The Comphet Nightmare, Part 1
If you’re a later-in-life lesbian, I’m willing to bet comphet has affected your life. Even if you don’t know it. Even if you don’t know what comphet is.
What is comphet?
Comphet is short for compulsory heterosexuality. Basically, it means that from the time we are born we’re assumed to be straight. Compulsory means mandatory, and of course heterosexuality means straightness. So the idea of comphet is that we’re all expected to be straight. In my case, it was more than an assumption. It was a requirement. More on that in a minute.
You can see comphet all over the place in our culture. And we’re indoctrinated early. Have you ever seen a Disney princess movie where the princess ends up with a woman? Me neither.
And comphet is insidious. We don’t even realize we’re being affected. It’s just the way things are. I know it was huge for me.
When I was a kid all I wanted was to be a wife and mother. But looking back, I don’t know how much of that came from me and how much was my indoctrination and training. I’m guessing it’s more of the latter.
I chatted with another lesbian on a dating app last night, and she said that she’d always known that she didn’t want children. For me, that wasn’t even an option. Without even consciously realizing it, I believed that a woman’s value was irrevocably tied to her fulfilling the role of wife and mother.
Old Maid
When I was a kid I had this card game called Old Maid. The picture on the front was this cartoon drawing of an old, wrinkled, bitter looking woman. I asked my brother what an “old maid” actually was. And he told me that it’s a woman who never got married because no man wanted her.
That struck terror in my soul. And it became my biggest fear.
What if no man ever wanted me?
As I grew up, that became my guiding worry. I didn’t have many boyfriends. And the relationships I had were short-lived and not all that enjoyable. In fact, boys didn’t seem to like me particularly. (I failed to notice that I didn’t actually like them either.) It seemed pretty clear that becoming that terrifying old maid was a genuine possibility.
I didn’t date in college. I mean literally. I did not go on even one date the entire four years I was an undergrad. I understand it now. I was a lesbian. I wore Birkenstocks, went to Indigo Girls concerts, and thought I’d be a much better boyfriend to my roommate than the losers she kept dating. You know… a lesbian. But of course I didn’t realize it at the time.
Then I went to grad school and met “the one”.
Honestly, I was so relieved that someone I liked actually liked me back that I married him — ignoring all red flags of course. What a relief. I wouldn’t be an old maid.
So I did the Christian wife and mother thing. And I did it HARD. I had four kids. I homeschooled. I studied the Bible. I ran my church’s children’s ministry. I ground my own wheat and baked my own bread.
I created this entire character named “Kathy”. She did what was expected of her. She lived up to the expectations that had been placed on her as a child. She checked all the boxes.
Sometimes I wonder how different my life would have been if it hadn’t been for comphet and the religious indoctrination of my youth. Would I have ever gotten married? Would I have even wanted to have children?
I guess I’ll never know for sure.
But I’ll tell you one thing. It sure felt good to retire that “Kathy” character.
