Do you like the trope of a marriage of convenience in romance books and movies, poppet? Sounds super romantic, right? Two people begrudgingly get married only to fall in love later. It’s the stuff dreams are made of. Or not. ‘Coz let’s be honest, while this sounds great in fiction, it doesn’t translate into romance in real life. More so for the people of the LGBTQIA+ community. Have you ever heard of lavender marriages and wondered what it is? Let Madam Eve educate you.

What is a lavender marriage?

In short, it’s a marriage of convenience, sugar. When two queer people enter into a heterosexual marriage, it is called a lavender marriage. Lavender might be the colour of the season, but it doesn’t make for an ideal marriage. Why, you ask? Because, sugar, the very basis of a lavender marriage is to hide your reality from a world that punishes people for not being cis-het.

An example of a lavender marriage is when a gay man marries a lesbian woman while both of them keep their relationships with their actual partners alive. All so that they can live without judgement. Now, tell me, darlin’, how is this an ideal relationship? My poor poppets of the LGBTQIA+ community have to live and love in hiding and it breaks my heart.

But why do people enter these marriages?

Good question, sugar. You know the pesky neighbour who keeps peeping into your balcony to see what’s brewing inside your house? The world is like that neighbour who is way too invested in other people’s relationships. Also, a lot of countries still haven’t legalised gay marriage, which means that queer people can’t marry the people they love. This also means that queer people lose out on a lot of benefits that marriage brings to heterosexual people. So, to avoid the drama that the world likes to create, and to maybe get the benefits of marriage, queer people enter lavender marriages.

But in some cases, darlin’, queer people don’t want to deal with the stress and drama that society and their families bring with them. So, to live their lives peacefully, they mutually enter into a lavender marriage.

In short, poppet, lavender marriage allows queer people to legally marry someone of the opposite sex so that they can live a happy life with their queer partner with no interference from the world.

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