The term “lavender marriage” dates back to the early 20th century, and is most famously associated with gays and lesbians of Old Hollywood. These unions, in which one or both partners were gay, provided a smooth, glossy heterosexual facade for the world, enabling participants to have prosperous careers and, often, engage in discreet homosexual tomfoolery. The most well-known lavender marriage is perhaps Rock Hudson’s with his agent, Phyllis Gates, a marriage he rushed into after Confidential magazine threatened to out him. Judy Garland was completely aware that her husband, Vincente Minnelli, was gay, and later advised her daughter to marry gay men because they were the best partners. Of course, it wasn’t just famous gay people who married with the mutually understood intent of obscuring their homosexuality — many did and continue to do so for familial, cultural or religious reasons.

Now, according to Business Insider, lavender marriages might be poised for a rebranding. The reason for this potential return is apparently Gen Z, who they explain are “redefining” lavender marriages because they’re disillusioned by dating and “tired of being broke, single, and lonely.” They’re sick of profit-minded dating apps and high housing costs and burned out from getting ghosted. They’re not prioritizing sexual relationships. They just want someone with whom to watch their shows, go on vacation and share a mortgage.

Last month, a queer TikToker named Ronnie (who often posts about the financial struggles faced by his generation) inspired widespread lavender marriage discourse after he amassed millions of views on a “dead serious” video soliciting applications for a lavender marriage. But this was not a Rock Hudson-esque proposal. Ronnie was explicit that men should not apply for the position, but not because he was looking to hide his sexuality via wife. He wanted something else altogether, telling the camera: “I can be your husband, I can be your wife, I can be your dog, I can be whatever the fuck you want me to be. All you have to do is marry me so that I can afford to pay a mortgage, utilities and taxes, that’s it. You can mess around with whoever you want whenever you want, in fact I encourage it.”

In the comments, viewers expressed desires to have lavender marriages of their own, and others boasted of in fact already having lavender marriages of their own. “Me & my best friend of 15y have a lavender marriage!” wrote one. “We own a house, cars, motorcycles, go on vacations etc. We are completely financially stable. Made the choice 6y ago, never going back!”

“Currently in a lavender marriage and have felt more love and care in 8 months than I did in 20 years with my ex,” wrote another. “Never going back.”

When Robbie also adds that he has no desire to share a bed with anyone, ever, he’s tapped in to perhaps another element of these relationships that might hold some appeal — freedom to be your entire, un-compromised selves. The idea that conforming to the status quo in order to function in society or in relationships has been a popular idea since the dawn of time, but that popularity is fading fast. The internet provides immediate validation for quirks, desires and neuroses many humans once thought they needed to change or hide. Even within cishet marriages, couples are openly defying standard expectations, like sharing a bed.

Romantic relationships seemingly involve a greater expectation of compromise than these hypothetical lavender marriages do, and more pressure to align across a vast swath of human behaviors and preferences. Focusing only on the logistics of partnership, like money and housing, releases pressure to align on more emotional elements, like shared interests, perspectives on monogamy, love languages or communication styles. 

The Rise of the “Platonic Marriage”

Now — historically the primary defining element of a Lavender Marriage was its ability to conceal homosexuality. (And it continues to be used that way in various contemporary contexts.)

The proposed redefinition sounds similar to what we started calling “platonic marriages” in the early 2020s, a phenomenon certified by a spate of viral videos and trend pieces.

Before I get into that, another linguistic shift to note — prior to 2021, “platonic marriage” was usually used to describe marriages that had once been sexual, but now no longer were. It popped up in a lot of relationship advice columns.

But massive shifts over the past few decades in how we conceive of relationships and partnerships and monogamy and gender and sexuality also led to a shift in how we approach longterm relationships. Asexual and aromantic people have become increasingly visible and vocal, challenging the idea that marriages require sex or romance to be successful or fulfilling. 

I imagine the COVID-19 pandemic played a role in the eventual new “platonic marriage” conversation too, making all of us reconsider how we receive and provide care for others. Many once-romantic couples quarantined at home found themselves at each other’s throats, while some quarantined single people spent a lot of time thinking about dying alone.

It was in this context that the 2021 Platonic Marriage Trend was birthed. Platonic marriages were defined in a 2021 Brides article as “a legal union based on spiritual connection or practical love, rather than on sexual or romantic love.” A relationship expert explained: “Some people may not want to get married to a romantic partner. They want stability with a partner they trust and more flexibility in their lives. I think this is a great solution for those that fall into that category. Having someone that has your back and you can trust is a wonderful feeling.”

The New York Times also did a trend piece on Platonic Marriages in 2021 that opened with the story of best friends Jay and Krystle, “besties, both queer and open to dating anyone but each other.” Jay and Krystle’s story appeared in a lot of reporting around this time. The Times piece also went beyond Jay and Krystle, speaking to five different couples seeking platonic marriages, including two pansexual women from Columbus who each had two children from previous relationships and wanted to raise their families and buy a home together. Platonic marriages, the Times wrote, challenged assumptions about which elements were important to making a marriage succeed.

Jay and Krystle appeared on The Tamron Hall Show in 2021 to discuss their relationship. In 2023, Jay returned to the program to deliver an update to the Tamron Hall audience —  they were divorcing. While Jay and Krystle remained friends, Jay said she had ended up wanting that romance and intimacy once she met her current partner, Jeff. She says now that she didn’t value herself enough back then to think she’d ever be “worthy” of romantic love.

A new spate of platonic marriage trend pieces sprouted earlier this year, like this story about asexual best friends getting married at a Phillies game. The pair had been close for decades and bought a house together in 2020. Neither identify as lesbians, instead saying their relationship was more like the “enviable iconic cinematic friendship between Romy and Michele from Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion than, say, Bette and Tina on The L Word.”

Forbes leaned into platonic marriages being popular for women, specifically, linking it to worldwide re-evaluation of “the role and importance men play in their lives.”

Forbes also surmises that “the practical nature of these [same-sex marriages between friends] might reduce the emotional conflicts that often lead to divorce.” Jay and Krystle might challenge that hypothesis.

How Is This New Approach To “Lavender Marriages” Different From “Platonic Marriages”?

In 2022, Huck Magazine put platonic marriages in the context of an overall push against the traditional family unit and the concept of “Family Abolition” discourse. Platonic marriages, they suggested, relates to “similar ideas of kinship and the redistribution of care as labour.” These new relationships challenge us to reimagine the family free of nuclearity and biology, instead considering a long-discussed version of utopia where queer chosen families build collectives around perviously constrained activities like raising children.

This vision isn’t really what Ronnie describes in his TikTok, nor is it the phenomenon described by Business Insider. Maybe eventually the real difference between utilizing the term “lavender marriage” instead of “platonic marriage” is lavender marriages’s commitment to being a kind of trick, the sense that the queers are getting away with something to make our lives function within an absurd system. In Hollywood, Lavender Marriages were largely commercial prospects, enabling participants to maintain thriving careers within a puritanical and capitalist society. New lavender marriages are similarly finding a way for gay people to game the system and still succeed within capitalism’s constraints. Because, duh, life has never been more expensive than it is now — certainly, having and raising children has become so cost-prohibitive that many Gen Zers have no interest in doing so. (Meanwhile, the app Just a Baby continues growing, offering users a chance to find sperm and egg donors but also to find platonic co-parents.) Ultimately, though, just as Hollywood’s lavender marriages did nothing to cure the disease of homophobia, new lavender marriages also address symptoms but not the disease — the astronomical cost of being single.

Can lavender marriages be rebranded as empowering partnerships that prioritize logistical needs and platonic companionship over romantic love and sexual chemistry? For many decades we’ve been gradually transcending marriage’s tenets — freeing ourselves from traditional gender roles, compulsory monogamy, and even the idea that marriage is “between a man and a woman.” Having shed all that, are we now at the final frontier: transcending romantic love?

Of course the evolution of marriage’s definition isn’t a straight line — in a response to the Lavender Marriage discourse, TikToker Destinee voices her support and notes, “Let’s not forget that marriage was created to combine forces and to get more power.” Marriage was originally not about romantic love at all — it was more of a financial arrangement, and in some cultures and locations, it still is.

When same-sex marriage was legalized, many feared gays would assimilate into mainstream society by adopting its legal protections. Furthermore, advocates argued that same-sex marriage didn’t threaten “normal” marriage and therefore normal-married people should stop acting like our rights impacted them at all. But other theorists wondered if same-sex marriage might actually do exactly that — “by providing a new model of how new people can live together equitability, same-sex marriage could help haul matrimony more fully into the 21st century… providing an example that can be enlightening to all couples.” 

That re-defining and reimagining continues. Who knows what we’ll reclaim or come up with next.

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