Ask the Thomas husbands, Reginald, 27, and Kelvin, 47, about when the idea for Gay Couples Collective was born, and you might get the same story but told quite differently.

Together for six years and married for two, the pair has created a group specifically for gay male couples who are intentionally building lasting connections, cultivating experiences, and empowering other married or engaged same-sex male couples.

It's just after 11 am on a Friday when Gregory "Gee" Smalls walks into Virgil's Gullah Kitchen & Bar – West Midtown.

As members of the staff mull around prepping for the day, he stops at a table to talk to a familiar face. They strike up a quick conversation.

Eventually, he stands and greets us – me and Johnnie "Jay Ray" Kornegay III, creative director of the Counter Narrative Project. We are there to capture a few images of Smalls and his husband of 13 years, Juan. It's 12 days after their anniversary.

Smalls hugs us and says, "Juan is up the street. He's on his way." But actually, Juan is already here. He appears at the top of the establishment's stairs. As we take notice, he slowly saunters down the stairs – making an entrance – and pulls his shades from his face.

They are dressed in seemingly coordinated outfits—Gee in a long sleeve, black sweatshirt, camouflage pants, yellow, high-top sneakers, and a Black beanie. Juan is wearing blue jeans, sneakers, and a black asymmetrical button-down, long-sleeved shirt. If their wardrobe choices indicate their relationship dynamic, it shows how their unique personalities and styles complement each other.

Until recently, Alec Tomlin, 30, never allowed himself to dream of living the life he now leads with his husband, Brian Mazelin, 34. The Orlando-based couple wed in an intimate ceremony at Paradise Cove on July 8, 2022, in front of family and friends, and days later, to an audience of over 34,000 people who watched their wedding video on their increasingly popular YouTube channel “Meet The Mazelins.”

Tomlin, a native of Montego Bay, Jamaica, and Mazelin, a Miami, FL native, walked down the aisle, hand-in-hand in what can only be described as an out-of-body experience.

“I literally burst into tears the minute we turned the corner,” Tomlin said. “Knowing this wasn't just me as a viewer, but me as a participant in a wedding, to this day, it’s something that I don't think has hit me, like, how big it is.”

The newlywed's journey to the altar was not without its share of obstacles; from navigating a long-distance relationship in 2020 at the height of the coronavirus pandemic, to Tomlin’s exhaustive immigration process, to the rescheduling of their wedding day—their persistence and unwavering commitment proved that a delay is not a denial.

Walking down the aisle at his grand 2015 wedding, Nathaniel Holley had plenty of reason to feel proud: The Morehouse College graduate had secured both a successful career as a Washington DC-area paralegal, and the love of his life. Holley and his partner marked the occasion with a splashy $50,000 ceremony, complete with 125 guests to witness it all.

Their split, finalized just four years later, was a much quieter affair.

Finances had become a sore spot. The men argued, often. Soon, Holley felt forced to choose between the relationship and his sanity. He moved out on New Year’s Day 2019.

“I didn’t have any more fight left in me,” says Holley, 35. “I just realized that wasn’t the life I wanted anymore.”

For years, legal marriage has been exalted in the LGBTQ+ community, held up as an ultimate mark of social acceptance and stability. Yet while many consider same-sex marriage the ultimate fairy tale ending for LGBTQ+ couples, reality has proven otherwise: Less than a decade after the landmark Obergefell v. Hodges ruling secured marriage equality for millions of LGBTQ+ men and women across the nation, their divorce rates have neared those of heterosexual couples. Among lesbians, in particular, some studies suggest rates may be even higher.

Takia Canty, 40, is aware that lesbians have a reputation for moving quickly into relationships. She hadn’t dated her then-girlfriend Nastassja Canty, 38, a full month before she was certain that Nastassja would be her wife. To many onlookers, their relationship appeared to be moving at lightning speed, but for the Canty’s, the whirlwind romance that led them down the aisle in an intimate Las Vegas ceremony in June—after being introduced by a mutual acquaintance in 2004—and then losing contact for 17 years, felt like fate.

“It was an underlying attraction between us that we never played on,” said Takia, who tells The Reckoning that both women were in relationships when they initially met but waited until those relationships ended before they explored their mutual attraction.

“And then I kind of slid in her DM, maybe three or four years later. But I was tipsy,” Takia jokingly recalls.

The DM from Takia to Nastassja (pronounced N ah - S t ah - S ee - ah) was short. She simply wrote: “Missing you.”

Author Doug Cooper Spencer, 67, almost let the opportunity to fall in love again pass him by. In 1998, sitting in Fountain Square, a busy plaza in downtown Cincinnati, as he continued to work on his first novel, he noticed someone walking by.

“I saw these nice legs walk past, and I glanced at them, like, ‘Oh, he’s got nice legs.’ That's it—because I'm an introvert,” he said.

Doug had dissolved a relationship a year and a half prior and wanted to focus on writing. While glancing up from the legs that caused his temporary distraction, he caught the eye of the person to whom those legs were attached.

“He catches me [looking up] and he stops and I'm like, oh God, here we go. No, I do not want to be bothered,” Doug recalls thinking to himself.

Queer couple Ja’Mel Ware, 32, and Alphonso Mills, 29, avoided each other for months after they first met at The Vision Cathedral of Atlanta in 2018. The avoidance—a result of excitement, fear, and an internal knowing that the journey they were about to embark upon would be different than any relationship they’d ever experienced—was cemented during a recent Thanksgiving trip to Disney World. It would prove to be a full-circle moment for Ware, who until recently associated the “most magical place on earth” with one of his most painful childhood memories.