In honor of Lesbian Visibility Week (which I did not know was a thing until a few days ago, and runs from April 24–30), here are some Sapphic-themed advice questions.
Dear Anna,
My girlfriend was kicked out of her home by her Irish Catholic mom as a teen. Unfortunately, a death in her family three years ago forced her to move back in with her mom to take care of her. I didn't think much of it. But then my girlfriend revealed to me through drunken sobs one night early in our relationship that her mom doesn't need her anymore. She just desperately wants her mom to be a part of her life.
A few months later she met my family but she still hadn't told her mom about me. One night when we were at a party nearby, I was too drunk to drive home so she hesitantly agreed to let me spend the night. She snuck me in and snuck me out the following morning so her mom didn't see me. It was awful.
I’m devastated that my GF, who has a steady paycheck and resources to move out, is choosing to live a lie. She said she would find somewhere else to live, but months have passed and she’s done nothing, which broke my heart. But I didn't say anything. Since I come from an accepting family, I didn't feel like my opinion counted. But then, a few weeks ago, she broke down about her mom again and I snapped.
I told her I would not listen anymore. She chooses to stay with her mom, and I refused to talk about our future until she can deal with the problems in front of her. She set up a therapy appointment for herself and says she will talk to her mom, but my faith in her has diminished. I feel betrayed, like she took me and our relationship for granted. Do I just really not get how difficult it is to have a homophobic mother? — Tough Love
Dear TL,
After her fourth stroke, my mother became a Jehovah’s Witness. Her ailing health and newfound religiosity changed many, many things about her life — but the most upsetting one for me was that, after 15 years of accepting my queerness (or so I thought), she suddenly no longer did. Our conversations became singular, relentless and damning — when would I find a husband?
At first, I endured these “talks.” I listened patiently to patronizing sermons about how I was going to a hell I don’t believe in (while such calls, ironically, became their own kind of hell). I tried to brush aside her harsh words as an unfortunate byproduct of her traumatized brain and body. But, like you, TL, there came a day when I no longer could. I snapped.
I refused to talk to her for a month — an unspeakable punishment in her eyes. Trying to explain the concept of boundaries, or healthy communication, failed utterly, in spite of the fact that my mother holds a Ph.D. in clinical psychology.
She didn’t understand my anger or my need to take a break from her. I didn’t understand where my kind, loving mother had gone. My mother, the sweetest, most selfless person I’d ever known, whom I had called my best friend, whom I had once told everything, who read all my writing, even the grim or blatantly sexual — that mother had vanished. I missed her with the ferocity of the bereaved. I missed her as if she had died — and she had, in a way. The version I once knew.
A part of us always loves and reaches for our primary caregivers, even difficult ones, even absent and abusive ones. They are the first place we learn about love, or lack thereof, and as such, they occupy prime real estate in our hearts, whether they deserve it or not.
So while your girlfriend’s behavior may be baffling to you, it’s not really. She loves her mom. She wants her mom to accept her. Same as you. And me. And all of us. In the absence of that love and that acceptance, desperation has grown, as well as fear, and denial.
She is trying to fill a hole in her heart she doesn’t yet know can’t be filled.
These are coping mechanisms. And they serve us. Until they don’t. Right now your girlfriend is grieving the loss of her first love. This is not to make excuses for her behavior or to dismiss your very understandable concerns and basic freedoms — but only to offer some perspective and compassion.
That said, compassion can only take you so far. Your girlfriend’s insecurities and fears are negatively impacting not only her own life, but yours, and that of your relationship.
However, loving someone fully also means accepting the parts that are less ideal, the parts that may never change or “get better.”
If you can’t, then the most loving thing you can do for them and for yourself is to walk away.
It’s up to each of us to decide when and if and how much to let in those people who are emotionally ravaging us and calling it “love.” In a similar way, it is also up to each of us to decide when enough is enough, to refuse to hold onto the unhealthy behaviors of others when they are slowly destroying us.
We all have our breaking points, and you reached yours. Living a lie and being treated like a secret that must be hidden from the world — that is no way to live, TL, and you have every right to feel upset, and to ask for the circumstances to change. If they don’t, you have a right to alter or end your relationship.
You may not know what it’s like to have an unaccepting family, but you know that being someone’s “secret” is not working.
While it is entirely up to your girlfriend to decide if and when to come out, you also have a choice in whether or not to accept the particular terms your girlfriend has set forth. She’s in therapy, which is a start. What do you need to make your relationship tenable once more? Think about it. Then tell her. Give her a chance to show up for you, while also accepting that her relationship with her mother is going to be strained, possibly forever, and most certainly in the near future.
My relationship with my mother is still complicated. She thinks my life is a sin, but she’s also coming to my queer wedding in a few months. I wasted years thinking her love was a wall that I had to break through. But it isn’t. It’s a bridge we’re building, brick by brick by brick, until it’s sturdy enough to walk across — uncertainly, tentatively — together.
Dear Anna,
I am 46 years old, live in Germany and have known my best friend for over eight years now. When we met, I was in a relationship with another girl (we broke up a few months later) and she was married to an awful guy, in a love- and sexless marriage. We went on a trip and ended up having sex. For the next 2.5 years, we had a secret love/sex affair. To make things worse, we also work together in the same office.
In August, her husband met another woman, asked for the long-overdue divorce, and she moved out of the house that very day and is now living with her mother to save some money. I offered for her to come live with me temporarily, which she declined.
Now that she moved out, everything has changed. It’s like we could only be happy together if our love was a secret. A few days ago she signed up for Tinder and is now chatting with some random guys she met there. She didn't even feel the need to tell me that she is looking for someone new.
When I confronted her she said that I am complicated and that she had the impression that everything between us was long over. The whole conversation lasted 10 minutes. Am I right to feel hurt and somehow betrayed? She keeps being nice to me, like nothing ever happened, says that I am her best friend and blah blah. But the only thing she is interested in is texting all day long to those guys. Any suggestions? I love my job. What do I do? — Thanks From Germany
Dear TFG,
What a momentous grief-suck. I am so sorry you’re going through the muck with a woman who cheated on her husband for years and then didn’t even have the courtesy to break up with you, instead choosing to take the low-blow Tinder fadeout.
Of course you are entitled to feel hurt and betrayal. And, though she will probably resist it, if she wants to continue being friends with you, then more than a cursory, 10-minute work chat about your two-and-a-half-year relationship is required. Not because such a talk will change the outcome, but because it will help you navigate some of these big feelings and get a sense of clarity about what exactly transpired between the two of you.
Right now it seems like there are a lot of assumptions floating around on both of your ends about what your relationship was, is, or could’ve been. To you, it was a sexual and emotional love affair. To her, maybe it wasn’t. To you, the husband was the barrier keeping you apart. To her, maybe it wasn’t. A frank, vulnerable discussion about both of your expectations is ideal if you want to salvage your friendship.
Even if you do have this frank, vulnerable discussion, afterward, give yourself time and space to grieve your heartache. You may have to see her at work, but take a break from her everywhere else. I would also seriously question what kind of “best” friend carries on a yearslong affair and then breezily acts as if it never happened. But that’s me.
You loved (and still do love) this woman. That she is not the person for you doesn’t diminish what you felt and shared with each other. Remember that when the weight of your anger and betrayal begins to feel insurmountable.
As poet Mary Oliver once said, “Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this, too, was a gift.”
I’m sorry things didn’t work out the way you planned, TFG, but I do hope one day you’ll see the situation as the gift that it is — a chance to move on and to give your heart to someone more deserving of it.
