Welcome to marriage equality. Across the country, same-sex couples who have been celebrating the increasingly rapid rate at which states have passed marriage equality laws (or at least, failed to block marriage equality from becoming the law), are starting to feel the impact, first hand, of what that means for their personal finances. And it isn’t always pretty.

Let’s say you and your partner dashed off to celebrate your long-standing relationship as soon as it was first possible to get a marriage license in your state. Now, you’re staring at the prospect of paying the infamous “marriage penalty”: the higher tax rate that married couples face if they file joint tax returns (something that has been possible since the supreme court struck down the part of the Defense of Marriage Act banning the federal government – and thus the IRS – from recognizing same-sex marriages). Gulp. (One hint: talk to your accountant about the cost/benefit tradeoffs about continuing to file separately.)

Or let’s say you lobbied heavily for the right to marry – but you’re still not convinced that you want to exercise that right yourself, much as you love your long-time live-in love, who is registered as your domestic partner. Tough. Welcome to the pressures that those of us in the straight world have encountered for decades, from gentle enquiries from friends (“do you think he/she is ‘the one’?”) to outright nagging from parents and grandparents, eager for a chance to celebrate an official union. And now you can add your employer to that list.

It’s no news to anyone that corporations are eager to slash their employee benefits budgets; Walmart is only one of a cluster of companies that last year both cut health insurance benefits as well as raising insurance premiums. And a key area for cost- cutting is what benefits they offer spouses and partners of their employees. United Parcel Service now doesn’t cover the healthcare costs of an employee’s spouse if the latter is able to get their own insurance coverage from their own employer (even if it’s more costly, or not as good.) Employee benefits consultants find that more and more companies plan to levy surcharges on the healthcare policies they do still provide to employees’ partners.

So the news that a handful of companies like Delta Airlines is starting to phase out benefits for same-sex domestic partners, and replacing them with healthcare insurance plans that only married couples will qualify for, shouldn’t come as too much of a shock. (Delta, like the other companies doing so, are only mandating this for LGBT employees who live in states where they legally can marry.)

“Those of us fighting for marriage equality have been fighting for just that: equality, or the notion that we want to be treated just like any other couple,” says Mike Schultz, an associate in the business law group at Boston law firm Foley & Lardner, who recently married himself. “That comes with the same set of responsibilities.”

And in this case, the companies that are putting in place rules governing benefits for the LGBT community, aren’t drawing up new policies altogether. They’re simply stretching existing policies – they don’t offer some benefits to domestic partners, but only to spouses – to cover a new group.

Still, if you’re part of that group, and suffering from a sense of whiplash, I can’t blame you. From having to demand the right to marry, to having an employer inform you that if you don’t marry within the next 18 months or so, your long-time partner will lose his or her healthcare insurance? That’s a whopping mental adjustment to make.

Then, to there’s the pesky matter of unintended consequences. Presumably, anyone who isn’t worried about revealing to their employer that they have a same-sex domestic partner, won’t worry unduly about taking that extra step and revealing that they have married that same-sex partner. That cat already was out of the bag.

But a marriage isn’t a quiet “life sharing” arrangement that a domestic partnership can be. Your new spouse’s employer may not feel the same way – and an inquiry into why he or she doesn’t need insurance coverage, discovering his or her sexual orientation, could unleash trouble at their workplace.

Then there is the housing market, already an area where same-sex couples face significant discrimination. Credit and background checks that landlords conduct require disclosing your marital status – and so you can bid farewell to the idea of glossing over the precise relationship between you, in case you encounter a homophobic rental agent or landlord.

A case for a counterpoint to marriage equality?

So, being treated equally is fine – but only if the outcomes also are equal.

“Some kind of non-discrimination protection is badly needed,” argues Schultz. He, for one, expects more legal cases of discrimination to arise if personal financial considerations push same-sex couples to marry when otherwise they might keep the matter on hold. Those won’t involve individuals suing their companies for making them marry (or for bias that results directly from any revelation of an employee’s sexual orientation within the company as a result), he suggests. Rather, “there will be cases where, when couples marry to access benefits and then affirm their relationship publicly, discrimination in the wider community may follow,” he says. “We don’t have a level playing field yet.”

Maybe it’s time to push for a new kind of relationship equality, as a counterpoint to marriage equality. That is, that those in long-term committed relationships – whether they are straight or part of the LGBT community – should be entitled to the same benefits that spouses are?

Deena Fidas, head of the Workplace Equality Program at the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBT civil rights advocacy group, notes that this has, indeed, been the trend – and it’s one that was set in place some 15 years before the marriage equality bandwagon got rolling. “Today, 66% of Fortune 500 companies offer benefits to domestic partners; 62% offer them to both gay and straight partners,” she says. “A company’s interest here really lies in whether they are offering benefits that are competitive enough, that don’t hurt their bottom line, and whether those benefits are reaching their intended recipient. They aren’t in the business of arbitrating what a real relationship is” and have no vested interest in whether or not people marry.

In other words, those companies making this decision to scale back domestic partner benefits are doing so to cut costs – and it’s hurting a wider group of people than the LGBT community. “There are a lot of people denied the right to marry, or simply choosing not to marry,” says Fidas, who hopes that companies will continue what she describes as their longer-term drift away from tethering benefits to a marriage license.

Even if they do, of course, you’ll still have to figure out what to say to your mother when she asks when to expect her wedding invitation.