I’m a 45-year-old cis woman. I’ve been married to a cis man for almost twenty years. About a year and a half ago, I made out with a woman at a party, and everything clicked. I realized something was missing in my life, and I started exploring my attraction to women with my husband’s blessing. I had always felt attracted to women but didn’t fully acknowledge it, thinking it was normal for “straight” women to be attracted to other women while only dating men. (I’ve since learned about compulsory heterosexuality.) I met a wonderful woman, and we dated for over a year. While I was with her, I realized I’m gay. We spent a lot of time together, I had the best sex of my life, saw shows, went out to dinners, had sleepovers, met each other’s kids. It was a real relationship. But she ended things because I wasn’t ready to make major changes in my life — she wasn’t included in our large family gatherings, as some family members don’t know about our open marriage. My husband has a girlfriend now, and I’m happy for him, but he feels certain family members wouldn’t understand. This made my girlfriend feel deprioritized, despite my reassurances and all the time I spent with her.
I love my husband dearly, but our relationship is platonic, and we’ve stopped being intimate. We have three amazing young children, and our lives are deeply intertwined emotionally, financially, and where our families are concerned. While I feel I need to live authentically as a lesbian, I’m terrified of the fallout — hurting my husband, my family, blowing up my life, etc. The plan was to keep our family together and slowly integrate my girlfriend into my life, but that wasn’t enough for her. My husband wants to stay married, and I wanted to stay married. Should I get a divorce instead? What should I do?
Wanting To Live Authentically
You wanna live authentically, WTLA, I wanna respond authentically.
And if I’m gonna be authentic — if I’m gonna be honest — my first impulse after reading your question was to find you and your husband and figuratively slap you upside your metaphorical heads. On the off chance your email found me in an ungenerous mood, WTLA, I set your question aside for a few days. But I had the same impulse — the same metaphorical desire to do figurative violence — the second time I read your email.
Zooming out for a second…
It’s totally fine — not a problem at all — that you didn’t realize you were a lesbian until after you married and had a couple of kids. Compulsory heterosexuality is a helluva drug, WTLA, and lots of queer people don’t figure themselves out until later in life. And it’s totally fine — not a problem at all — that you don’t wanna get a divorce. You’re not letting down the lesbian side by remaining in your marriage. Companionate marriages are valid marriages! If there’s mutual respect and real affection, marriages like yours can work and even thrive. So, if you wanna stay together for the kids and/or stay together because you actually do (platonically!) love each other and/or stay together because divorce is an expensive hassle, you have my blessing!
Where you lose me, WTLA, is when you talk about not being able to “integrate” your girlfriend into your life because “certain” family members wouldn’t understand. Oh, I get it. You’re staring down some real fears here: fear of judgment, fear of rejection, fear of losing people you care about. But every out gay or lesbian or bisexual person that came before you — and every openly non-monogamous couple that came before you — had to confront those same fears.
And the people you and your husband are so afraid of — your families of origin — don’t have any power over you. Yes, some of them might not understand. Yes, some of them might judge you. Yes, some of them might say shitty things to you and about you. But they can’t throw you out of the house (you have your own place!) they can’t cut you off financially (you make your own money!), and they can’t force you into conversion therapy (you are not minors!). All your judgmental family members can do, again, is say shitty things to you and about you. But one of the best parts of being an adult, WTLA, is that you don’t have to show up for Christmas or Kwanza or Hanukkah — you don’t have to see your families on the holidays or at any other time of the year — if your family can’t be kind to you and the people you love. You don’t have to show up to get punched in the face.
I can understand why your girlfriend dumped you. She doesn’t want to be abandoned on holidays for the comfort of people who don’t fully know you — people you don’t fully trust — but whose comfort you’ve decided to prioritize over the safety and comfort of a woman you claim to love. And while she may be comfortable being with a someone who’s married (companionably!) to someone else, your ex-girlfriend wasn’t comfortable being lowest priority. Perhaps she should’ve been more patient — you’ve only been out for a year and change — but if she’s close to your age, WTLA, she may not feel like waiting for your family (husband included) to come around is the best use of her time at this (grownup!) time of her life.
Look, your family might not understand at first — mine didn’t — but if the gays and lesbians who came before you waited for our families to somehow magically “get it” before we started coming out, no one would’ve come out at all, ever. While some queer people are lucky enough to come out to supportive families — while some queer people are lucky enough to have families who got it before they came out — most families don’t get it until after a loved one comes out to them.
If you wanna be who you are — if you wanna live authentically — you have to be willing to make some people uncomfortable, WTLA, and that may include your husband. Good luck.
How do partnered-but-monogamish people identify each other and get things going?
I’m a 42-year-old bisexual woman, happily married to my husband for fifteen years. My husband and I are monogamish and have dabbled here and there, the biggest dabbling being an on-off relationship I had with a woman for nearly a decade. I was able to start that because my former lover was loud (and proud) about her open relationship, and brought it up to anyone who had a set of ears. Aside from her, the other sexual partner my husband and I had was a very close friend who we were able to bring it up to.
I have a crush on my neighbor, who is ten years my senior. She is married to a man and I’m pretty sure she’s bisexual. However, I’m not really friends with her, and I don’t know how I would go about approaching this if I wanted to make something happen. We live in a close-knit neighborly community and if I were to ask her out, she would interpret it as being purely friendly. I don’t want to make her feel uncomfortable in any way if she was not into the idea, but it would be a shame if she would go for this, but we just can’t cross the chasm. How would I go about getting this started, if it is possible at all? Would it be wise to test the waters for potential by asking a third party to feel her out in some way? In general, how do monogamish people identify each other and get things going outside of apps?
Need Expert Insight Getting Hot Babe Over Regularly
Even if your neighbor is in an open marriage — and even if she’s bisexual and even if she’s into you (and that’s a lot of ifs) — sending someone to ask her if she might wanna mess around doesn’t say, “Your neighbor is a mature adult woman that you might enjoy fucking,” it screams, “Your neighbor has the emotional maturity of a second grader and people like that are risky fucks.”
You’re a grown-ass woman, NEIGHBOR, and grown-ass women don’t send their best friends to ask out their crushes for them during recess. Grown-ass women also don’t slip notes under their neighbor’s doors with “I want to be your girlfriend” or “I don’t want to be your girlfriend” written on them next to boxes to check. And sensible monogamish people typically don’t hit on neighbors who’ve never signaled any interest or availability because sensible monogamish people — like sensible single people — don’t shit where they eat. Unless the sexual tension is off the charts and the signals are unmistakable and you’ve controlled for dickful/clitful thinking, NEIGHBOR, sensible people don’t hit on their coworkers and/or the parents of their children’s friends and/or their next-door neighbors. Because if it turns out that person isn’t interested in you — or if they are interested but things end quickly and badly — your workplace, your children’s playdates, and your backyard will become almost unbearably awkward.
To answer your question, NEIGHBOR, here’s how sensible partnered and monogamish people find each other: they go places — online and off, separately and together — where partnered-and-monogamish people gather. They get on a dating apps and hookup apps like Feeld and #Open, they go to local swingers’ clubs and sex parties, and if they run into their neighbor in one of those places — Yahtzee! — they get to use one of these all-time great pickup lines: “Do you come here often?” “Fancy meeting you here!” “What’s a nice next-door neighbor like you doing in a place like this?”
Now, if you put yourself out there — apps, clubs, parties — and you never cross paths with your neighbor, NEIGHBOR, that doesn’t mean she’s not bisexual, isn’t in an open marriage, and isn’t masturbating about you right now. But instead of sending a friend to pump her for information about her marriage, you could get to know your neighbor a little better — you could do a little platonic socializing —and then, once you’re friends, open up to her about your life and your marriage.
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