My divorce from Jakob felt far more meaningful than our wedding. By the time our marriage officially ended in 2019, we had been together for over ten years, and only four of them were spent as a married couple. The wedding wasnt the start of us, but the divorce was absolutely the end. There was a weight to it that our wedding didnt have.The breakup was painful and a long time in the making. Im not the type to rush through the end of a relationship. I knew it was over, but I lingered, desperate to hold on a little longer. Even as I moved forward, I kept looking back. Related How marriage equality gave trans people the freedom to get divorced Before Obergefell, this couple spent years trapped in matrimony. Now, the landmark ruling has become pivotal for trans rights in more ways than one. I had mentally prepared to reduce contact with Jakob, but the deeper ramifications of our breakup didnt fully hit me until his mom a lesbian I had felt close to since our first meeting stopped texting me from one day to the next. Overnight, an entire network of intimate connections had gone offline. Never Miss a Beat Subscribe to our newsletter to stay ahead of the latest LGBTQ+ political news and insights. Subscribe to our Newsletter today And yet, despite the depth of my feelings for Jakob and the countless memories I still hold dear, like those endless Swedish summer days at his cottage by the Baltic Sea, fishing for cod and picking mushrooms and berries Ive never once regretted our divorce.For most of my relationship with Jakob, I believed that the only gay man I needed in my life was my partner. My earlier attempts to forge genuine friendships with other gay men, mostly peers Id met in the club scene, never truly blossomed. Wed laugh loudly, trade gossip, and dance until dawn, but when the nights grew quiet and I felt vulnerable, I kept my guard up. I never dared share the parts of myself that ached or faltered. Those friendships stayed on the surface, fun but hollow. Gradually, I stopped trying. I came to the bleak conclusion that straight men made better buddies. It did not occur to me then that I may have been suffering from internalized homophobia.A few years before the divorce, I stumbled upon the Radical Faeries, a vibrant, nature-loving queer community that felt like a refuge for those of us who didnt quite fit in the mainstream gay scene. With each gathering, I found myself more drawn into their world, dancing barefoot to the beat of drums, sharing stories by campfires, and breathing in a freedom I hadnt known I craved. But Jakobs smile would tighten whenever I mentioned the faeries. His eyes darkened when I spent weeks away. Conversations grew colder, heavier. One evening, the words finally came, sharp and unyielding: I had to choose either him or the faeries.More than the occasional crush or passing sexual encounter, what made my time with the faeries truly transformative was discovering, for the first time in my forties, the joys of queer siblinghood. At gatherings, I found myself among people who valued me not for my looks or skills but for the quiet trust and honesty we shared. As I often tell my friend, May, lovers come and go, but sisters stay forever. It was through these new connections that I finally found my tribe.Getting divorced empowered me to discard all the scripts I knew about how life should or shouldnt unfold and instead to engage in the exhilarating, yet terrifying, exercise of open-ended queer creativity. I chose to follow intuition over convention and rely on trial and error so that experience rather than handed-down heteronormative wisdom could be my guide. Meeting the faeries shifted something inside me. At gatherings, I watched nomads drift through, restless and searching; I saw sex worker witches who spoke softly of using pleasure as a balm for broken hearts; and I met eco-farmers whose hands were calloused from tending the earth, yet whose eyes held quiet satisfaction. Through their stories and rhythms, my world grew wider, and the worn paths Id followed suddenly felt narrow. I felt a pull to step away, to carve out a life that was truly my own.The divorce wasnt just the end of a relationship; it was the end of a way of life. When I finally chose to leave behind a comfortable yet uneventful life in Sweden for the unpredictability of a nomadic path, I knew I was letting go of the safety net I had spent years building. Gone were the prospects of an academic career, along with the status and the financial stability. In their place opened an immense, uncertain, and thrilling expanse of possibility.Although we were only legally married for four years, we had lived like a married couple much longer. When I landed a PhD position at the Swedish university where Jakob was already teaching, we quickly fell into the gay middle-class dream. We took a mortgage to buy a cute two-room apartment, went on fancy holidays, and for the first few years never questioned the virtues of a monogamous sex life. Marriage came later, when, despite having all the trappings of a successful gay couple in liberal Sweden, we began to feel something was missing. Wed both work all day, and when we finally came together for a home-cooked dinner, wed find with a mix of dismay and embarrassment that we had nothing to say to each other. The clinking of silverware didnt break the silence; it only deepened it. It soon became apparent that there was a void in our lives, and when we looked at the script we had the only one society had handed us we divined that our nest was feeling empty for lack of children.Adoption was our preferred path to parenthood, and according to the law, we needed to get married to start the process. We went ahead with the marriage, but never adopted. The first thing social services told us was that wed need to move to a larger apartment and cut back our working hours. We couldnt afford either, so that was that. Ill never know what life with children would have been like, but I do know that the emptiness I felt had deeper causes than the absence of kids.As conclusive research has shown, drawing from 85 years of data in the Harvard Study of Adult Development, the quality of our relationships has the greatest impact on our happiness and health, surpassing wealth, fame, or career success. For me, marriage became a gilded cage in which I lived in the sole company of one individual. And while Jakob was exceptional in many ways, expecting him to be my lover, best friend, confidant, and logistical partner in juggling the challenges of running a household with a full-time job was asking too much. Something had to give. And eventually it did. Divorce for me meant giving up one extraordinary relationship in the hope of cultivating several meaningful new ones. The art of relationships, Ive found, lies in finding a number that is small enough to allow for depth and investment, yet large enough to enrich ones life with different perspectives. For me, that number wasnt one. And maybe if I hadnt been a foreigner in Sweden a country notorious for how difficult it is for expats to make good friends this story would have ended differently. But I doubt it.Five and a half years on, my life is far from perfect. I still miss certain moments I shared with Jakob, but Ive never looked back with regret.After the divorce, I lived like a nomad for a while, trying to figure out what would come next. Then two years ago, I co-founded an intentional community with five other gay men in rural France. The Radical Faeries showed me what community could be like the place where I had felt most alive in years. But those weeks in the forests, vibrant as they were, always slipped away too quickly, leaving me wanting more. When they ended, I returned to my nomadic wanderings, knowing deep down that such a lifestyle couldnt last. Still, the thought of falling back into the routine of working just to pay rent on a lonely apartment felt hollow. The dream of starting a community slowly took shape during that time, but it never would have occurred to me if it werent for the divorce.I also have a boyfriend in Paris whom I love to pieces. Although not always easy, I find that living two hours apart by train, with independent lives and interests, has been more of a blessing than a burden. I sometimes even muse that the key to a long-lasting romantic relationship might be allowing ample space to miss each other.Still, the shape my life took after divorce isnt the most important part. I could have chosen something completely different and thats exactly the point. We fool ourselves if we believe that, after centuries of institutional history and a lifetime exposed to Hollywood romance, marriage does not come with its own baggage. Queers are known experts in hacking social technologies, and I am sure many will find a joyful way to make marriage work for them. But for those of us who couldnt salvage ours, divorce can be the beginning not the end of living a more fulfilling and authentic life.And if I ever remarry, because queer people sometimes need the rights and protections that come with it, Ill make sure not to fall for the same trick again. Marriage can be just a piece of paper; the real trap is believing you have no choice but to buy into the lifestyle.Subscribe to theLGBTQ Nation newsletterand be the first to know about the latest headlines shaping LGBTQ+ communities worldwide.