Doing It Wrong: Why Labeling Relationships Isn’t Necessarily Right

Taylor Campbell believes that a marriage isn’t a label — it’s a couple’s way of being together.

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Gabrielle is my wife. I’m telling you that up front because an editor once told me that the reader deserves to know something like that. I can’t just say, “Gabrielle called to me from the other side of our one-bedroom apartment.” I have to say, “My wife called to me from the other side of our one-bedroom apartment.” The former leaves you asking questions; the latter answers them before you can ask them.

I’m not sure it really matters. When I tell you that Gabrielle called to me from the other side of our one-bedroom apartment, aren’t you content to simply conclude that she must be my significant other? Why does her specific relation matter? You ought to infer that we are close—maybe married, probably friends, certainly obligated to each other in some way, perhaps even committed? Or perhaps that’s presuming too much. Either way, I’ve just broken a second rule by telling you what you ought to think.

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It’s not that I hate labels. It’s just that Gabrielle went from being my friend to being my girlfriend to being my fiancé to being my wife in less than a year. So somewhere in there, I abandoned my efforts to remember exactly what she was to me—whether fiancé when I called her girlfriend or wife when I called her fiancé—and adopted this habit of calling her “my Gabrielle.”

Labels just seem irrelevant in the face of devotion.

Labels just seem irrelevant in the face of devotion. I’ve been working for my boss for four months now, and I still can’t figure out what her significant other is. She won’t even call him her significant other—Athena only calls him Kai. And she’s been sharing her life with this guy since the early nineties. They have an apartment together on the Upper East Side and share insurance and everything. At five o’clock every evening, he calls her on his way home from work to ask when she’ll be done at the office. She answers the phone and says, “Hi.” That’s how I know it’s him—she doesn’t answer the phone that way for anyone else. But I still don’t know what Kai is. Athena says he’s not her boyfriend or her fiancé or her husband. So what is he? And does it matter?

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Drake seems to suggest that it does in his song, “Doing It Wrong.” He sings,

We live in a generation of not being in love

And not being together

But we sure make it seem like we’re together

Cause we don’t want to see each other with somebody else

His lyrics amount to a biting social commentary on the way our culture has begun to practice relationships. No one wants to call a person boyfriend or girlfriend because the label implies an obligation. So two people allow themselves to appear to be in an exclusive relationship, but they refuse to regard each other as anything more than friends—they never define the relationship. And that’s how they remain exempt from commitment and free from the risk of heartbreak.

But since they feel no obligation to one another, they also feel free to call it quits at any time. Drake dumps a girl in “Doing It Wrong” because he needs “someone different,” and he tells her,

Cry if you need to, but I can’t stay to watch you

That’s the wrong thing to do

Touch if you need to, but I can’t stay to hold you

That’s the wrong thing to do

Talk if you need to, but I can’t stay to hear you

That’s the wrong thing to do

Cause you’ll say you love me, and I’ll end up lying

I’ll say, “I love you, too”

He manages to articulate the core problem with hookup culture and with label-less relationships—that a couple is still a couple regardless of someone’s decision to label it. There is still an inexplicable bond that forms between two people. And it introduces a sense of emotional obligation—which is why Drake couldn’t stay to watch or hold or hear the girl. He knew he’d be forced to admit his love for her, and that it wouldn’t really be a lie.

Or perhaps that’s presuming too much. But I don’t think it is. Because “Doing It Wrong” isn’t a singles anthem—it’s a lament. And you can’t tell me that Stevie Wonder’s heart-wrenching harmonica number at the end of the song doesn’t betray regret, disappointment, and heartbreak.

A couple is a couple because of the way they act towards each other.

All I’m saying is that labels don’t matter—and that Athena and Kai aren’t a couple because of one. They are a couple because of the way they act towards each other. It is Kai’s call every weekday evening at five o’clock and Athena’s feigned complaints about not knowing what to cook him when she gets home. It’s their names side-by-side on the apartment lease and their role as “Mom” and “Dad” to the same puppy.

And whether I had chosen to call Gabrielle my wife or just Gabrielle, it would not have changed how smitten I have become with her in these past nine months of living together. And it wouldn’t make it any easier to abandon her.

I’d still be doing it wrong.

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