About us

A little background: My name is Fernando. I was born in 1971 in Spain but have been living in the UK since 1995. In 1996 I met Glen and we’ve been together since. Glen is English, and he is 41. Last year we got married in Spain (same-sex marriages - as opposed to civil partnerships - became legal in Spain in 2005. However, it is only recognised as a civil partnership in the UK which means that our marital status is “married” in Spain but “in civil partnership” in the UK – go figure...). I may talk about the wedding at some point, but, here is the short summary: corny as this may sound, it probably was one of the happiest days of my life. Most of our friends were there, and a lot of my family as well. Even one of my aunts, who is a devout catholic, came - after first asking her confessor if she was allowed to come! (he had the sense to say “yes” and that what was important was to celebrate our union with the family). It was such a wonderful day. We you could really feel that everyone was so happy for us, which made me think that if the likes of my mum’s friends’ husbands (not known for their forward thinking) could wish us well and shed a few tears of joy (very emotional ceremony, but I won’t go into it now), then surely they could accept us being parents too? Not that I think I need their approval, but it’s nice when not everything is a battle to fight.

Catching up

So anyway, here is how it’s going to work: whenever I get a chance I will write about whatever’s happened recently about the adoption process. The first few posts will actually be post-dated. I have been writing about our experience for a while and wasn’t sure whether to post it in a blog or not, so I need to post that first so I can catch up with myself and then this can be read in chronological order. Every now and then there may be a “flashback” too, which may look into events to do with our adoption that go further back.

The difficult thing for me, which I haven’t finished working out yet, is how to do this without giving too much away. Obviously I will be divulging some personal thoughts, but I don’t really want to share too many of my personal details nor, most importantly, confidential information. So I’ll play it by ear and see how it turns out.

Mission statement

Well, first of all the rules: I do not want to create a guide to adopting for gay men. Nor do I want to make a political statement about gay adoption. I absolutely do not want to become a famous blogger, or make this about “me me me”. I have always thought of blogs as “vanity publishing” and mostly irrelevant diaries that nobody should be interested in (talk about alienating my blogging audience here). So no, I do not want to tell you about my work, my life story, my political opinions, the books I read, what film I watched last night, or what music I’m listening to. I do not intend to rant about the price of things, how values are disappearing, or the state of the country (any country). I just want to share what I’m going through as my husband and I go through the adoption process. This is probably a way for me to sort my thoughts out at the end of the day, and to share with others what the process is like in case they are going through it themselves, thinking about it, or know others who are. I suppose it will be very similar to what a heterosexual couple goes through, as I do not believe there are that many inherent differences, so I do not expect to be speaking to an exclusive gay audience. That is supposing I do have an audience. I would like to have an audience in the sense that I do hope that this is helpful to somebody, otherwise I would just write a diary and not publish it, but even if only 2 people read it that is fine by me. I do not wish to be at the top of any blogging chart.