I knew a couple—the husband was openly gay. He and the wife were friends. Both wanted a child. They got married for tax reasons, had a son together, each maintained separate romantic relationships. Lost touch with them so I don’t know if they’re still together. The child would be grown now.
I don't understand that. If she has self-made wealth, then she didn't inherit it. Families aren't self-made; people are. You seem to be asking for help coming up with your whole story. It's one thing to ask a question you need help with, such as how an openly gay man could have a wife and child, but it's another to put all of your questions out to the forum. For questions such as "Is she the same age as C2 when they meet", you need to decide based on its impact on the characters and their story. Try what seems best, then change things that aren't working. Try Googling how people became US citizens back in the 70s. Your career-oriented character might have moved to New York because of her career, etc.
Thank you so much for your feedback on these! Negatory on the bi but sexuality can also be very grey so I guess there is not always a need for labels, even in my story for this particular character. As uncloseted and flamboyant as he may be. How many of these do you think would necessarily need to be explained in a story, especially when those earlier experiences are only told "later". If it is daughter is providing the backstory by sharing with other characters about these things later in the story, what voice is that considered? As for the green card, that has been suggested to me previously how especially if someone were coming from England there would be no problem getting citizenship. I don't know how long the process takes but I don't know that it matters. He kind of has to be a citizen at some point because having a few run-ins with the police would have resulted in shipping his ass home to England, I imagine, unless he is a citizen but I may be terribly wrong about that.
I don't know why your comment was not showing up for me before, I saw someone's reply to it though and found it. Tax reasons meaning they get more money back when they file their taxes sort of thing? This is the exact kind of scenario from real life I am interested in hearing examples of because it makes my fictional character's off beat arrangement seem less... unlikely. Maybe I have become progressively more conservative as I age since I first started this story that it seems so unlikely? I used to just be like yeah, they were good friends, both as participants in a more experimental partying type crowd had a wild time that involved more than the two of them and then happens baby. But I like the course this seems to be going now much better. That is not to say there wouldn't have been any experimentation or swinging going on and I stand firm with the idea that she might take great pleasure in fact in watching him with another guy, so... anything goes, especially back then the type of circles he is in. Then she grows up and becomes a less adventurous, more serious and respectable, feminist career woman who has abandoned all that childish hippie nonsense she, herself, partook in in the late 60s. Still parting at Studio 54 and the like though of course, because it is an upper crust elite scene. I wish the role play section of this forum was still active. Just discovered it earlier and was looking forward to tinkering around with trying to get folks on board with like acting through some of these scenes with me to see where it goes and what kind of dialogue comes of it like how did that conversation go when he first comes out of the closet to her?
I understand what you are saying. However, this is not the entire story- this is but just a very small fraction of the entire story. the story does not ever take place when any of this happens, it is theoretical backstory to help develop how things happened and understand character of his wife a bit more, since she is not very developed because she does not appear much at all in the story. There are only a handful of scenes as of right now that I have written her into, one of which being the scene when C1 learns that they are married. In regards to the wealth- she is from a wealthy family. When I refer to self made wealth, I mean as opposed to C2's wealth, an ancestral estate passed down for generations kind of thing. Not aristocracy but pretty high up there. Her family is like the grandparents started a company in the late 1800s or early 1900s and is now a huge incorporated company kind of thing. If you don't think this matters in such families what their children are up to and the reputation at stake and that they wouldn't be groomed to get into the business- I know two real life examples off the top of my head. One is a greedy twit who is just waiting for her parents to die so she can sell the multi billion dollar company that has been run by the family since her grand parents started it, because she could care less, and neither did her two train wreck brothers lol in my story this character ends up abandoning her passion for performing arts and singing to take the career-woman path of life and work for in the family's financial business.
Also, I was thinking more on this.. it also serves me well to put some thought into things to avoid locking myself into a plot that ends up not working, later. I would rather work out all the details so that if anything does not fit I can rework or abandon it altogether-- right now I realize my purpose with this post was to try and get an idea how well this premise works within the current story I have. Will I ever actually explain som eof this stuff? Maybe, maybe not. Depends on if it seems necessary later. But if I can't answer these questions, my readers certainly won't. So long as there are (perhaps multiple) possible plausible conclusions one might draw, I am even ok with omitting some explanation altogether and leaving to the imagination. It is crucial for outlining certain things later to answer some of these questions, for myself. I need to have an idea how old his daughter is which is why I need to make a decision on when, exactly, she is born and the circumstances around when she was conceived and they got married, etc. Just talking through these ideas helps my brainstorming process and I now have a really (I think) sound basis for the way things unfold for him in his pre-NYC life.
Various reasons. The author stayed with a host family and they were doing it with their daughter (author didnt know. She was actually writing about female politicians and stayed with said politician and family when one if the older daughters told her the young "son" was actually a girl.) Which is when yhe author decided to explore why. The politician saw it as a status symbol to have a boy. She had all girls and when she was pregnant with her last, she wanted to have a boy because she didnt think she would be taken seriously without a son. When she had her daughter,she and her husband decided to raise her as a boy. There was another family that believed if they had a boy in the house, it would be enough luck for the mother to actually conceive and have a "real boy". So they raised their daughter as a boy until they had a boy. Then there were poorer families that needed breadwinners, so.... Boys. The author interviewed a 15 year old and asked her/him if they wanted to be a boy. They said no, boys are problematic. The author asked if they wanted to be a girl and the 15 year old said no because, even though girls can do MORE than men, they are teated badly. The 15 year old said that for now, they are just stuck. But they feel like going to America, they can be unstuck because they can be free to just be both girl AND boy.
