Lesbian Friendships

Everyone knows the stereotype depicted in the joke, "What do lesbians do on their second date?"--"Rent a Uhaul". I have experienced and known many lesbians who have rushed into relationship in this way.

The experience I have wanted to have, but hadn't in my lifetime with other lesbians, is to  just be friends. No emotional enmeshment. No co-dependency. No sex. No partnership. Simply friends.

Most of my life-time closest friends are straight. Some are in relationships and others are single. Their preference has undoubtedly helped me keep the boundaries of friendship secure and protected.

Is the need for lesbians to bond manifested because we have fuzzy boundaries? Is it too difficult for us to be single and not in a relationship? Is our identity only validated by being "with" someone?

Last year I met a lesbian while we were both walking our dogs. She was traveling through Colorado, considering moving here. Over the next month and a half we became friends. When she left we stayed in contact by phone. In July of this year she moved here.

Our friendship has grown as we have spent a lot of time together doing things. We bike. We go to Tai Chi twice a week. Talking over lunches is a regular happening. We both love to go to the mountains. Last Monday we took an all-day road trip through Rocky Mountain National Park. (It was spectacular!)

There has never been any confusion in our friendship about what the relationship is and is not. There are no hidden agendas. There is no sexual tension. In the same way as with my straight friends -- we are friends.

I am grateful that I have a lesbian friend. It is nice to share that way of being in the world with someone who totally understands it. Being lesbians gives us a commonality that feels very comfortable.

I appreciate the absence of pressure I experience in this friendship. It's not complicated. Without the tension that often exists between lesbians to make the relationship into something more, I feel a freedom that is quite satisfying.

It has been a wonderful growing experience for me to develop a solid friendship with another single lesbian. It has strengthened my sense of myself. I am having great fun! I am blessed.

Gentle Musings…

I have been reflecting this week about the feelings I had when I first started having relationships with women. I was in my early 30s before I figured it out. When I did realize I loved women, everything in my life made sense.

I struggled in my relationships with men. I struggled within myself and with them. I felt belittled and like I could not truly be myself. I felt I had to be manipulative to maintain any sense of Self at all. I did not understand why it was so uncomfortable and difficult on myself to be able to stay steady in a relationship with a man.

One thing I found interesting was what happened to my own inner masculine when I was relating to men. The inner masculine and identity is what connects what we want to “do” and what is important to us, with our soul. The masculine is the bridge that makes that connection.

When I was in a relationship with a man, my own inner masculine could not stay strong and steady and would become eclipsed. I would try to get stronger and found that the more I tried, the angrier and weaker I got. This was a problem in each relationship I had with men.

When I got with women, our inner masculines were doubled and I did not loose my power. It wasn’t like competition or envy or anything like that. The process was just comfortable and easy. Being with women helped me keep my masculine inside. It helped me own and identify what was important and direct the energy of “doing” toward my deepest soul. This felt so right.

Another thing that was easier for me to deal with women rather than men was my sexuality. With men, there was always a tension, an expectation, a blurring of myself that made my sexuality feel very unsafe. When I got with women, sexuality flowed out of friendship, intimacy, connection and love.

With men, the connection was always one-sided. Theirs. It was incredibly difficult to find intimacy with the men I chose. I have several men I know who I have as friends and have never been in a romantic relationship with. With them, closeness and caring form the core of the foundation of our relationship. Taking away sexuality makes these men safe and close also.

Perhaps another thing that made being with women so comfortable was my early training about caring for others. My family and particularly my mother paid close attention to the men and boys and took extra care to make sure they were happy. This early conditioning (which smacked of co-dependency) was not only strongly encouraged but I got into a lot of trouble when I tried to stray away from the program.

This made for a lot of conflict when I was in relationships with men. My repressed anger came out with them because I did not want to take care of them. It wasn’t a selfish streak that I was feeling but a struggle to keep myself intact. I had not learned to take of myself, which didn’t make me a good candidate to take care of those whose sense of entitlement left me flat.

Being with women just simply made all of my childhood issues less stressful and made healing less dramatic and painful. The dynamics in my relationships, regardless with a man or a woman, had a lot of similarities. After all, I was the same person in each equation. It was how I was able to work through my issues that became much easier with women.

It has taken many years to reach a place within myself that I can have a healthy relationship with myself. This makes it possible to even have a relationship with another person. I am still smitten with women and am delighted that I know this about myself so that I can share that joy and gratefulness which makes my heart so full.

Maintaining Personal Boundaries In Relationships

We come into the world at birth with no sense of boundaries. We don’t know where mother ends and we begin. We feel no doubts of our need fulfillment and of its source.

Our first growth realization is of separateness. With our first steps our task is letting go and acknowledging a personal boundary: I am separate and so are those who care about me.

As exuberant as this independence feels, emotionally it is a departure and a struggle. The rawness of the experience may even feel like abandonment. From the beginning of life, we have equated letting go of attachment with loss of power and of secure need fulfillment. The mystery of why we hold on so fiercely as adults may be found in this original terrifying and illusionary experience.

Healthy adults learn that separateness is not abandonment but simply a human condition, the only condition from which a healthy relationship can grow. With boundaries comes interdependence rather than dependency. With boundaries comes personal accountability not entitlement to be taken care of. From boundaries comes the mutuality that drops control of another in favor of honor of another.

Boundaries do not create alienation; they safeguard continuity. Boundaries are what allow us to have closeness while we still safely maintain a personal identity. To give up personal boundaries would mean abandoning ourselves. No relationship can thrive when one or both partners have forsaken the inner unique core of their own separate identity.

In a healthy person, loyalty has its limits and unconditional love can coexist with conditional involvement. Unconditional does not mean uncensoring. You can love someone unconditionally and place conditions on your interactions with them to protect your own boundaries.

The essential inner core of our self must remain intact as relationships begin, change and end. The journey never violates our wholeness. When we are clear about our personal boundaries, the identity that is ours is not given to us by others nor do we let it be plundered by them.

What is important in building a functional healthy ego is to relate intimately to others with full and generous openness while your own wholeness remains intact. This is adult interdependence.

In every truly intimate relationship we become ego-invested in the other person. This means that we care deeply about our partner’s welfare. It also means that we care about our partner’s opinions of us and treatment of us. We are vulnerable to hurt and rejection. We have given power to our partner. This is perfectly normal and flows from the nature of commitment.

In a functional ego-investment, we give power without being personally diminished. We are vulnerable as lovers not as victims. Our commitment does not mean losing our boundaries.

In a neurotic ego-investment, we loose our ability to protect ourselves. The actions of our partner then determine our state of mind rather than simply affecting it temporarily. We live by reaction rather than by taking action. This is how the unfinished business of our childhood can sabotage adult self-esteem.

Those who were abused or neglected as children and had no way of defending themselves, have the most trouble in making a healthy ego-investment in relationships. For them, boundaries were never clear or safe and adult relating depletes their tentative ego supplies.

There are some things to keep in mind when becoming more aware of your personal boundaries. Ask directly for what you want. This declares your identity to others and to yourself. If your boundaries are so rigid that you avoid closeness, you may be in the grip of fear. If your boundaries are loose or undefined you may be in the lap of submission to others’ control.

Foster inner self-nurturance (a good parent within yourself). This builds an inner intuitive sense that lets you know when a relationship has become hurtful, abusive, or invasive.

Observe others’ behavior toward you—taking it as information—without getting caught in their drama. Be a fair witness who sees from a self-protected place. This is honoring your own boundaries. It empowers you then to decide—uninfluenced by another’s seductive or aggressive power—how much you will accept of how someone treats you.

Maintain a bottom line. There needs to be a limit to how many times you allow someone to say no, lie, disappoint, or betray you before you admit the painful reality and move on to mutual work or separating.

Change the focus of trust from others to yourself. As an adult you are not looking for someone you can trust absolutely. You acknowledge the margins of human failing and let go of expecting security. You then trust yourself to be able to receive love and handle hurt, to receive trustworthiness and handle betrayal, to receive intimacy and handle rejection.

Maintaining personal boundaries in relationships is something that we can learn as adults. Many breakups happen when boundaries are fuzzy and co-dependency is operative instead of healthy interdependence. The stronger we are within ourselves and the more we know and trust ourselves, the healthier our relationships will be.