CHAPTER V : Why do women become LESBIANS?

Cynthia Nixon made it happen. Lindsay Lohan's making it happen. Television programs depend on it. Is it our minds, or are spouses and sweethearts dumping their men and becoming hopelessly enamored with different ladies? New science says that sexuality is surprisingly liquid.

At a Halloween party last October, Macarena Gomez-Barris, dressed as a flamenco artist, put out a bowl of her hand-crafted guacamole and kept an eye on the bubbling pot of new corn in the kitchen. She'd as of late isolated from her significant other of 12 years, and the companions gushing in now were anxious to meet her new love, who, on this evening, was the privateer in the three-cornered cap cutting pumpkins outside. After her marriage separated in 2007, not many of the people who realized Gomez-Barris had thought she'd be single for a really long time — "a catch," they called her — and they were correct.

An energized 38-year-old, Gomez-Barris appeared to have everything — a splendid vocation, two youngsters, striking looks. Her family had come to the United States from Chile when she was 2 to get away from Augusto Pinochet's tactical tyranny and to seek after the conventional American dream. While reading up for her graduate degree at UC Berkeley, she met a magnetic Chilean exile and fiction essayist named Roberto Leni at a salsa club in San Francisco. "We had moment science, and he was my perfect partner," Gomez-Barris says. They wedded and after eight years had their most memorable youngster, a child.

The difficulty started after they moved to Los Angeles, where their little girl was conceived and Gomez-Barris' scholastic profession took off at the University of Southern California. Leni went through his days really focusing on the house and youngsters. "I was in the more remarkable job," says Gomez-Barris, a Ph.D. and an associate teacher in the human science and American examinations and nationality offices. "I got more cash flow and was battling to adjust my work and home life."

"Submerged," is the way Leni puts it. "She focused intensely on USC. Every one of her companions was a teacher, and in the long run, I was outdated. I'm nothing the framework considers I ought to be as a conventional man. I'm not aggressive. I couldn't care less about cash. I was raised among torment survivors, and the main qualities were in the profound domain of human experience, to calm and support."

His respectable goals tragically conflicted with everyday real factors. "Somebody needed to think often about bringing in cash to help our family," says Gomez-Barris. Notwithstanding endeavors to save their relationship in guiding, they wound up isolated.

Single again at 36, Gomez-Barris dated a couple of men, none truly. "They were not entirely certain of themselves in their professions or monetarily," she says. "It was a period of genuine investigation and individual freedom, and I turned out to be exceptionally sane about the sort of accomplice I needed and required" — somebody, she trusted, who might match her scholarly desires yet additionally deal with her and her youngsters.

At a party one night last March, Gomez-Barris ran into Judith Halberstam, Ph.D., a teacher of English, American investigations and nationality, and orientation learns at USC. They had met in 2004 and appreciated each other's academic achievements, sometimes winding up at similar grounds parties. However, while they shared a liking for legislative issues and civil rights, they were apparently miles separated in their confidential lives. Halberstam, almost 10 years her senior, was transparently gay.

That evening, Halberstam, who had likewise said a final farewell to an accomplice of 12 years, spotted Gomez-Barris remaining across the room and thought, "Presently, there's a truly lovely lady." "I saw her diversely then and fostered a major pound on her," says Halberstam. "However it made me anxious, considering that I have a background marked by solitary love with straight ladies. On the other hand, you don't pick who you love."