Virginia Edwards (left), 56, and Christine Forster, 49, met when their sons attended the same preschool. They left their respective husbands to be together and are now engaged.
Virginia’s story
I still remember the day Chris and I met. I was dropping off my son at occasional care, and Chris had just dropped off her boy.
By coincidence, our children ended up in the same class at the local Catholic primary school and became great friends.
One of the earliest recollections I have of thinking Chris was “an absolute cracker” was at a school fund-raising evening. Christine got up and was singing karaoke and I thought, “Isn’t that marvellous?”
I would love to be that confident in myself, to have such a sense of myself that I could stand up in front of all the school members and just rip out a song. Knowing Christine it was probably Barbra Streisand or something like that.
Probably when the boys were in year 4 or 5, we became aware that this was more than just a very strong friendship.
It wasn’t a light-bulb moment but I started thinking, “These are very strong feelings I have for Christine, not just friendship feelings.”
I was in a monogamous marriage for 21 years.
When I was much younger I had feelings for girls, but I had the classic Sydney north shore upbringing – grow up, this is my path, this is my journey.
Breaking up my marriage was the most traumatic thing. Any marriage breakdown is catastrophic, but to put that additional sexuality issue on top of it as well, it’s a big ripple effect.
Christine and I spent many, many months agonising over the decisions that we made.
I would say that Christine is my soul mate.
I have never been as comfortable with any other individual as I am with her, and I have never felt more myself. At 40-plus you have to be brave enough to say, “Okay, I know this is going to be a difficult and traumatic time, but you can’t put that back in a box.”
Did I ever consider doing what most generations have done and become “golfing partners”? No. How can I teach my children to be honest and brave when I wasn’t prepared to jump off that cliff myself?
Christine is the politician in our family. Of course, I hope in due time Christine and I will be able to marry here among our friends and family.
Tony [Christine’s brother, Prime Minister Tony Abbott] came to dinner six months ago, and we had a couple of gay friends as guests, too, and Tony wanted to have an open discussion about same-sex marriage.
He is not closed. He has his opinion and I respect that. He is a man of great integrity. He is an Abbott: of course he will have a fiery political discussion at the table.
At our wedding, we hope to have a chorus line of drag queens with Christine doing karaoke. To me, marriage is about acknowledging Chris and me becoming a family in the eyes of our community. Tony and Margie and the girls have said that they will be there front and centre.
He probably won’t be a page boy, but he will be at our wedding.
I love Christine’s sense of fun. She is the only person I know who puts her hands on her belly and just throws her head back and laughs. She will try anything. Eat anything. Sing karaoke at the Stonewall hotel. She’s incredibly kind.
I would struggle to find anything meaningful that I would change about her. Maybe get her to stop snoring. Or to wash her bloody running socks.
Christine’s story
Virginia made a great first impression on me because she is vivacious, she is fun.
I was a bit worried because I thought to myself, “This girl could really be a good friend of mine, and it’s a bit dangerous to have a really good friend who is a bit of a livewire living around the corner. That could lead to all sorts of getting up to no good.”
It was a slow realisation that I had romantic feelings for her. I had been going through a process of realisation about myself, and part of that process ran in parallel with the development of my relationship with Virginia. At some point the two dovetailed.
Since I was a teenager, I have always had very intense and strong relationships with women.
If I look back at the path of my life, I was at school, I was four years at university, then I went travelling. Six months later, I met my husband to be. I was 22 when we met and I fell in love with him and we got married, because that’s what you do.
I probably wasn’t ever in a relationship with a woman when I was younger because I wasn’t around a lot of gay women.
My relationship with Virginia snuck up on me.
It was very intense and you don’t see that kind of thing coming. Over a period of months, I wrestled with whether or not I would be able to deny what I knew about myself.
It was a very difficult period for me.
I know it was a very difficult period for my ex-husband and I imagine it was a difficult period for the children, although I thought we kept them out of it pretty well.
There was a period in which we talked and had counselling, and there was discussion about where we might be able to go.
But at the end of the day I made the decision that I was in love with somebody who wasn’t my husband so I couldn’t remain married to him under those circumstances.
That conversation I had with my ex-husband was the hardest I’ve ever had in my entire life. I wouldn’t want to go through that again. It was heartbreaking on many levels.
My parents reacted with shock because to them, I had a perfect domestic world.
I lived very close to my parents. If we were socialising with our friends, I would invite them to join us.
It was a pretty tight-knit set-up and they didn’t see it coming.
They are now 80 and 90 and they come from a generation where homosexuality was not only not accepted, it was frowned upon. And of course they are traditional Catholics and their concern was for my children.
Tony and Margie were the first people in my family who knew what was going on.
Tony was shocked but his reaction was very much, “Essentially, Chris, life throws up a lot of unexpected situations and I know that you will be trying to do your best. Anything I can do to help you through it, I’ll do.”
We would like to have our wedding at Café Sydney. I will sing. I wouldn’t be going all doe-eyed and singing something mushy to her. That’s not our style. I often sing I Will Survive. Maybe I’ll sing that.
Photo: Sahlan Hayes
Author: Jacqueline Maley
Publication: The Sydney Morning Herald
Date: 30 November 2013