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last revised 10/07/02
This is a story about names, not about a marriage. I've written publicly about the marriage in net.support.psych.misc and net.writing.general. I'm happy to discuss it in e-mail. I figure this is more appropriate to what my acquaintances need as an explanation than an ugly story that I cannot fairly tell: I could not tell it fairly when I first put up an explanation, I could not in any subsequent revision, and I cannot now. If you want to hear me being really bitchy about the same subject matter, get me drunk. :)
Actually, my birth certificate says "William Kendall Cole" but it's always been Billy or Bill. I never considered changing anything about that until I fell madly in love.
Sandra Stewart was (and is) a very remarkable person. I met her in 1982, and after some hard work managed to convince her to marry me. There is a complex romantic tale there. I am not writing it.
It felt just WRONG to expect her to drop her name for mine.
It also felt WRONG to not share a name with my lifetime total partner. Or at least with someone I really expected to be that partner.
It was my idea and it was our shared choice to go with Stewart-Cole because it flows better than Cole-Stewart. Of course we had to spell it out every time we said it, and just about every large organization screwed it up, but for me it was always a way of making a deep symbolic statement about who I am to the world and I cherished the name.
After 16 years of friendship and almost 11 years of marriage Sandra decided to leave that partnership and seek her greater happiness in a different way. I can't tell that story fairly either, since I don't understand all her reasons but can posit credible yet very bitchy ones... It's best I not elaborate. I didn't ever want this to happen but it DID happen and while it took me a while to accept it, one person cannot rebuild a marriage alone. We are still a odd sort of friends, but certainly not the sort of friends we were. We separated in early 1998.
It hurt too much to keep that deeply symbolic name. I returned to using my birth name informally (mainly online) in mid-1998 as a statement and a way to reduce how often I had to face a tremendous failure. I gained that name back legally in October 1999 when the divorce was made final.
Sandra and I have both changed our names back to the ones we had before we married, but our wonderful daughter Megan will continue to be cursed/blessed with the hyphen. She is the independent product of our love, our partnership, and our long collaboration. Neither of us want to try to deny that identity to her, because while we could not sustain our life together we have done a great job so far as parenting partners and we will continue to do so as best we can. Megan has some of the best of us both, and she is definitely OUR daughter.
For well over a decade, nearly all of my putatively adult life, I never considered it possible (much less ethically acceptable) to fall in love with anyone other than Sandra. That was fine because I was madly in love with her for 16 years. We still connect pretty well in some ways.
Yet I have found a new love. It took months for me to accept Sandra's desire to leave, and it had me reaching out for support all over the place. One of the kindest and mopst thoughtful responses was from Kathy Pascoe. When finally Sandra made it unequivocally clear to me that our marriage was over and all that remained were the legalities, Kathy listened to me cry. In the years since, she has also become the dearest person in the world to me, has made me feel like I am a teenager again in some ways, and has shown me that there isn't just one possible life partner for me. She also has me convinced that my first choice was not the best choice for me, because I keep finding ways in which Kathy fits me far better than Sandra ever did or ever could. In the ensuing years our relationship has evolved from a purely platonic online friendship to a marriage which started in spirit in late 1998 and became legal November 26, 1999. Kathy never wanted a hyphenation, so my name is now mine and hers together.