From: "Shelly Roberts" Date: Wed, 30 Oct 1996 08:57:47 +0000 Subject: ROBERTS' RULES: BREAK IT UP EDITORS: The following is submitted for your discretionary usage. If used, the cost is $25. Free to non-profits, all volunteer papers, and organization newsletters. Please send checks and tearsheets to P.O. BOX 1030, 3405 ROBBINS ROAD, POMPANO BEACH, FL 33062 IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO RUN ROBERTS' RULES REGULARLY, PLEASE CONTACT ME DIRECTLY AT THIS EMAIL ADDRESS. THANK YOU. SHELLY ROBERTS ____________-**************-___________ ROBERTS' RULES by Shelly Roberts Breaking Up Is Hard To Watch Kaye and Ellie broke up. We're in shock. Our friend Diane beat the lesbian jungle drums from California to tell us that Kaye found someone else. Moved out. Suddenly. Ellie didn't expect it. Neither did we. I don't think I ever introduced you. You'd have loved them. They were a capital letters COUPLE. A model of monogamy. I thought there would always be time. They'd been together nearly fifteen years, and we figured they'd go for a Guinness Book of Lesbian Longevity record. They didn't actually have separate names any more. KayeandEllie. HamandEggs. ShoesandSocks. SaltandPepper. LoveandMarriage.LoveandMarriage GotogetherlikeaHorseandCarriage. 'Can't have one without the other. KayeandEllie. Everyone knows a couple just like them. Or, at least you think you know them. Now the details of a breakup are juicy, but, really, not all that interesting if you don't happen to know the lucky couple. (Unless the couple happens to be Martina, and anybody Marvin Mitchelson happens to be suing her on behalf of.) But what's important, it seems to me, is how inconsiderate a breakup of this magnitude is.on your *friends.* I mean, really. Couples of more than a decade's duration should seriously consider the impact on chums before implementing actions. A breakup like this draws faint question marks on your own expectations. If it could happen to them, well, then could it happen to you?! The last question Diane on the phone asked, was, "How are YOU TWO?" We asked her was exactly the same. Then there is the disruption. Not in their lives, in ours! We'll have to get used to saying, Kaye and Hepsebah. Or Ellie and Ingratiata. Not the same. And you know, at some embarrassing moment when one brings her new honey for inspection, that you are going to say it: "So what are you and Kaye." .or "Ellie and you used to ." Oops! It's gonna happen. Trust me. Besides emotional costs, there are real ones. Towels for the leftee to shred in endless angst over the dear departed. Towels aren't cheap. Neither are cases of crying Kleenex. Not to mention all those flowers, boxes of candy, baubles and Home Shopping Network zerconia to reassure your own loved one that you ain't headin' South. (Or, if you live in Ft. Lauderdale, North.) Ever. Honest. Then there's long distance. Reach out and hug someone. Sure, you try for after eleven when the rates go down. But you can't always wait for a better price to lend a sympathetic ear teletronicly. When someone needs to repeat over and over and over, between teeth clenching sobbing, that the formerly beloved was really Satan in thin disguise, and reversed the charges because she hasn't been able to quite get it together to get to work for weeks, you can't say, "Sorry, wrong number." No way. You say, "Huh? Ungrhh. Gruuuuuuuu. Mumph? Oh. No. Really. We were awake." When a couple rifts, it's friends who get the toughest end of the stick. You have to be careful all the time not to be too agreeable. I mean, it's hard not to say, in the midst of the turmoil, "You're absolutely right, she is a sub-species that wouldn't get past the bouncer in a Star Wars bar. Pond Scum. And you never should have wasted the happiest decade and a half of your life on her." Or, "Merciful heavens, Kaye, a person does need a little excitement after fourteen, fifteen years. You were absolutely right to go off with Donna Rice to up your adrenaline. Ellie should have understood that." It's so tempting to make judgments. It's a natural law or something. Especially when the event reminds you of the time that your no-good, inconsiderate third lover walked out on you for that bimbo in a corporal's uniform. Or was it the fifth lover who ran off with the gym teacher/bartender/ tennis pro/show girl and, dammit, actually took the engraved set of Arnold Palmer golf clubs you had personally selected for her for your fourth anniversary, (the ones you would still personally like to wrap around her personal neck.) No. No. No value judgments. Even if it does seem exactly like the same thing that happened to you when you split after your umpteenth anniversary with the one who did Woody Herman imitations by blowing air through her ears, who had none of the job skills currently listed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and who firmly believed that sex, especially with you, was dirty. You know what happens. One agreeable remark, and then next month they work it all out, have long soulful discussions in bed of every little detail of the event, including exactly what they thought they heard you say, and what you seemed to mean by it. And, hey, where does that leave you? With two ex-friends. Neither one of whom ever calls you again to invite you to their fabulous, catered house parties in Montauk. Breakups are hell. On your friends. ________________________ (C) 1996. Shelly Roberts. All rights reserved. May be reprinted only in its entirety with written permission. Shelly Roberts is a nationally syndicated columnist, speaker, and author of Roberts' Rules of Lesbian Living. Spinsters Ink.