I Moved to Brazil and I Was Married

When I moved to Brazil from the U.S. a few months ago, my boyfriend and I moved in together. We share a one-bedroom apartment and in the eyes of most Brazilians this constitutes marriage. While in the U.S. children generally move out of their parents’ house at the ripe age of 18, Brazilians continue to live with their parents until they are married. There are exceptions in both countries of course. Some Americans do not move out of their parents’ home after graduating from high school. And we are seeing a trend with my generation which some call “the boomerang generation” as that many teenagers move out of their parents’ home for college but after move back in with their family. Some Brazilian adolescents need to move to a different city because of their university or job or perhaps they choose to move to a different country. And others are just very independent and choose to live on their own.

However, usually when Brazilians graduate from high school they go to a university near their home and stay under their parents’ roof until life takes them away from their childhood home. And if they are not moving out of their hometown than the most acceptable reason to stop living with their parents is getting married.

Compared to the U.S., dating in Brazil implies a more intimate relationship in which one is already part of the family. This is clear even through language. In Portuguese you do not say “my boyfriend’s mother” of “the father of my girlfriend.” Rather you say “minha sogra” or “meu sogro” translating to mother-in-law and father-in-law. Just dating someone means that you have in-laws. More likely than not, these in-laws live with your significant other so this closeness is not just through language but also through shared time and space. As opposed to the occasional Sunday brunches or family get-togethers, much more is expected from you as your role as a “daughter or son-in-law.”

Though one thing that Americans and Brazilians share is the idea of the undesirable mother-in-law. Brazilians love to tell jokes about the stereotypical mother-in-law. When sharing personal anecdotes they trump Americans in this sense because they have so many more experiences to draw from as they have had many more mothers-in-law.

And so when my boyfriend and I moved in together everyone from the doorman, to my capoeira instructor, to total strangers and even friends refer to him as my husband. If I try to correct them and inform them that really he is my boyfriend, that we are not married, the follow-up question is usually “but you are living together, right?” This is accompanied by a quizzical look and is really a rhetorical question, as though they are asking, “what are you trying to prove?” You live together and that’s marriage, no rings or ceremonies required.