Relationships ::

I’m Out, but My Partner Isn’t
The Degrees of Being Out

by Nicola Simmersbach, PsyD, LMFT

In March, I saw a t-shirt at the Dinah that said, “I’m not a lesbian but my girlfriend is.” It was funny/cute for a moment, but then my mind flashed back on the couples who have sat in my office struggling over the degrees and nuances of being “out.”

Some couples live almost separate existences — one out to many and one so closeted she won’t even tell the couple’s closest friends. Others are out to people close to them, but keep a safe berth of seeming heterosexuality around them. The reasons for this can range from trying to protect military or other professional careers and carefully balanced relationships with families of origin, to internalized homophobia. The pressure on these partners is extreme as they try to balance and negotiate a life of anxieties and stress of being outed or wanting to come out.

A generally accepted belief among gay and lesbian therapists is that being out contributes greatly to a person’s emotional and spiritual health. Closet life is filled with having to suppress your feelings which can result in emotional pain in the long run. Life sometimes demands periods of living in the closet from us, but it’s useful to work at keeping these periods of self-denial and incongruence as brief as possible.

Along with pressures from the straight world, in/out couples face pressures from the gay community, which often includes judgment about whether it’s okay be closeted or acceptable to be with a woman who won’t identify herself as a lesbian. Remember that coming out is a process, but not often a tidy, linear one. You or your partner may experience many changes and fluctuations as you negotiate the path ahead. Wherever you are, as long as you are aware of it, is probably the right place for you. Facing and negotiating discomfort is a growing process, and where you are is subject to change.

So what options are there when a career, a family relationship or personal safety is at stake and one or both of you has to keep your real life under wraps? How can you balance the demands life brings you to keep silent about who you are and still keep a loving partnership alive?

The first steps involve identifying the source of the pressure that keeps one of you in the closet. Is it internalized homophobia? A career path? Permission to see your nieces and nephews, or even your own children? The sources are many and it may take some deeper soul searching to find the roots of the issue.
Inevitably, the in/out couples have to face the question of whom or what is more important in their lives than their emotional needs and the recognition of their partnership.

Internalized homophobia lurks in us all. We skitter along on the continuum of “being out.” If you want to have an enlightening experience, take your partner on a date and ask her, “Under what circumstances do you hide being a lesbian?” Then lean in and really listen; you might be surprised at where she draws the line.

Recently, an old professor of mine described taking her “out-and-proud” partner mattress shopping. Suddenly, her usually affectionate and attuned wife became distant and began making all sorts of efforts to dissuade her spouse from testing the mattress when they were on it together. We all have our limits. Sometimes they hit us in the middle of Sleep Train Mattress Center.

Knowing if the issues are short- or long-term, isolated or pervasive, internalized homophobia or temporary necessity, will shape how you tackle the problem. But what about the less transient periods of closeted life? Perhaps you are faced with several years of living closeted or with a closeted partner. The remedies here are as unique as the couples who find themselves in this predicament. For some, the determination of a deadline, such as military retirement or career change, is enough to keep them together until they can relax about people knowing their couple status. Others find they need to develop specific tools to balance the inequities. Tools such as stellar communication skills, an ability not to personalize the other’s behavior (e.g., boundaries), and the ability to signal when it’s time to be alone as a couple and re-group, are critical in order to maintain equilibrium.

Unless both partners are able to commit to these efforts, it’s often difficult to keep the relationship together. The degree of being out can represent a point of incompatibility for a couple. Without at least trying to address the issues in counseling, however, it is impossible to know if the coupleship can last.

Being in a relationship helps you test your mettle: How do you learn to adapt to another person who has different wants and needs from yours? The degree to which you and your partner are out is only one of many areas in which you have the opportunity to practice what therapists call “differentiation,” which includes the ability to remain true to yourself while being able to remain in emotional contact with a close other who may have some profound differences from you.