Domestic Partners and Divorce

COUPLES’ EMOTIONAL ATTACHMENT DIFFICULT TO BREAK              

Same sex couples experience strong emotional attachments because of their intrinsic capacity to understand each other, said Jane Ariel, Ph.D., a family psychologist and faculty member at the Wright Institute in Berkeley, Calif.           

 “When two women get together, there is a potential for emotional connection and attunement because of sameness that allows them to go really, really deeply,” Ariel said.            

Because of that close connection, however, separating couples find it especially difficult to leave, she said. “When that kind of separation happens, when you are that engaged, there is a lot of pain and there is a lot of disappointment,”  Ariel said.            

Ariel said that she doesn’t mean that heterosexual couples can’t form similarly deep connections, but the way lesbian women connect to each other is different.  And the ends of those relationships can be difficult to navigate, she said. Women have a fair amount of trouble refinding their own identify outside of the relationship,” Ariel said. “People do it, but I think it is a pretty arduous journey.”            

Adding in the feelings of isolation brought on by homophobia, Ariel said, can increase the self-doubt one feels.  Also, the pain of aloneness that is experienced after a break-up intersects with  the extent to which (they have accepted their gay identity and how resolved or unresolved they are in their coming-out process, Ariel said.  She said that some same sex couples feel comfort and security in their relationships which can act as a buffer in countering internalized and overt homophobia.            

“There is a pretty profound emotional experience about the separation of the relationship, and that intersects with one’s one interaction with the homophobic world,” Ariel said.           

The gay and lesbian community can provide both solace and sadness, Ariel said.  mong those in gay and lesbian relationships, there is a fairly cohesive community, she said. When the relationship ends, the partners may fear disappointing this community, she said. These worries of disappointment tend to be stronger among people who come from marginalized groups, she said.            

However, on a positive note, Ariel said that many women stay connected in some way after a separation. She said that in her personal experience, practice and research, she would guess that 75 percent of women who end relationships find a way to stay within each others lives, but in a new capacity.            

“It is an interesting phenomenon,” Ariel said. “I think that has to do with the capacity of women and the desire of women to stay in a relationship.  Women who have loved each other reconnect in a different context.”