word thesis. A couple of weeks ago I finished writing my thesis. It weighs in (with references and appendices) at just under 92,000 words.

Now, my PhD is by no means complete! The thesis is written, but now my supervisors are reading it and they will give me feedback on what I need to do to improve it. Then I'll do that, send it off to an editor to deal with all the finicky stuff, and submit. Then it gets sent to my examiners who read it and make their comments/suggestions and decide if it passes with major, minor, or no revisions (technically they can say it doesn't pass, but that almost never happens). THEN I have to respond to the comments the examiners make, and once that is satisfactorily completed, I can submit my hard bound thesis to the university and apply to graduate. And then, when I walk across the stage in my funny hat and get my physical degree, you'll all have to call me Dr Joni FOREVER!!! MWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

As many of you are aware, the writing of said thesis has left me a tad ... preoccupied. (Other acceptable descriptions include: single-minded, self-centred, miserable, unpleasant company, nonsensical, or bat shit crazy.) It's consumed a lot of my energy, especially in the final pushes to finish it. I haven't had a lot of mental energy to expend upon other things, but, like the Joni Mitchell song says, "you don't know what you've got til it's gone." I thought I was leading a pretty balanced life, until I finished writing my thesis! Suddenly, I had all sorts of anxious mental energy and no outlet to pour it into. I was looking around at my life wildly going "WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS?!?!?!?"

Fortunately for me, in a moment of desperation when I thought my thesis would never end I'd booked myself a week long holiday to Sydney. I turned a corner with the writing process a couple days after booking my flights, and having that upcoming holiday spurred me on to get everything finished so I wouldn't have to have the thesisbeast hanging over my head while I was away. The other benefit of this was, after handing off my thesis I had nothing to do but be anxious about everything. So getting out of town for awhile was a good move. If I'd been in Melbourne I probably would have spiraled into a bad state of mental health. Instead, having nothing in particular to do in a city where I wouldn't have anything in particular to do anyways was a great distraction from the newly formed void in my life. I had quite a lovely time roaming the streets of Sydney, sipping their (inferior) coffee in their very cute cafes, reading books about futuristic dystopias (by far my favourite genre).

When I got back to Melbourne though, I had to face the fact that I didn't have much of anything to do with myself. I mean, I have things. I'm about to start a new job, I've got friends to catch up with, I've got my girlfriend, there's revision work I can do on my thesis, as well as writing articles for publication. But I could also just sit in a corner and stare at a wall and drool all over myself. The pressure to produce something is gone.

Another smart move: I made an appointment to see a counsellor once I got back from Sydney. She said a couple of things that really resonated with me: 1) After working so hard for so long on a single project, letting it go is hard to do and involves some grieving. 2) The thesis becomes such a priority that everything else just gets pushed aside. Now that I'm not working on it, all those things I've pushed aside are popping back up and demanding my attention. And they are not necessarily things I want to give attention to!

I've got some issues to work through, and I've got the support to do that. I find that having my experiences validated actually goes a long way towards relieving my anxiety, so I'm feeling much better than I was about a week ago!

It hasn't been all bad, the stuff that's popped up and demanded my attention. In fact, a lot of it has been exciting and fun! For starters, I thought I was making a lot of time for my relationship with Foxy, but now there's just a whole different quality to that time. And that's been amazing! I'm really pumped to be able to catch up with all my friends again, I've just been hesitating because I'm also aware that I still don't actually have any money. Fortunately, this is now a temporary problem.

One of the things I'm really excited about is that I've actually started to pay attention to my physical body again. I've acquired more than a few PhD injuries over the past few years and now I am starting on the path to recovery. I've got a new program at the gym to help my injuries recover, Brunswick Baths has FINALLY reopened their indoor pool (which is good enough, since I've got a shoulder injury that makes swimming in a 50m pool difficult), I'm doing Pilates, Hubby is going to set me up with a personalised yoga program (since a wrist injury has written me off from my former yoga classes), and tomorrow I'm getting a remedial massage to sort out the rather intense muscle cramping in my legs.

I've started making food for myself again too. Food that involves more than carbs, sugar, and cheese. Food that is actually kinda delicious. I'm remembering flavours and creativity, and that cooking can be enjoyable.

I've also started to consider aesthetics again. Towards the end of the writing process, I rarely looked at myself in the mirror, or brushed my hair, or put much consideration into what my outfit as a whole looked like (all that mattered was if it felt comfortable to sit at a computer for 12 hours in). I'm remembering makeup and starting to wear it again. I've come to really like the way I look without makeup, but I stopped wearing it because it was just a hassle to not be able to rub my computer-bleary eyes, and because I only ever saw the same 10 people anyways and they didn't care. I've started to take pride in my appearance again and the difference is noticeable! I've made friends with nail polish as a fashion accessory, instead of just as a nail-biting deterrent.

Now that the thesis is not front and centre in my life, I'm starting to focus on myself again, or still, but in a different way! In a way that encompasses others. My life is about to begin a new era, so as I make the transition from 'PhD Candidate' to 'PhD', I am using this time to get back in touch with myself and the things that make me happy. Instead of spinning my wheels and worrying about what will be around the next bend, I am preparing myself to be the best version of myself so that I can meet whatever new found challenges await me head on. And look good doing it!

Why I Don't Support Marriage Equality

If you're looking at my blog, you've probably encountered the recent sea of red marriage equality pictures on Facebook. Maybe you've even joined in yourself, changing your profile picture to some version of this:

Perhaps you've noticed my hostility to these 'marriage equality' campaigns over the years. I figured it's about time that I addressed why I do not support this movement, and why I think you should be critical of it too.

I am not a supporter of marriage, gay or straight. Its basis - women as the property of men - is extremely misogynistic and has never been effectively critiqued and reworked on a societal level. Sure, my father can't exchange me to a man of his choosing for a predetermined number of goats anymore, but that is not really a challenge to the underlying gendered bias of marriage. Although individual couples may be much better able to negotiate the terms of the gendered roles of their relationships than in the past, the cultural 'script' of what it means to be married - that is, the picture we immediately get when we think of a married couple - continues to be one where the man is the head of the household, and the woman takes care of the kids. Until we have a non-gendered cultural/societal understanding of the roles within a marriage, there is nothing 'equal' about it!

Same-sex marriage is not inherently more progressive than heterosexual marriage. Our understanding of 'married couple' is shaped by assumptions that the relationship consists of two people who engage in particular gendered behaviours; whether or not their genitals match up with these roles is pretty much irrelevant. I suspect that same-sex marriage actually promotes a more conservative understanding of same-sex relationships than currently exists. Instead of opening up the possibility to reconsider how gendered roles are negotiated within heterosexual relationships, I suspect same-sex couples will instead be bombarded with more questions of the "So, which one of you is the man?" variety.

Gaining the 'privilege' of entering into a heterosexual institution also means playing by their rules. Hinging civil rights onto marriage further exasperates inequalities. There are many valid reasons not to want to get married, regardless of who you don't want to get married to. I worry that when equal rights are attached to marriage, unmarried same-sex couples who try to fight against discrimination will be left with little other recourse than to marry. For instance, parenting rights. Many heterosexual couples have kids without getting married and the father is still recognised as the legal co-parent. I think that as a society it would be easy for us to just expect that same-sex couples would get married in order to access rights that are granted to heterosexuals simply for being heterosexual. This is because underlying issues of homophobia are not being addressed by the marriage equality movement.

Marriage equality will not end homophobia; after all, interracial marriage did not end racism. Instead, it creates a hierarchy of relationship types whereby being married is privileged over all other relationships and other relationship configurations are dismissed as not possibly being as committed/serious/caring. I'm sure we're all familiar with some of the abominations of heterosexual celebrity marriages, so I probably don't need to spend a lot of time talking about how ridiculous it is to assume that marriage is the best possible type of relationship to be in. Heterosexual couples already have to deal with the pressure of marriage privilege when they choose not to marry. Same-sex marriage will only make the marriage monster a bigger, badder, harder to resist machine of cultural conformity.

Because same-sex attracted people have been excluded from the tradition of marriage, we have had to come up with other ways of being in relationships. This has meant creating new ways of making commitments to one another, and finding new reasons to stay together when things get tough. Marriage presents itself as a 'one size fits all' kind of relationship, but we've got stockades full of evidence that shows it does not. The marriage equality movement is closing the queer community off from having those discussions. Our voices are silenced and we are made to feel guilty for not jumping on the bandwagon.

Same-sex marriage is being heralded as a band-aid that will fix all our gay issues. I keep hearing that once our relationships are recognised as 'legitimate', we will be much better able to fight for issues like queer suicide and homophobic bullying. I hear this from intelligent, critical thinking people who should know better. If we have to get married for our relationships to be seen as legitimate, that is NOT acceptance! That is barely even tolerance. In many ways I think that allowing same-sex marriage will make it harder to fight against homophobia and what it produces. It shifts the attitude to "We gave you marriage, what are you still complaining about?" It makes it harder to point to the systemic discrimination that lead to things like higher rates of depression and suicide amongst the queer community. "Give it time, it takes time for the benefits of marriage equality to trickle down." I don't see how anyone can think that is 'good enough'.

Queer relationships are legitimate, diverse, alternative models to the heteronorm. I refuse to belong to a movement that tells me what I have is not worth valuing and asks me to conform to someone else's values. Marriage equality denies the good things about different types of queer relationships and tells us we'd be so much better off if we aspired to be like heterosexuals.

Remember second wave feminism? Where women were told they should strive to be like men and that would be super awesome? Remember what that produced? It created an even greater devaluation of traditional femininity, making it harder to engage men in feminism because asking them to step into the home was asking them to voluntarily become social outcasts.

I think the marriage equality movement, like second wave feminism, started out with good intentions. But it has been co-opted by conservative values and it's time we let it go and moved on to something new. Something that recognises the value within different types of relationships and doesn't place one type above all others. I don't want to take the marriage model away as a type of relationship that people engage in. What I want is for the marriage model to be recognised as one of many different, legitimate types of relationship models that some people engage in. And I think that's something that we can achieve, if we start to think critically about what marriage equality will actually produce.

Aussie Camping Adventure

In the five years I've been living in Australia I've come a long way in creating myself as an Australian. But there was one thing missing: an Aussie camping trip! For the past few years I have been longing to sleep in a tent and roast marshmallows over a camp fire. Unfortunately for me, I haven't had particularly camping inclined friends. So while I've gone on a few road trips now, they've always involved staying in buildings with electricity, plumbing, and beds.

Fortunately for me, I met my girlfriend, hence forth referred to as 'Foxy'. Foxy loves road trips and camping, so when I told her I was serious about wanting to go camping over brunch one morning, within 2 hours we had our trip planned and booked! Since I can't even remember the last time I went camping we decided to go to a caravan park instead of just rocking up to the bush like she's used to. At the recommendation of some of my friends, we settled on Cumberland river on the Great Ocean Road.

The thing about camping is, you need a car. While Foxy has a car, she doesn't have her licence. And while I have my licence, I've hardly driven in the past 5 years, had never driven in Melbourne, and had quite limited experience driving on the left. Look, we did alright! Both the people and the car made it there and back without injury, bar a few frazzled nerves. Let's just say, driving at night is much harder than I remember it. Driving down the Great Ocean Road at night is terrifying. I'm glad that most of the driving we did was during the bright, sunny, clear-skied day!

We hit the road late Friday morning and headed off for what was both my first Aussie camping adventure and me and Foxy's first weekend away together. The drive down the Great Ocean Road is truly beautiful, and it is actually a fun drive too - if you like windy roads. By the time we left on Sunday I was really enjoying making my way around those tight bends. I'm not going to lie, I really do enjoy driving and it was damn good to be behind the wheel of a car again! Even if I was pretty nervous.

Great shark! On the Great Ocean Road.

We got to the campground in the afternoon, and were very pleased to discover that not only did our campsite have a beautiful view, but it was also probably the shadiest site in the campground. Foxy got the tent up, with me attempting to be helpful. She'd picked us up a 6 person tent, so we had heaps of room (relatively speaking), and I've got a nifty air mattress, so we were pretty darn comfortable! Once we'd gotten ourselves set up, we cracked open a couple beers and enjoyed the serenity. At least until we discovered that we were camping next to a large group of dads with a disproportionate number of daughters, all under the age of 7. The dad two sites over from us was particularly crap, as were his bratty daughters who kept wandering into our campsite to play and then looked at us like wtf were we doing there... *shutter*

Tent up = beer o'clock!

After we had gotten ourselves settled we popped over across the road for some quality beach time. The beach was good! The sand was soft and not too hot, the waves were crashing in impressively, there were neat rocks to explore on, and we were right where the river met the ocean. That evening we drove into nearby Lorne for dinner, followed by ice cream. Then it was back to the campground for our first night in the tent.

Beach time!

We lucked out and got really amazing weather. The nights were cool but not too cold, the mornings were slightly overcast with a cool breeze, but then the sun would break through the clouds and the rest of the day would be sunny and just hot enough to be enjoyable summer weather. We weren't the only ones who fluked out on the good weather though! It turns out Saturday afternoon we had front row seats to a wedding! As many of you know, I'm not exactly a fan of weddings. But I enjoyed this one. Everyone was really friendly and relaxed. We had a chat with the groom and the uncle as they set up the decorations for the ceremony in the morning and they were really lovely and encouraged us to come watch the wedding (the uncle referred to children as short monsters, instantly winning us over).

How's the serenity?

The campground is on a bushwalking trail to some waterfalls. I think there's a few different falls you can go to, depending on how far you want to hike. We decided to check out Cumberland Falls, which was approximately a 9km return trip. Planning to have a swim in the rock pools and a picnic lunch, we packed up my backpack with supplies and headed off. This bushwalk involved a fair bit of river hopping, which I was quite happy about as I enjoy scampering over rocks. Foxy was less keen on that part of it, but by the time we came back she was making her way across the rocks like a champ!

We had been left with the impression that the trail was fairly easy and well marked. For the most part that was true, but there were certainly a few places where we had no idea where the trail was, and the bit right before the falls involved more intense rock clambering that we'd signed on for. In the end, we didn't have a picnic or go for a swim, so the pack was a bit of a nuisance. But now we know for next time.

Cumberland Falls

I'd been going on about how I wanted to see some Australian wildlife, and may or may not have said "This trip won't be complete unless I see a marsupial." (Which we did - we saw some kangaroos while driving into Lorne.) On the hike we came across heaps of lizards. I am a fan of reptiles, so I was pretty happy about that. Although, this being Australia, I was a bit disappointed that the lizards weren't gigantic. So after one of our river crossings on the way back, when I saw a large reptilian head on the other side of some rocks, I was pretty keen to get up close and personal with a big ass lizard!

IT WAS NOT A LIZARD!!! I stepped over the rock and found myself standing right beside an impressively sized snake. Now, I like snakes, a lot. But as Foxy put it, "The 5th most poisonous snake in Australia will still kill you."

I quickly backed up to the other side of the rocks while calling out "SNAKE! It's a snake!" With Foxy behind me going "Get back! Get back!" For its part, the snake slithered off back into the bush where it was safe from pestering humans trodding on it. All it wanted was to sun itself on the nice, warm rocks.

There were some people coming up the track, so I thought I'd be useful and yelled out that there was a snake up ahead. Apparently this was not a helpful thing to do. When they reached us - a group of barefooted, bare chested men and teenage boys - we informed them that there had been a snake and it had gone back into the bush.

One of the boys asked what it looked like and Foxy said "It was black with a yellow belly."

"Ah, a yellow-bellied black snake." The boy replied.

Classic Australiana.

Relaying this story to Hubby, he informed me that there is no such thing as a yellow-bellied black snake. With a bit of Googling I discovered that what we stumbled across was actually a tiger snake which is one of the most venomous snakes in the world. Well then!

Our walk went quite quickly after that and we found ourselves back at our campsite in no time. We got stuck into our lunch and watched as the wedding got into full swing. We'd been informed that the bridal car was something to watch out for, and sure enough, they rocked up in a baby blue combie. We both quite enjoyed watching the wedding from our campsite, not only because of the wedding, but because all these other people came and stood beside our campsite to watch from what could be considered a respectful distance. And while they stood around and had a geeze, we got to hear all the goss about the couple and about the campground. For two people who love people watching, this was the perfect way to spend the afternoon!

The Bridal Combie

Once the wedding had cleared off we headed back over to the beach to get in a bit of an ocean swim. The waves were crashing and the rip was pulling and it was just so damn refreshing! We had a bit of a play in the rocks again and then headed back to the campground for a shower before driving back into Lorne for dinner.

And then, after dinner, we came back to our campsite for a special treat. S'MORES!!!!! Honestly, this was the real reason I wanted to go camping. I hadn't had s'mores in years, and it had been even longer since I'd had them the traditional way: marshmallows roasted in a camp fire. I'd brought graham crackers and jet puffed marshmallows back from Canada on my last trip out there and had been eagerly awaiting an opportunity to get myself around a camp fire to bust them out.

We were at a bit of a disadvantage with roasting the marshmallows as we didn't have a proper stick to put them on and were using bamboo skewers instead. This meant that we had to be pretty close to the fire, which meant we got faces full of smoke. So there were none of the golden brown artisan marshmallows of my youth, but we made due. I was very happy to get to share the wonderous glory of s'mores with Foxy. You can't get graham crackers in Australia, so they're not really a thing here. It would be a source of much sadness for them, if only they knew what they were missing out on.

S'MORES!!!!!

Once we had stuffed ourselves with s'mores it was off to bed, where sleep was interrupted by obnoxious teenage boys and a coughing/crying baby. Sunday morning we were greeted with the familiar sounds of shrieking children, signalling that it was time for us to get up and pack up the campsite and make our way back to Melbourne. We made a good team getting everything sorted and it wasn't long before we were ready to hit the road again. We stopped in Lorne one last time for brunch (at the most Melbourne-esque cafe we could find) and then joined the scores of weekend holidayers making their way back to the city. I was a much more confident driver by this point, and the drive home was pretty uneventful, the highlight being us taking a more direct route than suggested by the GPS and listening to her mispronounced 'recalculating'.

All in all, my first Aussie camping adventure was a big success! I got to drive, I saw some marsupials, I slept in a tent, I didn't get eaten alive by bugs (though I did coat myself in a fair bit of DEET), I had a close encounter with a snake, I got to make motherfucking S'MORES!, I built a camp fire, I swam in the ocean, I went on a bushwalk, and most importantly, I got to spend an amazing weekend away with Foxy. I can't wait to do it all again!