For decades, Carlos and I weren’t married. And I didn’t mind. I built comedy material out of it and used it at L.A. clubs such as the Ice House and the Comedy Store:
“I’ve been in the same relationship for 25 years, and I’m still stuck with the word ‘boyfriend.’ How is it we come up with new words for technology every two minutes? Texting, sexting, Googling, pinging. But when it comes to extended relationships we’ve got: lover, domestic partner, significant other, longtime companion. Recently, someone did tell me about a new term: spousal equivalent. Spousal equivalent! Why does that sound like a sugar substitute to me? Carlos is my spousal equivalent. All the great taste of a husband and only half the commitment.”
The audience always laughed. And if Carlos was in the room, someone would inevitably glance at him and shake their head, as if he were the one dragging his feet. The truth was, I was fine not being married. It wasn’t just him. It was us.
Outside of comedy clubs, when I was asked why after close to 30 years we weren’t married, I would say: “We’re waiting to see if it’s going to work.” People thought that was hysterical. It wasn’t meant as a joke. We were very different people.
There was a period when I started to call him my husband just to simplify things, but I was still as likely to call him boyfriend. “You’re very open about your relationships,” a woman once told me on Day 2 of a two-day conference. It took me a minute to realize she thought the man I referred to as “my husband” on the first day was different from the man I called “my boyfriend” the next.
For a long time, marriage wasn’t something we needed. We’d already built a home, a life, a circle of friends and a level of trust. But then I made a big career shift. After 30-plus years in advertising — comedy was my side gig — I stepped back from full-time agency leadership and went part-time by choice, finally giving my workaholism less oxygen. With that choice, though, I lost my healthcare. Suddenly, marriage wasn’t a punchline anymore.
Carlos had SAG-AFTRA coverage, the kind of “forever” insurance that came with vesting. If I became his legal spouse, I’d be protected too. So after three decades of spousal equivalency, we tied the knot. For love, yes, but also for health insurance.
Except “forever” wasn’t forever. During the COVID-19 pandemic, SAG-AFTRA stripped senior performers of their healthcare. Carlos lost his coverage. Spouses of senior performers got to stay on the plan until we were kicked off at 65 — the age I turned this year. The promise of permanence vanished.
Marriage, it turned out, didn’t just change our status. It also changed our relationship to the house. Before, we had owned it as “tenants in common,” each holding 50%. After we married, we could hold it as community property. Both of us fully owners. That felt permanent too.
Until one day I heard about racial covenants in Los Angeles real estate. I pulled out the original 1921 deed and saw the words that would have disqualified both of us from living where we do:
“No part of said premises shall ever be leased, rented, sold or conveyed to any negro, or any person of African descent, or of the Mongolian race, or of any race other than the white or Caucasian race.”
Neither Carlos, who is Afro-Panamanian, nor I, being Jewish, would have been allowed to live here when that clause was written. We could only be here now because, after 1948, the courts said such covenants were unenforceable.
Suddenly, all I saw were the parallels. First, “forever” insurance that wasn’t forever. Then, “community property” that came with a deed that once rejected our very existence. Now, even the protections that allowed an interracial couple like us to marry in the first place — Loving v. Virginia — feel shakier than ever. Turns out both interracial marriage and racial covenants are protected by 14th Amendment rights. Just like Roe v. Wade was, and we all know how that turned out.
I never thought much about permanence until recently. I was happy with spousal equivalency, with the idea that every day Carlos and I chose each other without needing the state to ratify it. But age, illness and insurance have a way of forcing pragmatism onto romance.
In Los Angeles, permanence has always been an illusion. Hillsides give way to landslides. Wildfires erase entire neighborhoods. Sanctuary policies are challenged, and immigration raids leave families shattered overnight. Even the freeways we once thought immovable split and buckle with time. Why should marriage or property be any different? Paperwork gets rewritten. Laws get repealed. Protections you thought were settled are suddenly up for debate.
The city reminds us daily that permanence is fragile. And yet, we stay. Not because the paperwork binds us, but because we choose to. After all those years of joking about “spousal equivalency,” it turns out the real equivalency is this: permanence on paper versus permanence in practice. We’ll take the latter, every time.
The author is a writer and storyteller for page, stage and the advertising industry. She lives in West Hollywood with her husband and Instagram-viral cat and dog. Visit her website at rochelle-newman.com.
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This story originally appeared on LA Times
