Lesbian Ex-Lovers

The Really Long-Term Relationships

Esther D Rothblum, Jacqueline Weinstock

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317953579
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sozialwissenschaften
• Subtopic: Feminismus & feministische Theorie

We have earned a certain place in each other's lives, and in the best of times we can rest on what we have made together. Lesbian Ex-Lovers: The Really Long-Term Relationships examines the need for the development of better understanding and more critical analysis of lesbian ex-lover relationships. This eye-opening look into the minds and hearts of women offers personal insight into the possibilities for and potential pitfalls of lesbian ex-lover relations. This book contains personal stories, fictional accounts, poetry, and theoretical analyses of the frequency and significance of ex-lovers at different stages in a relationship. Topics of interest in Lesbian Ex-Lovers include:

• the roles ex-lovers play in our lives
• ex-lovers as contexts for change and development
• how we continue to be influenced by ex-lovers
• letting go and moving on
• ex-lovers as current friends and family
• themes of betrayal and loss of faith
• reconstructing friendships and community
• the mystique of the ex-lover
• friend/family connections among lesbian ex-lovers

Rather than totally scrap a relationship, we recycle itfrom lover to ex-lover to friend in a relatively short half-life. Lesbian Ex-Lovers is the only book in print that explores how a lesbian's ex-lovers impact her subsequent romances and lifestyle. This special collection adds a new dynamic to the current literature for and about the lesbian community. Lesbian Ex-Lovers offers advice, anecdotes, and interpretations from such authors, poetesses, and artists as:

• Michelle Gibson, PhDeducator and editor of Femme/Butch: New Considerations of the Way We Want to Go who says goodbye to her lover in a sad, passionate elegy
• Marny HallPsychotherapist, editor of the anthology Sexualities, and author of several books, including The Lavender Couch: A Consumer's Guide to Psychotherapy for Lesbians and Gay Men who muses on the unique bonding between lesbians and their ex-lovers, lending a mystique that surrounds the lesbian lifestyle
• Alison Bechdelcreator of the comic strip Dykes to Watch Out Forwho presents a humorous comic strip thanking her former lovers for teaching her about herself
• Jane Futchernewspaper reporter and author of three novelswho uses a chapter in her novel to illustrate the tensions that can occur when ex-lovers choose to remain friends, especially when those bonds provoke jealousy in both current and ex-lovers
• Renny Christophereducator and award-winning poetesswho expresses her love, loss, and regret in three poems about her ex-lover
• and much more!

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Editors Page
• Contents
• INTRODUCTION
• Lesbian Ex-Lover Relationships: Under-Estimated, Under-Theorized and Under-Valued?
• “THE CHANGER AND THE CHANGED”: EX-LOVERS AS CONTEXTS FOR DEVELOPMENT
• To All the Girls I Left Before
• Tenth Anniversary
• Coming Out of My Closet
• In My Dream: My Ex-Lovers’ Unconventional Convention
• These Most Difficult Tasks
• Passion
• MOVING COSTS: CHALLENGES OF (RE)DEFINING OUR RELATIONSHIPS AND DEALING WITH UNFINISHED BUSINESS
• Still the One
• Loading Up the U-Haul: Traveling the Spaces Between Friends and Lovers
• Daring to Take the Risk
• Family Affairs
• Highly Favored Ex
• For Emily, Many Years Too Late/Years Later, in Another City, I Still Think of Her
• TOO MUCH TSORAS? THE HIGH COSTS OF MAINTAINING TIES
• Truth, Dreams and the Li(v)es Between
• Temporary Temptation
• Lost Love
• Neurotic Love Letters
• Goodbye Note to My Lover
• Leaving Liza
• Lesbian Ex-Lovers by the Numbers: A Reflective but Not Contemplative Love Poem of Sorts
• NOT LOVERS BUT NOT “JUST FRIENDS”: RECONSTRUCTING FAMILIES, FRIENDSHIPS, AND COMMUNITIES
• PERSONAL STORIES
• I’m Not Lisa
• The House on Transcript Avenue
• The Politics of Potlucks
• Family Doggerel
• The Visit
• Irritating and Constricting/Elating and Elastic–Being “Ex” as a Lesbian
• THEORETICAL REFLECTIONS
• Consummated Friends and Ex-Wives: Two Types of Lesbian Ex-Lovers
• When Three’s a Crowd: Ex-Lovers and Lesbian Families in 2 Girls in Love
• Making the Transition: Understanding the Longevity of Lesbian Relationships
• Lesbian FLEX-ibility: Friend and/or Family Connections Among Lesbian Ex-Lovers
• AFTERWORD
• The Migration of the Mythic Lesbian
• Index