Samantha Wynn Greenstone knows her husband is gay, okay?
She knew he was gay when they met in a San Diego production of “Fiddler on the Roof.” She knew hewas gay when he proposed. She knew he was gay when they got married in November.
He’s not bisexual. She’s not in denial. That hasn’t stopped them from being in a committedmonogamous relationship for nearly 10 years.
“If anything, I think we are taking the sanctity of marriage to a whole new level,” said Greenstone, 38,smiling widely as she sat beside her husband, Jacob Hoff, 32, at their home in Los Angeles.
That morning, Hoff made Greenstone her new favorite breakfast: an English muffin with egg, cheeseand avocado.
“It’s kind of been one of her pregnancy things, English muffins,” he said. “Before pregnancy, we ate nobread. We were gluten-free people.”
Yes, she’s pregnant. Yes, it’s his. And yes — if you must know how they conceived — in Greenstone’swords, “we birds’d and we bees’d.”
Hoff and Greenstone are part of a small but growing community of people who are opening up on socialmedia about their nontraditional permutations of partnership, amending “marriage” with clarifyingadjectives such as “platonic,” “queerplatonic,” “aromantic” or “mixed-orientation.”
For months, Greenstone and Hoff have been making content about their “lavender marriage.”
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The term has it roots in the Lavender Scare of the mid-20th century, when a moral panic stoked by Sen.Joseph McCarthy (R-Wisconsin) and an executive order signed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower ledto a purge of workers suspected of homosexuality from the federal workforce.
“There were … thousands of people who lost their jobs, lost their livelihoods, many lost their lives. Itwas really frightening,” said Regina Hillman, an assistant professor at the University of MemphisSchool of Law. “And then there were some people who found a way to exist during that time and notlose their job.” One possibility: Enter into a lavender marriage, a seemingly heterosexual partnershipmeant to conceal your own homosexuality.
“We are a little different than the conventional definition, because I’m openly talking about it,” Hoffsaid. “We’re like the Version 2.0.”
Maybe you could say the same of Barry Diller, who recently
confirmed
that he is both gay and happilymarried to Diane von Fürstenberg. Or Tricia Cooke, who
spoke openly
about being a lesbian married toEthan Coen while promoting their movies “Drive-Away Dolls” and “Honey Don’t!”
Hoff and Greenstone have turned their marriage into a career. Social media is Hoff’s main source ofincome. (Greenstone also works as a personal assistant.) They spend much of their day making videosand responding to skeptics, supporters and other curious commenters.
“We found a whole group of people who had never heard of us before who were just like, ‘Oh my gosh,I’m in this relationship and I didn’t know that there were others like me out there!’” Greenstone said.
“You also get the people who are like: ‘I have a gay best friend. Do you think we’re in love?’” Greenstonesaid. “And we have to be like …”
“No, honey,” her husband answered.
‘We kind of all blew each other’s mind’
This is the first committed relationship Hoff has ever been in, though he says that he has “sampled” theproverbial offerings of the world. “They were literal samples,” he said. “There was never a full meal.”
Both parties felt a deep connection when they met, but neither had marriage on their minds. Thatbegan to change after Greenstone saw a spiritual healer — they do live in L.A., after all — who told herthat she and Hoff shared a “spiritual umbilical cord.”
Greenstone asked Hoff via text whether he had feelings for her that ran deeper than friendship. He did.
Early in their relationship, they went to see a therapist. “She told us she’s a straight woman who’smarried to a woman,” Hoff said. “And we kind of all blew each other’s minds in that session, becauseshe had never really seen this dynamic before.”
Greenstone said some of their most supportive commenters online are conservative. “It’s a safe packagefor them,” she said.
They’ve also gone out of their way to court viewers from across the political spectrum. One of their mostcontroversial videos was from last year, when they explained their decision not to reveal who they werevoting for in the presidential election.
“We didn’t want any audience member to feel isolated,” Greenstone
said. When asked about PresidentDonald Trump’s positions on transgender people, she clarified that she has always shown unwaveringsupport for trans rights.
“We have trans people that voted for Donald Trump that support us,” Hoff said. “So we’re not going toisolate ourselves from those people.”
They know that people have questions and that some will never be satisfied with their answers. Butthey’re steadfast in their happiness and love.
“It feels the way that I felt as a kid when I first watched ‘Titanic,’” Greenstone said. “It’s what our lovestory feels like.”
Joe Kort, who wrote the book “Is My Husband Gay, Straight, or Bi?,” says that stories like Greenstoneand Hoff’s are increasingly common among his therapy clients.
“More and more and more, that’s happening,” he said.
“A lot of straight women are so tired of patriarchy and they know that gay — and even bi — guys aregoing to be less patriarchal,” he said. “That’s what I’ve seen.”
Kort has heard women in mixed-orientation relationships say that gay men are more emotionallyavailable and open to their input. And he stresses that not all of these partnerships are sexless. “Gaymen are able to have sex with a woman if that’s his person,” he said.
Kort himself has never been with a woman. He has been with his husband for 32 years. He has workedwith gay men as a relationship therapist for 40 years.
Some of Kort’s gay clients feel alienated from gay culture. Others say they’ve always wanted atraditional heterosexual family unit regardless of their own orientation. Kort acknowledges that theprocess of making a mixed-orientation marriage work can be “brutal” and that the number of peopleinterested in entering one is small.
“I tell them, ‘Be careful who you’re telling, because you’re not going to get a lot of support for this,’” hesaid. “It’s almost like they have to go into the closet as a couple.”
Still, he encourages people to reserve their judgments and explore what works for them. “I always saythis to every couple of these mixed orientations: ‘Maybe you’ll discover together a way to make thiswork that doesn’t even exist on this planet yet,’” he said. “Who knows? And people do.”
An asexual tradwife?
In late 2023, April Lexi Lee told her parents that she was going to marry her childhood best friend.
“They were shocked, but at the same time, not surprised,” Lee, 28, said as she smoked a cigaretteoutside of her parents’ apartment in Singapore. She was visiting her family while her wife, Renee Wong,27, was holding down the fort at their home in Los Angeles.
Lee and Wong had been close since they met at age 12. During the pandemic shutdowns, when Wongwas in Singapore and Lee was in California, they were spending hours on FaceTime every day.
Then Lee’s TikTok algorithm started delivering her videos about “Boston marriages,” a term from the19th century for pairs of women who lived together without men.
“We didn’t even know it was an option, and then we were like, ‘Wait, this makes so much sense,’” Leesaid.
Lee and Wong started cohabitating and sharing finances. Marriage wasn’t on either of their minds untilWong had a health issue that required surgery.
“It became really clear that we are family, but on paper we are nothing,” Lee said. She looked back atthe times when they were on separate continents. “I would want to be able to be at the border and say,‘My wife is in here.’ Not just ‘my best friend.’”
Lee and Wong are both on the asexual spectrum. Lee has been happily celibate for years. Wong, whoidentifies as “solo poly,” occasionally dates outside their marriage.
Since making content about her aromantic relationship, Lee has received hundreds of comments frommarried or divorced women who said that her relationship resonated with them. “I have chills when Ithink about it,” Lee said.
She also isn’t surprised that more people are exploring new structures of marriage.
“I feel like there is a lot of tension between the genders right now, particularly a lot of women feelinglike men aren’t doing it for them, like they’re not showing up for their needs,” Lee said. “And then onthe flip side, a lot of men feeling resentful that they are never enough for women and feeling thatrejection.”
Perhaps counterintuitively, Lee said that marrying Wong allowed her to step into a more traditionalfeminine role.
“When I’m with Renee in L.A., I am a tradwife,” she said. Lee cooks every meal, washes every dish andcleans every litter box. And Wong has been enjoying exploring a more masculine role in theirpartnership, bringing home the bacon via her career in talent management. Lee says that thesedynamics could change at some point. But so far, so good.
And if that doesn’t make sense to you, Lee doesn’t particularly care.
“I’m confident in my decisions and the life that I’ve chosen for myself, that I am happy in it,” she said.“I don’t really need anyone to understand.”
A platonic divorce
Platonic marriage implies the existence of platonic divorce. This is something Lizz Cannon, a 51-year-old lawyer in Tampa, knows well.
From 2000 to 2007, Cannon was legally married to a man. Early in their relationship, they had agreedthat they weren’t meant to be lovers. For most of their marriage, they lived with another man withwhom Cannon was romantically involved. “We didn’t have that term ‘platonic partner’ back then, justlike we didn’t have the term ‘polyamory,’” Cannon said.
When people found out that she and her husband were platonic, they often assumed that they were justfriends. “We would sleep in the same bed, naked together, curled up together,” she said. “You don’treally do that with your friends.”
In 2007, her husband decided to leave their home in Boston to pursue a career in New York. Cannonand her other partner were devastated but supportive. Eventually, Cannon filed for divorce.
Today, Cannon has a new primary partner and an active polyamorous love life. When she visits NewYork, she’ll often stay with her ex-husband and his new fiancée. “I love his fiancée,” Cannon said. “I
freakin’
love her.”
Cannon still sometimes refers to her ex-husband as her “other husband.” The new fiancée doesn’t mind.
“Even she can see it,” Cannon said. “She’s like: ‘This is not friendship. This is something else.’”