Breakup-less breakups
Ending a relationship is almost always painful, even if you’re the one who initiated it. The relationship started with hopes and dreams; now it is drawing to a close. Even a relationship that has grown lifeless has a familiarity and comfort about it: the little daily routines that stitch life together will be missed. Small wonder, then, that some couples try to end the relationship without…actually ending the relationship.
Maybe there’s a decision to end the commitment to one another, but the daily phone calls at work continue, or the text messages throughout the day. Or a couple continues to share space, friends, even families together just as before the breakup. Sometimes the time spent together is almost as much as it was before, and life’s little intimacies continue unabated. Friends may even wonder….didn’t the two of you call it quits? We can’t tell!
This is what I call the “breakupless breakup,” the desire to end a relationship without actually disrupting the connection between the two people involved. It’s the fantasy that you can end the relationship without truly separating. It often fails to recognize that sometimes pain in life is unavoidable.
Couples ending a relationship often say they want to stay friends. That’s understandable. Unless there was a great sense of hurt or infidelity, the desire to hang on to the connection between former partners makes a certain sense. But often that desire to be friends is actually a form of denial or codependence. Concern for the other’s feelings has taken precedence over doing the important work of separation that is necessary if both people are to move on. The result is typically feeling stuck. In fact, if one former partner actually does move on and start to date, the other person may feel a sense of betrayal.
When a relationship begins, it takes time for two people to truly grow connected. Lives and emotions become entangled and interconnected. The two grow closer together. The work of separation is just the opposite: withdrawing involvement and investment in the other. This separation work is important if the former partners are to move on. Put another way: he or she must move out of that special place in your heart if there is to be space for someone else to move in.
Friendships – even close ones – are different from romantic relationships. It is almost always necessary for significant amount of a time to pass before a friendship can be established post-relationship. If that time is not permitted to occur, the situation is likely to be confusing and painful. One chapter must close before another can begin.
If you find yourself stuck in the post-relationship limbo of a breakupless breakup, there are steps you can take to move on:
- Talk with your ex about setting boundaries. This is a courtesy conversation; if your ex doesn’t recognize the importance of establishing some distance, your task is to establish boundaries on your own. In fact…
- Recognizing that your responsibility is now to yourself and not to your ex’s happiness is an important piece of separation work.
- Spend less time together. If your goal is to maintain a friendship, then remember that your ex is one friend among many now. Granting that person special access to your schedule is a problem.
- Communicate less. Talking or texting almost as much as you did when you were a couple keeps your emotions more intense than is helpful. Dial it back.
- Depend on yourself. Maybe you always relied on the other person to help you with certain tasks or responsibilities. That help now comes at a significant cost. Take charge of your own life.
- Let your emotions cool. If you find yourself preoccupied with news about your ex, you are staying hooked together. Learn to let it go. Instead of worrying about how he/she is doing, give yourself a little mantra, something like “I wish Steve peace and happiness” or “I wish Jessica well.” And let it go. If you are really worried that your ex needs support, suggest they get professional help rather than rely on you.
Breaking up is hard, but if you have decided to do it, do it well. Doing so leaves you with less unfinished business and allows you to move forward toward greater happiness.
What causes homophobia?
A study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology says that a combination of repressed same-sex attraction and authoritarian parents cause homophobia. Strict parenting – common in fundamentalist households – thwart young people from developing a healthy sense of autonomy. When a child in such a family starts to feel attraction towards someone of the same sex, that desire must then be concealed and defended against. And it gets worse from there.
If you’re gay or lesbian, none of this is likely to strike you as news. It has often been gay “folk wisdom” that the biggest opponents of equality for LGBT people often carry a secret shame.
Self-loathing is a central part of the problem. The mix of defensiveness about attraction to others of the same sex and rejection of this part of the self is what causes some men and women to remain trapped in the closet. When that loathing is then projected onto other LGBT people, you get the long list of anti-gay preachers and politicians who end up having their careers cut short by gay sex scandals.
What struck me as most interesting about the study was the link with authoritarian parenting. “Authoritarian” in this sense doesn’t need to mean physically abusive (though that could be part of it). This sort of authoritarianism refers to parents who are strict and demanding and not respectful of their children’s choices – in fact, who may not permit choices at all. Children of such parents often confuse love with obedience to authority. For gay offspring of such parents, coming out may feel like a rejection of their parents. They may experience a terrifying fear losing their parents’ love.
Two responses to this sort of rigid parenting are common. The first response is fear. As a consequence of this fear, individuals with same-sex attraction may develop massive anxiety around gay feelings and attraction. This fear may be big enough that it causes them to repress their same-sex attraction. The attraction doesn’t go away, of course. Instead, it expresses itself in unhealthy ways. These repressed feelings may be behind some of the pedophilia scandal in the Catholic Church. Having a sexual relationship with an adult man would require acknowledgement and social interaction. A clandestine molestation of a child, on the other hand, keeps everything secret.
An alternate response is that individuals may become aggressive as a way of defending themselves against that part of the self that feels bad, broken or unacceptable. That aggression may be overt, as with the guy who goes out to physically assault LGBT people. Or the aggression may take a more political form. I suspect these people fill the ranks of the American Family Association, the National Organization for Marriage and a host of other groups fighting against equality for gay and lesbian people.
Why did Bob Bergeron kill himself?
Perhaps you’ve read the news: 48 year old psychotherapist Bob Bergeron took his life earlier this year. The author of a book entitled “The Right Side of Forty” and a therapist in New York City, Bergeron’s suicide was unexpected and rather out of the blue. He was a good looking guy with a successful practice, a supportive family and no known health problems or history of depression. What on earth happened?
I didn’t know Bergeron. My purpose in writing about him is not to criticize him, but to look at what his life and his death may say to us as gay men. Bits and pieces from his website may provide clues. Bergeron seems to have been very concerned with his physical appearance – there are a lot of photos on his website that display his well-built physique, perhaps a bit unusual for a psychotherapist. And he seems to have had trouble with aging. His last blog post, dated about three weeks before he took his life, included the following:
In 2012 I want to:
- Take better care of myself.
- Spend more time out of the house interacting and having fun.
- Find happiness with getting older and stop lying about my age.
In a video on his blogsite, Bergeron proposed defining youth as the years up to 65 – an alternative to the “50 is the new 35” trope he rejected. But both of these perspectives are problematic. 50 is 50 and 65 is 65, and to define either in terms of “youth” is ridiculous. (Full disclosure: I’m 58.) Anyone who is clinging to youth this far into midlife is in serious denial. If youth is over, is life is over? Hell no. But by the time you’re 50, life expects you to know a few things, to gain some perspective and to be able to distinguish between the ephemeral beauty of youth and the enduring beauty of a life well lived.
Perspective is the key to happiness and contentment at any age. I think that’s especially true as we get older. One of the great secrets of life is that things really do get better in so many ways. In the second half of life there is less to prove and more payoff from the hard work of earlier years. But successful living requires paying attention to what is really important: relationships and friendships, meaningful ways to invest our time and energy, physical and emotional health.
For many people, spirituality helps to provide that sense of perspective, of answering life’s big questions. What is our place in the order of things? What makes life meaningful? Whether through religion, meditation, time in nature or creative pursuits, healthy spirituality helps ease our anxieties and leads us to make positive choices.
Physical attractiveness has its place, but the beauty of youth is fleeting. If given too much importance in life, we’re in trouble. “Live fast, die young and leave a beautiful corpse” is terrible advice.
I’m very sad that Bob Bergeron took his life. I’m sad that he felt life was so desolate, and I’m sad for the clients he’d worked with who must be struggling to grasp how someone could be gifted in helping them with their problems while ultimately so without hope in addressing his own. But my greatest concern is how this man’s death mirrors the struggle of so many gay men to find contentment and purpose as we grow older.
More questions about “normal” sexuality
Is kink OK?
Experimenting with sexuality is normal and healthy, and variety truly is the spice of life. “Kinky” is a very broad term that covers many, many activities. Playing with erotic power and exploring your sexy inner bad boy (or girl) can be ways to enjoy and enhance healthy sex. Something may not be “normal” in the sense of “statistically average,” but that doesn’t mean there is anything wrong with it.
The key words in kinky play are safe, sane and consensual. Safe means just that – nothing unhealthy, dangerous, etc. Sane means not doing things that are unacceptably risky one way or another. Consensual means that both partners must agree to whatever is being done. If someone feels coerced or intimidated, they aren’t in a place where they can give their consent.
As with anything, talking with your partner about fantasies, limits and boundaries is the key to making sex work – and making it good.
What about fantasies?
Not everyone has them, but most of us do. Fantasies are a normal part of sexuality. It’s often said that the brain is the body’s biggest sex organ, and there is truth to that. Fantasies keep us from getting bored, help us understand our wants and needs, and can keep us from getting stuck in a rut.
It’s also important to understand that not all fantasies are something we would actually want to do in reality. Some fantasies are meant to stay that way – strictly fantasies.
At what age do people stop having sex?
Sexual energy may or may not decline with age; testosterone typically declines, and a drop in libido results. But there’s a wide variety in what is normal. If a person is reasonably healthy, there’s no reason why sex can’t be part of life at least into the 70s and 80s. Sex may look a little different than in younger years, but that may be just as much from knowing more about what works for you and how to be intimate as from physical changes.
Why don’t I have as much of a sex drive as my partner? Is that normal?
It is rare for two partners in a relationship to have exactly the same sex drive. One person usually initiates more often or wants sex more frequently. That doesn’t need to present a problem, but it does require communication and mutual care and concern. Talking about sex can be more difficult if one partner or the other feels “wrong.” It’s so easy for us to feel shame around sex, or to feel that something is damaged about us if we want sex less – or more – than someone else.
Pat Love has written several books about desire discrepancy, including “Hot Monogamy,” which I think of as a classic.
