hen Cait Wallace and Brennan Keehan were about to close on their house in 2022, someone at the real estate signing asked if they were married. They tend to say yes, although technically they’re not.
It’s just easier than explaining.
“It’s not romantic or sexual, but also definitely all of my assets go to them when I die,” Wallace said.
Wallace, who is 34, met Keehan, 32, in a pagan student club she founded at Drexel. Between rituals and an “occasional field trip to the middle of nowhere,” as Wallace described it, they became friends. After Drexel, they bought a house in Kingsessing with three other friends.
Inside that crowded house, Keenan and Wallace came to think of each other as platonic life partners. The amount of time they spent together and how much they prioritized each other made others think of them as a duo.
“That’s when the jokes went to, ‘Oh yeah, you guys are married,’” Wallace said. “If you invited one of us somewhere, we would assume, ‘I can definitely invite [the other.]’”
When the not-quite-a-couple attended a concert by the indie folk musician Will Wood at World Cafe Live in 2022, Keehan noticed that Wallace started crying when Wood sang about growing up and settling down in an unconventional way.
“Marriage always scared me, but I’d like to have a last love,” the song, “Becoming the lastnames,” goes.
Later that week, Keehan bought them both wedding rings with their birthstones encrusted in them. It wasn’t a proposal, more like an out-of-the-blue gift to mark the relationship they already had.
“This is someone I’m committed to,” Keehan said. “It would be nice to have something for that. And also just, this is cute. That’s fun.”
The two own a 3-bedroom house together in Cobbs Creek, where they live with Keehan’s 28-year-old brother, who has Down syndrome. They also expect Wallace’s mother might move in if she is one day in poor health. Keehan works at a local museum, and Wallace, who studied programming, has long COVID and is not currently working. That has meant they no longer split everything down-the-middle financially as they initially planned.
They share a car and a joint bank account.
The following, as told to Zoe Greenberg in separate interviews, has been combined and edited for length and clarity.
On why they were drawn to each other
Wallace: We like a lot of the same things — we liked Marvel at the same time and then we both became disaffected with Marvel movies at the same time. The cadence of our speech is pretty much identical.
Keehan: Both of us love a bit. Absolutely any dumb joke, we will volley for way longer than it needs to go. We have a very similar sense of humor. We both love telling a completely harmless lie, and letting it go for way too long.
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On buying a house together
Keehan: I’m not sure it was a decision so much as a given. Both of us are from messy divorced parents, so both of us wanted the house to be something that if we do have some horrible falling out, neither of us is homeless suddenly.
Wallace: We knew having both of our names on the deed would mean that if one of us dies, the other one maintains the right to live there. It turns out my partner could buy the house outright, so we had an agreement where I would pay them back.
On an unexpected financial shift
Keehan: We originally wrote it as essentially a loan, with the stipulation that if we sell this house, she owes me the full amount of loan. Since long COVID put her out of work, she stopped paying me back.
For most of the time I’ve known her, Cait has been more ambitious and certainly made more money than I did, by more than double. But things happen. I’m not not going to have the house, I’m not not going to pay the bill. We have a commitment to taking care of each other.
Wallace: I always figured I would be making more money and that I would be able to take care of them, and so it’s been a shift to realize, no, I’m the one who has to be taken care of.
On dating other people
Wallace: It’s been a couple years since I’ve dated anyone. I don’t think I want to get married to anyone else. If anyone I were dating were to express discomfort with how close I am with Brennan, that would be an immediate deal breaker.
Keehan: I have been out as aro/ace — aromantic/asexual — for over a decade now. My main reason to be stressed was people don’t tend to commit to friends the way they commit to a romantic partner. So I wondered, “Am I going to be in the lurch?” Having the commitment that this is my person, even if it’s not the way that people often mean that, answers that fear.
On growing toward each other
Wallace: They are the most important person in my life. I want to grow in a direction that they also want to grow. If they really want to move to California, I want to be the type of person who wants to live in California.
On splitting the housework
Wallace: Something about doing dishes by hand really stresses Brennan out, so that’s my job.
Keehan: I do most of the cleaning. Cait kills the spiders.
This story is part of a series about life partners across the Philadelphia area.
If you want to share your story about who you’re navigating life with, romantically or otherwise, write to lifepartners@inquirer.com. We won’t publish anything without speaking to you first.
