Four years ago, my girlfriend and I were living in The Hills, in one among the thousands of identical townhouses in Bedminster, N.J. To give you an idea of how cookie-cutter this development is, the recent remake of The Stepford Wives was shot there.
We told people that we were moving half an hour northwest to rural Washington for practical reasons — it’s a seller’s market, I can telecommute, cheaper housing — but in actuality, it was because we wanted to nudge our relationship to the next level. Back then, I was living with Dawn in her house, which was fine with me and OK with her — until it wasn’t OK with her. One of her biggest pet peeves was that she didn’t know how to introduce me to new people. “Boyfriend” sounded like we were a pair of teenagers going steady, and “partner” was no better option, as if we were a same-sex couple or about to embark on a business venture. So who was I, exactly, if not a husband?
An article I wrote for the December 2008 issue of KoreAm Journal.