Relationship Ends

When a relationship ends, the grieving process happens no matter what the circumstances of the breakup are. The feelings of loss are present regardless of how the relationship ended. Endings and change bring loss and loss brings grief.

Some of us are extremely uncomfortable with these feelings. Everyone has moments when they don't want to deal with them. It is important to let ourselves experience all the feelings that come up or they will more than likely accumulate and cling onto other feelings of loss that we've had in the past that still linger in our psyches.

One of the main feelings of loss of a relationship is hurt. So many of us have had our feelings hurt as children and as adults. Sometimes it is difficult to know where the hurt is coming from. Is it the past or does it have to do with the current situation? Hurt is a normal feeling of loss that the heart experiences when change happens.

When we are in a relationship, no matter what the quality of that relationship is, our hearts open up to the other person. Intimacy, trust, and love all make us vulnerable to ourselves and the other person. When that person is no longer there, we are left feeling even more vulnerable.

If the feelings are not felt, they can turn into anger. This kind of anger is a protection from all the vulnerability that we don't know how to deal with. This can lead to all kinds of projection on the other person. One of the symptoms of protective anger is blame. Another is changing the past to reflect only negative things. Another is to hang onto little annoyances and make them big. All of these activities of the mind help protect us from feeling loss.

Another common way to avoid feelings of grief is to get immediately involved in another relationship. In this scenario, we don't have to feel the uncomfortable feelings because we are attaching to someone else. Falling in love is a lot more exciting than healing from the relationship we have just disassembled.

Feeling loss can bring with it the experience of helplessness and of being alone and not in control. It can make us feel little, like a child. It is important when these feelings come up to remember the choices we have made or that we have now. This will remind us of our strength.

We can feel all the feelings and still stay empowered in the present. This requires us to steadily allow and monitor all the feelings that come up for us. Sometimes the mind will try to distort the hurt feelings of grief to cover up the feelings of sadness. It is important the not let our minds run the show.

Ending a relationship is difficult no matter whether you are the one who left or the one who was left. It is difficult to understand the meaning of why it happened until much later. Initially though, we can expect grief. How we deal with it is what matters.

Breaking Up A Relationship

If a relationship is unhealthy and you need to go separate ways, it is important to know how to go about dissolving it while maintaining integrity and honoring yourself and the other woman. That being said, this will not be easy. Keep in mind, though, that if the relationship is not good for you the most loving thing to do is to break it up.

The process requires special attention and time set aside especially for talking. A private place to talk is important because there will no doubt be strong feelings in the conversation. Setting things up with consciousness will give you a good foundation with which to start.

Honesty cannot be emphasized enough. Being honest doesn't mean bringing out a long laundry list of everything that has ever annoyed you in the entire time you've been together. Making it simple and really thinking ahead of time what is not okay for you will help you stay focused.

Being clear is of utmost importance. This will be most successful if you only use "I" statements. This will eliminate blame and keep your needs in the forefront.

Having 2 or 3 things that you have identified ahead of time as the reasons the relationship needs to end for you will be helpful. Then you can say, "our relationship is not good for me and needs to end because___________________.

You may have to come back to this statement many times throughout the conversation, but it will help you stay strong in your position if the other woman's emotions run high and she tries to get you to change your mind.

Before you talk, think about what kind of relationship you want with this person. Do you want to stay friends? Never speak to each other? Visualize the best outcome for you. Of course, the other woman may have different needs around this and that will ultimately dictate the outcome.

Remember, all you are doing is lovingly stating your needs. You may get very emotional, too, and that is when you can go back to your original statement. Breaking up is very difficult. Do not expect it to be easy. The only thing you can control is you and how maturely you approach and say what you truly have to say.

Partnership Abuse

I have just gotten out of an covert partnership abuse situation. Abuse happens in many forms and this one snuck up on me. I take responsibility for staying in it for the year than it happened. But, the abuse started benignly and grew to an obvious level. Here is the story. I hope that others who find themselves in similar situations will become more conscious of their own situations and learn to identify and get out of them.

My partner and I had six years together that were calm, peaceful and built on trust. We worked together very well and both grew in the areas of trust, honesty, and the meaning of partnership. Then her 44 year old son descended on us.

He is an untreated manic depressive, out of control, violent, ex-con. He had burned all his bridges and was so down and out that he had nowhere else that he could go but to come home to live at his mother's. He was negative, rude, had days that he wouldn't even talk to us and was a general black hole in the household.

I was doing a lot of traveling during the year and had a hip replacement so it wasn't a good time for me to leave, however, in retrospect I should have. He was subtle in his hostility toward me but as the tension built I became more and more aware of his hatred of me and his homophobia toward me and my partner.

In February he was watching the dogs and let mine out. She was lost in the desert for four days before I miraculously found her. After that Ladybug hated him and barked at him whenever he came into the house. I tried everything, including taking her outside when I saw him coming toward the house, to get her to stop. She wouldn't stop and nothing I tried helped.

The tension continued to build and this began to take a toll on my relationship with my partner. Blood is thicker than love. She promised me in a couple's therapy session to keep me safe, but when things happened she would back down and stand up for her son. I was getting more and more frustrated with the whole debacle.

Then in early August, her son came into the house. My dog barked at him and he came unglued. He got in my face and said he wanted to kill Ladybug. Then he said he wanted to cut off my head, my arms and legs and bury me in six holes. Needless to say, I left and called the police, who couldn't do anything because my partner and her son told them "a different story" so that her son wouldn't go to prison again.

I stayed in a hotel for two nights and then got on a plane to go to my sister's. I left Ladybug with a friend. This gave me some time to look at the situation for a distance. I was alarmed at how I had put up with the abuse from both of them for so long. I made the decision to get out of the relationship, get my things out of the house and go on with my life.

When I went to get my things, I picked a time when both my partner and her son were going to be gone. My partner became mean, abusive, and controlling. She did things like shut off my cell phone, tell the woman who was going to pick me up at the airport not to pick me up, changed the locks and hid the keys to my car. In spite of her trying to make it as difficult as possible, I was able to go through my things and get them out of there.

I have had no contact since. I am relieved that I am out of her son's covert abuse and the abuse from my partner. She got involved with another woman, who had just gotten a 13 million dollar medical malpractice settlement, while I was moving. You tell me what that is about!

I am better off now. I handled my self in an honorable, respectful, responsible way and for that I am very happy. I hope if you are in an abusive relationship you will get some help in therapy or talk to friends about it--and get out. Life is too short to live in those conditions and there are plenty of people who are much more healthy that you deserve to be with.

Challenges To Intimacy

Intimacy is usually thought of as being close, sharing, and feeling loved, understood, accepted, known, and appreciated. The experience of this gives a warm and fuzzy feeling. Intimacy can also feel hot and agitated and can include negotiating differences and fighting.

Some lesbians were brought up in homes where confrontation and acceptance didn't go together. Others were raised within an environment where fighting fractured any positive sense of intimacy.

This can be a problem in a relationship. Often partners may avoid confrontation and intimacy out of discomfort or fear of losing what closeness they have. Several things need to be considered to allow trust and balance to exist in a peaceful way in a relationship.

One factor that seems to go hand in hand with this issue is allowing each person to be who they are without trying to change them. In accepting our partner for who she is, we can give her understanding, freedom and support for being herself.

Another important factor in promoting intimacy is learning how to listen to each other. Active listening in a relationship, where you can both hear the other's position while keeping track of your own, greatly enhances intimacy.

Learning how to resolve differences in a healthy way is crucial to having true intimacy. If you have not had a good model for this, as many of us haven't, it could be very useful to seek couples counseling or a group to learn these skills.

In focusing on understanding of and comfort with the normal fluctuations in emotional distance that occurs in relationships, we need to accept the differences inherent between partners to increase the chances of meaningful intimacy. Even with understanding, good skills, and a good level of translating skill into action, couples need to intentionally create a climate that offers a good chance for intimacy to thrive.

Challenges to Intimacy

Feminism's Effect On Gender And Living

Do lesbian feminists define and organize their households differently than the heterosexual population? The traditional American kinship system is based on a hierarchical duel-gender system. Lesbian feminism is based on an egalitarian single-gender system.

Lesbian feminism as a household pattern differs from the normative nuclear family in two ways: household composition (single-gender as opposed to duel-gender) and ideology (egalitarian as opposed to hierarchical).

Lesbian feminism is the daughter of two related social movement, the lesbian/gay rights and the feminist movements. In the 1960s lesbians and gay men began to suggest (among other things) that homosexuality is not a psychological pathology but an alternate form of sexual expression upon which viable relationships can be formed.

Feminists argued that the nuclear family's gender-differentiated roles, and the belief in gender asymmetry are not naturally determined but socially constructed and that the female role exploits women.

Feminists advocated (among other things) the abolition of traditional gender roles within the family and the establishment of households of people with a gender egalitarian ideal. This was the belief that adult household members, regardless of gender, should equally share domestic labor, financial support of the household, and childcare.

Over the past four decades the combination of these two movements has resulted in the growth of a distinctive lesbian feminist identity, self-conscious lesbian feminist communities, and egalitarian households which have helped to normalize these values and this life style within the larger heterosexual society.

The lesbian feminist model has has a significant changing effect on the ideology of traditional heterosexual household and relationships. They are currently much more egalitarian in nature. This makes the lesbian feminist identity stronger than it used to be.

The slow changes that have taken place in our society have brought lesbian feminists and heterosexual households closer together in ideology and organization. Today we would define their differently-gendered living arrangements and systems as much more similar in ideology and functioning in an egalitarian way. The identities of both have taken on the qualities of feminism in spite of the differences in gender.

EMOTIONAL DEPENDENCY AND INDEPENDENCE

The concepts of emotional dependency and independence are at the core of the stereotyped assumptions about women and men in our culture. Dependency is devalued and pathologized. It is linked with symbiosis, weakness, passivity, immaturity, and is attributed to women, children, and persons perceived as inadequately functioning. Independence, on the other hand, is highly valued. It is linked with autonomy, strength, taking action, and maturity and is attributed to men, adults, and individuals who are perceived as fully functioning.

This kind of polarization makes it difficult for women and men to accept any dependent feelings realistically and to depend on each other empathically. It also complicates the acceptance of independent feelings and goals in women and retards the development of interdependence among women.

The transition of women from dependent and limited functioning to fuller and more independent functioning is slow and complex. As women, most of us have gone through periods when we've shed the protective and immobilizing ties that keep us from full functioning, only to discover that the new freedom is terrifying. We have not yet developed the skills or the strength to make full use of new opportunities. The learning or relearning is slow, frustrating, and painful. Even more, we long at times for the familiar comfort of the ties that keep us immobilized.

When we can place our ability to give to others at the core of who we are, we can also recognize the legitimacy of our own needs. When we value the help we give, our interdependence, we can more easily ask for help and trust each other. When we cherish our ability to meet the needs of others, our dependability, we are better able to express our own needs, our dependency, and to take care of ourselves, to be independent.

In today's world it is absolutely essential that all of us, women and men, take responsibility for being aware of our human relationship needs and that we be mindful of our own and our planet's vulnerability. Our survival depends on learning to interact in a mode of equality and interdependence.

Lookism In Our Society

How has the cultural oppression of "lookism" and the societal beliefs around body type affected lesbians? All human beings develop a body image (mental representation of their body) which shapes their body concept and self-concept. Especially for women, body concept and self-concept affect our self-esteem. Historically a woman's body concept and self-concept have been tied to the roles prescribed for her under the dominant, male, patriarchal culture and the enforcement of compulsory heterosexuality.

Women and men in our society undergo a different socialization process. From early childhood women are taught that their appearance is a crucial aspect of their lives whereas men are taught that their accomplishments are what counts. Not only is appearance important for a woman but the appearance must come as close as possible to whatever the current media image happens to be. Often that image can only be achieved by a minority of the population. The end result is that most women are unhappy with their bodies and suffer from negative body image.

Lesbians are a segment of the female population who have undergone the same socialization process as all women but have rejected traditional female values. We should, by resisting male domination set up by patriarchal society, be able to escape the negative body image and lack of self-acceptance that other women in our society suffer from.

The most predominate heterosexual challenge for all women in our society is the objectification of women. This is being highlighted this month with Playboy Magazine putting out their centerfold in 3-D. Fortunately, lesbians do not think of ourselves as objects to be defined by males.

In spite of these differences it seems that lesbians, even feminist lesbians, have bought into the myth. Lesbians also suffer from body image disturbance and discrimination against fat lesbians who do not fit the patriarchal standard of beauty. Lesbians, by rejecting the traditional female role and questioning the aspect of heterosexuality that is defined by the male image of a female body, have the opportunity to come to define our own bodies. This potentially allows us to create positive, self-affirming ways of reacting to, and claiming back, women's bodies.

The lesbian feminist community is beginning to attack the patriarchal oppression of women through body image in the same way it has attacked the oppression of women through rigid, traditional roles. It is a difficult struggle, for even though lesbians have rejected the assumption that a woman's purpose in life is to attract a man, they have been socialized to attempt to mold their bodies to fit man's image of woman. Hopefully, as the struggle continues, the statement "not in man's image" will be completely true for lesbians.

The Birth Mother

"Birth mothers" are women who have surrendered their babies for adoption. They have often experienced excruciating and recurrent pain. It is not unusual to hear these women say, "I'll never get over it," "I think of my child frequently," or "I'll never forgive myself."

Many women who have surrendered a child are plagued by low self-esteem and mood disorders. Having given up a child for adoption is perceived by many birth mothers as negatively influencing marriage or partnership and parenting. It remains an overriding issue of conflict and intra-and inter-personal difficulty years later.

It can be expected that a woman who surrenders a child for adoption will experience sadness and loss. These women are more likely to turn grief and loss inward to depression that outward in the expression of anger. Four characteristics commonly identified with their depression are: vulnerability to loss, inhibition of action and assertion, inhibition of anger and low self-esteem.

If we recognize that the birth mother's difficulties in coping with the consequences of having surrendered a child for adoption are intimately linked to women's development in a sexist society, we must then ask how mental health professionals can work with women to enable them to feel more empowered to cope with these issues.

The therapist needs to support, encourage and participate in the active and multifaceted bereavement process of the client. The birth mother grieves not only for the loss of her child, but often for the loss of self-esteem, the loss of support from significant others, and the loss of her expectation about what her life would otherwise be like.

The relationship between the birth mother and her child does not end when she surrenders it for adoption, and the grief and bereavement of the birth mother is an ongoing process. Major events in the birth mother's life (marriage, birth, death, Mother's Day, menopause, etc.) or major events in the child's life (birthdays, starting school, reaching the age of 18, etc.) may rekindle the sorrow. Although the birth mother may not actually know the significant events in her child's life, she may have fantasies about these events.

In order to grieve, the woman needs to remove the shroud of denial and secrecy concerning the birth and surrender. Often this occurs for the first time within the safety of a caring therapeutic relationship, in which the birth mother is encouraged to talk about her expectations and her ongoing relationship with her child.

To alleviate the birth mother's distress caused by issues of grief, shame, guilt, and anger, it is essential that the birth mother enter into a caring, empathetic, and mutually empowering therapeutic relationship. This relationship will provide the opportunity for her to see herself as a person who is capable of giving, of nurturing, and of "mothering" herself and others.

Couple Dynamics

Lesbians have difficulty recognizing differences between partners due to gender-specific sex-role socialization. Our socialization facilitates primary identification with others and discourages differentiation. As lesbian couples are comprised of two women, both partners bring to the relationship conflicts about differentiation within an intimate relationship. The desire to merge, or to be as close and as alike as possible, is one end of this continuum. This becomes problematic when differences between partners surface either consciously or unconsciously.

At the other end of the continuum is the woman, or lesbian couple, who fends off conflictual dependency needs through a false independence, or rigid self-sufficiency. Nonmonogamy can serve as a vehicle to de-merge the merged individual or couple. It can be used as an attempt to structure dependency needs in a woman who may be terrified of the loss of self implied in primary intimacy with another woman. Nonmonogamy can function as a stable solution to conflicts regarding merging, or as a transitional step in the development of autonomous boundaries.

Lesbian nonmonogamy differs from heterosexual nonmonogamy because partners are open about their affairs. This difference may arise from the feminist political value that monogamy is based on patriarchal ownership of women, and from female socialization patterns which make it atypical for women to value sex without love. The combination of open communication about noncasual sexual relationships is the particular challenge of the nonmongamous lesbian couple.

Lesbian relationships where there is unconscious merging can have its own problems. Loss of self, no differiation of power, and co-dependency are common patterns seen in relationships where there are no boundaries between the couple. Monogamy then becomes a smoothering, clinging identity to a particular kind of relationship that may or may not be a good one for each individual in the couple.

Lesbian intimacy and couple dynamics are an underanalyzed phenomenon that is complicated and can complicate and even break couples up if not addressed in a relationship. This is a highly value-laden issue in the lesbian feminist community. Our couple partnerships need support to look at and understand the dynamics of coming together and separating within an intimate relationship.

Socialization within a heterosexual society does not have to address these issues in the same way as lesbian couples do. With a man and a woman in an intimate relationship, psychological difference is more easily recognizable and can feel more safe than the sameness of two women in a relationship. Examining this dynamic and bringing consciousness to the problems created by it are important to our having healthy lesbian relationships.

The Power of Addictions

An addiction is anything or anyone that takes us away from ourselves. It is a pathological, recurring relationship with any mood-altering event, experience, person or thing that causes major life problems. The addiction isn't because of the substances, experience, person or thing. It is the relationship with the substance or experience that goes awry.

The real addiction is not to the substance or experience, but to the high. The real addiction is not physical, but emotional. It is the psychological dependency, the belief in the need and continued use in spite of harmful consequences. Anything that removes or alters unwanted feelings can become an addiction. The process of addiction is reinforced by the fact that the more we use it, no mater what it is, the less ability we have to deal with that feeling, so the more we need the addictive activity or substance.

Addictions are primarily about feelings, a need to alter, avoid or distract us from our feelings. Why do we need to do this? Why do we need to avoid our pain to distract ourselves from our emotional reality? Why do we protect our addictions?

In childhood we find out whether or not our feelings are OK. Normal feelings are present, expressed, affirmed and then go away. We simply pass through them. When we don't acknowledge, express and affirm our feelings, they become repressed and acted out. Addiction is one way we act out the feelings we can't express.

The hallmark of addiction is a loss of control, marked by attempts to control. Addicts are very controlling people and very controlled people. They control feelings, the people around them, and try to control their addiction with repetitive, futile efforts. The first step in dealing with addictions in 12-step programs is admitting that you are powerless. In recovery we have to face powerlessness--that we cannot control. This is the first step in accepting that our lives have become unmanageable. We are powerless.

It is puzzling why we protect an addiction. We hold on to an addiction even though it may be destroying our lives, hurting us, and keeping us from those things and people that are most important to us. As a child, if no one is dependable enough to depend on, we learn not to depend on people in healthy ways. We learn not to be vulnerable. Our very ability to depend on others in childhood is survival. Instead of depending on others, we learn to depend on our addictions. This gets us away from those uncomfortable feelings.

The dependency on the addictions starts to take care of the feelings and fears of survival. The addiction is misplaced dependency. To give up the addiction, we need to go back into those feelings and fears of survival that occurred in childhood. It brings us in touch of our fears about survival. The addiction that stems from our unmet dependency needs is now what we depend on and what we can't give up. It is too scary and feels like life and death. We hang onto it as if it were our very survival.

According to Terry Kellogg there are six stages of addiction. Stage one is learning. In this stage we discover an addiction as a survival skill, a coping mechanism. They are the ways we use to distract us from our pain, something that helps us survive or cope with the emptiness of self, with our fears and anxieties.

After we learn how to distract from pain we move into the seeking stage. We establish a trust, a relationship, a belief system that the addiction will work for us. We establish patterns and begin the rituals of addiction, seeking it and looking for new experiences with it.

The third stage is harmful dependency. The addiction has escalated and preoccupation becomes obsession and trust becomes a blind faith that the addiction will take care of us. The high of the addiction is our attempt to feel normal. Harmful consequences come in this stage.

Stage four is the controlling stage. This is where we try to reduce the addiction and its impact on our lives. It is in this stage, when we attempt to get one addiction under control that another addiction emerges to take its place. We can control our addictions for a while but eventually we go back to the harmful dependency.

At some point we hit the acute stage. We lose important things in our lives and our priorities are affected. We may suffer a loss of family, friends, health, self-respect, money or job. We lose our values, spirituality and sexuality.

Finally the chronic stage of addiction is met when we've lost all of the above. This is known as hitting bottom. In our society, we often wait for a person to reach this stage before we intervene. We think we have to wait until the addict is completely broken and they have to want help. Often times, though, an addict who has hit bottom has nothing to recover for. There is so much despair and helplessness that they do not want help and sometimes can't be given help.

Addictions are a huge problem in many lives today. Addictiveness is effected by our biological chemistry, modeled behaviors, opportunity, cultural messages and personal beliefs and the ways we learned to survive our feelings in childhood. When our own lives begin to fall apart or someone in our life's life becomes unmanageable, we are reminded to come out of denial and deal with addictions at their source. This is difficult and challenging and sometimes painful, but in order to get life back we have to deal with it.

Body Image And Self-Esteem

The lesbian feminist community is beginning to question the patriarchal oppression of women in the same way it has looked at the oppression of women through rigid, traditional roles. It is a difficult struggle, for even though lesbians have rejected the assumption that a woman's purpose in life is to attract a man, they have still been socialized to attempt to mold their bodies to fit man's image of women.

Women and men in our society undergo a different socialization process. From early childhood women are taught that their appearance is a crucial aspect of their lives whereas men are taught that their accomplishments are what counts. Not only is appearance important for a woman but the appearance must come as close as possible to whatever the current media image of women happens to be. Often that image can only be achieved by a minority of the population. The end result of this impossible quest is that most women are unhappy with their bodies and suffer from negative body image.

Lesbians are a segment of the female population who have undergone the same socialization process as all women but have rejected traditional female values. A lesbian tends to resist male domination and through this resistance is able to escape the social and biological bindings from patriarchal society. Lesbians do not think of themselves as objects to be defined by male subjects. Therefore it seems lesbians ought to be able to escape from the negative body image and lack of self-acceptance that other women in our society suffer from. And yet many lesbians, even feminist lesbians, have bought into society's myths and suffer from body image disturbance.

All human beings develop a body image (mental representation of their body) which shapes their body concept and a self-concept. The self-concept is what a person thinks she is like and has cognitive and affective aspects. The body concept is the value-laden aspect of body image. Body concept and self-concept are related to each other and affect a person's self esteem, especially for women. Historically a woman's body concept and self-concept have been tied to the roles prescribed for her under the dominant, male, patriarchal culture. Women have needed to be attractive in order to catch a man and be assured of economic survival.

Before exploring how lesbians have been affected by the patriarchal standard of body image for women, it is important to briefly examine the lesbian experience within our society and the movement toward political, feminist, lesbianism. Lesbians have been viewed by the rest of society as either abhorant, deviant, or nonexistent. Rejection of the traditional female role, a primary commitment to women, and a questioning of every aspect of heterosexuality, including the male image of a female body are consistent themes in the thinking of lesbians.

Lesbians live and work within the heterosexual, patriarchal society. The socialization process of all women teaches lesbians that privilege and power comes with an acceptable appearance. Lesbians, as women, find that sexualizing women is part of the working world. Women have to market their attractiveness especially in the economic world and a closeted lesbian in the job market must also play this game. So, lesbians, even radical lesbians trying to fit in, act out the culture's dislike and fear of women's bodies, with all the mystery and power they represent. In acting out this dislike, lesbians suffer all the negative feelings about themselves and their bodies that non-lesbian women suffer.

Through clear examination of the attitudes of society about the body image of women from a patriarchal point of view, lesbians are beginning to form their own ideas about what a woman should look like. Lesbian feminists are attempting to create positive, self-affirming ways of reacting to and claiming back, women's bodies. Lesbians' willingness to look squarely into the ideas of the partriarchy and redefine society's image is courageous and challenging and can possibly, over time, make a difference for all women.