You’re out with your husband or boyfriend, maybe at a work party or a cousin’s wedding, or just standing in line at the grocery store. Someone leans in with a friendly smile and asks a question.
They aren’t being hostile, just curious. But it’s a question nobody in history has ever asked a straight couple.
Nobody stops Mike and Jennifer to ask which of them can cook, or checks whether the newlyweds at table six might actually be siblings.
These questions come up so often that most of us could finish the sentence for them. And the people asking are nearly always nice, which is why you can’t really be mad. You smile and answer. Then, on the drive home, one of you says, “They asked it again.”
Here are the twelve we hear most, along with the comebacks we wish we’d had ready.
1. “Are you two brothers?”
Nothing else comes close. It happens at restaurants, at the movies and at hotel check-in, sometimes a few times a month.
Looking nothing alike doesn’t save you. Different hair, different skin tone, and still: “Are you two brothers?” Their brain jumps to brothers and then just sits there.
Most of the time it’s a polite way of asking “are you really together?” without having to say it.
When a man and a woman split a dessert, nobody’s first guess is that they’re siblings. Our favorite reply: nod, say yes, and give each other a big kiss.
2. “Which one of you cooks?”
It’s asked like a riddle. There are two men and one kitchen, and no woman, so who’s feeding whom?
Tell them you both cook and you’ll get the follow-up: “You can both cook?!” We had no idea it was so revolutionary to be with another man who can feed himself.
There’s a deluxe version, too: “If there are no women, who makes the chicken soup on Sundays?”
Straight couples get asked what’s for dinner. They don’t get asked whether anyone in the house is legally able to make it. The honest answer in most gay homes is whoever gets home first, and on a Tuesday, Uber Eats.
3. “So… which one of you is the wife?”
Yes, we know. We’ve covered “which one is the woman?” before, more than once. It won’t die, so here it is again, this time in its married-couple form, which somehow makes even less sense.
Sometimes it comes from a dad, years after you came out: “When two guys are married, how do they decide who is called the wife?” Apparently there’s a coin toss at the courthouse.
Sometimes it’s a creative variation, like “Who’s the lion and who’s the tiger?” Honestly, that’s the better question.
No one asks a straight couple which of them is the husband. With us, the answer is even easier: both of us. And if they go with “Who’s the girl?”, the best reply we’ve heard is “There are no girls. That’s the point.”
4. “So are you guys… open?”
This one shows up somewhere between the appetizers and the main course, asked as casually as “Going anywhere nice this summer?”
Gay couples get asked this like it’s small talk. Straight couples never get it out of nowhere. Try asking your sister’s new husband at Thanksgiving whether they’re monogamous. Grandma would need oxygen.
Some couples are open and plenty aren’t. It’s a lot less common than straight people seem to think. Either way, it’s not usually something you planned to discuss over the bread basket with your coworker’s wife.
The reply we wish we’d given: “Open to what? Dessert? Absolutely.”
5. “Wait… are you two together?”
The slow double-take, usually about an hour into a conversation where you’ve said “we” forty times.
You can watch it happen: “Are you two… together? Like… boyfriend, girlfriend?” Or the cashier at the self-checkout, settling on the safest option: “Are you two friends?”
A man and a woman who arrive at a party together and leave together never get filed under “just friends.”
The answer is simple, though: “Yes. Like boyfriend boyfriend.”
6. “So who’s the… pitcher?”
Hardly anyone asks about tops and bottoms directly. They switch to baseball.
“Who’s the pitcher?” usually comes from a coworker, with a wink. The more earnest version sounds like a genuine research question: “How do you decide who’s the pitcher and who’s the catcher? Or do you take turns?”
Others treat it like a detective case and solve it by height, build or the depth of your voice. “I bet you’re the top, even though he’s taller.” “He’s more manly than you, so he must be the top?”
Nobody has ever leaned over to a straight couple at a barbecue and asked about the batting order.
The best answer is the short one: “We take turns.” It works on a number of levels, and it ends the conversation right there.
7. “Father and son, yes?”
This is the brothers question’s meaner sibling. All it takes is a few gray hairs on one of you.
Our favorite example comes from a man who’d been with his partner for 17 years when a tour guide looked them up and down, lit up like she’d just cured cancer, and announced, “Father and son, yes?” His partner is three years older than him. He just started going gray at 22.
Even the friendly version stings a little, like a stranger at Costco telling you your boyfriend “must be a cool dad.”
A straight couple with a three-year age gap doesn’t get asked whether he’s her father. The reply we’d like to give: “No, but he does tell me to bring a jacket.”
8. “One check or two?”
To be fair, waiters ask straight couples this too. What they don’t do is look back and forth between the two of you first, like they’re working out a puzzle. They also never add “Do you guys always split the check since you’re both men?”
The best reply, if you share finances: “Yes we do, great question.”
Hotels have their own version. You ask for one king bed, and the person at the front desk double-checks: “Two men, one bed?” Or quietly assumes you’d like two queens.
A straight couple checking in never gets asked if they’re sure about the bed.
9. “So who’s wearing the dress?”
Get engaged and the questions get upgraded. “So who wears the dress at the wedding?” “Who’s getting walked down the aisle?”
Then there’s the practical crowd: “Why would either of you wear an engagement ring? You’re both men.”
And our personal favorite, from someone who had clearly given it some thought: “So how gay is the wedding going to be? Like Broadway musical gay, or RuPaul’s Drag Race gay?”
Nobody asks a bride and groom which of them will be in the suit. Our answer would be “Somewhere between Les Mis and Drag Race, with an open bar. You’ll love it.”
10. “Are you sure it’s not just a phase?”
This is a phase with a mortgage.
It comes from a coworker, right after you’ve mentioned you’re married. It comes from a mom who, years into your relationship, still hopes “to God” it’s a phase.
Straight guys with wedding rings don’t get asked whether their wife is something they’ll grow out of.
Our reply: “If it is, it’s the longest phase in history. It also has a joint checking account.”
11. “Where’s his mom?”
For gay dads, the questions begin the day the baby comes home. “Where’s his mom?” comes from cab drivers, cashiers and strangers on the street. At the grocery store, someone coos over the baby and asks, “Does your wife breastfeed?”
At the park it’s “Giving mom the night off?” Straight dads hear that one too, but at least for them there is a mom.
Then there’s the one gay dads hear all the time: which of you is the “real” dad? The usual answer is “We both are.”
Our favorite comeback to “Where’s his mom?” is short: “Where’s yours?”
12. “And this must be your… roommate?”
The oldest cliche in the book, and the one that hurts most, because it usually comes from family.
Sometimes it’s almost funny, like his dad visiting your place for the first time, two years in, looking around at the one bedroom, and asking, “Oh, are you his roommate?” The best reply we’ve heard: “Just mate, actually. The room is incidental.”
But for plenty of us, the joke stops there. There are parents who’ve known for twenty years and still haven’t told their own friends. There are men in their fifties who can’t call their partner “babe” or say “I love you” in front of their mom. And there are supportive moms, really supportive ones, who still introduce your husband to the aunts as your “roommate,” or your “friend.”
Some couples get even less, like the man whose parents banned his boyfriend from Christmas until his siblings stepped in.
Nobody introduces their daughter’s husband of ten years as her “roommate.” If you’re the one doing the introducing, try “husband.” It means more to us than you’d guess.
What We Wish You’d Ask Instead
Not every question goes badly. Sometimes it’s the person you’d least expect, like an elderly church lady at a family Christmas party, who leans in nervously and says, “Now, let me know if I’m being out of line. But, do you all like to go out on date nights?”
Then, “I don’t mean to step over any boundaries, but how did you two meet?”
It’s very sweet, and it’s exactly right. Ask us what you’d ask anyone else. How did you meet? Where do you like to eat? What’s he like? We have great answers.
And if you’re still curious about who cooks, it’s both of us.