You and No Other

by Jane Weiss

  However, given our relationship, we no longer held claim to being a traditional American family. For one who had never before stepped outside the boundaries of mainstream social expectations, I found it difficult living a secretive, unconventional lifestyle. I walked or jogged the three blocks from our apartment down to Lake Harriet nearly every day. I studied all the families engaged in walking, biking, picnicking, or swimming as I circled the lake. Just a short while ago, my family was one of those—a mother and father with kids in tow. We then lived seven blocks from the lake, and, having little money for recreation or entertainment, we spent countless hours in those same family activities as the kids were growing up. Now I wasn’t a wife, and I didn’t live in one of those conventional families. Who was I, and what was my family, now?

  Simple as it sounded, the only sense I could make of my seemingly involuntary attraction to Jane was that I fell in love with a spirit or soul who happened to be in female form, though I felt I would have loved whatever body Jane’s soul wrapped itself in for this lifetime. I was unaware of a “sexual inclination” towards her for the first year-plus of our friendship. But I was recognizing a deep growing love for her. The fact that she was female launched me into new realms of self-study and analysis. Had I secretly been attracted to girls and women most of my life, but just too socially inhibited to admit it?

  I had talked with lesbian women who said they knew they were different from other little girls by as early as age three or four. Other women who called themselves lesbian had no recollection of early childhood differences from other girls, but by adolescence, they felt very alone and “out of it,” simply because they weren’t interested in boys. They weren’t interested in girls, either.

  The women who described these situations generally reported that they didn’t recognize an attraction to females until someplace between their late teens and twenties. Once the same-sex attraction was acknowledged, however, even though they might have experimented sexually with males, they figured out that deep down, it was women—plural—who titillated their hearts. Neither of these descriptions seemed to fit me.

  I had only talked with a couple of bisexual men and women, and they described simultaneous sexual attraction for both men and women. Neither had leanings toward one gender or the other, and sexual relations with both were equally enjoyed. If they had longer-term relationships with individuals, it was usually out of convenience, and because they got along well—but gender was irrelevant. Up to this time for me, gender had been everything, so I didn’t feel that description fit, either.

  For the time being, I decided that it wasn’t helpful to me to put any labels on who I was, other than a woman and a mother—a mother who now happened to love and cherish another woman. And I continued trying to deal with society’s definition of me because I had no choice in the matter.

  Can You Understand?

  By the time Jane and I had been together a year, it was more clear that, though Jane’s family considered her relationship with me to be an abomination, they were reacting first and foremost to her separation from Charles and the separation from the children, a separation which they enforced. In some ways, this was understandable. Jane had been one of those women caught in the warp of social expectations for women of that period, and she fulfilled them to the letter.

  Somehow, I had escaped that pathway—perhaps due to my being the third daughter, rather than the first, and having critically observed my mother’s and aunts’ thankless lives of service to their families. Whatever the factors, I was reading and touting the message of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique in my college years, and I knew I could never live a life that relegated me to some variation of servant status. So I clearly understood the need for women to break out of that existence after years of buying into it because they’d been robbed of their selfhood.

  I desperately wanted to help Jane bridge the chasm between herself and her family’s expectations. I felt if the family could just understand the big picture—the dynamics and consequences of women living lives without personal meaning—perhaps they might be more understanding of Jane. The following is a letter I wrote to the Weisses, but never finished or mailed—probably because their willingness to reconcile with Jane grew more and more hopeless to me as time wore on. But I believe it holds essential truths, both about women during Jane’s formative years and about Jane in particular.

  February 10, 1983

  Dear Family,

  I’ve now lived with your Jane nearly eleven months, and have learned much about her and all of you in that period of time. I don’t need to sing Jane’s praises to you—you know her as a wife and mother, and you know how loving, caring, giving, and competent she is. You also know that she tirelessly devoted herself and all her energies to all of you and to your home. You were happy, and you thrived in that environment. You never gave much thought to how the person felt who was meeting your needs, nor to what her needs might have been. She didn’t give thought to those things, either. She had been carefully taught what wives and mothers are supposed to do—and she was a star performer.

  There are books written about your Jane—Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique was on the bestseller list in the early sixties, just when Jane was setting out to prove her competence as super-wife and mother. And in the late seventies, another book—this time a novel, The Women’s Room—chronicled the lives of four or five suburban women who tried to live the patterns they’d been taught, the only ones they knew.

  As the women in The Women’s Room demonstrate, and as Friedan asserts, this lifestyle of tireless giving and unselfish devotion to others can’t succeed in the long run. It can’t succeed because it doesn’t treat women as human beings with wants and needs of their own. It treats them as mindless, selfless conveniences of others. It doesn’t teach or allow for “straight” communication—of openly communicating one’s thoughts, wishes, needs, joys, hurts, etc.—because these things aren’t important when one’s major mission in life is to serve others.

  This lifestyle with all its myths was blown out of the water in the late sixties and early seventies when psychologists, family sociologists, marriage counselors, and even clergymen began to validate women’s movement’s descriptions of it as being inhumane, degrading, and demoralizing to women. But most wives and mothers at that time continued their patterns, because they didn’t know any other way. Additionally, they weren’t skilled at communicating their needs, nor at getting the skills and information they needed to change.

  Eventually, however, doors began to open. Women’s support groups sprang up like weeds. Personal growth seminars flourished. Colleges and universities began appealing to women to earn their college degrees in evening classes or Saturday school. Women’s assertiveness training couldn’t be scheduled often enough to meet the demand. Equal pay for equal work placed a value on women at least in law, and a few successfully fought court battles made it a reality. And on, and on.

  What happened to your Jane in the midst of all that? She was not unaffected. And after exhausting all the upholstery, sewing, landscaping, interior decorating, tole painting, and other such classes available, serving on the various parent committees that schools requested, decorating every nook and cranny of your home—inside and out—and unconsciously searching always for the personal transformation that would lead to greater fulfillment—after all that and more, she finally made the big leap to full-time student at the university. And there began her real awakening.

  I know you need to believe that I and others at Methodist were responsible for Jane’s dissatisfaction with her lifestyle, and ultimately for her departure from it. First and most importantly, one can know Jane only a short while to know she would not be influenced by such transparent manipulation. She’s fully competent and capable of making wise decisions, and it is disrespectful to suggest otherwise.

  Next, one of her professors at the university told her last fall that, “You were banging at the bars of your cage four years ago. I’m
not surprised you’ve sought marital freedom.” Another neighbor from Eagan told her that, “I never knew how you kept all that up as long as you did.” While other friends simply marveled at a sixteen-hour-a-day schedule, which was fully devoted to family and home with little to self.

  What I’m getting at is that the lifestyle all of you lived and she allowed was as unhealthy to Jane (and all of you, for that matter) as it was for millions of women caught in those times and patterns of society. And she knew it long before she came to Methodist. She even tried articulating it to you on several occasions, but somehow wasn’t successful. At the university and at Methodist, the feelings she was having were heard and validated, just as they were for many women everywhere. And that gave her confidence to begin searching for options to find herself.

  I don’t remember what else I intended to say in this letter, nor do I know why I kept it. I probably hoped that someday Jane’s family would be open to a dialogue around these issues. Maybe, just maybe …

  Chapter 11 - Life Unraveled

  Jane

  Sometime towards the end of that first year in our apartment, Bonnie and I felt secure enough in our relationship to dare to dream about a future together. To symbolize that dream and our specific hopes, we cut out from a magazine and pasted on our bathroom mirror a red BMW convertible and a beautiful log cabin. We believed that if we could clearly visualize these goals, we would manifest them, even though we were barely covering our expenses at the time. Although I hadn’t considered where we would live in between living in our apartment and achieving our new log cabin, I wasn’t prepared for Bonnie’s plan for us to move back to her former home on York Avenue.

  She occasionally told me she had mentioned to Brian that she would trade places if he felt he couldn’t manage the household any longer, meaning he would move to an apartment, and we’d move into their family home. We were both concerned about the amount of time her children spent alone. Brian spent hours training for running marathons, and he was often out evenings, dating Marilyn, the woman he met shortly after Bonnie and he separated

  Once David, who had primary babysitting responsibilities, left home for the Army, Edward, thirteen, and Moria, twelve, were left to manage each other and little Erin, four. Maybe I didn’t take seriously Bonnie’s discussions with Brian because I couldn’t imagine Charles agreeing to give up his stranglehold on our children, nor could I foresee Brian venturing from the security of his home. But the day came when Brian said he was ready to move out and turn over the homestead to Bonnie.

  Our apartment was a sanctuary to me, a place where our souls entered a holy of holies, deepening our life experiences and bonding us together in communion with God through each other. Within that spiritual union, we both sensed the emergence of a third loving entity, an energy that would go forth healing others. The apartment place circumscribed our relationship, its walls creating a boundary around us, so that we could thoughtfully determine who we would let into its sanctity. There, I understood who we were to each other. We lived in our little apartment by Lake Harriet for eighteen months.

  In September of 1983 I reluctantly agreed to leave. I was frightened of this move’s potential impact. How would my children receive the news that I was moving in with Bonnie’s children? Would Marie and Andrew, who were still at home, think I’d be mothering Bonnie’s kids, when I should be in their home mothering them? Would they consider moving in with us? How would Bonnie’s children feel about my taking Brian’s place in their parent’s room? How would I feel moving into the seat of Bonnie and Brian’s relationship—the place where Bonnie had conceived Erin, where they had brought newly adopted David and Moria, where Edward had learned to ride a bike? What would Bonnie’s reaction be to those memories? Who would we be to each other in this place that was “theirs”? How could there be any space there for my children or me? My soul grieved at what was happening to us—all of us.

  But what choice did Bonnie have? Brian desperately needed a change, and her children couldn’t all move in full-time with us. The apartment was too small. Little had changed in my relationship with my children, so where Bonnie and I lived didn’t need to accommodate them yet. Moving to York Avenue seemed like the rational, right thing to do.

  Like an eclipse slowly coming into position and overshadowing the light of the sun, the dark hour arrived for us to begin the move to York Avenue. We spent the morning quietly loading a sixteen-foot Ryder truck with all of our belongings. When we arrived at Bonnie’s home, Brian had moved his possessions out onto the front lawn. After he and the children helped us unload our things into the house, we all helped him move his into the same truck. I imagined that the neighbors were having tabloid-like thoughts, watching all the comings and goings at this residence.

  I can’t recall how Bonnie’s children responded to our moving in. But it seemed as if Bonnie and I quickly settled into managing an accelerated schedule of meals, housecleaning, transportation, and keeping up with three active children. My grief around leaving our first “place to be” was overridden by the demands of our new life. I don’t remember how I explained this move to my children, or if at the time they even commented on it. This was yet another instance where my lifelong pattern of disappearing emotionally when I became terrified precluded any meaningful support I could have given them.

  But several months after we moved in, Andrew, now sixteen, came to the York house and tearfully pleaded with me to come home. Andrew’s appeal was the first time any of my children had asked me to come back home. Sitting alone in our master bedroom, he unfolded his story of what life was now like for Marie and him.

  Although I was elated that he still wanted me to be at home, I was deeply distressed—not only about what he shared, but at my hopelessness in finding a viable solution to improve their situation. We both cried and held each other after he finished. Placing my hands on both his shoulders and looking into his precious blue eyes, I explained to Andrew I was now clear that his dad and I would not be able to live together again. And his dad was equally clear that he had no intentions to move elsewhere so that Bonnie and I could move into the Eagan house. Nor would he allow Andrew or Marie to live with Bonnie and me anyplace else.

  I asked if I could share his concerns with his father, since he hadn’t. I told him that I knew his father loved him but must be feeling overwhelmed, and might need some help. And that as his dad learned about his concerns, I believed he would try to make changes. Andrew agreed, but wanted me to wait for a while to communicate with Charles.

  I prepared a letter for his father, which explained the reasons Andrew didn’t feel cared for, that he felt Charles had been overly harsh and impatient with Marie, that Andrew was really distraught about not having enough money for the things he needed, and that he was feeling very hopeless. But I didn’t send the letter, and I can’t remember the exact reason. It may have been at Andrew’s request. He may well have been concerned that my speaking on his behalf would worsen his and Marie’s living conditions. Perhaps it was enough to have spoken his fears out loud, so that he didn’t need me to take action. Better yet, he may have approached his father himself. He never spoke to me about this incident again.

  Andrew would have felt differently about the quality of their life if Charles had permitted me to have an active parenting role. But with no support from my extended family, the church, or Charles to help Andrew and me redefine how we could be “family,” Andrew was left with no recourse but to feel cheated out of his comfortable family life—a life his friends had, and that he had lost.

  I defaulted to a familiar, unhealthy coping pattern, and submerged my feelings by burying myself in the York house. The 1928 craftsman bungalow needed major cleaning and clearing out, as years of accumulations crowded every storage space and nearly the entire basement from floor to ceiling. Bonnie was amazed at how the house had deteriorated, and attributed it to Brian’s emotional state during the year and a half since she left. We sifted, sorted, and tossed out two truckloads full of
“stuff,” and still had enough salable items left to make over five hundred dollars in a garage sale.

  After clearing out the home’s interior and adding some paint, wallpaper, a few new pieces of furniture, plants, replacement light fixtures, art, pillows, and other accessories, we turned our attention to the exterior and redesigned the foundation and backyard landscape, removing old rangy shrubs and replacing them with healthy new plantings. Within our first six months at York, we had made the house more livable and lovely. We were now able to direct our attention to other pressing matters; that is, obtaining divorces from our respective spouses.

  Dissolution Process

  Although after nearly two years Bonnie and I knew we could and wanted to be together long-term, neither of us were ready for the finality of divorce, nor were we eager to enter into the emotional and financial quagmire of the divorce process. For Bonnie, it was financially advantageous to remain legally married because she and Brian still filed joint tax returns. They had a workable structure for sharing the children, so there were no issues around custody that needed legal attention. For me, the prospect of going head to head with Charles around legally dividing the family’s assets was formidable, so I chose to avoid it. I was also afraid that Charles might claim my lesbianism made me an unfit mother—a decree that was still occurring in some courts of law—so that I would have no legal rights regarding my children’s care or visitation.