‘Going To Turn It Into Something Beautiful’: MassMutual Ad Explores Married Same-Sex Couples’ Lives

This heartwarming, emotional, powerful video is more like a mini documentary of same-sex couples’ marriages than an ad for life insurance.

Five married same-sex couples are the focus of a four-minute ad for MassMutual, a life insurance and financial services company founded more than 150 years ago. If the ad feels more like a documentary, it may be because it was directed by a documentary filmmaker, Stacy Peralta.

An off-screen voice asks, “So, how long have you guys been together?”

“Fourteen years,” one man responds.

“Seven years,” both women say at the exact same time. 

“Has it really been three?,” a younger woman asks her wife. “Close,” is the answer.

“Eight years?,” another man asks, receiving a smile and a nod from his husband.

“Almost thirty years,” two older women say, almost in unison.

The second couple is up again.

“The day Em was sworn into the bar was the day the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage – I know, it’s crazy,” she agrees. “Yeah,” Em adds. 

“And I cannot tell you – I’m getting the chills just talking about it.

The first couple, two middle-aged men, are next, as the topic moves to how they all got engaged.

“I said, ‘Do you want to get married?,’ and he’s like, ‘Yeah.'”

The video moves from couple to couple, each telling the director what marriage is like for them.

The younger women and the older women both share conservative backgrounds, and viewers can delight in how the world has changed for each of them.

“It was almost like a conspiracy of silence,” one woman says. “We didn’t talk about it s they don’t talk about it.”

Em’s wife says, “This is something I never thought would happen, in my life.”

“There are no quotes, there are no air quotes, around our marriage,” the younger male couple say. “We are married.”

“She knows what’s in my heart and what it needs, and she feed that to me,” another woman says, with her hand on her wife’s knee.

“I’m committed to her madness,” her wife, one arm gently around the back of her wife’s chair, says proudly. 

“She’s committed to my madness.”

And so it continues.

“I have with Ed, two sons and three grandkids. I thank him for that part of my life, which I never thought I would have.”

“And it needs to be the word marriage because words matter.”

Em’s wife shares, “Deep down, I get to do this thing,” she says, of marriage. “I’m going to turn it into something beautiful.” She pauses, then adds, “I should have had the right to do it all along.”

The ad ends with, “It’s love, and isn’t that what you want to support?”

Watch:

Adweek notes the “subjects are instantly relatable and command respect. They’re doing their best to form relationships and families in a frequently harsh world. Their stories are universal to the human experience. With a history of outreach to the LGBT community, which lends legitimacy, MassMutual’s brand stands to benefit from this targeted effort to provide information and support.”

Responses on Twitter have been exceptionally positive:

 

 

Image: Screenshot via MassMutual/YouTube