What is amatonormativity?

Amatonormativity is a long word which philosopher Elizabeth Brake came up with. It means that, in our culture, it’s seen as normal for people to want romantic love, and to prioritise that kind of love over other kinds. Other kinds of love include things like the love we have in friendships, family relationships, work and play relationships, and relationships with ourselves and with companion animals, our communities, the world around us, and our spiritual beliefs.  ‘Amato’ means romantic love and ‘normativity’ means what’s seen as culturally normal.

Amatonormativity is linked to several other kinds of ‘normativity’: heteronormativity (where it’s seen as normal to want relationships with someone of the ‘opposite gender’), cisnormativity (where it’s seen as normal to be one of only two genders – male and female – and to stay in that gender all your life),  mononormativity (where it’s seen as normal to only love one person and to want a monogamous relationship with them), and sexual normativity (where it’s seen as normal to want to have sex, generally only with the person you’re in a romantic relationship with).

To make it simpler we could say that the overall ‘norm’ is to be in one gender yourself, to fall in love with someone of the ‘opposite’ gender (perhaps after dating a bit), and to form a monogamous relationship with them where you have sex and get more and more committed over time (the relationship escalator): getting married, having a family, and trying to stay together for life.

What are the different ways it affects everyone in society?

Amatonormativity affects everyone: the people who don’t fit into it and the people who do. 

The people who don’t fit into amatonormativity include people who are single or solo, people who are aromantic so don’t experience romantic love, people who prioritise other kinds of relationships in their lives, and people who prioritise many relationships rather than just one – like polyamorous people and relationship anarchists. Other people who don’t fit into amatonormativity are people from cultures where marriage and other committed relationships aren’t based on romantic love, which is actually people in many cultures around the world.

Some people don’t fit amatonormativity because they’ve realised it doesn’t work for them. It’s hard for them because the world around them assumes they will want romantic love and may discriminate against them or make them feel weird or isolated for being ‘different’. 

The people who do fit amatonormativity often have a hard time too. Because there’s so much cultural pressure – and pressure from friends and family and peers – to want romantic love and to focus on it obsessively, people often miss out on other great things in life like friendships and projects and community.

Also the huge pressure on a romantic partner to be ‘everything’ to you and ‘complete’ you and be your soul mate who meets all your needs means that most romantic love relationships often don’t work out long term. It’s just too much pressure to be someone’s best friend, and their lover, and the person they live with and have kids with, and their cheerleader, and the person who looks after them when they’re sick or struggling.

People can end up staying in really unhappy relationships because they’re scared to be alone in an amatonormative world, and they can end up breaking up with one person after another and getting really hurt by that because they’re so busy searching for someone perfect.

Is there anyone it particularly affects? 

Amatonormativity particularly affects those of us who are trying to do relationships differently because we’ve realised some of the problems with basing relationships on romantic love. While we might try to prioritise the other relationships in our lives, we may still find that our friends prioritise their romantic relationships and drift off as soon as they have a partner, or spend more time on dating than on friendships. Or they might find it weird to talk with us about how we might make commitments in our friendships.

Amatonormativity also affects people with trauma in their backgrounds – which is many of us. Romantic love can be quite risky when we have childhood trauma because it’s very easy to jump into relationships quickly and to try to get the kind of love there which we were missing – or lost – as a kid. Again that’s a lot of pressure to put on one relationship, and we can often end up getting hurt because painful patterns come up in intense romantic relationships and we can become very dependent on them.

Some neurodiverse people can struggle with amatonormativity because romantic love type relationships don’t give us the space we might need, enough solo time, or can just be too intense for us.

Finally, some people would say that amatonormativity – with its focus on one romantic relationship – isn’t so good for disabled people, or people with physical and mental health conditions, or even for parents, where being an isolated unit of just two people can be a lot of pressure. Perhaps community-based models and extended family structures where there are networks of people looking out for each other can work better when we need care and support.

Focusing on young people specifically, what expectations does it set and how might it harm them? 

For young people amatonormativity can mean that a lot of your focus goes on love relationships, particularly for girls who are still taught in stories and movies and magazines that love is their big adventure in life. When that message is all around you it can seem to make sense to spend a lot of your time longing for love, talking about the people you fancy, dating or hooking up. That can feel like the most fun and pleasurable thing in life. But what would it be like if we lived in a world where mates were seen as just as important as dates, where we were taught how to enjoy our relationship with ourselves rather than being so hard on ourselves all the time, or where we were expected to get just as excited about the things we’re passionate about as we do about the people we’re into?

If you’re a young person who doesn’t fit into amatonormativity there can be so much pressure to do so. You can end up being bullied for being weird and different if you don’t talk about who you fancy or get off with people, and you can end up feeling like an outsider or like there’s something wrong with you if romantic love isn’t something you’re interested in, or if it doesn’t seem to happen for you.

That’s why the idea of amatonormativity is really helpful. It reminds us that prioritising romantic love isn’t really the normal, natural, right thing to do. It’s just one thing we can do, and it might not even be a very good idea for all the reasons we’ve talked about.

Online communities can be a lot of help for finding other people who do things differently, and it can be good to see a counsellor if anyone is giving you a hard time. Website like BishUK and Scarleteen both have great advice for young people about relationship diversity.

Do you think there are structural things that favour couples, or privileges that come with being in a romantic relationship/marriage that are related to amatonormativity? 

One of the reasons it’s so hard to be outside amatonormativity, or to resist it if it doesn’t work for us, is because the whole of society is set up like it’s the One True Way to be. People who get married are given lots of legal and financial and health support that people who are in other kinds of relationships don’t get. It’s often much easier to get a house together if you are a romantic couple than if you’re in another kind of relationship with one or more other people. People who have kids together are often not recognised as valid parents unless they’re romantic partners.

Outside of these practical problems, cultural messages are So Strong that we should want romantic love and settle down with a romantic partner. It’s literally the ‘happy ever after’ of most fairy tales, movies, and novels. It’s also the focus of loads of magazines, soap operas, and reality TV shows like Love Island or Love is Blind. This means most people just accept amatonormativity and everyone from our mates to our families are probably assuming we’ll want romantic love and are pressuring us to date, especially around events like proms and weddings, or at times like Valentine’s Day and holiday seasons.

‘Couple privilege’ is a phrase for the many ways in which it’s easier to be in our society as a couple than it is as somebody single or in another kind of relationship. Couples never have to explain why they want to be together or stay together, whereas people who are single are always asked to explain themselves, as are people who leave romantic relationships, or who decide to prioritise other kinds of relationships.

Do you think society is changing in terms of amatonormativity?

I hope so. In 2012 my book Rewriting the Rules came out, which suggested that we could question the love rules that prioritise romantic love over other kinds of love. Eight years on we now have a word for this: amatonormativity, and people are having these kinds of conversations more widely. There are also more and more words and communities for people who want to do things differently like solo poly people, self-partnered people, relationship anarchists, aromantic people, etc. Popular TV shows like Modern Love have started to portray lots of different kinds of love rather than just romantic love.

However, at the same time, the mainstream media seems increasingly obsessed with people at a young age finding The One and getting married to them. Look at all the massively popular reality TV shows where winning is based on falling in love and making that commitment.

It’s a bit like what’s happening with sex and gender. At the same time that we have asexual communities questioning why there is so much pressure to be sexual, we also have more and more cultural obsession with having ‘great sex’ and ‘experts’ insisting that it’s vital to have sex. At the same time that we have non-binary people questioning why people are divided into men and women, there’s also a lot of cultural pressure to be a manly man and or a girly girl and ‘experts’ insisting that gender is binary.

What can we do to be less amatonormative or how do we get rid of amatonormativity?

It is So Hard to step outside of culture so go gently with yourself. If you see the problems with amatonormativity then it’s a great idea to be part of communities of other people who feel similarly in order to get support. Finding online and offline communities of other people who want to do relationships the way you do is a great plan. You might also read some of the books and zines out there which question amatonormativity and offer alternatives. I hope my book Rewriting the Rules is a pretty good place to start, and me and Justin Hancock (from Bish UK) have a podcast where we talk about these things A Lot.

For me one of the answers to how to do things differently has been to slow down all relationships. These days I tell everyone that I want to be friends first. In fact I aim to have a friendship for at least a year before I consider adding anything to it (whether that is sex or romantic love or working together or living together). New Relationship Energy or ‘falling in love’ is a major feature of amatonormativity and I think it’s a great idea to slow that right down, because it generally isn’t a great basis to build a whole relationship on.

Do you also happen to know if any cultures across the world are not amatonormative?

Actually all cultures around the world do love differently. More cultures are some form of non-monogamous than are monogamous, and many cultures base marriage or committed relationships on some kind of family and/or financial arrangement, or on choosing a good fit, rather than on romantic love (although that can develop over time in such relationships). If we don’t want to impose one view on the rest of the world – as we have in the past – we need to get on board with relationship diversity.

Patreon link: If you liked this, feel free to support my Patreon, it will certainly help this self-employed person to maintain some income during these uncertain times.

Plural tag: This post was primarily written by Fox.

The post All about amatonormativity: the privileging of romantic love appeared first on Rewriting The Rules.

It’s particularly good to be included on a list with other authors who I enjoy and respect such as Esther Perel and Polly Young-Eisendrath. Esther’s work offers similar critiques to mine of the common assumption that we can get all of our needs met in one relationship: particularly the need for hot passionate love and the need for warm companionate love. Like me Polly weaves together ideas and practices from western psychotherapy and from Buddhist philosophy.

It’s also great to see the inclusion of books like mine on this list which offer alternatives to normative culturally accepted ways of doing relationships. I’m now keen to get hold of Clare Chambers‘s Against Marriage: An Egalitarian Defence of the Marriage-Free State, which looks like it reflects on some similar issues to my book, but from the perspective of what levelling out hierarchies of love might look like on a societal level than an interpersonal one.

Thanks again for including me

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For me the choice of who to pick was an easy one. S. Bear Bergman is an inspiration to me as a gender warrior and as a writer, but more than either of those things, as a person who values – and embodies – kindness in their life and work.

The Queer Bible invited me to write a personal piece about what Bear means to me, so I wrote about kindness, and about writing and gender, and about how the relationship between writer and reader can be another kind of vital relationship which challenges conventional ways of understanding and valuing relationships (a theme that both Bear and I both write about).

On a grey London day in March 2014 I took my seat in a small theatre above a pub to see S. Bear Bergman talk. I wasn’t familiar with Bear’s work: a partner had invited me along. I was accepting every social invitation I received at the time because I’d just relocated to London and knew that I had to start the long, slow work of building up some kind of friendship network. I was coming out of several years of self-imposed isolation following a tough experience of media shaming and the collapse of relationships and community that followed. I’d just gone through yet another painful break-up. Things with my family were strained. I didn’t have many close people at all.

Bear was reading from his new essay collection. Like all of his books this includes stories which are funny, thought-provoking, poignant, and frequently all three together. This time, following the birth of his son Stanley, the focus was on relationships with family of all kinds – biological and logical – including people – as he puts it – who share bonds of blood, of marriage, of wine, and of glitter. Read more…

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Here’s one on love myths.

How do we, in general, conceive relationships today? How strong are the ‘love myths’?

Love myths do still seem to be strong. A range of relationship styles are practised across the world (many cultures being polygamous or having relationships based on things other than romantic love). Despite this, the western ideal tends to be finding ‘The One’ perfect partner and remaining with them for life with the expectation that the relationship will generally provide happiness and fulfill all of each persons’ needs. We know that this model is common because very few other models are ever considered in mainstream media (magazines, movies, TV programmes, etc.) and psychologists like Bjarne M. Holmes have found that many people to follow those love myths. Interestingly he has also found that believing strongly in such myths often means people having worse, rather than better, relationships.

Psychologist Terri Conley and her colleagues have found that people generally think that a life-long monogamous relationships is beneficial for a couple’s sex life, happiness and well-being, and for any children they have. However, there is evidence which challenges all of these beliefs and suggests that forms of consensual non-monogamy (such as polyamory and open relationships) can be just as beneficial. It seems from such research that around 4-5% of people in the US engage in some form of consensual non-monogamy.

What do we actually know about the reality of relationships today?

The statistics suggest that up to 50 or 60% of monogamous people have at least one affair or infidelity. However, it is notoriously difficult to get exact numbers on this because people are often reluctant to open up about it even on an anonymous questionnaire. This tells us that even within supposedly monogamous relationships, non-consensual non-monogamy is actually norm.

Also, we know that people often think that they share understandings of what monogamy means in their relationships, but that frequently they eventually find out that they differ (and that can often cause a crisis). For example, it is very common for one person to think that looking at pornography or having cybersex, is okay, whilst the other person disagrees, or for there to be disagreements around remaining friends with ex partners.

When did this idea of marriage as an institution, based on love only, start to exist and why?

Indeed the western love ideals are very new. Historian Stephanie Coontz suggests that they date back only to around the 1950s and the invention of the nuclear family. Before this, marriages were frequently entered into for factors to do with family, money, work, childcare, etc. rather than for romantic love (although that doesn’t mean that romantic love was never involved).

Also our idea of what you should get from a romantic partner has altered over time such that there is a lot more pressure on partners to be ‘everything’ to each other as communities and religion have dwindled, and worklives have become more precarious. Partners are often expected to provide belonging, excitement, validation, security, and to help us meet our goals in life.

Paradoxically, this pressure makes it less, rather than more, likely that people will stay together, as it is often impossible for people to match up to the huge, and often contradictory, expectations upon them. For example, Esther Perel writes about how difficult it is for relationships to provide warmth and stability at the same time as passion and excitement.

What is the most contradictory rules of love, as you see it?

I think that so many of them are contradictory. For example the pressure to be highly monogamous and to get all our needs met by one person often makes it more likely that people will be tempted elsewhere. The pressure to be happy at all times with each other makes it more likely that people will conflict. The pressure to have ‘great sex’ makes it less likely that we will relax and enjoy sex with a partner. The pressure to stay together forever makes it more likely that we will break up!

The answer, as I see it, is to open up these rules of love to exploration and to really think about which are useful to us, which we don’t need, and which might even be damaging.

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My immediate reaction was to feel angry that this – otherwise excellent – charity was using guilt tactics to frighten people into action. I also disliked the implication that other people might have so much power over what somebody chooses to do with their own body.

However, I had to reflect that – when it comes to mental rather than physical health – I have used a somewhat similar argument myself. I am a great believer that we all need to build some form of self-care into our lives in order to be in an okay place emotionally and psychologically. It is when I don’t have a moment to myself that I get overwhelmed when stressful things happen, respond badly to conflict, or make mistakes at work. Similarly, clients who I work with in therapy are often constantly engaged with work, family and friends. When I encourage them to build in time for a ‘daily kindness’ to themselves, or for quiet reflection, the major block that they frequently come up against is all their obligations to other people in their lives. They don’t want to let down their managers and colleagues, their partners and parents.

For many of us the argument that we will feel better if we look after ourselves doesn’t get very far because we see self-care as being self-centred or as spoiling ourselves. When we’re depressed we don’t feel that we deserve this. Or perhaps it doesn’t fit the self-sacrificing image that we want to have of ourselves.

However, the realisation that we will be better for the other people in our lives is often the thing that helps us to make that first small shift towards building in some time for self-care. For example, we might notice that a small amount of self-care can leave us less exhausted, more able to hear other people, and better able to manage extra pressures. We might also see that we are a better role-model for others in our lives if we demonstrate that we are able to say ‘no’ to things or to prioritise looking after ourselves.

So how is this different to the Diabetes UK argument that people should take steps towards better physical health in order to be in a better place for their loved ones? I think it comes down to the complex tension that we all face that we are, at the same time, independent individuals, and unavoidably involved in interdependent relationships with the other people in our lives. There are a few elements of this that I want to tease out here, but I don’t think there are any easy answers. Rather I hope that this blog post might be a starting point for people who want to talk about such matters, and that it will set out some of the territory in a way that is helpful.

Guilt doesn’t work

The main difference that I can see between the Diabetes UK campaign and the conversations that I have with clients (and with myself!) is the direction of travel. With clients I encourage them to explore the implications – for themselves and for others – of the ways in which they are currently living their lives. I might suggest that they experiment – for example with building in a daily kindness or a little time to themselves into the day – and report back on what the experience is like, including what was difficult about it. I’d certainly explore what kinds of self-care they had found helpful – and not – in the past, and what it meant to them. And I would be open to the likelihood that this person would be different to me in terms of what counted as ‘self-care’ anyway, and how they experienced it.

What I’m saying is that it would be a collaborative conversation, and the client would be the expert on what works for them – not me. This is in contrast to campaigns that suggest that you are being bad for your loved ones. The implication of such campaigns seems to be that it is a relatively simple matter to get tested and to make the necessary lifestyle changes, and that recognising that we might be bad for our family is enough to make such changes happen.

These tactics are dangerous. Back in the 1980s scare tactics were frequently used in the ‘safe sex’ campaigns around condoms and HIV. As this Sigma report points out, the risk of using fear in this way is that people will come to associate condoms themselves with fear (rather than HIV) and will actually be less, rather than more, likely to engage in safer sex behaviours.

I imagine that the same is the case with guilt-based campaigns. At-risk people viewing these posters are likely to already have anxiety about their health. Adding guilt to this could easily lead to them feeling overwhelmed and even more worried about finding out whether they actually have diabetes. Similarly, making any potential lifestyle changes could become associated with feelings of guilt and fear of failure: it could easily feel safer to do nothing.

Personal meanings: We’re all sensible

Vitally, guilt and fear based campaigns fail to address the personal meanings behind people’s behaviours. Most of us have a fairly good idea these days about what constitutes healthy and less healthy behaviours. So when we do something less healthy (such as failing to build self-care, or physical activity, into our lives, or having unsafe sex) there are good reasons for this. If we just nag people – telling them that they should meditate, for example, or go to the gym, or put on a condom, then we are ignoring these reasons and giving them the message that they are faulty or deficient for struggling in this area (more guilt). This is what we often do to ourselves – of course – when we beat ourselves up for not exercising more, or eating less, or taking up yoga, or whatever, without trying to really understand why this might be difficult for us.

An alternative approach would be to assume that we – and others – are sensible people, so if we are doing something that seems irrational, we need to listen and explore more in order to understand how it makes sense. Perhaps a person has learnt that the only way to feel valuable is to work as much as possible, and that doesn’t leave space for self-care or exercise. Perhaps food has become such an important way of controlling a person’s emotions that the idea of eating more, or less, would be very threatening (taking this strategy away). Maybe someone has internalised the cultural messages that it is vital to be sexy, attractive and desirable, and they are willing to put themselves in risky situations if it validates this view of themselves.

Even these are oversimplifications, and there are likely to be many things going on for all of us in our relationships with food, time alone, physical activity, work, sex, and so on.

The danger with guilt and fear-based campaigns – and when we nag, berate or criticise ourselves and our loved ones – is that we make it less, rather than more, likely that people will be able to kindly, and gently, explore these individual meanings and the very personal fears and desires behind them. Without such understanding I doubt that lasting change is possible, and a continual pattern of trying and failing will likely make things worse rather than better.

Sidebar: Physical and mental health

I realise that I’ve been writing here about physical and mental health – running together things like depression and diabetes. I think that this might be useful because the kinds of underlying behaviours that we are talking about impact on both our physical and mental health, e.g. physical activity, food, sleep, work, self-care, etc.

Also, as we’ve seen, physical and mental health are pretty inextricably linked. Our past experiences, the messages we’ve taken on board, and related feelings like guilt, worry, fear, irritation, and envy are interwoven with our physical health in many ways: from how we feel when we get sick, to our reaction to various potential ‘health behaviours’, to our immune function and likelihood of having accidents.

Of course, in all cases, there are also likely genetic factors and other physiological – and external – aspects involved that we have little or no control over. But the parts that campaigns like the diabetes one, and counsellors working with depression, are trying to address are the parts that we can do something about ourselves – in addition to any medical treatments. Also, of course, whether or not we access screenings, treatments, etc. is an aspect of that controllable part.

However, it is worth also remembering how much of our physical and mental health is out of our control. We can easily spend our whole lives having a go at our partner who smokes, and our kid who goes motorcycling, only to be the one who is struck down by totally unanticipated accident, chronic condition, or period of despair. Perhaps part of our desire to believe that we – and others – are responsible for our health comes from the existential anxiety we all have about the inevitability of sickness, suffering and death.

Useful conversations: What can we offer? What do we expect?

It seems like what I’ve concluded here is that it’s good for us to decide – ourselves – to address our physical/psychological health in whatever ways we can, but that it is definitely not so good (indeed perhaps even counterproductive) to tell somebody else that they need to do so. This is where my discomfort with the diabetes advert comes in: it is not inviting somebody into a conversation about what they would like to do with their body, rather it is telling them what to do (or else!)

However, questions then come to my mind about what we do when other people in our lives don’t address their health – in whatever way – and that does have serious implications for us.

What about the colleague whose difficulties with stress get in the way of our joint projects? Or the partner whose risky behaviours have implications for our own safety? The friend whose aggression has alienated all their other friends, leaving us the only person to pick up the pieces each time they get in trouble? Or the housemate who goes out all night and is therefore never around to help with the chores and is too tired and run down to have a conversation about it

On the one hand whatever a person does can be viewed as sensible if we are willing to really listen and try to understand. On the other hand, what do we do if the person isn’t up for listening and trying to understand themselves? Or if they’ve done so and still continue with some behaviour that feels difficult to us. Should we accept any behaviour, even if it leaves us resentful and angry? Surely that isn’t very helpful either?

A tentative suggestion here is that it might be useful to communicate about the kind of relationship that you have and how that might shift if it there is such a tension.

We tend to take for granted what it means to be a colleague, partner, friend, housemate, child, parent, sibling, etc. and what responsibilities come with that. But none of this is set in stone. It is often the assumptions that are the problem here. We might assume, for example, that if our parent became sick they would come and live with us for the rest of their lives. Then we might feel like we should be very involved in any decisions that they make about their health. However, this may not be in their plans at all, and/or there may be many other possibilities that we could explore together.

Of course we can’t always know how we will feel in the future – especially if a mental and/or physical health crisis happens – but it might be worth having some conversations about what you think you could offer to people in your life under various circumstances.

Certainly if we get married it is worth discussing what ‘in sickness and in health’ means to each person. For example, does it mean ‘in sickness and in health provided that I know you’ve done as much as you can to stay healthy’, or ‘in sickness and in health physically but I know I really can’t cope with serious mental illness because of my own history’, or ‘in sickness and in health as long as our relationship could adapt that I’d still get my needs for socialising/sex met if you got ill’, or ‘in sickness and health as long as we cultivate a good group of friends who’ll be there to support us too’.

Also, of course, these things are likely to have different meanings for each person, so it may well be that what the other person has to offer is not the same as what we could offer ourselves. It might be that one of us can promise that we’ll be great in an emotional crisis but are likely to struggle with anything involving blood, whilst the other can confess that they really struggle with sudden changes but can be very patient with long-term conditions involving gradual shifts.

And, of course, it is only in marriage that the ‘sickness and health’ discussions come up at all. Perhaps it would be a good idea to open up such conversations with other people in our lives, despite there being less obvious contexts for doing so.

I suppose that what I’m reaching for here is something that respects both our own – and the other person’s – freedom whilst recognising the ways in which we are inevitably bound together and impact on one another. I’m trying to capture the ways in which we have some control over our physical/mental health whilst recognising all of the ways in which it is out of our control. I’m seeking to respect each person’s choices – both around their own bodies and feelings – and around the limits that there might be on what they can offer.

Find out more…

Check out my zines on Self-Care, and Making Your Own Relationship User Guide.

The post Is taking care of ourselves a relationship responsibility? appeared first on Rewriting The Rules.

Me and Jen Yockney (of BCN) at No.10

Opening up

Clearly the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act does something extremely important in legally accepting that relationships between two people of the same gender are as legitimate as those between two people of different genders. Whilst civil partnerships brought us some way towards this, marriage is the way in which our society currently recognises relationship commitment, so the cultural impact of this on people who love people of the same gender cannot be underestimated.

As David Cameron rightly remarked in his Downing Street address, the potential impact of this on people’s everyday lives is immense. Whilst many lesbian, gay and bisexual people currently experience painful responses from family members when they come out, and even total exclusion from families, the message that same gender romantic relationships are as real and valuable as different gender ones may well help matters a great deal. Parents at such times often express concerns that they have lost the opportunity to see children reach the important social milestones in life such as getting married and having children, and clearly now this is not the case.

Along similar lines, the statistics on homophobic, biphobic and transphobic bullying in schools make frightening reading. As Cameron also suggested, it may well be the case that the knowledge that future relationships will be equally valued, whether they are with people of the same or different genders, will result in some decrease in this bullying culture, greater confidence on the part of teachers in challenging it, and an increase in the comfort in LGB&T people being out in schools, and in their neighbourhoods and workplaces.

When we look back over the last few decades, to the times when having same-gender attraction was regarded as a psychiatric disorder, and when it was not even allowed to be discussed in schools, this seems like a huge step forward which many LGB&T organisations could not even imagine until very recently.

Also, regarding my own particular area of activism and research – bisexuality – the Downing Street event marked an important step forward. Last year was the first year in which a bisexual organisation was invited to the number 10 LGB&T garden party (Bi Community News). This year, my own group, BiUK, was also invited along. As Jen Yockney from BCN playfully pointed out, if the number of bisexual organisations included continues to double year on year then this will be a fantastic achievement for bisexual visibility!

More seriously, there have been real issues in the past with the lack of bisexual input into UK LGB&T policy, both nationally and locally. The last couple of years have seen a major shift in this, including regular meetings between UK bisexual organisations and the Government Equalities Office, and the inclusion of BiUK on the National LGB&T partnership (of the Department of Health), and the LGBT Chief Executives’ Network.

The inclusion of bisexual groups at the Downing Street event, and the use of terms ‘equal marriage’ or ‘same-sex marriage’ in the act and by the Prime Minister, were important steps in the recognition that many bisexual people have same-gender relationships as well as lesbian and gay people. Given the previous lack of visibility of bisexual people and their relationships, and the potential knock on impact of this invisibility on their comfort with being open about their sexuality, and their mental health, this is also extremely important.

Closing down

However, there are several concerns following the same sex marriage act which need to be taken seriously. Broadly speaking these are the remaining issues facing LGB&T people which the act does not address, and the relationship and family issues which the focus on romantic/sexual relationships (whether same or different gender) does not cover.

In both areas there are legitimate concerns that the passing of this act will lead people to believe that all the work has been done and that we no longer need to fund, research, and address LGB&T issues (on the one hand) or relationship issues (on the other).

LGB&T Equality

The saddest moment for me yesterday occurred in David Cameron’s speech when he commented that Britain was now “the best place to be gay, lesbian or transgender anywhere in Europe”. UK bisexual groups have fought hard for many years for recognition that bisexuality is a vital part of the LGB&T grouping and that bisexual people face many bi-specific issues, as well as having shared experiences with lesbian gay and trans* people (and of course many people are both bi and trans*). It was hard to hear the B left out of the LGB&T by our Prime Minister.

There is a strange sense sometimes that there is only space for one more spot in the acronym (after L & G) and that bisexuality and trans* have to fight for that place. Many times T is left off by organisations which only speak for LGB people, despite the fact that there are large overlaps in the agendas of these communities, and the involvement of trans* people in the gay rights movement from its early days. Other times people assume that bisexuality is covered by ‘lesbian and gay’, and so they only need to add the T (as in yesterday’s speech and in references to ‘homophobia and transphobia‘, which miss out biphobia).

I realise that this may seem like a picky point to those who are not as immersed in bisexual politics as I am. The reason that it is important to include the B is that our culture tends to regard sexuality as an either/or thing: either you are gay or you are straight. The inclusion of bisexuality in the LGB&T acronym means recognising that some people are attracted to, and form relationships with, more than one gender. Statistics on how many people this covers range from 3% to 20% so it is a significant grouping. When the B is left out this, it perpetuates commonly held assumptions that bisexuality is somehow a questionable identity (‘just a phase’ or ‘a confusion’), or that it doesn’t exist at all. This makes everyday life tough for bisexual people, who may have to come out multiple times due to people disbelieving them. It also means that we very rarely see depictions of bisexual people in the media. And the knock on effect is that many bisexual people don’t feel confident about their identity or experience, and may not have access to any support from those around them. We know that being invisible or constantly doubted and disbelieved by those around you takes a major toll on mental health and other aspects of well-being. Perhaps a useful thought experiment is to imagine what it would be like if you had to repeatedly remind people that you were straight after they kept assuming you were gay, or if – as a gay man – you had to access services that were labelled as for ‘lesbian, bisexual and trans*’ people.

The issues around trans* inclusion in the same-sex marriage act are perhaps even more significant than those around bisexual inclusion. An amendment to the act means that married trans* people applying for a gender recognition certificate will now require the consent of their spouse in order to receive this. There is a real danger that this sends a message that being trans* is not really legitimate, and that transitioning implies a massive change in one’s relationship, which it does not for many people. Given the level of transphobia in our culture, we could really do with changes that make trans* people more confident that transitioning is a totally acceptable thing to do, and that enable the significant people in their lives to be more supportive of them in doing this (whether or not they decide to remain in the same kind of relationship together).

Finally, on this note, there is a fear amongst many LGB&T people and groups that same-sex marriage will be regarded as the end point in the journey towards LGB&T equality: that it will be assumed that now we have achieved this there is nothing else to do. People are worried that funding will be withdrawn from LGB&T organisations or that remaining issues will be dismissed. Of course there are still many problems facing LGB&T people which are not addressed by same-sex marriage (such as hate crimes, homelessness, and specific health issues facing older LGB&T people and black and minority ethic LGB&T people to name just a few). And there are the specific remaining problems of biphobia and transphobia eluded to above. Globally, of course, we are reminded that progress towards equal rights can easily be reversed, as in Russia at the moment. It was concerning that the presentations by both David Cameron and Ben Summerskill at Downing Street yesterday seemed to suggest that same-sex marriage meant that we had achieved total equality around sexuality.

Valuing relationships

My other concern about the same-sex marriage act is that, whilst it gives a strong message that same gender and other gender relationships are equally valid, it also reinforces the idea that romantic and sexual relationships are more valid than any other kind, given that these are the only kind that are legally recognised and celebrating in front of friends and family.

In his speech, Cameron outlined his view that relationship commitment is the best basis for both families and for society as a whole. I agree with him that it is important for humans to commit to each other in all kinds of ways. For example there is the commitment that parents and other people in their lives make to care for children, the commitment of adults who support other adults in their lives in all kinds of ways, and the commitment that those of us who work together make to mutual endeavors and to help each other to achieve our goals.

However, I’m not convinced that commitments between romantic/sexual partners should be regarded as the most important kind of commitment, or the only legitimate basis of families and societies. This is for two reasons: first, this kind of pressure on relationships is actually often damaging rather than helpful; and secondly, there are other kinds of relationships which may be equally valuable for both families and for society as a whole.

To take the first point, the pressures that we currently have on romantic/sexual love to provide us with all our needs and to last forever (many of which are underlined in the common marriage vows), are – I think – to a large degree responsible both for people remaining in very painful and damaging relationships, and for people having non-ambicable and even devastating break-ups. Each of these situations is not only hard on the two people involved, but also very troubling for those around them (including any children they may have as well as other family, and friends and colleagues who may be called upon to ignore the suffering of their friend or to ‘pick a side’ in a separation).

I would like to see romantic and sexual relationship bonds become more flexible such that it was acknowledged that a ‘successful’ relationship can be one which lasts a lifetime, but equally one where people recognise when it has run its course. Also it would be great if the multiple roles that people have in each others’ lives could be equally valued such that it was easier for people to remain co-parents, close cohabiting friends, or engaged in mutual work projects, for example, even if a relationship has ceased to be sexual or romantic, or if other sexual or romantic relationships have been forged.

To me this would seem to fit with some of the current government’s ideas about ‘big society’. When we are constantly focused on our romantic/sexual relationships – because we are desperate to find one, because we are totally caught up in one, or because they have become painful and hard – we are very turned in towards our internal worlds and our individual lives. If there was less pressure on such relationships, and more of a sense that all the relationships in our lives were valuable, people might find more time and energy to focus outwards on their wider communities, and to connect with diverse people in their lives rather than just those who were seen as ‘family’ or ‘like them’.

Such a perspective might, for example, involve a return to considering the potential of extended family networks where multiple adults are involved in any child-rearing or support of other adults which needs to happen. It might involve people making more flexible commitments in (all) their relationships which recognise how such relationships can – and do – change over time. Societally it might be about finding ways of celebrating all kinds of relationships (not just romantic/sexual ones), of defining success in other ways than longevity, and of reconsidering the promises that we make on formal occasions like weddings. As with many issues we’re currently facing, a good starting point for this might well be a form of relationship education which values all the relationships children currently have – and may have in the future – and considers, with them, how they might engage with these in mutual, kind, and ethical ways.

Read more:

These latter ideas are explored, in much more detail, in the commitment chapter of Rewriting the Rules. For more about bisexuality, see BiUK, BCN or The Bisexual Index.

The post Same-sex Marriage: Opening Up and Closing Down appeared first on Rewriting The Rules.

Dr. Meg Barker has been invited to a reception celebrating the passing into law of the marriage (same sex) couples act at 10 Downing Street on Wednesday 24th July.

Dr. Barker has been included because of the work of BiUK: a group who are now on the Department of Health National LGB&T partnership group as a result of The Bisexuality Report, which was published by Open University Centre for Citizenship, Identity and Governance (CCIG) last year. The act will mean that many bisexual people with same-gender partners will now be able to marry their partners just as heterosexual people and bisexual people with other-gender partners are able to do. However, the fact that civil partnerships were not extended to other gender partnerships is still a matter of concern in terms of bisexual equality. There are also remaining issues around ‘spousal veto‘: an aspect of the new law which means that trans people will need their spouses to consent to the granting of a Gender Recognition Certificate if they apply for one.

It is important not to call same-sex marriage ‘gay marriage’ because, of course, it applies to many bisexual people too. The name ‘equal marriage’ is also not accurate as there are remaining inequalities regarding trans people, and also those in openly non-monogamous relationships, who were generally excluded from the debates this time.

Dr. Barker said ‘I am delighted to have been invited to the Downing Street celebrations next week and hope to take the opportunity to raise some of these important remaining issues with the Prime Minister there.’

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The thing that I am most pleased with in the feedback so far is that most people are using words like friendly, kind, or compassionate. One person over email said that the fact that the book emphasises how tough relationships are, and how we all struggle and make mistakes, was refreshing and helpful compared to the usual ‘expert’ stance of self-help books. For me it was important to write something that could be useful and wouldn’t leave people feeling worse than when they started. That was a lot more vital than it being smart, radical, or rigorous (although I hope that it is those things to some extent as well).

I want to keep a note, here, of the points that people are picking up on that they wanted more on or didn’t think were covered so well. That way I can make sure that I explore more in those directions, and/or encourage other people to do so. So far these points have come up:

• How difficult it is to care for ourselves and take time for ourselves and how it would be useful to have a whole book on this material (covered in the self chapter). This is something I’m definitely planning, related to my other mindfulness projects.
• How difficult it can be for people with kids to find the time and energy needed to consider the rules, or their relationships, in this way, and how I don’t really address children or child-care much in the book. This is something I don’t feel qualified to write about in detail, but it would be wonderful if there was a book tackling parenting, and relationships where people have kids, in a similar way (rewriting the rules of deciding whether to have kids, how people go about it, what relationship styles are possible for child-rearing, and parenting, schooling, and child-development, perhaps).
• As Michael says, not taking into account that many people who get married see the vows as just part of the public ritual. This was a good point and could do with emphasising. It would be interesting to look into both how people do perceive the vows that they explicitly make, and also what implicit assumptions people have about what they are committing to at various stages of relationships and how those do, or don’t, map onto explicit promises. I’d be interested to hear of any research people are aware of in this area.
• How the book doesn’t deal much with affection or passion. This is something I definitely want to consider further. It would be interesting to write more directly about the different feelings involved in love from a Rewriting the Rules perspective, and also how shifting our perceptions and assumptions about love does, or doesn’t, involve emotional shifts.
• I’m also very aware of the minority cultural perspective that I’m writing from (albeit that the book is quite critical of mainstream minority culture). I was wary of dropping in ‘other culture’ examples in a tokenistic way, but equally didn’t want to suggest that the culture I was writing from was the only possible way of seeing these things. I’m very interested in reading more intersectional accounts of relationships and books which deal with these topics in a more diverse and global way.

The post Review of Rewriting the Rules appeared first on Rewriting The Rules.

The book is packed with a wealth of experiences from experts, celebrities, and mostly everyday folk who have negotiated their relationships to home in a wonderful variety of ways. I like very much the way in which Angela shies away from presenting one version of home as some kind of ‘antidote to Broken Britain’ (p.6), but rather aims to explore the meaning of home in its broadest sense, recognising that different things work for different people at different times. It seems that we need to move away from a one-size-fits-all understanding of relationships, families, and homes, and to embrace the diversity of possibilities if we are to address the various economic, social, and emotional pressures currently facing us.

Separate Togetherness

I was struck by the resonances between A Home for the Heart, and my own book on relationships Rewriting the Rules, not just in the foregrounding of diversity, but also in the theme of separateness and togetherness that recurs throughout the book. Angela began her project of exploring the home because of her own experience of realising that she and her long-term husband were struggling to live together, but didn’t want to give up their shared home. They decided to carry on living together, but much more independently, terming this ‘separate togetherness’. This was their phrase for what others have called Living Apart Together (LAT) which suggests more of a positive choice and recognition that they are still important in each others’ lives.’

In Rewriting the Rules I also found the theme of separateness and togetherness coming up again and again as I located many relationship tensions and conflicts in our desire to simultaneously follow our individual dreams and to find a sense of belonging in a relationship. It seemed that many of the people Angela interviewed in her book have addressed this tension head on and found creative ways of engaging with it. Angela interviewed me for her book particularly in relation to openly non-monogamous relationships, which is one way in which people have been renegotiating the rules of relationships and home. But there are many other ways of doing this relating to the commitments that are made, and the kinds of time and space that are shared and kept private. As Angela puts it there are people ‘deeply committed to each other, but who know themselves well enough to be wary of blending their lives too thoroughly, aware they need separateness to be able to retreat entirely from the presence, requirements, demands, delights, of a partner who is not less loved because of this’ (p.27).

The Meaning of Home: Freedom and Belonging

The part of the book that I found most fascinating was the chapter on what home means to people. It seemed particularly relevant to me because some of my own family members have recently made big decisions about the houses they live in, relating to the shared histories that these have, and their potential for enabling further family memories.

Angela initially explores home as being a place where we, as individuals, can be ‘private, authentic selves’ (p.32). I hadn’t previously make such a strong connection between home and sense of self, but this idea really got me thinking. Perhaps the home space, at its best, can be a relief from the potentially judgemental gaze of others, and our own tendencies to compare ourselves and find ourselves wanting. Wafting from empty room to empty room, vegging out in front of the TV in our pants, or dancing in our bedroom, we can let loose and enjoy freedom from worrying about what anybody else thinks of us. Angela cites Alain de Botton‘s suggestion that the daily rituals of home (washing, cooking, eating, sleeping, tending plants and pets, etc.) also connect us in a fundamental way to the rest of humanity, so home can be both something that frees us and something that connects us.

Freedom and connection also come into the ways in which we create homes. However, big or small our own space, we often fashion it to make it ours, using objects, pictures, music, as a kind of extension of ourself. Alain de Botton calls homes ‘guardians of identity’ in this way (p.44). But we also create homes together with people we share them with, forming joint decisions about furniture or paint, and investing time and energy in creating a place to reflect our relationship, our family, our friendship group, or our community. Again home is something that can reflect our freedom as part of the process of self-creation, and it is something that can express our connection with others and our part in something larger. People spoke to Angela about home as where they belonged and felt their strongest, often due to all of the stories they had built up in the place: with others and alone, happy and sad.

Hard Homes

A Home for the Heart also movingly describes several situations in which home is not a positive experience at all. I like Angela’s idea that it is important for home to be a place to dream and to expand the imagination (p.77). In situations of poverty, social marginalisation, homelessness and overcrowding, what homes there are may simply not be secure enough to enable that. Also, when people in the home are dangerous physically or emotionally, people are deprived of the peace and privacy needed to stretch themselves and their freedom, and any sense of belonging and safety in everyday ritual. Angela compellingly links these kinds of experiences to mental health, physical health, and the intellectual development of children, and questions educational approaches which call for tougher teaching, higher standards, and greater discipline when so many kids are precariously homed: one million living in conditions of overcrowding.

There are other times when homes cease to be nurturing. Like me, Angela is critical of the ‘perfect life’ model that we are presented with in consumer and celebrity culture: the idea that we could be a successful self if only we could get enough money, find the right partner, or create the perfect home. She spends some time reflecting on the ‘trading up’ model where so many people moved time and again in order to get more money, investing in the economic rather than emotional value of property. Like me, Angela cites Oliver James’s book Affluenza which speaks of a set of values that paradoxically increase our vulnerability to psychological distress (p.61). She also recognises the role of pressure to have perfect relationships (and fear of admitting they are not) in keeping people boxed up in very unhappy homes.

There is a further way in which homes can, perhaps, become hard. I’m thinking of times when we feel that homes are the only safe place to be: when everywhere outside becomes scary and we withdraw into the home and find it difficult to be anywhere else. At such times home can become suffocating – a cage which we have trapped ourselves in – rather than a valuable shelter which we can retreat into and come out stronger. I wonder if sometimes we cling to too tight an idea of home, rather than recognising that we can find moments of home-ness with other people, and out in the world, as well as within a specific four walls. Angela certainly recognises the danger of increasingly segregated, atomised forms of home where people hide in gated, guarded, locked-in worlds (p.64).

Conclusions

In Rewriting the Rules I encourage people to communicate with each other about all aspects of relationships: what they are looking for from a partner, how they like to manage conflict, what they want to commit and have committed to them, where they stand on privacy, how much they want to share, and how they feel about family, holidays, sleeping arrangements, illness, and a range of other aspects of life. Perhaps a vital element to add to this list is home. What does it mean to us, and what does it mean to the people we are considering living with? We will probably never agree on everything, but if we can understand what it means to us, and to other people, we are better prepared for the business of building and sharing a home.

You can also find out more about these themes in my book The Secrets of Enduring Love.

The post Home and Relationships appeared first on Rewriting The Rules.

In this post I will summarise a few of the key reported findings of the survey and then mention three potential problems which we need to be aware of when considering its implications.

The findings

The average rating of life satisfaction overall was 7.4 out of 10, but one in five people rated their anxiety yesterday as greater than 5 out of 10. Women reported being more satisfied than men, and 16-19 and 65-79 year olds seemed to be the happiest age groups. Black British, African and Caribbean groups scored quite a bit lower than any other ethnic groups.

People in rural areas seemed to be happier than those living in in industrial and built up places, and owning property also seemed to be related to higher satisfaction. Married and cohabiting people reported more satisfaction than single people (including widowed and divorced people). Good health seemed to be related to satisfaction, without guaranteeing it, and unemployed people were less satisfied than those in employment.

Problem 1: Correlation does not equal causation!

The first vital issue with the findings is the old chestnut familiar to anybody who has studied psychology or statistics: correlation does not equal causation. It would be easy to look at the results and say ‘people in couples are better off than singles, we should encourage everyone into relationships and make sure that they stay together’ or ‘people in rural areas are happier so being around nature must make people feel better’.

However, just because there is a relationship between two things does not mean that one causes the other. It could equally be that there is a causal relationship in the opposite direction. For example, it could be that happier people are more likely to get into romantic relationships (because they are overly optimistic about how easy they will be perhaps!), or that people who are more satisfied with life tend to move to the country (maybe because they feel less need to prove themselves in high-power city jobs).

Also it could very well be that some other factor is responsible both for people being happier and for the other aspect. For example, it could be that wealthier people are more likely to get married, to live in the country and to be happy: so in that case being better off is the causal factor, not anything to do with relationships or where people live. A good way to remember this possibility is to consider the correlation between ice-cream sales and drowning deaths. As one goes up, so does the other, but obviously eating more ice-cream doesn’t cause drowning. The reason they are related is that both go up in hot weather.

Problem 2: Happiness or normativity?

Continuing on from this point about correlation, it seems to me that, for quite a few of the reported statistics, another factor which could be of relevance is what is regarded as culturally ideal or normal. In the UK, it is generally seen as normal, or ideal, that a person should get a job, get married, and own a house. Therefore perhaps it is unsurprising that people who do so report more satisfaction. They have more of a sense of ‘belonging’ to the culture and of having ticked the boxes which are expected of them by themselves and others.

However, those things may not be intrinsically related to satisfaction. Perhaps in a culture where it is considered more normal to rent property (as it is in many other European countries) home-ownership would not be so related to happiness, because all the problematic aspects of having your own house (mortgages, keeping it in good repair, being responsible, etc.) would not be balanced out by the plus side of fitting in, meeting expectations and the perceived security of owning property in a culture which generally believes that it is the safest thing to do.

The gender findings are also interesting from the perspective of normativity. In the current economic climate it may be harder to meet up to norms and ideals of masculine roles (which have traditionally been based on being a provider and having an identity linked to what you ‘do for living’), than norms ideals of feminine roles (which have traditionally been about looking after others, and being approved of by others).

A further point about normativity is whether the overall findings (the 7.4 out of 10 statistic) reflect people responding in a culturally normative way (‘mustn’t grumble’). It is important to remember that people are doing something whenever they speak or write (for example, when they complete a survey) rather than simply expressing their inner state. For example, psychologists find with opinion polls around election time that people often don’t respond truthfully about who they plan to vote for, but rather strategically, hoping to give the message that parties should improve otherwise they won’t get their vote.

It is very possible that cultural differences in happiness ratings or satisfaction indices could say more about how people in that culture think they are supposed to feel than how they actually feel.

Problem 3: Striving for happiness?

A final point about the whole endeavour of eliciting happiness or satisfaction ratings is the big assumption implicit in it all that it is good to be happy, and that people who express less satisfaction should be made more happy.

Unfortunately this message may have the opposite impact to its intention as many philosophies suggest that striving after happiness, believing that one is entitled to be happy, or expecting some kind of constant happiness in life, actually make us suffer more. Recognising the inevitable struggles that life involves, expecting our moods to fluctuate, and learning to accept difficult feelings rather than trying to avoid them, may well be better approaches.

It is also important to challenge norms about the kind of life one needs to lead in order to be happy because these reinforce the marginalisation of those who don’t fit these norms. We need to recognise the diverse things that can bring satisfaction to life if we let them. Perhaps then people might be able to be equally satisfied on a busy street as in the country, with friends or alone as with partners, or in diverse forms of accommodation or daily life.

Find out more:

The report itself

Links to further articles about the report:

BBC

Independent

Guardian

Guardian analysis

Links to other blog posts by me on happiness:

Happiness

The H-word

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