All couples deal with the dynamics involving closeness and distancing. For lesbians these patterns and struggles can be different as compared to two men or a couple with one person of each gender.
The dynamics unique to the lesbian relationship comprise of both women attempting to maintain an extraordinary level of emotional intimacy while learned societal values create a situation of compelled interpersonal merging. The impact of this on the security of the couple’s formation profoundly effects, intensifies and prolongs the merger of the couple in a lesbian relationship.
Merging often occurs with characteristic frequency in lesbian couple relationships. I am using the term merge to mean a psychological state in which there is a loss of a sense of oneself as individual and separate.
It is helpful to view merging occurring in most relationships to varying degrees. In some relationships, merger is transient and mainly present during times of sexual or emotional closeness. In other relationships, it is a normative preference for intense connection that can include some loss of individuality.
In still other relationships, it is more fixed or permanent and can reach a point of excessive dependency where there is acute tension or anxiety when there is physical or emotional distance, an inability to function effectively without the presence of the other, and multiple self-other confusions in terms of who is feeling what.
It is important to contemplate the effect of sex role socialization on female dependency, negation of the self, and responsibility for the happiness and caretaking of others. From birth, girls are taught these responses to others that forms a mode of relationship functioning that becomes established as a relational style. The quality of the female sense of separation of self and other becomes fluid and not sharply defined.
This absence of clear individual boundaries creates a strong capacity for empathy or the sensing of the feeling reactions in others. It is the basis for the capabilities of nurturing, connecting, and personality blending which enables a profound and vital dimension in relationship intimacy.
Another thing girls learn from an early age and is observable in many women is an acute attunement to the needs and wishes of others as well as a vulnerability to emotional distancing and difficulty with separateness and differences in relationships. These relational capacities and characteristics, duplicated in relationships between women, shape the dynamics of the lesbian couple.
Couples proceed through relationship development. The first stage of couple formation is typically a merge-like period of intense bonding. This phase of union, loss of boundaries and individuality, with its thrilling discoveries of similarity and mutuality of sexual passion and emotional connectedness is heightened in romantic relationships between two women.
Because they each possess the female relational capacities for intimacy and empathy, each is less fearful of boundary loss compared to heterosexual couples and each is less willing to place limits on emotional closeness. The mesmerizing combination of physical similarity, duplicated softness, sexual arousal, and mutual nurturing establishes strongly connected bonding. This creates an interdependence of unmatched intensity and a quality of relatedness distinctly different than in other types of couples.
The importance of this stage in couple formation is it makes possible the continuation of the relationship through the disappointments, disillusionments, and discovery of conflict differences inherent in all relationships. The first stage of merging provides the impetus to change behaviors, to compromise, to solve incompatibilities, and to develop those relationship skills necessary to negotiate the multiple tasks involved in relationship building.
Memory of intense connectedness hopefully makes possible an eventual tolerance and comfort with separateness and difference. Lesbian couples who do not have the experience of intense merger closeness generally have a feeling that something is missing or incomplete.
As lesbian relationships continue, merger connectedness combines with power or control issues. This is typically a period of conflict that includes particular struggles over issues of differences, power, individuality, and dependency. This phase attempts to re-establish individual boundaries and tests the couple’s solidarity.
Although stressful, its potential outcome of accommodation and acceptance of differences and incompatibilities can forge new compatibilities and confidence in the possibility of an ongoing relationship commitment. When ongoing connectedness is joined to repeated experiences of resolution of conflict and difference, the internal experience or feeling of relationship trust and stability is strengthened.
Couples who have the courage to deal with the issues that arise during this period make it possible for later stages of commitment and re-commitment based on more individuality and separateness. Those who deny differences and avoid rather than resolve conflict, tend to form unhealthy relationship systems based on prolonged and entrenched merger.
For them, any change toward decrease in merging is experienced as a “wrenching apart” as if their relationship is disintegrating. Both women typically wish to spend as much time together as possible to maintain their merged connectedness.
With relationship trust and security yet to be established, couple harmony becomes primary and tends to be defined as the absence of difference and conflict. Individual interests, activities, friendships, and often values are relinquished in the service of closeness. Interactions that create distance and are disruptive to closeness, such as the asserting of differences, disagreement, and limit setting, are avoided as the couple tries to maintain stability around merger connectedness. The consequences are individual restriction and limitation and an increasingly isolated and stagnant relationship system.
Difficulty with establishing distance as well as honoring differences and conflict are often recognizable to both women in couple relationships. Attempts at change in terms of increasing individuality and separateness, more open communication, and expression of needs or negative feelings are often responded to with anxiety and fear that these new patterns and behaviors will interfere with the relationship’s connectedness equilibrium.
In order to negotiate increased separateness, both women must be able to tolerate distance and also manage anxiety. To assert individuality, differences must be conveyed in a non-threatening way and not contain meanings of personal inadequacy or threats of impending relationship loss. The couple’s struggle and resolution is rarely absolute. Instead, these themes are worked and re-worked throughout the relationship.
The disruptiveness of compelled distancing often remains a continuing stress in lesbian relationships. When couples do not accept or resign themselves to this fact of lesbian existence, it can play a sizable part in contributing to projections, misunderstandings, and frequent feelings of hurt and rejection.
Couples need to anticipate potential disrupting events. Arranging signals of reassurance before particular triggering situations, planning how each can be responsive to the other in distancing situations, and engaging in prior negotiation regarding their closeness and separateness issues are important relationship strategies.
Lesbian relationships are characterized by two women who each wish the relationship to be central in their lives, who display ongoing attentiveness to each other’s needs, and willingness to devote time and effort to working out difficulties. In spite of the lack of sanction, invisibility, and multiple disruptions by society, it is this relatedness that distinguishes romantic relationships between women—and when it is healthy, forges possibilities of extraordinary connectedness, compatibility, and happiness in a disconnected and alienating world.
The dynamics unique to the lesbian relationship comprise of both women attempting to maintain an extraordinary level of emotional intimacy while learned societal values create a situation of compelled interpersonal merging. The impact of this on the security of the couple’s formation profoundly effects, intensifies and prolongs the merger of the couple in a lesbian relationship.
Merging often occurs with characteristic frequency in lesbian couple relationships. I am using the term merge to mean a psychological state in which there is a loss of a sense of oneself as individual and separate.
It is helpful to view merging occurring in most relationships to varying degrees. In some relationships, merger is transient and mainly present during times of sexual or emotional closeness. In other relationships, it is a normative preference for intense connection that can include some loss of individuality.
In still other relationships, it is more fixed or permanent and can reach a point of excessive dependency where there is acute tension or anxiety when there is physical or emotional distance, an inability to function effectively without the presence of the other, and multiple self-other confusions in terms of who is feeling what.
It is important to contemplate the effect of sex role socialization on female dependency, negation of the self, and responsibility for the happiness and caretaking of others. From birth, girls are taught these responses to others that forms a mode of relationship functioning that becomes established as a relational style. The quality of the female sense of separation of self and other becomes fluid and not sharply defined.
This absence of clear individual boundaries creates a strong capacity for empathy or the sensing of the feeling reactions in others. It is the basis for the capabilities of nurturing, connecting, and personality blending which enables a profound and vital dimension in relationship intimacy.
Another thing girls learn from an early age and is observable in many women is an acute attunement to the needs and wishes of others as well as a vulnerability to emotional distancing and difficulty with separateness and differences in relationships. These relational capacities and characteristics, duplicated in relationships between women, shape the dynamics of the lesbian couple.
Couples proceed through relationship development. The first stage of couple formation is typically a merge-like period of intense bonding. This phase of union, loss of boundaries and individuality, with its thrilling discoveries of similarity and mutuality of sexual passion and emotional connectedness is heightened in romantic relationships between two women.
Because they each possess the female relational capacities for intimacy and empathy, each is less fearful of boundary loss compared to heterosexual couples and each is less willing to place limits on emotional closeness. The mesmerizing combination of physical similarity, duplicated softness, sexual arousal, and mutual nurturing establishes strongly connected bonding. This creates an interdependence of unmatched intensity and a quality of relatedness distinctly different than in other types of couples.
The importance of this stage in couple formation is it makes possible the continuation of the relationship through the disappointments, disillusionments, and discovery of conflict differences inherent in all relationships. The first stage of merging provides the impetus to change behaviors, to compromise, to solve incompatibilities, and to develop those relationship skills necessary to negotiate the multiple tasks involved in relationship building.
Memory of intense connectedness hopefully makes possible an eventual tolerance and comfort with separateness and difference. Lesbian couples who do not have the experience of intense merger closeness generally have a feeling that something is missing or incomplete.
As lesbian relationships continue, merger connectedness combines with power or control issues. This is typically a period of conflict that includes particular struggles over issues of differences, power, individuality, and dependency. This phase attempts to re-establish individual boundaries and tests the couple’s solidarity.
Although stressful, its potential outcome of accommodation and acceptance of differences and incompatibilities can forge new compatibilities and confidence in the possibility of an ongoing relationship commitment. When ongoing connectedness is joined to repeated experiences of resolution of conflict and difference, the internal experience or feeling of relationship trust and stability is strengthened.
Couples who have the courage to deal with the issues that arise during this period make it possible for later stages of commitment and re-commitment based on more individuality and separateness. Those who deny differences and avoid rather than resolve conflict, tend to form unhealthy relationship systems based on prolonged and entrenched merger.
For them, any change toward decrease in merging is experienced as a “wrenching apart” as if their relationship is disintegrating. Both women typically wish to spend as much time together as possible to maintain their merged connectedness.
With relationship trust and security yet to be established, couple harmony becomes primary and tends to be defined as the absence of difference and conflict. Individual interests, activities, friendships, and often values are relinquished in the service of closeness. Interactions that create distance and are disruptive to closeness, such as the asserting of differences, disagreement, and limit setting, are avoided as the couple tries to maintain stability around merger connectedness. The consequences are individual restriction and limitation and an increasingly isolated and stagnant relationship system.
Difficulty with establishing distance as well as honoring differences and conflict are often recognizable to both women in couple relationships. Attempts at change in terms of increasing individuality and separateness, more open communication, and expression of needs or negative feelings are often responded to with anxiety and fear that these new patterns and behaviors will interfere with the relationship’s connectedness equilibrium.
In order to negotiate increased separateness, both women must be able to tolerate distance and also manage anxiety. To assert individuality, differences must be conveyed in a non-threatening way and not contain meanings of personal inadequacy or threats of impending relationship loss. The couple’s struggle and resolution is rarely absolute. Instead, these themes are worked and re-worked throughout the relationship.
The disruptiveness of compelled distancing often remains a continuing stress in lesbian relationships. When couples do not accept or resign themselves to this fact of lesbian existence, it can play a sizable part in contributing to projections, misunderstandings, and frequent feelings of hurt and rejection.
Couples need to anticipate potential disrupting events. Arranging signals of reassurance before particular triggering situations, planning how each can be responsive to the other in distancing situations, and engaging in prior negotiation regarding their closeness and separateness issues are important relationship strategies.
Lesbian relationships are characterized by two women who each wish the relationship to be central in their lives, who display ongoing attentiveness to each other’s needs, and willingness to devote time and effort to working out difficulties. In spite of the lack of sanction, invisibility, and multiple disruptions by society, it is this relatedness that distinguishes romantic relationships between women—and when it is healthy, forges possibilities of extraordinary connectedness, compatibility, and happiness in a disconnected and alienating world.
