This volume offers more than 20 interdisciplinary and intersectional essays to break the silence around LGBTQ divorce and relationship dissolution, covering the interplay of social stigma, economic status, gender identity, legal recognition, immigration status, child custody, and other factors on LGBTQ people and their families as relationships end. It looks at not only break-ups of legal marriages, but also those of non-married couples, polyamorous people, and families with more than two parents.
Goldberg and Romero note in their introduction that “Discourse on divorce and dissolution among LGBTQ people … was and remains almost nonexistent” despite, or perhaps because of, the heroic efforts to achieve marriage equality. And Katherine Allen, professor of human development and family science at Virginia Tech, observes in her essay, “Same-sex couples may have constructed a reality around being perfect, or normal, or just like everyone else. They may be unprepared for when that image shatters.”
When the first same-sex couple to marry legally in the United States, Hillary and Julie Goodridge, was feeling stressed from public attention, they didn’t want to seek couples’ counseling. Julie told NPR, “It felt like too much of a risk.” They divorced a few years later. Their daughter Annie, who was 10 at the time, said in retrospect, “I felt like our family let everyone down.” Their situation highlights a long-time problem for the LGBTQ community and other marginalized groups: the pressure to be perfect. This pressure can impact our children as well. Aaron Dickinson Sachs, the grown child of same-sex parents, writes in LGBTQ Divorce and Relationship Dissolution, “Like members of many groups battling negative social perceptions, I felt unable to discuss the difficulty of my parents’ separation, fearing it would ultimately validate anti-LGBTQ rhetoric.”
Furthermore, it isn’t just parental break-ups that can stress our kids, but also the ongoing pressure to be high-achieving, fault-free testaments to LGBTQ parenting. Any problems, from academic difficulties to substance abuse, may be hidden or ignored. As Abigail Garner explained in her 2004 book Families Like Mine
The volume seeks to change that. While it is aimed at scholars, therapists, lawyers, and other professionals working with LGBTQ clients, much will also be of interest to anyone who has been involved in the fight for LGBTQ relationship recognition and doesn’t mind some (generally accessible) academic lingo.
