temporary marriage

At the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Wednesday, Senator Angus King, independent of Maine, asked Ms. Haines if the relationship between China and Russia was a temporary marriage of convenience or a long-term love affair.

"Is it a temporary marriage of convenience or is it a long-term love affair?" he asked.

Instead of forbidding the liaison, the parents did something I did not expect: They proposed a temporary marriage between my 13-year-old and theirs, although I would not know about this until moments before the ceremony.

By then, they were in high school, 9th grade, and had become an object of great fascination to their peers from whom they had not thought to keep the temporary marriage secret.

I knew then, as I do now, that my immediate assent to the temporary marriage was a gift I was giving my exuberant daughter, an explicit acknowledgment that her romantic and sexual feelings were worth honoring.