Our latest personal story is from Simon Andrew and Rein Sevenstern, an Australian-Dutch couple living in Brussels. As Rein explains:
“the Belgian model of equality is the same as the Dutch one. There isn’t gay marriage, there’s just marriage. You sit in the same queue as everyone else. Literally, you sit there waiting with your marriage forms with the straight couple.” The full story follows here
I met Simon Andrew and Rein Sevenstern, an Australian-Dutch couple, over dinner of pizzas in their apartment in the upmarket and very green Brussels neighbourhood of Uccle, an apartment filled with paintings from the Heidelberg School of Australian Impressionists – packed in fact. Coat off and wine open, we launched into questions about their relationship.
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Rein: As we were preparing to get married, I was trying to gather to get documents that proved I was not in a marriage already. The Belgian commune (local governments) wanted to see a ‘single status’ document from Simon to prove he wasn’t married, and because I’d also lived in Australia for five years the commune wanted to see this document from me too.
It was fine for us, I was able to go to the Australian embassy and get that certificate called a ‘No impediment to Marriage’ certificate. But a few months after we were married we heard that there was a new directive from the Australian Foreign Affairs Office not to assist in the marriages of same sex couples. I was pretty outraged by that.
Interviewer: Do you feel that marriage has meant that your relationship is respected and included and recognised without hesitations?
Rein: It works both ways. Speaking for myself, because I don’t wish to speak for Simon. The marriage has really made a significant difference for me in the way I perceive our relationship. Our relationship was very strong otherwise I never would have done it, and I felt then and still feel now that Simon is the person I want to grow old with. So that is the premise. But getting married has changed my attitude and given it much more certainty and stability, because we have an official commitment to each other.
Interviewer: So you feel you can act with confidence now?
Rein: It’s made me much freer, ironically. It’s like: ‘OK, it’s official, we’re tied together.’ We’re stuck together now no matter what either of us does.
(Simon returns with drinks and hors d’ouevres)
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Interviewer: Do you think marriage is treated differently in Europe compared to Australia – that it has a special social importance, and therefore perhaps people here have a real sense that without marriage there can’t be equal rights? In Australia marriage is possibly seen as a little bit separate from ‘equal rights,’ that equal rights are possible without marriage rights.
Simon: I don’t want to generalise, but absolutely, it is very casual in Australia.
Rein: the way I experience marriage here … I say it, and Simon cringes, I say ‘he’s my husband. And then there’s no more questions asked; it’s clear. And that’s great, because I think marriage has a special meaning here and to be able to say you’re married solves a lot of issues.
Simon: I only say ‘husband’ if I want to make an impact.’
Rein: And then we’re just automatically treated like a couple. Whereas if he was my partner I would have to prove things. And it’s a respect thing, particularly with official things. When we were married, the next day he got his residency, his insurance, no questions asked. He got all the rights.
Simon: The reason I find it hard to use the term ‘husband’, is the same reason that Rein proposed to me three times and why I turned him down two times. I was a young boy growing up in Australia, in Western Australia, and I was just forced to accept certain things. So finally I came out and was becoming gay and starting to know who I am. But I did that assuming certain things, including that I’m never going to get married or have children. But that’s still OK you say to yourself because you focus on other things.
Then times change, the world changes. I move to Europe, I meet Rein and suddenly he proposes to me. Maybe I wasn’t sure if he was the one, but it was much more than that. Even now, it’s only in the last couple of years in the marriage that I’ve had the confidence to say ‘husband.’
Interviewer: I think I understand. In my own experience I found my happiness in being gay in surrounding myself with a supportive community of mostly other gay people. And it does change your expectations and what you see as important, and you do close off other things in order to gain that secure place. It seems easier to be gay in Europe, and the gay acceptance is more consistent. You don’t need to run off to a big city.
Simon: That’s why I love Europe so much. From almost the beginning I felt comfortable and accepted being gay. To accept oneself, I couldn’t do it (but others accepted me). Even now I can’t hold Rein’s hand in public; I just boycott it altogether almost.
Living in Europe I can do a lot of things I would never do before, but in Australia too. It’s a lot better now. I went through hell at school, I hated school. I was taunted for gay ever since I was 10 or 12. It was a whole suburban experience that lived in me and turned into a really concrete thing. And compared to Rein it’s just so different, his background is so liberal and he’s always been doing what he wants. That said he didn’t come out until he was 25.
Rein: I was born in the Netherlands, and I grew up in Malaysia in a Shell compound. Then I moved back to the Netherlands and lived in four or five places, moving every year. Finally we ended up near a city called Eindhoven in the south-east of Holland and I lived there until 18. Then onto Rotterdam, the States (Massechusetts), New York and nine years in Amsterdam.
I had a female friend who I felt at the time was falling in love with me while we were in New York and that’s when I knew I needed to act on what I felt on the inside. But up until 25 I was still hoping I might be straight and would go on to live the life that I felt was expected of me.
My parents didn’t impose these expectations, but they projected them implicitly. Carry the name, produce grandchildren, and pass on the family crest. That was the expected trajectory. Having said that, when I came out my parents were very supportive. I’ve never encountered any homophobic from anyone who matters.
I think what was important for this conversation was that I only had 10 years between coming out and getting married. So I’m older than Simon, but really we actually had the same period being single and maturing in that way – I was 10 in gay years when I got married.
Simon: I came out when I was 19 and I got married when I was 27. So I was barely 8 in gay years. The idea of marriage was very odd.
Rein: But for me the whole concept of a gay marriage wasn’t strange.
(We turn the tape recorder off for food at the couple’s colonial era Australian dining table.)
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Simon: But what comes after a marriage? Children. People are now constantly asking us about when we’re going to have children.
Rein: My father is really quite insistent on this, he constantly wants to know. He’s got 4 grandchildren by my sister. He has to share them with their other grandparents. So he’s hoping to have more grandchildren. And he is hoping to get them by us.
Interviewer: So the pressure’s on?
Simon: The pressure’s on.
Rein: In seeing us settled as we are my father is all of a sudden thinking again, ‘why can’t we just continue on the old trajectory?’ Why can’t we carry on and have kids now we’re married? They see that I’ve matured and I’m happy, and they realise they don’t have to worry about my happiness anymore.
Simon: I’ve not wanted it, but more recently I am warming to the idea. Rein has mentioned it twice in the last six months. I still say I’d rather prove myself with a dog first, and then we could move onto children.
Rein: I’ve also come to the conclusion that I’ll be thinking about it until I’m too old. I’ll be 45 in a couple of years, and then that window might be closed.
Simon: And we wouldn’t look forward to being 55 or 60 and running around looking after teenagers.
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(Coffee is served and the conversation begins again)
Interviewer: Tell me about the preparations for the wedding.
Rein: Well, our marriage ended up being analogous with a traditional straight marriage.
At the ceremony the ladies all wore hats. That was significant for me, that the ladies wore hats. I come from quite an establishment or bourgeois family and this meant they were treating our marriage the same way as any other.
Actually, my mother told some of her friends and so some of them even sent us presents, with little notes saying ‘congratulations in anticipation of your intended marriage,’ and that was just lovely and a very proper thing. And it hadn’t occurred to us that this would happen at all, so we actually then went through some more of the formal stages of marriage preparation that we weren’t planning for. We did an annonce, for example, where you notify friends and acquaintances that you plan to marry
I have to say there was a hidden agenda here. We thought ‘well, we got presents without an annonce, and who knows what we’ll get if we do it properly!’
Simon: But of course I did the annonce myself and had no idea what I was doing, and didn’t get it professionally printed. So I designed it myself and put a little black border around the entire thing and printed it off … and these poor people getting the annonce are wondering ‘who died? What’s happening?’ But apart from that it was nice!
Rein: Seriously though, we got a lot of responses. It was very much treated respectfully. The process gives everyone a respectable excuse to acknowledge our relationship. You know – that we’re not just shagging or living in sin.
Interviewer: So how did your wedding day unfold?
Rein: They had the Dutch flag, the Australian flag, the Belgian flag handing in the city hall for our ceremony and they played all the national anthems. The celebrant and justice of the peace – it’s one person here – gave a 40 minute speech about the importance of what we were committing to. It was the exact opposite of what we were expecting, we thought it would be a typical commune thing where you take a ticket, recite the vows and get moved on after 10 minutes.
Then they insisted on having for simultaneous translation from French into both Dutch and English so that we were fully aware of what we were signing. My brother ended up being the Dutch translator. But he was doing it from French to Dutch rather than Dutch to English so he was very flustered and it was all quite theatrical with so much going on.
And I flew Simon’s parents over for the wedding as a surprise. So they were able to understand everything in the end.
Then we went on to have a Dutch-style reception. That’s where anyone – literally anyone – can come in for a glass of champagne and meet the couple. It happens all the time – you can read the ad in the newspaper and turn up to congratulate the couple and then you move off to the real party.
Simon: We must tell you about the restaurant we went to after we were married. We went to this fantastic little restaurant, called Francois, in the old Brussels’ harbour which is famous for its seafood. They did so much for us. They set up such a lovely table with flowers. They knew it was a wedding, they knew we were gay. And to this day, they still know our names and we still talk about the day when we eat there.
Rein: They were so pleased that we chose to celebrate our wedding there. We had a lunch of oysters and scallops and lobster and beautiful wines and cakes. It was a glorious meal, but they really did so much more. After the meal they brought out two jeroboam of champagne (3 litre bottles) and swords and sliced the tops off and everyone else in the restaurant was clapping and all the staff came out. It was really wonderful, and then we went off to a pub and Simon’s parents took us out to dinner.
Look (shows me a wedding photo), look, we look so happy.
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Simon: We call each other ‘boobie’
Interviewer: You have the same nickname?
Rein: Yes, we do, and know some of our friends refer to Simon as boobie as well. Apparently when I was on a work team retreat that went overnight – we were all sleeping in a bunkroom and apparently as I went to sleep I rolled over and said ‘slaap wel boobie’ and everybody heard that!
So the point is, we are just so comfortable and natural about saying things like that, and we are with each other so often, it just happens.
Simon: Well, at the end of the day this is a real relationship. So we say things like that, and if we aren’t around each other it’s so unusual we forget the other one isn’t there.
Interviewer: It sounds like your relationship is quite similar to most other good relationships.
Rein: It is. In fact the Belgian model of equality is the same as the Dutch one. There isn’t gay marriage, there’s just marriage. You sit in the same queue as everyone else. Literally, you sit there waiting with your marriage forms with the straight couple.
Simon: I don’t understand why we need to be separate. I hate the idea of going to events and only sitting in a section with the other gays, or bars that are only for gay people. We’ve moved on from that.
Rein: It’s the same for me. I don’t want to sit in the gay section. But I do have to say that one of the happiest times of my life was the Gay Games in Amsterdam in 1998. We’re a city of only 500,000 people but we had nearly 100,000 athletes and spectators coming for one big party – together – basically. It was such a revelation: being gay was the norm.
Seeing straight people holding hands seemed odd for once, and I felt like I was on the other side of something. So I understand that when we create a gay space or a gay group or a gay institution, we are creating a little mini-reality where we can be the norm. It’s natural because I think we all long to be near the norm at times.
I do want to be accepted though I am different, but it’s nice to be near the norm too, is what I am saying. And that’s what is so wonderful about being married. The fact that I can be married brings me to a norm. I wonder what it’s going to be like when we move back to Australia.
Tags: Australian-Dutch couple, Brussels, Dutch-Australian couple, gay marriage personal story, marriage equality, Perth, Rein Sevenstern, Simon Andrew
Beautiful story from a beautiful couple. Thank you! We wish them all the best and lots of love from Bangkok.
Warm regards, Nicole and Peter