Surprise, You’re In A Long Distance Relationship Now!

We’re currently in the middle of a global pandemic and almost everything about life as we know it is changing rapidly. One of the things that might have changed in the past few days / weeks / months is your dating and / or sex life. If you’re not in a position to quarantine with your date(s) or partner(s) you may be surprised and dismayed to discover that you are suddenly in a long distance relationship. Surprise!

In all seriousness, life is different today than it was even last week – even yesterday. Things are moving and changing quickly and many things are currently unknown. One thing that is known? We are experiencing a global pandemic with the spread of COVID-19. Another thing that is known? Our only tool of defense against the virus, currently, is social distancing, quarantine, and physical isolation.

Some folks are able to quarantine with their date(s) and / or partner(s) but for the many of us who aren’t, never fear – queers have a long history of committing ourselves to the most outlandish long distance situations in the name of love, lust, and Gay Yearning at the best of times. We’ve got this! Here’s some advice about how to weather a long distance relationship during a global pandemic, whether you and your babe live in different countries or just a few blocks away.

Here’s Your LDR Syllabus from Autostraddle

Good news: here at Autostraddle, we have already written a lot about how to handle long distance relationships and how to build some of the skills necessary to survive them – like a strong selfie game, above-average sexting skills, and a willingness to fuck on the phone. Here’s a refresher on some things you can do to feel close to a person you like or love or are attracted to while you’re not actually in the same place.

How to Write a Really Hot Sext in 5 Easy Steps

Sexting! An excellent skill to cultivate when you’re not long distance, an essential skill to cultivate when you are.

10 Tips For Better Lesbian Sexting

More sexting tips! We’re nothing if not thorough around here.

Safe Sexting: Tech Tips for the Stress-Free Sexting You Deserve

Sexting securely remains important even (especially?) during times of global crisis.

How to Have Phone Sex: A Detailed Guide

Eventually you’re going to get bored of sexting. Time to move onto phone sex!

Ready For Your Close-Up: The Beginner’s Guide to Taking a Sexy Solo Video

Listen, you can only have so much phone sex before you start thinking, wouldn’t this be better if I could see you sucking on a dildo?

You Deserve to Practice Elaborate Masturbation in Your Life; Here’s How

Let me tell you something that happens a lot in a long distance relationship: you masturbate. Lucky for all of us, masturbation can be quite the elaborate activity.

How to Take a Winning Thirst Trap: Your Detailed Multimedia Guide to Being Hot Online

Useful whether you’re partnered and pining or single and trying to flirt with the whole world!

Selfies Are Gonna Save The World

Okay I admit this headline from less than a month ago did not age well, and it’s very possible that selfies will not in fact save us from our current reality, but taking a nice photo of your cute face and sending it to your long distance babe can still feel really good. You don’t need to be super sexual 24/7 with your long distance babe, and to be honest, it’s very likely you won’t be feeling sexy 100% of the time right now. You might not be feeling sexy at all. It’s still nice to show the person you care about and miss your face, and it’ll be really nice to see theirs, too.

How to Make Long Distance Dating Sexy and Keep Things H.O.T. in Your L.D.R.

This is our ultimate definitive guide to keeping things sexy in a long distance relationship! Written at the end of 2018, it’s slightly more hopeful in tone than any of us feel today, but it’s still chock full of good practical tips. Plus it really is a nice reminder that queers have perfected the art of the long distance relationship many moons ago, and that we as a people have always found ways to connect with our faraway loves. This time – though different and specific in its moment – will be no different.

Some Additional Tips Specific To Long Distance In The Time Of COVID-19

Keep Your Phone Clean

Your phone is about to become your BFF, so make sure it’s not covered in germs before you hold it up to your ear for three hours every night. Yes, you should’ve been keeping your phone clean before COVID-19, sure, but we don’t have time to stress about the past. We’re in the present, and in this moment, Apple has finally admitted it’s fine to use most disinfecting products to clean your phone, after years of pretending it wasn’t fine. Fascinating to learn all the things we’ve been lied to about as this crisis intensifies! Anyway! Clean your phone!

Get Real about Logistics

Depending on your living situation and your work situation, it’s possible that you will only have to be long distance from your babe for a short period of time, or perhaps not at all. If you are able to safely quarantine together and it’s what you both want, that’s lucky and awesome. But if you’re not able to, you have to be honest about that, and you have to be strict about your new long distance status. Social distancing and isolation methods only work to flatten the curve if everyone does them. Since not everyone is able to stay home and away from other humans who they don’t live with right now, those of us who are able to absolutely have to do our part.

(If you’re feeling confused about social distancing and quarantining or wondering if it’s really necessary for you and your date(s) and / or partner(s) to be long distance lovers right now, check out this amazingly well researched and informative document put together by my friend Elly Belle, a queer journalist, about why we all need to be taking the coronavirus pandemic very seriously and why all of our individual actions really do impact the collective in major ways.)

Be Extra Patient and Compassionate

It’s true that patience and compassion are great to practice in all relationships, and that perhaps we need even more of both things when we’re separated from our sweeties and living that long distance life, but I would argue that living through a global pandemic while being separated from the person you like, love, or even simply enjoy fucking on a regular basis calls for extra extra extra patience and compassion! Everyone reacts to a crisis differently, and what seems logical to you may not make sense at all to your cutie, and vice versa. Now is really a time to slow down and think carefully before saying anything you might regret. We’re all scared. We’re all gonna show not-the-best-versions-of-ourselves in the coming days, weeks, and months as we try to navigate this brand new reality. I hope we’re all being extra patient and compassionate with everyone, but you absolutely have to be this way in your romantic relationship right now if you want it to survive.

Now go send your long distance babe a selfie – they deserve it, and so do you.

How are you dealing with de facto long-distance dating through this crisis? Are you an LDR pro and want to weigh in because now is your time to shine? Are you feeling frustrated because instead of doing the long distance thing, your housemates all moved their casual dates into your house and now you’re living in a nonconsensual queer commune?

Are you that couple that went on one Tinder date and decided to quarantine together? Are you those exes that are unfortunately still living together and thus suddenly quarantining together? (If you are in either of these two situations, please email me immediately – vanessa [at] autostraddle [dot] com – because I’d love to interview you.) Let’s talk it out in the comments.

11 Books for Getting Started with Polyamory and Non-Monogamy

Eight Things I Wish I’d Known About Polyamory Before I Tried It and Frakked It Upby Cunning Minx

The Ethical Slut by Janet Hardy and Dossie Easton

Girl Sex 101 by Allison Moon

Linked by DaemonumX

Love’s Not Color Blind by Kevin A Patterson

Love Without Emergency by Clementine Morrigan

Opening Up by Tristan Taormino

Redefining Our Relationships by Wendy-0 Matik

Rewriting the Rules by Meg-John Barker

Stories From the Polycule by Elisabeth Sheff

What Love Is: And What It Could Be by Carrie Jenkins

You Need Help: How Do I Navigate Being Monogam-ish With My Bi Girlfriend?

Q:

I’m a lesbian and I’ve been dating the most amazing woman for almost two years now. We connected instantly and when we met, we were both looking for something fun and open. Very quickly though, things escalated (as they do) and we decided that we wanted to be monogamous (well, monogamISH, meaning that we have open communication and that we want to tell each other if we have feelings for other people… it’s okay to talk about but we are sexually and emotionally exclusive).

I’ve only ever been in monogamous relationships, whereas she’s pretty much only been in poly[am] ones. It’s important to note that my girlfriend is bi and we’ve been going through a bit of a rough patch because she told me she has a crush on a guy that she knows. For some reason I felt terrible and even cried when she told me. I’m not sure why I felt so sad about this. We’ve talked openly and honestly about past partners and I’ve never felt weird about her dating men, it’s a part of her sexuality!

We’ve always said that group sex is okay as long as we are both present and consenting obviously, but I don’t think I could ever be with a man sexually. It makes me feel weird and gross. I know she likes the idea of having a threesome with a man, and I want to make her happy but I don’t know that I would feel comfortable with that.

We recently had a conversation with her friend who is also bisexual, who posed the question “can bisexual people be monogamous?” Because she ends up missing sex with women when she is monogamous with men and vice versa.

Do you think this is the case? I’m feeling at a loss. My feelings are confusing me and I know I’m hurting her when I react so strongly to her attraction to men. HELP.

A:

Hi! Right off the top, it’s crucial for me to say this: being monogamous and being bisexual are not mutually exclusive. This is a really problematic stereotype that has to go, like yesterday. Bi people have enough problems being accepted in queer community without these myths.

Your friend who “misses men” when they’re with women and vice versa probably shouldn’t be monogamous. If you miss other partners when you’re monogamous with one partner, to the degree that it causes you distress or affects your relationship, then you either don’t want to be monogamous with that partner or maybe shouldn’t be monogamous with anyone. A lot of people, non-monogamous people included, have this weird idea that they’ll eventually go happily monogamous with the right person once they’re ready to “settle down” or something. That’s another patriarchal stereotype. Some people will, some people won’t. It’s OK if you never want to be monogamous!

It’s also not OK, though, to string partners along, compromising into monogamy when you aren’t happy with it, and eventually cheating or breaking someone’s heart. Some people do this, and it has way more to do with their lack of introspection about what they need in a relationship than whether or not they’re bisexual. Cheaters are going to cheat. There are plenty of people to cheat with of every gender. Bi people don’t have “twice as many opportunities” to cheat or some other nonsense. If people want to commit to someone monogamously, they will, and if they don’t or can’t, they won’t.

Now, on to your situation. Since you said “we” had a conversation with that bi friend, I’m curious how your girlfriend responded to that statement. The omission of her perspective on this is ominous. Does she agree? If so, that spells trouble for y’all. Did she say, “No, of course bi people can be monogamous, I’m doing it right now, happily?” That would be good!

You and your girlfriend decided to be monogamish… what does that actually mean to y’all? Sometimes we say things, thinking the other person understands what we’ve said the same way we do, but it turns out we have wildly different interpretations of what the thing we said meant. You’re sexually and emotionally exclusive, except for threesomes? Was it explicit that these threesomes would be women only? The way you describe it, it doesn’t seem like y’all have actually had a threesome yet, and I’d bet you were hoping it’d actually never come up. If y’all haven’t explicitly talked about exactly what y’all mean by these things, you need to get on that ASAP.

Non-monogamous people shouldn’t “settle” unhappily into a monogamous relationship — but the opposite is also true. Monogamous people shouldn’t “settle” unhappy into a non-monogamous one. Are you sure you want to be non-monogamous? Did you do it for her, hoping that it would never actually be acted on? You have to work that out in therapy and through introspection and, hopefully, through honest conversations with her. But it sounds like the potential of your partner wanting to actually act on y’all’s non-monogamy is what’s really bothering you.

I can’t tell you why this particular experience of your partner having a crush on a man bothers you so much, except that maybe you’re jumping 18 steps ahead and imagining the threesome already and it’s freaking you out. Has she ever expressed a crush on a non-man? If not, maybe it’s the fact that she even has a crush, and it’s someone she knows, and the idea of non-monogamy is finally viable, and that’s stressing you out. And not that it’s a man.

But if she has, why did this bother you more? Is it the first time in a while, like, since y’all have been really serious? If it’s really because it’s a man, is that a result of some of your internalized biphobia or homophobia? Do you feel like she’s going to leave you for a “real” relationship with a man, that your relationship is just a placeholder or a phase or something? You really need to dig into what potentially unexamined assumptions you’re bringing into this. Or is it just about the idea of the threesome?

In terms of group sex, please don’t consent to anything that you’re actually uncomfortable with. If she absolutely needs to have group sex, with you and a man as part of it, to feel sexually fulfilled, and you’re not into it, then honestly you might need to break up. But that scenario seems really unlikely — it’s not clear from your question whether she’s actively pursuing a threesome with this male crush or any other man, or whether it’s something she’s casually floated as a general interest sometime in her life, in which case this is probably not an urgent concern. If it is, there are also other ways to approach it if you wanted to get creative. What if she fucked a guy and you masturbated in the corner and y’all kept eye contact the whole time? Or she gave you head while being fucked by him from behind? Or she got head from him while giving you head? Or any of countless arrangements that don’t involve you and him touching at all. Or, could you compromise on the “I have to be there” stipulation?

Overall, the solution here is to have a really honest conversation with her about this. Maybe you didn’t make your feelings and needs clear from the beginning. It’s absolutely within your rights to say “I want to be strictly monogamous.” Or to say, “I am OK with being non-monogamous, but only in terms of a threesome and only if the other person is a woman.” Or whatever stipulations you want to put out there. And it’s her right to say, “No, that doesn’t work for me.” Or to say, “Well, can we compromise?” It’s totally possible that there’s a great compromise that works well for both of you and you can both be happy. Or, she might say, “Babe, it’s just a crush. I only want to have sex with you. And I don’t need threesomes to be fulfilled.” You won’t know unless you talk about it!

It’s also possible that you have some hang ups that you need to explore and work through and once you do, this won’t bother you as much or at all. It’s also possible that y’all have different sexual needs that won’t be met in this relationship. And that’s OK too! It’s not the end of the world if it doesn’t work out with this particular person. You want both of you to be happy, right? Even if it isn’t together? If that’s the case, you need to really examine what’s going on here from multiple angles, and be very honest with yourself and your partner about your sexual needs, and then move from there.

You can chime in with your advice in the comments and submit your own questions any time.

You Need Help: Why Am I So Tempted to Cheat?

Q:

I’m a pansexual woman in a het-monogamous marriage to a cis man for more than a decade. He knew my sexual and romantic attractions at the outset of our relationship and was (still is) accepting, and I was sure that I would always be able to be monogamous. That said, my attractions to women and trans men have kept gnawing at me and I have asked my partner for an open relationship in any form (d.a.d.t. or open/poly), but he refuses. A few years ago, I cheated with a woman – I couldn’t help myself – I didn’t want to end the relationship, but I was going crazy. My husband found out, initially was furious but then seemed to understand what I was going through. While the debacle initially opened up conversation, it’s now back to total silence about this. My husband refuses to acknowledge my attractions and the frustration of constantly denying them and I am at a loss of what to do.

I am tempted to cheat but be more discreet this time, as a way to release the pressure valve, so to speak. I know that sounds awful, but I feel like maybe it’s less awful than blowing up my marriage, home – our kids’ lives.

I don’t know what to do. But I know that this is unsustainable and I will end up cheating again, not because I don’t love my husband and not because I’m not attracted to him, but because this straight relationship is just not enough for me. Help!

A:

Your letter reminded me of a interview of Myrna Kurland, who was not straight and married to a man in the 1940s, from the book Baby, You Are My Religion: Women, Gay Bars, and Theology Before Stonewall by Marie Cartier.

“I would get up at one or two a.m. and I would call every gay bar I had the number to from the 1940s. I wouldn’t say anything. I would just stay on the phone and listen to the sounds in the background. I would stay on until they hung up, and then I would call another one of my numbers, until I had called all the numbers I had … That phone. Those numbers. That was my lifeline … It meant there was a place somewhere — even if I couldn’t go there — that place was out there. I could hear it. Freedom.”

Myrna called the bars two to three times a week like this, for fourteen years.

You are this woman. Your affairs – the ones in the past and the ones in the future – are your phone calls. You will cheat on your husband again. And probably more than once.

It is not hard to cheat. Cheating is easy. Cheating is also really sexy, something about the taboo and the secrecy, it can feel really hot. Hell, even getting caught cheating can feel good. Cheating can feel good because it scratches whatever itches you might have. You can replay a night over and over, drinking up the memory of the affair until there’s not a drip left and then you can go out and get another cup. It sets our imagination on fire. Cheating is a form of escape from our current situation, it allows us to momentarily be with someone else, maybe even be someone else, for a night. Honesty has consequences. Cheating, if we don’t get caught, does not.

Cheating has nothing to do with being bisexual or pansexual in and of itself; but it is what we do when we feel like we’re out of choices. It’s an action for when we feel stuck. We are helpless in our situation – my husband will be devastated, my children will be hurt, my livelihood will fall apart, my family will be destroyed. Why ruin good things, why hurt others needlessly?

I do not believe in demonizing people who cheat. Maybe this is because I’ve been there, on both sides, more than once. Maybe because I believe people are good, even when their actions hurt. Or maybe I just know how complex and nuanced a life can be and how sometimes our actions–even bad actions or painful actions–seem to make sense at the time.

You are not a bad person for cheating on your husband. You are not a bad person for contemplating doing it again. What you are is unsatisfied. What you are is unfulfilled. This is of no fault of your husband, or of your family, or of you. It doesn’t matter why you’re unsatisfied and unfulfilled, but it is important to recognize it. You say yourself in your letter it’s “just not enough”.

You have a choice, though; we always have a choice. You can do several things. You can choose to let things stay the way they are, you hooking up in secret until you get caught again and it’s painful and disastrous for your family; hooking up in secret until you catch feelings with a person and it’s painful and disastrous to you. Or you can confront your very valid needs and discuss them openly, letting your husband know this isn’t just a desire but a need you have. And go from there. And don’t let the conversation fizzle out until you both reach a solution – and that solution might be that the two of you separate. Your husband is a capable adult; trust he will recover. Your children are resilient; show them what it’s like to not settle, show them what it’s like to embrace who you’ve grown into. When they are your age and unhappy in a situation, wouldn’t you want them to be brave enough to change it? What is the point of compromising ourselves for others when in reality everyone involved – you, your family – will be hurt. What are you saving by self-sacrificing your desires?

You are not a bad person for cheating but you are also not a brave person. You don’t have to rock the boat, you don’t have to confront these feelings or share them with your partner honestly. You don’t have to make a plan, move in with a friend or a parent for awhile, you don’t have to acknowledge the impact it will have on your husband, you don’t have to deal with the headache of paperwork or splitting finances, you don’t have to fuck anything up — because that’s what brave people do. Brave people fuck things up and we are all better for it in the long run.

You might think you and your family has a comfortable life, but it’s not comfortable. You’re buzzing with the things you’re denying yourself. Not just physical intimacy, but perhaps more. Think about what’s on the horizon — let your imagination lead your way forward. Going on dates, being in public with a person you’re crushing on, physical intimacy over a longer period of time than an affair would allow, being out in the queer community, holding hands while walking down the street.

Wouldn’t you rather hang up the phone and join the party?

Take It From Us: Relationship Myths We’d Like to Bust

Feature image by The Gender Spectrum Collection.

There are a few things we can all agree help make relationships work — OR ARE THERE??? Maybe it’s more complicated than that. Here are the supposedly ironclad relationship rules that we don’t necessarily agree with!

10 Non-Confrontational Gifts For Your Girlfriend’s Other Partner

See All Holigays 2019 Content

Choosing a gift for your girlfriend is easy, but if you’re one of the many intrepid queers pursuing a polyamorous path, you might need to get a little something for your girlfriend’s other “little something.” Need a gift that says, “Don’t worry — I’m a great communicator and navigating non-monogamy in a culture that privileges monogamous partnerships is totally easy for me?” Never fear! You have plenty of options.

Some Air Plants ($11.95)

Show your girlfriend’s other squeeze that you trust their care-taking abilities by giving them a set of air plants. The next time you unexpectedly bump into each other at the only queer barber shop in town, you’ll get to chat about how the plants are doing instead of the usual, “So how’s your cat?”

A Pirate Costume For Their Cat ($10.99)

Maybe the gift tag says it’s “For Mr. Tickles,” but Mr. Tickles isn’t the one who’s invested in achieving cat fame on Instagram.

A Meditation Cushion ($22.99)

Encourage your boo’s boo to navigate polyamory with a clear and conscious mind by giving them a mediation cushion. Even if they only try meditating once for 30 seconds before spiraling into panic about whether or not they experience enough compassion, they’ll still have a place to rest their laptop while they watch Ellen Page movies in bed.

A Casual, Non-Sexual Fruit Basket (prices vary)

If you’re feeling fancy, you can order one of those Harry & David monstrosities, but a heartfelt, hand-picked basket of fruits and nuts and fancy snacks says, “Thinking of you and occasionally talking about you with my girlfriend in a positive, healthy way.” Steer clear of juicy fruits unless group sex is on the table.

Modern Tarot by Michelle Tea ($16.31)

Chances are, if your girlfriend’s other sweetheart is queer and/or exploring non-traditional relationship structures, they already own tarot cards. Help them bring their unconventional mindset to their tarot deck with a book that tackles tarot with a queer sensibility and Michelle Tea’s wicked humor.

A Fancy Nail Trimming Set ($15)

Honestly, this is mostly a gift for your girlfriend if you know what I mean.

An Oil Diffuser ($15.29)

Defuse any weird, competitive vibes with a puff of lavender and sage. Everyone needs a calm home environment for all those relationship check-ins.

The Audiobook Version Of Mating In Captivity by Esther Perel ($23.99)

Everyone’s favorite blazer-clad psychotherapist dishes out the hottest takes on relationship struggles. This audiobook is an ideal gift for any fan of Perel’s radical couples counseling podcast and wants to hear her sexy Belgian accent for eight hours and eight minutes straight.

A Fancy Water Bottle With A Crystal In It ($22.99)

Nothing says, “Please stay hydrated so we can clearly negotiate our boundaries” like a fancy schmancy water bottle with a crystal in it. Even if neither of you read Goop or believe in the whole crystal healing thing, a crystal water bottle looks lavish as hell. They’re “doing the work.” They’ve earned it.

An REI Gift Card (prices vary)

Acknowledge their adventurous spirit with a gift card for the gayest outdoor retailer around. Maybe they’ll get inspired to take an outdoor survival class or plan a poly partner camping trip or create a poly survival class for people on poly partner camping trips.

Holigays: Sexy, Sweet Gifts for Long Distance Relationships

It’s no secret I was in a long distance relationship for a hot minute. Overall, it sucked! But also, there were parts of it that were really fun, really rewarding, and aspects of being long distance helped me learn more about my partner (and myself) (and us as a couple). Loving someone far away makes us flex our creativity to connect in new ways. We had to think out of the box when it came to dealing with time differences, longing for a bod we couldn’t touch, and ways we could keep in contact without constantly being glued to our phones.

Here’s some gifts to get your long-distance sweetie so you can feel close to them, even when they’re 1,730 miles (or more) away.

!!!!!!!!SEX!!!!!!!

We-Vibe Moxie (129.99)

Thank Satan for all the new app-controlled sex toys coming out into the world! My new fav is the We-Vibe Moxie and I think it’s a lot of fun for long distance exhibitionists. It’s a clitoral vibrator with a super strong magnet–great for wearing out mowing the lawn, at a dance night, or whatever your dirty desire might be. One person controls it while the other gets the pleasure. The We-Connect App has the ability for voice and video calls while the vibrator is being controlled as it’s definitely strong enough to be used just as a vibrator. Check out all of We-Vibe’s app-controlled vibrators though, they’ve got toys for all bodies.

Spa Night From Afar

Mint Chip Cooling Face Mask (15.99)

One way to make sure you’re both taking care of your own needs while being apart are gifts that make your partner stop and slow down. Bath bombs, face masks, candles, and skin care items are nice ways for you to help your partner pamper themselves. If you get yourself a matching set, you two can have a long distance spa night! Please, don’t use your phone while in the tub though, you WILL drop it.

Long Distance Movie Night!

Customized Snack Box($50.00+)

Curate your own snack box and send your babe some fancy popcorn and goodies to enjoy while y’all use Netflix Party to stream whatever terrible holiday movies Netflix releases this year.

Plants

Staghorn Fern (79.99)

Listen, all you homos love plants. I’ve seen it with my own eyes, I’ve read about it on this website. What’s a nicer way to make your partner feel comfortable and homey than with something living and green to care for.

A Last-Minute Flight!

YOLO (Varies)

Just cut to the chase and visit a new destination somewhere! Is this extremely reckless and expensive? You bet! Will you regret it after a few nights of being in a new place with your hunk of a partner? Probably not! Will you bone every night that you’re together? Priceless.

Let their hands do something else!

Tablet Stand ($9.49)

This is handy so you partner can do… other things with their hands while FaceTiming you other than hold the phone. Like cook. Or eat. Or…other things.

A Cozy Blanket to Lay on While They Daydream of You

Sherpa Blanket ($110.93)

Alternative idea: A weighted blanket.

Customized Jewelry With A Very Homosexual Pet Name

Custom Necklace ($9.94)

Give your partner something they can wear everyday with whatever gay moniker you gave them!

Always Be My Baby: Our Semi-Professional Opinions on What Keeps Queer Couples Together

You Need Help: Trusting Yourself in a New Relationship After Early Attachment Trauma

A few weeks ago, I reposted a graphic from one of my favorite mental health Instagram accounts, @the.holistic.psychologist. In it, Dr. Nicole LePera (the holistic psychologist) posted some of the signs that a partnership may be a trauma bond, rather than authentic love. Here are some of the ways she listed to identify a trauma bond:

Shortly after I reposted the graphic, someone reached out to me with a question that was not so easily answered and encapsulated in an Instagram post. It’s a question that LaPera, in her work around reparenting our inner child, often writes about, and one that I find comes up often in session with my own clients:

I have a question about trauma bonding! Even though I’ve been so happy with my current relationship and feel like it really could last for a long time, if my partner says something that could even be perceived by me as similar to the verbal/emotional manipulation I experienced as a child, I get antsy and afraid. Like I feel like my partner is doing this on purpose, but if I confront them and tell them how it makes me feel, they apologize and try to make it better. It’s hard for me to accept that my partner is actually apologizing/taking responsibility for their actions. How do you know if you’re experiencing a trauma bond, or if you’re just experiencing the leftover trauma from other relationships manifesting itself in the current relationship?

There’s so much rich material here, and first of all, I want to commend you for being so aware of your process, even as it unfolds. This is something that not everyone can do, and requires the courage of our self-awareness, which we are not often taught to cultivate. Some of the psychological terms for what you’re grappling with are attachment and attachment wounds, your relationship with your early caregivers, trauma bonds (as you’ve correctly identified in relating to LaPera’s post); and the ways in which your inner child is responding to attachment in the present with the information that it had in the past. The question itself – how can I trust my partner, when what I learned in my earliest relationships was that attachment was related to fear, distrust, and betrayal – is a tale as old as time, yet can often feel brand new in each new relationship we find ourselves in.

One of the key factors in LaPera’s post, which on my first read skated right under my radar, was the point about our nervous systems – though on a reread, this is perhaps the most important part. Trauma bonding isn’t something that just happens to us emotionally or psychologically; or rather, our emotional responses to things have a neurobiological origin to them, which makes them physical, chemical, and embodied. Learning about this is a key part of understanding how trauma bonds work. So, get ready for some fancy science speak: The neurochemicals that the brain releases when you are trauma bonded to someone – “oxytocin (bonding), endogenous opioids (pleasure, pain, withdrawal, dependence), corticotropin-releasing factor (withdrawal, stress), and dopamine (craving, seeking, wanting)” – mirror those that are involved in addiction. (Funnily enough, these chemicals also share some overlap with the ones your brain releases when it experiences romantic love – especially early stages of romantic love known colloquially as New Relationship Energy. Love truly is a drug.)

Don’t worry so much about the specific details, unless you’re really interested in ‘em – there isn’t going to be a pop quiz or anything. But the point is, trauma bonds are difficult because they mimic regular patterns of attachment, and, because we need attachment bonds so much to survive, when they come under threat, our bodies respond to them as though we are experiencing actual, physical pain. We all want to move away from pain, and we’ll do almost anything to avoid it. This is why trauma bonds work. You become addicted to the cycle of emotional abuse: close bonding, confrontation (where the abuse most clearly happens), and reconcilation (coming back together to release those good, good bonding hormones.)

And on top of all this – this cycle can feel like its life or death because, at one point, it was! You needed to form attachments as a kid because it is literally how you made sure you stayed alive, and above all else, our nervous systems evolved to keep us here. If you grew up with toxic caregivers, it was in your best interest to adapt to the circumstances under which they cared for you – even if they were toxic. Now, you recognize the toxicity inherent in your early relationships when you were too helpless and dependent to be able to protect yourself or leave, and you want to make difficult choices for yourself now. That, in and of itself, is huge.

In “antsy and afraid” what I’m reading is somatic awareness – that is, how your body responds to emotional states of being afraid and wary (“antsy”-ness) – and this is the little nugget of information that I want you to really try to focus on as you move forward in this relationship. If you’ve worked with me, you probably know that the ways in which our bodies communicate to us with regard to things like trauma, stress/danger, and pleasure/safety, is one of my favorite topics, and a central focus of my work as a therapist and sex educator. Our bodies were the first means we had of communicating in the world, and they never stopped being our biggest and best source of information, but as we grow up, learning to use our words, and learning to fit ourselves into the molds and expectations of the social groups and systems around us, we often abandon the knowledge and wisdom of our bodies, relying on rationalization and intellectualization to interpret stimuli around us. This is in part because, in the Western world at least, the mind was exalted as divine (and associated with the supposed superiority of white masculinity, hmph), whereas the body, and its wisdom, was shunted aside and positioned as inferior (and associated with the perceived “shameful” eroticism of femininity and the racist perceptions of “savagery” in non-white experiences and ways of being). Screw all of that, of course – but it’s a good and important reminder that everything about our trauma (especially the self-doubt and gaslighting we do to ourselves to keep us stuck) comes back to white supremacy and capitalism, always. It is the water we’ve been swimming in for centuries.

I don’t say any of this to freak you out! That your body sometimes responds with antsy-ness and fear at some of the interactions you have with your partner does not necessarily mean that your partner is secretly as emotionally manipulative as your early caregivers, or that you have to throw the whole relationship away. What it does mean, though, is that your body is cluing you into an opportunity for growth. That growth is going to take the form of paying attention to your body, and also paying close attention to the context of the relationship. Here’s what I mean by that: According to Psychology Today, in trauma-bonded relationships, “there will be intense craving, a heightened value attributed to the abuser, and a hyperfocus on the relationship and conflict resolution. The victim’s thoughts will often follow to make sense of these feelings. [Their] brain usually turns to self-deception and rationalizations to resolve the cognitive dissonance.” What does this look like? “A victim might offer excuses to themselves, friends, and family to explain away or minimize the toxic partner’s violating behaviors.” By contrast, “Normal partners do not create the same emotionally charged climate as an abuser. Context is everything when it comes to the brain.”

This is all a complicated way of saying actions speak louder than words – and the information we get from our bodies can be purer and wiser before we run it through the mill of rationalization, self-doubt, a deep desire for safety and connection, and all the social conditioning that tells us we have to be nice and demure and polite and selfless, and abandon ourselves for the sake of love and acceptance. The growth opportunity here is to turn all those things on their head and engage with them critically, intentionally, and non-judgmentally.

It sounds like you’re taking that opportunity both when you express to your partner how you feel and give them the opportunity to clarify their statements and support you through vulnerable moments, and when you pay attention to what’s being kicked up for you in these circumstances. To take it further, I would suggest using these opportunities not only as a means of getting your partner to clarify, apologize, and support, but also get more curious about what’s coming up for you: What, exactly, about what they said triggered your inner child into squeamishness, into fidgeting and fear? Was a specific memory triggered by that interaction, or a dynamic more generally? Do you remember a specific person – your mother, father, grandparent, aunt or uncle, older sibling? What is your relationship with that person like now? Was there ever a moment when you stood up for yourself, or did you have to stay under the radar to keep the peace? How did they respond if you tried to voice your hurt and dismay? How does your partner, by contrast, respond to that, and does it feel different?

And, some harder questions: Are you having the same conversations with your partner over and over again, or do they take what you say to heart, and show changes in behavior? When they apologize to you, is their apology a real one, by which I mean, does it lead to changed behavior? Do they also confide in you about what the process is like for them, and do you share together what your childhoods were like and how you both learned to love? Quite frankly: Are they also proactively and intentionally doing healing work around their own experiences of early attachment? We all have baggage, and none of us came from perfect homes. (Again: Capitalism and white supremacy is the water we have been swimming in for centuries.)

Get really honest with yourself about the answers to these questions, because it’s very easy, and tempting, to explain all our reactions away are responses to trauma. “I’m broken, and this partner will save me” is what keeps us vulnerable. Possibly your trauma history is being triggered out of context in this relationship – but maybe it’s not. Or maybe you’re reacting to things that are not abuse in the way you experienced it as a child, but are clues the changes you want and need in how you and your partner relate to each other. YOU are the expert, no matter what your trauma history is.

Take note of what stress response is being triggered in you. Many of us have heard the usual culprits: fight, or flight, in response to stress and trauma, but less well-known are freeze – when our bodies shut down in the face of threat, and we experience things like disassociation; fawn – when we bend over backwards to try to appease the people hurting us, abandoning our own needs and desires in our bids for safety (this can show up a lot in codependent relationships); and tend and befriend, or seeking nurturance and social support through the stress response. Examining this is a practice of mindful self-awareness, and the curiosity required to do it is what creates enough distance between the stress of your response and your experience of it.

Pay attention to how your body responds to your partner’s reassurance, as well, and not just the event that triggered your stress response. Every interaction is an opportunity to gather more information. Similarly: How can you bring your body into these moments of vulnerability and connection with your partner? Our bodies are not just vehicles for us to receive information about the world, they’re also the most powerful way for us to unlearn, relearn, and heal. If it feels safe enough, what would it be like to incorporate touch, closeness, or movement into these moments of rupture (the psych term for conflict in a relationship), vulnerability, and repair (the psych term for healing that conflict and integrating it into the relationship) with your partner? This doesn’t mean anything hot and heavy, it can be as simple as linking pinkies while you talk, as silly as a mini-dance party, or as deliberate as a twenty-second hug – most importantly, though, it needs to feel freely chosen and safe for you.

Please know that you’re not alone in this process, at all. In fact, recently, Feminista Jones wrote for Zora about her own experience of relationship trauma, and how therapy is helping her sort out early attachment’s role in it: “My therapist helps me dig deeper into the reasons why I kept revisiting the same relationship with the same type of man, only to end up with the same devastating results. I now understand more about my relationship with my father, and its effects on how I interact with men. The biggest ‘aha!’ moment for me was in my understanding that relationship trauma is very real, can alter your brain and its functioning, and the symptoms can completely change your life.” As you can probably tell by now, our brains do a whole lot of developing in childhood, and they also seek patterns and familiarity. But that doesn’t mean we’re pre-destined to always be in unhealthy relationships, and that doesn’t mean that your relationship is unhealthy just because you experienced manipulation early in your childhood. Another possibility, though, is related to this – that because emotional manipulation was what you experienced in childhood in your early attachments, your brain is seeking to create that familiarity in this relationship, because what feels familiar (even if it is unhealthy!) is what our brains perceive as safe.

The trick, of course, is that all of this discernment is easier said than done. When we start asking ourselves these questions related to our early childhood experiences, a lot of scary stuff can come up for us, and many of us choose to avoid it all because the process is too painful. You’ll need support around this work, so I would also recommend seeking out a therapist who can guide you through this process, if that is accessible to you, or at least think about opening up these conversations with your friends. A common saying around attachment theory is that we heal in relationships. That doesn’t have to only mean your romantic relationship, though we’re pressured into thinking that our romantic relationships should be the central focus of our lives. But your friendships, or even the therapeutic relationship you create with a good therapist, give you other forms of context for healthy attachment – more information! – against which you can examine your experience of your romantic relationship.

As my mama always says: actions speak louder than words. You’re already doing it: paying attention to how this relationship is different from what you grew up knowing, and how your partner’s actions are different from your previous history. Hold onto that. Pay attention to your body. Don’t judge your anxiety, but thank it. You’re not broken; your body is doing exactly what it is meant to do to keep you safe. As LaPera says, “Authentic love must be learned,” and you’re right on track in the process of it. While it makes sense for your inner child to be fearful, you now have the opportunity to comfort her the way you needed to be comforted when you were her. Be brave, for her, and for you, because you deserve it.

Queer Sex Coven: A Relationship Format Tarot Spread

Throuples and tarot, anyone? Relationship formats other than monogamy are becoming more and more accepted, however that doesn’t mean it’s an easy task to find which one works best for you. We can’t promise dating will get any easier, but we can offer some insight through this tarot exercise.

What relationship formats are there?

Monogamy means to be in a committed relationship with one person. Polyamory literally translates into many loves and refers to the capacity to have more than one relationship at a time. However, like most things, relationship formats are not binary. There is a relationship format for every person, couple, and polycule out there. Open relationships allow for various forms of sexual freedom while remaining emotionally monogamous with one person. Relationship anarchy views all partnerships on an equal playing field, holding platonic relationships equal to sexual and romantic relationships. Use this tarot spread to help figure out which relationship format is best for you.

How does tarot help?

Tarot is well-known as a divinatory tool, or way to look into the future. However, it’s more accurately a mirror. Each card represents an archetype, a snapshot of the human experience. When understood from this perspective, the death card is not scary, but simply an expression of rebirth, like a post-breakup makeover. When we pull cards for a situation weighing on our mind we usually know what the answer is going to be. Tarot cards act as a means of reflecting a situation back to us and can provide clarity as a result. For a guide to tarot readings, check out Queering the Tarot.

I have to do something from the Muggle world, like communicate, don’t I?

There’s no right way to love and fuck. For some people, relationship formats like polyamory feel like a built-in part of their sexuality, even like an orientation. For others, their desired relationship format is more fluid and changes depending on partner(s) and what is the best current set-up. You should without a doubt share your views on relationship format with the people you date, so you can date the best people for you.

Step-by-Step Breakdown:

1. Sit somewhere quiet with your tarot cards. Hold the deck in your hands while you meditate upon the question at hand: Which relationship format is best for you?
2. Begin shuffling. When you’re ready, pull a tarot card to represent you. Place it to the right. Hold up the card. How does it speak to you? Refer to a tarot book to better understand it’s meaning. Does it make sense for your feelings and desires towards relationship formats?
3. If reading for a partner as well, pull a card to represent them, and place it to the left. If you’re single, this card can represent a desired partner or partner(s). What does it speak to you?
4. Now let’s pull cards to represent both sides of the spectrum. To start, ask the deck, “How is my relationship with monogamy?” Pull a card and place it to the right. What does it invoke?
5. Pull a card and place it to the left. This represents your relationship with polyamory.
6. Finally, pull a fifth card and place it in the center of your square spread. This card represents what relationship format works best for you, your partner(s), while acknowledging the great room to experiment in between monogamy and polyamory.

“I’m Not Missing Anything in My Relationship”: Bi Women and Nonbinary People on the Challenges and Joys of Dating

As I sat across from my date at a bar patio, the orange hue of street lights creating a halo around her, I shared the story of an awkward date. She asked for the gender of the person. Yes, this was a man, I informed her. It seemed like a harmless question until later in the date, when she proceeded to talk about her poor experiences with bi women. At our next bar, she talked about how her previous dates and online connections with bi women eventually ended without any physical connection and surmised that they really wanted to date men. She questioned if these people actually wanted to sleep with women at all. I wasn’t sure what she imagined they wanted out of their dates with her.

There’s no comparable situation with men. The world still assumes heterosexuality as the norm and the world generally sees me as a straight woman rather than a bi nonbinary person. So men usually aren’t going to assume that my lack of interest in sleeping with them, whether immediately or never, means that I’m not interested in any men at all. When I have told straight men I’m dating that I’m bi, the reaction has often been a swift change from sharing favorite movies to overtly sexual comments. Once, within minutes of mentioning that I’m bi, my date escalated his aggressive behavior to sexual assault. I felt that the way bisexual women and femmes in particular are portrayed as performing their sexuality for men may have made it easier for him, along with other misogynistic ideas he may have already held, to justify this dehumanization. Bi people of all genders have consistently treated me with more respect, with one date waving her hand at me over a couple beers and saying “You don’t have to go through your dating history with me.” In my experience and my bi friends’ experiences, we’re often asked to share our romantic and sexual histories with various genders on dates, and it gets tiresome.

Several people who spoke with Autostraddle shared their unique experiences dating as bisexual and queer people, including the hyper-sexualization of bi people and polyamorous people in particular, the idea that bi people will always “leave them” for a person of another gender, how bi people seek out other bi people, and the ways nonbinary people have treated their bi dates and partners with more understanding. Being bi has shaped the way they have dated, such as preferring to date other bi people, the hypersexualization of bi women by straight men, managing the insecurities and expectations of other people they’re involved with, or debunking myths about their relationships in their own community. Some of the bi women and nonbinary people Autostraddle spoke with chose to go by either their first name or a psuedonym. They will have an asterisk by their name.

Bi women face a number of health and economic barriers compared to other people in the LGBTQ community. Bi women have reported poorer health outcomes and are more likely to depend on SNAP benefits and Medicaid than monosexual peers, according to 2018 analysis from the Center for American Progress. Some of bi people’s negative health outcomes may be the result of feeling alienated from all monosexual communities, internalization of the stigmas bi people face, and the loneliness that comes as a result of it, researchers say. Bi people are also less likely to disclose their bisexuality to healthcare providers, according to 2012 research from the Williams Institute. Research on sexual violence has established that bisexual women have higher rates of sexual assault than straight or gay women. A 2017 Lehigh University researcher examined why that may be the case and found that sexual violence against bi women may result in part from “social construction of bisexual women as especially worthy of distrust, jealousy, and other emotions” and that the hypersexualization of bi women by men, reinforced by media representation of bi women, is also a factor.

Fear of harassment or uncomfortable interactions with lesbians has affected the way some bi people feel about dating lesbians. Miryam T*, who is nonbinary, said she hasn’t experienced direct harassment from lesbians for being bi but the rhetoric she has seen from some cis lesbians online about both bisexuality and trans people is enough to make her wary.

“Between the combination of experiencing biphobia and experiencing transmisogyny, I don’t really interact with cisgender lesbians if I can avoid it. I don’t go out of my way to avoid them but I don’t trust that they will be really happy to see me in their spaces,” she said. “ …Most of the people I’ve seen in the past few years have been trans men or nonbinary people and there’s a good reason for that. And it’s basically because those are the folks that I feel more like they understand me and I understand them.”

Miryam T said that although gay men have expressed interest in her, she tends not to date them, and tends to date trans people and bi people she can relate to more.

“I’ve been in situations with gay cis men where they were into me and I was into them but they made me feel like they thought of me more as a man, like talking about genitals,” she said. “Mostly whatever else they thought or said, they were so genital-focused… All around I feel safer with more own niche community than trying to see what the ‘proper gays’ are up to.”

Sarah* came out in her late 20s as bi after realizing she was in love with her best friend. She has had one serious relationship with a woman and is now in a monogamous relationship with a man. She said that her girlfriend at the time said she was concerned that she might leave her for a man.

“I don’t think it was so much biphobia as to have a partner who can easily meld back into heteronormativity. I think if I were a lesbian I would fear that too. But also as the person who is dating a woman it feels a little unfair, like well maybe, but currently we are dating,” she said.

She said that when she learned her best friend had feelings for her but that she was going to date a man instead, she said she felt like she was on the “opposite side” of it.

“Is she deciding to date this man over me because that is more comfortable out in the world?” she said she asked herself at the time.

Sarah added, “Knowing myself as a person who has dated a lot of men before coming out, it is comfortable for me to date men so it was a fear that I had that women I’ve dated would not want to date me or that they wouldn’t want to be with me because my experiences were mostly with men.”

She said that partners may use bisexuality as the thing they focus on as a relationship problem when they’re insecure about their relationships in general.

“I think to some extent there is a sense of insecurity in a lot of relationships that you aren’t enough for the other person — particularly in hindsight if it didn’t work out — and gender is a really tangible thing to grasp onto as a reason you think maybe you are unsatisfying to a partner or former partner,” she said. “I think it’s often an anxiety in a relationship with a bi or pansexual person because it’s so surface level. It’s so much easier to think ‘she left me or I worry she might leave me because I’m not a man/woman’ than ‘she left me because I was an asshole.’”

Chaya Milchtein, a queer polyamorous woman and automotive educator said that being poly magnifies certain stereotypes people already hold about bi people. Milchtein’s fiancée is a woman, which also affects how people receive her sexuality.

“A lot of times people assume I will date ‘the opposite sex’ like I’m missing something from my partner and where do you get all those stereotypes of bisexual people? I identify as queer but you get those bad stereotypes — like a bisexual person will cheat on with you with the opposite sex because they’re missing that or whatever. I’m not missing anything in my relationship. It’s fantastic and it’s going great. We just got engaged and who I date who is not her has frankly nothing to do with her and is no reflection on her or what she offers.”

Milchtein said that people’s perception of her sexuality has depended on her community at the time and that trans and nonbinary people have generally understood it better.

“I never dated a nonbinary person but I had the privilege of spending many years in New York where my community was mostly flexible,” she said. “But when I came out to Wisconsin, it’s a lot more rigid. I haven’t encountered many nonbinary or trans folks who are like ‘Oh I want to know who you fuck’ but the cis women have a big issue with it.”

“I quite frankly haven’t had a serious relationship with a man in a long time but I have dated and had relations with people of other genders,” Milchtein said. “But people are really surprised like I’m betraying my sexuality or something by talking about the experiences I’ve had with men in the past or that I might be interested in in the future.”

Although she said that cis men haven’t seen her attraction to other genders as a dealbreaker, she said they have focused on her queerness so much that all she becomes to them is the potential for a threesome. Milchtein said she doesn’t have a problem with threesomes and has had them and enjoyed them, but doesn’t it want it to be the focus of a date when it hasn’t previously been discussed.

“They just turn into blubbering idiots and whatever you were possibly having a conversation about all the sudden turns sexual,” she said.

Sarah said she has also experienced this assumption that her partner can’t offer her enough satisfaction because she is bi, but from her boyfriend. She said that his anxiety about it is “pretty minor” but that “men showing more than a passing comfort with bisexuality” has been a litmus test for her in any relationship she entered into with a man.

Melanie Cristol, founder and CEO of a queer-inclusive sexual health company Lorals, is a monogamous relationship with a nonbinary partner and said they have been very accepting of her sexuality.

“Their attitude toward bisexuality is so refreshing. They don’t remotely care about the genders of my former partners, and there’s not a weird undertone of fear that I’ll leave them for someone of another gender,” she said.

Another challenge for bi and queer women and nonbinary people is assumptions from monosexual people about their relationships either erase their sexuality or don’t consider that their gender and gender presentation affects which relationships people see.

Miryam T said she calls a relationship a queer relationship if queer people are in it, and being trans and bi can certainly affect how people read your relationship.

“As a baby trans woman who was dating a person who would eventually come out as a trans man in college, we both identified as queer already and we felt super weird about the appearance of being a straight couple. When in reality we were pretty far from that.”

She added, “There’s this interesting phenemenon of two people dating each other and especially two bi trans people dating each other where we’re approaching heterosexual conventions but at a great remove and great distance. If there are two cis people who are both bi and dating each other, they’re not really heterosexual. You do things to blend in and you might do things that are conventional in some ways but there’s a good chance that you’ll both be alienated enough that it will be different.”

She said that dating a trans man she and her partner could be mistaken for lesbians and a straight couple assuming genders one way and then a straight couple again with genders assumed another way all in a matter of a few hours. She said she sees things in being nonbinary and being bi tie their experiences together.

“In gay men’s dating culture there are a lot of rigid roles and sexual interests, at least that they proclaim, and lesbians say they don’t do this but they do this too, especially with the butch-femme dichotomy. It’s something that is subversive of all sexuality to be bi. The fulfillment that comes from feeling like, when things are going well, that you embody something that doesn’t quite fit cleanly into one category or another. That is what I keep coming back to as to why bi and nonbinary and trans people are all linked. We have a lot of common characteristics and experiences even if some of us are cis and a lot of us aren’t.”

Sarah said that since meeting her boyfriend, she has felt less comfortable talking about her sexuality in queer spaces. She doesn’t feel that fear in predominantly straight spaces, where she said she doesn’t have a problem correcting straight people who believe she’s straight too.

“Well I kind of felt like I came out and started dating a woman and it lasted a few months and was exploring my queerness and wanted to be in queer spaces. And then I met my boyfriend and it was unexpected and sort of fell into this relationship,” she said. “He’s great and amazing and I love him. But I do feel like now all of a sudden, I was exploring my queer sexuality and now I’m back in a hetero relationship. I’m a little timid about exploring queer spaces and trying to be open and vocal about my queerness. It’s something I struggle with day to day.”

The Elusive Three-Way Relationship: How to Avoid F*cking It Up

Two mojitos into a night out, a friend turned to me, eyes shining. “What if I’m falling in love with two people at the same time?” she asked, her fingers digging into my arm. “Does that make me polyamorous? I don’t know how to do that.”

In confessing to me, the only person she knew that has first-hand experience with the scarcely talked-about world of polyamory, she was searching for reassurance. It broke my heart – because at the time, I couldn’t give it to her.

Back then, I was part of a throuple (a three-way relationship) and it failed. We f*cked it up spectacularly, all three of us left hurt and reeling in the aftermath of our own foolish mistakes. I endured a long, painful grieving period, and then began the process of determining what went wrong. I saw each conversation we had, each hurtful action, each buried feeling; I started to realise how, if I could go back, I would be able to steer us clear of the worst rocks we hit head-on.

Perhaps if I’d known then what I know now, after years of reflection and experience, I could still call my past poly lovers my friends. Instead, I will share my follies with the readers of Autostraddle, along with all that they taught me, and provide a cohesive guide to the three-way relationship, and how not to fuck it up.

Clarify What You Want

Before prowling the dating sites, or calling up two of your closest, open-minded pals, take a breath to consider what exactly it is you want from a poly relationship. If you’re just looking for a bit of fun, it might be better to find some strangers for a one-time fling. That way, feelings are pretty much out of the mix, so nobody gets hurt.

If, however, you are interested in a long-term relationship with two or more other people, you’ll need to pick and choose with more care. The most frequent transitions into polyamory are when a couple decide to experiment with a third partner. Perhaps you and your boyfriend or girlfriend have discussed this, and you’re ready to start looking for this person. Or perhaps you are single, and are waiting for a couple to find you. In the world of polyamory, there is a word for this:

A Unicorn.

The Myth of the Unicorn

The unicorn is a rare and mystical creature that gallops solo through the plains of dating apps or discreet nightclubs. The unicorn is open-minded and sexually liberated enough that when an established couple extend a hook-up offer, their response is a resounding ‘yes’. The unicorn is fun, breezy, independent, and eager to please; they are the perfect third to introduce to a party of two, even if it’s just for one night.

From the perspective of the couple, the unicorn is the ideal solution to any lingering desires for experimentation outside of one another. The unicorn is a beautiful, unattached, inherently sexual being, whose only desire is to please their partners before being released back into the wild, possibly to be called back again at a later date for another round of uncomplicated fun.

Here is the problem: unicorns do not actually exist. At least, not as this two-dimensional fantasy. Certainly, there are those women who identify themselves as such, that search for one-off trysts with couples and thrive on being the elusive, unobtainable other. But this is as far as the concept goes; sex can be exciting and impulsive if it is just sex, but open it up to more than that, and the unicorn becomes a human being, with emotions and wants just like you.

Once upon a time, I was a unicorn myself – freshly single and thusly open to new experiences, and openly bisexual to boot, which made me irresistible to a couple on the brink of collapse. I ignored my own wants in order to indulge theirs, because at first it was exciting to be idealised, to be chased and wanted. Inevitably, I wound up unfulfilled, neglected, and heartbroken.

The couple I joined were a man and a woman – he keen to see some girl-on-girl action and fool around with someone new, she longing for her first lesbian experience. Living in the same apartment, slowly inching our way from ‘blowbacks’ to full-on kisses, we developed our close triad of friendship into throuple-dom. And for a few months, everything was perfect.

You Won’t Love Both People The Same Way

Here’s the thing: I loved them both. But my love for one was nothing like my love for the other. My bond with the man was based on mutual interests, a clicking sense of humour, a shared love of Film Noir. With her, it was about intense physical attraction, feminine softness, the intoxicating sensation of showing her what it was like to be with the same sex.

In their eyes, my affections seemed imbalanced. The way I behaved with each of them was entirely different, and therefore they assumed I was demonstrating a preference for the other. They competed for my time and affection, and began to argue about it constantly.

If I could do it over, I would explain myself to them both. I would tell them the parts that attracted me to them as individuals, and make sure they understood that although my attractions were different, they were equal.

Honesty & Communication

In any romantic partnership, the core fundamentals should be open communication, and total honesty. This is the only way to establish trust amongst all participants; it is particularly important to be open and communicative when there are more than two people involved.

How do I know this? You guessed it. Because I was not open, I was not communicative, and it was terrible.

For them, I was an island to escape to when their frustrations with their long-term partner swelled to unbearable levels. Because there were no rules in place, trips taken to my island were secretive, hidden from the other, lied about when we were all together. Looking back at us now, sneaking around one another to avoid hurt feelings, I despair over our naivety. I want to shake our former selves by the shoulders and ask us what on earth we were thinking would happen, and how omitting the truth could ever create a steady foundation for a relationship to balance on.

Since my experience, I have spoken with other throuples, and read helpful accounts from people in successful three-way-relationships. All of them stress that the most vital thing is to make sure everyone is always on the same page, that all of you are happy with the inter-workings of the relationship, and that everyone feels they can share whatever they are feeling.

‘All the books I read said jealousy was wrong, the emotion of the monogamous unenlightened. Something we poly people should transcend. And yet I wasn’t transcending jealousy. I wasn’t enlightened at all.’Jeff Leavell, HuffPost

It’s all very well to say that jealousy is ‘ugly’ and you should avoid it, but you’re only human, and so are your partners. Jealousy is a natural emotion, and often arises without you wanting it to. So bare your honest thoughts, share how you truly feel with your partners, and find a way through it together.

If I could paint a perfect picture of how it should have looked for us, it would be this: all three of us, sat as we so loved to do, around our kitchen table when we should have been sleeping, our windows flung open and swathed in blankets, drinking wine and telling each other, right from the start, what we each wanted from this journey we were about to undertake. I would have loved to know, before it was too late to change my mind, how unstable they were as a couple, how without my sudden appearance in their lives, they might have broken things off long before. I wish I had summoned the confidence to express my confusion over the vastly different types of love I had for both of them. I wish we had all been cleverer, had encouraged open communication, so none of us felt we had to hide, or were ever feeling we were doing something wrong.

Know When It’s Not Working

My final speck of advice before you gallivant off on your polyamorous adventure is to keep watch for signs of collapse, so that you can avoid total destruction. Nobody embarks on a new relationship thinking about the end, but I still advise caution, only so you can protect yourself from an enormous mountain of pain.

A wonderful part of the poly lifestyle is connecting with multiple people at once, sexually and emotionally. In non-monogamous relationships, you are able to build several intimate bonds around yourself that act as a fortress of safety and love. Unfortunately, however, this often means that a poly break-up can be a lonely and isolating experience. When three or more partners break up, at least double the ties are severed as there would be in a typical two-person split. This is often worsened by the non-understanding of your other support systems, such as parents or friends. If they don’t ‘get’ your poly relationship in the first place, they lack the ability to properly help you through the pain of it ending. So be wise to the warning signs – the jealousy, the secrecy, the lack of effort from one or more people.

Above all else, however, go in with an open, loving, generous heart. Be clear about what you want, and find out what the other parties expect from you. Be respectful, be kind, and take care of the precious, unique bond that brought you all together.

The Rituals of Love in Everyday Life

At fifty-five years of age, I had made a good life for myself. I was secure in my job and loved my work as a teacher at the local community college. My only daughter was grown and living a full and happy existence in a city eight hours south. I lived in a small cabin in the middle of a beautiful forest, majestic Douglas fir and cedar trees towering over me.

Each season had its rituals. Spring brought the planting of seeds in the ground and the welcoming of the sun’s return. In the summer months, I happily tended my garden; harvesting squash and strawberries, eating fresh-picked lettuce, and watching my roses bloom. Come fall, it was the task of cutting and stacking firewood, gathering kindling, and getting ready to return to school. The winter months carried with them cold and quiet, which settled into the forest and made the heat of the fire a welcome companion.

I had a close circle of friends with whom I shared long phone conversations, talking of the day’s events, books we were reading, and the latest gossip. Sometimes we went out to eat, sometimes to a movie or concert. They were who I turned to for advice, solace, and to share the joys and sorrows of my life. We had been friends for decades and had committed to being there for each other, in the good times and in the not so good times. I was content to be alone and looked to my friends for my emotional sustenance, believing that was all I needed. I had tried relationships, my last one having ended seven years prior. I often thought of the different kinds of love that we humans are capable of feeling, and caritas, the Latin word for charity, would often come to mind. Perhaps I had entered a time of my life where I would practice loving of a different kind, the love for all humanity.

But in being honest with myself, I had to admit that I felt sad at the thought that I would never again enjoy romantic intimacy with another person. To share daily life with a lover can be so deeply nourishing and enriching. And yet, there can be enormous pain and turmoil, when the reality of life with that other person becomes unbearably difficult. I had known both.

Sometimes I fantasized about my one true love driving into the yard, overjoyed at finding me, and we would live happily ever after, just like in the movies. More often though, I imagined that I would most likely find a companion, someone who would lean against the kitchen counter, share a cup of coffee, and help ward off the lonely afternoons of my old age.

Either way, I was hesitant to go looking. I wasn’t willing to give up the contentment I had found, nor upset the sense of a balanced life I had created. It seemed I would live out the rest of my life enjoying a richly satisfying life in partnership with myself.

Attending a party one Spring afternoon, I struck up conversation with a friend I hadn’t seen in some years. Her relationship had ended two years before, and as I stood next to her, the words, “She’s single!” flashed through my mind. I felt a rush of heat, and then wondered why such a thought had occurred. Little did I know how fateful an encounter it would be.

I’ve read about falling in love with someone you’ve known for twenty-five years. I had wondered what unforeseen gesture or act sparked a fire after so many years of friendship, and why the two people involved didn’t know sooner. In my case, it was that she had always been partnered, so it was out of the question. As for her side of things, she told me on our first date that she had been attracted to me for a long time. I hadn’t noticed, and there was the matter of her partner. She explained, “I had no intention of doing anything about it, for I was in a committed relationship. But it was fun to look.”

A committed relationship of fifteen years, which ended overnight when her partner told her that there was someone else.

Our coming together began with emails back and forth, subtle flirtations written late at night and early morning before work. Then came daily phone calls. The first time I stayed over, I found a piece of chocolate waiting for me on the pillow in the guest bedroom. Cards, lovingly chosen, began to appear in the mailbox, and soon, the word, “relationship” became a part of our conversations.
Weekends, we drove the hour and half distance to be with each other, our hearts doing cartwheels over our good fortune. Each in our late fifties, we had both been uplifted by the ecstasy and shattered by the heartache of other loves. We had each chosen solitude for a time to clarify what we wanted in a relationship, if there were to be another one.

As we spent increasing amounts of time together, it felt like we had found, in each other, the perfect partner. Not that either of us was perfect, but we held similar beliefs about how to live life, and what was important. We agreed that honesty and integrity needed to form the basis of our commitment to each other. “I say it like it is,” she told me. “You’ll never have to guess what I’m thinking.” That, and the fact that we laughed… a lot. She was silly and playful, often defusing a tense moment with humor. Being with her, I often felt a lightness, a sense that really, everything was alright. We figured out that, due to our similarity in age, we knew all the same songs. One of us could throw out a riff and the other would chime in with the next set of lyrics. Somehow, that synchronicity sealed the deal.

It took a year of long-distance dating; a relaxed, laughter-filled trip to see one another’s family; and the sadness and longing that would overtake us when we were apart, to recognize that we wanted to spend the rest of our lives together. And so, after thirteen years of living alone in a cabin in the woods just big enough for me, I moved in with her, lugging too many books, my furniture, and the important mementos of my life. I also carried with me the hope that the love I felt for this woman would endure, and we would make home with the same joy and ease that had defined our courtship.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder, but presence makes the bond grow deeper. Our life together has been a weaving of moments, small and large, that create our shared world. The daily feeding of the dog and cat. The eternal question, “What’s for dinner?” One of us watering the garden while the other does the dishes. The reaching out, in the middle of the night, to touch an arm or shoulder — a silent statement, “I’m here, I love you.”

Some of our gestures are planned: a conscious giving of our love that surprises, excites, and delights. Our first Christmas together, I expressed a desire for a traditional tree and the time-honored ritual of gift-giving. She revealed that she wasn’t good at giving presents. “I never know what to buy.” In the days before, she made a lot of noise about not getting it right.

Christmas morning, I woke to see that Santa, indeed, had made a visit; I was overwhelmed with emotion as I opened my presents. Each one had been chosen with such caring and thought. The final touch: a montage of photographs of my cabin and the woods I had left behind, photographs she had lovingly taken and arranged.

Other gestures allow us to play, bringing laughter and fun to our lives. She taught me the way to fold the first square of toilet paper on a new roll to evoke the sensation of staying in a classy hotel. “I learned it from Leona Helmsley,” she kidded. I dutifully practiced until I got it right, and now take the time to create the effect whenever needed. Early on, she would laugh and make a remark about it, but recently I wondered if she had stopped noticing.

My answer came one recent morning. I stepped into our second bathroom, the one less used, and my eyes fell on the neatly folded triangle that lay atop the soft white roll. I felt myself gasp, and then smile with pleasure. A message from her that said, “We create home together; we create joy for one another.”

Some of these small acts of love are not premeditated, but occur from a desire to make clear, “I see you. I understand what matters to you.” Often she turns to me, or I to her, and says, “I love you.” It has become somewhat of a game between us, the question that follows: “Why, at this very minute, do you say that?” The answers are often enlightening.

When, a few weeks ago, I asked that question, she told me that she had been touched because I had assembled all of her coffee fixings — her favorite green mug, the thermometer that determines when the steamed milk is just right, and the small pitcher that strategically holds the frothy liquid — at the side of the dish drainer so she could find them easily in the morning.

A simple thing, easily done. A moment extra taken in the daily doings of life. Yet, more than the lavishly wrapped gift box on Valentine’s Day, or the serious but cherished conversations we have about the possibility of getting married, these rituals performed by each of us, as we move through our days together, form the cornerstones of our love.

My mother used to say, “It’s the little things that count.” Only now do I understand the deeper meaning of that statement. A rose cut from the garden in a vase on the nightstand, a stack of laundry found folded with care, my favorite ice cream bar appearing in the freezer. As each day passes, and we settle deeper into our life together, it’s the little things that make me love her more and more, and convince me that I made the right choice to take the risk of loving again.

They are what hold us when, in a time of stress, one of us speaks harshly, and the other takes offense. Our first really serious struggle, one that began with a simple moment of miscommunication, took all day to sort out and felt insurmountable at moments. We had entered waters we’d never navigated before, a level of turbulence we couldn’t escape from. But then, we remembered that the other person is more than a tone of voice, steeped in frustration over a lost tool; our love stronger than an affronted moment. We sought the solace of the night and the comfort of each other’s arms; we forgave each other and reaffirmed our love.

When we first came together, friends chided us that we were acting like “a couple of high school sweethearts,” so strong was our desire to be with each other, so full of joy at having found each other, and so happy to express the love we felt for the other. The weekends couldn’t come soon enough; the obligations of work that kept us apart — weights we were eager to throw off. Teaching allowed me to have my summers free, and for three glorious months, we were able to spend every day together, deepening the love that was growing between us.

High school sweethearts, perhaps, but like every other couple, we have had to experience all the natural stages of a relationship: the honeymoon period, the first argument, the realization of the other’s humanness ― that we are each flawed, beautifully so, but flawed. We’ve had to confront the fear that the other might find us lacking and seek another; and thankfully, we have reached the place where we trust that we’re both in for the long haul.

What might be unique in this relationship is that at fifty-seven and sixty respectively, we aren’t innocent young lovers looking toward a fairy-tale future. We carry our past with us: the painful lessons and the exquisite triumphs. They inform us of the pitfalls to avoid and the places to reach for within ourselves, when we need to be strong or to strike the right balance in a given situation. We are older and wiser, and our loving has a wonderful maturity to it. We are not so thrown by adversity and can more fully appreciate the beauty and goodness that we create together.

We both recognize that we are moving toward the last era of our lives. Both physically and mentally, our age has begun to show. She’s got a bum knee. I work hard to find the names of things sometimes. It takes both of us to open a stubborn jar, and no longer can we depend on the muscle strength that once was an integral part of our make-up.

Increasingly, our peers are facing death and we each have buried good friends. Each time it happens, we have a moment of pause. When will it be one of us? When will we have to face the moment of saying good-bye to one another? We are deeply aware that the time we have together is precious and irreplaceable, not to be taken for granted.

The small gifts of love we offer to one another sustain us, deepen our bond as partners and lovers, and ultimately, will give us the strength to face the illness, old age and death that will take us from one another. We are already practicing: the offer of a massage for an overworked muscle, the cold cloth on a forehead when a headache cripples, the urging by both of us, “Take your vitamins.”
I was raised on the premise that love, above all else, is what carries us through life’s journey. These years of loving my partner and making home with her have been the litmus test of that premise. The lesson I’ve learned is that it isn’t Love with a capital L, the stuff of romance novels and million dollar movie scores. It is the thoughtful gesture, the unbidden touch, the whispered word of caring that makes the heart go pitter patter.

These rituals of love in everyday life — each one small and insignificant by themselves ― together make a potent recipe for a life of loving, shared day in and day out, year in and year out, for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, till death do us part.

This essay was first published in Eureka Literary Magazine, Vo. 24, Spring 2019. Visit Eureka Literary Magazine at elmmag.com.

Photo credit: Teresa Kasza

You Need Help: Navigating Aggression, Desire and Gender in Dating

Content warning: Discussion of sexual violence.

The origin of this article was a question from a reader who reached out to me on Instagram with a question about her experience of violence and desire as a queer woman currently in relationship with a cis man. She wrote:

“I’m a queer woman who is currently in relationship with a cis man, and I’ve been pondering recently how to manage a shift in sexual practice since going from largely aggressive male partners to a sensitive and respectful one who often waits for me to initiate. I get confused by the lack of quasi-assault, and interpret it as a lack of interest. I’m starting to realize I experience desirability via a violation of my boundaries, and it’s a weird, murky place to navigate. I’m bi/pan/however you want to define it, but I’ve only experienced this kind of thing with cis men. With non-men, sex has been way more…expressive? There’s no dichotomy between violence and desire there, it’s somehow more connected and playful and a level playing field. I haven’t talked to my current partner about how the difference between sex with cis men and sex with other partners, but I have talked to him about the desirability/aggression thing…like after our first date, I wasn’t sure if he liked me, because he hadn’t grabbed me and kissed me, and he was like, ‘I was just being respectful.’ I guess I’m still unlearning this whole idea of, just because he doesn’t make aggressive forward initiations, then he doesn’t find me attractive or sexually appealing. Is this bad?”

Originally, I was going to answer this like any other advice column, but the nature of the question seemed bigger than that, and something that I thought perhaps a lot of queer women could relate to, especially those who from time to time find themselves in relationships with cis men. So, let’s break down some of the themes here.

First is the question of desirability, and how we interpret being desired based on our gender, and the gender of our partner(s). As bi/pan/however-you-want-to-define-it queer women, we often have the uniquely beautiful experience of being able to interact with partners of many different genders, and your assessment of how desire and dynamics shift in response to the various genders of your partners is an astute one. How can it not? We bring all of who we are, and all of the unspoken messages we’ve learned about sex and sexuality throughout the course of our lives, to each sexual or romantic interaction we have. Those experiences and conditioning then interact with the ways our partners’ learned sexuality in order to create unique and idiosyncratic exchanges. We create something new each time we partner with someone, whether that be in a long-term romantic and sexual partnership, a brief onetime encounter, a friends-with-benefits arrangement, a situationship, etc.

I was curious about how other bisexual/pansexual femmes navigated gender, sexuality, and desire, because I was certain that you weren’t the only person who’s experienced this. I put out a call on my IG asking people to talk to me about the social conditioning they received about sex/sexuality being raised and/or perceived as feminine, and how it impacted their own experience of desire. Most people responded with things like, “Oof,” or “where to EVEN begin,” or “how much time do you have? lolcry” – so clearly, the topic resonates with people. But beyond that, the answers I received where many and varied. A common them, though, was primarily one of having to unlearn toxic messaging about who we are. For example, Kit, a stripper, poet, and shit-talk astrologer, said, “I feel like I was taught to fear my femininity and sexuality as if it’d turn against me if I honed it or loved it.” Kit said that she was taught that to own her sexuality would lead to failure or disaster of some kind: “Teen pregnancies or women ‘failing’ because of their sexuality is super, super common in my family,” she said. By contrast, Kit says that she sees her sexuality and desirability as her strength and source of power – a disruptive and transformative narrative not uncommon to those who work in the sex industry. “Now with either gender I’m always told I’m comfortable or confident, so joke’s on you, social norms,” Kit says.

Another person told me that they’re “not great at identifying desire when it’s coming from other femmes” – highly relatable content, as many a meme will attest. They went on to explain that, “cis men are, like, incredibly obvious and often sort of tiresome but sometimes kind of adorable, and there’s this swaggery masc energy that I see in trans masc and butch people. But femmes are like. It’s almost like we’re all too uncertain to make our desire clear to each other?” This description seems to me moderately in keeping with your description of aggression and desire with regard to sexual encounters with cis man – not that swaggery masc energy is aggressive, necessarily, but that masculinity and toxic masculinity are a spectrum, and that one aspect of that spectrum has to do with being the active participant, the pursuer, the subject/protagonist who drives the action in the relationship. This is not to say that femmes can’t ever embody that energy, of course, but that a more toxic version of this is what you’ve felt in your interactions with cis male partners in the past, and it’s relative lack in the relationship that you’re in now might be contributing in part to some of your confusion reading his desire for you.

The fact that there’s a lot more freedom in your interactions with non-men doesn’t surprise me, from the standpoint of thinking critically about conditioning and social norms. There’s a reason that queerness and queer love is radical, and it’s because there aren’t any scripts for it in mainstream culture. Sure, we’ve all heard of lesbians U-HAULing, and lesbian bed death, and the stereotype of gay men only wanting anonymous sex to the exclusion of intimacy and emotional connection. And certainly, queer people suffer from these narratives – as a therapist and sex educator, I’ve worked with both queer women and gay men who express frustration at the way these stereotypes weigh heavy on their dating and romantic lives and serve as boxes from which it seems impossible to break free. But we’re also at the beginning of a very new generation of queer people, folks who are starting to be more comfortable talking openly about and organizing their lives around things like ethical non-monogamy and polyamory; who have more fluency when considering sexuality and romantic attraction and how the two intersect, and also diverge. We are a community for whom asexuality and demisexuality are no longer unnamable experiences but legitimate identities, and one that understands that sex doesn’t have to look a certain way (involving penetration, for example, or even orgasm) in order to be considered valid and worthy expression of authentic sexuality.

This is a distinctly beautiful and powerful place to be, and yet, as with any moment of change, transformation, and newness, it can also be frightening. I know from my own experience as a bisexual femme the pressure I felt to go back to what I had been forcibly taught and had internalized over the course of my life, especially in a fraught and overwhelming political moment. My last relationship was with a cis straight white man from a conservative family (I know, I know) and it started just before Trump was elected in 2016. I distinctly remember thinking about the ways in which identity politics featured heavily in this relationship – my extremely misplaced certainty that my proximity, via my then-boyfriend, to all these markers of power that I lacked (cisness, straightness, whiteness, monogamy, and a stereotypical type of masculinity, the very top of the hegemonic tier) might somehow extend to me, not because I wanted to be powerful by proxy, but because I desperately wanted to be safe.

I’m sure you can imagine how well that worked out.

Our identities are inseparable from the ways in which we relate. S. Tazia answered my IG post by describing how she had been raised to view her own sexuality as something shameful that had to kept secret. “As a young black female, I had several people say or insinuate ‘not being fast’ so I snuck around, kept secrets, and judged females who were more out there and maybe even missed out on great interactions because I believed so many ‘no no’ rules.” When I asked her if she experienced desire differently with cis het men versus people of other genders, she explained, “with cis het men I’m more reserved because I feel there’s always a bigger risk of being in danger…I try to keep physicality out of the conversation so they don’t think or expect sex is happening.” She, like you, reads aggression and danger into desire when it comes to interacting with cis het men, something that I can also relate to, and it informs aspects not only of dating, but even of the preliminary conversations she has with new people: “I always have my guard up to an extend but even more so with cis het men and non-POC individuals. I like to talk about sex and relationships but most men take that as a sign that you desire them and I usually just desire to conversational attention.” Hearing this made me sad at same time as it struck me as discouragingly familiar, and made me wonder at how heavy queer women’s interactions with cis men often tend to be. How can we have good sex if we don’t even feel safe enough to talk about sex with our partners or prospective partners without being on our guard? And how can we ever let our guard down when our entire lives the world has been teaching us that we must keep it up unless we want to earn the violence we all endure?

It sounds like aggression and desire for you have become intertwined because that is the experience with cis men that is familiar to you, and familiarity in our bodies is interpreted as safety. I am sorry that this has been your experience, and I am sorry that it has also been mine. I’m sorry that male aggression is so normalized – for us, and also for men, because I do not believe that it reflects an authentic part of their sexuality either. Nor is it, from my interactions with non-cis masculine folks and butch women, an authentic part of masculinity itself. I am sorry that bi women’s identities are perceived as shapeshifting in response to the gender of our partners – when we have straight male partners, we are read as straight women, even though that is not what our internal experience and identity really is. I’m sorry that we often internalize that projection, incorporate it unknowingly into our own self-concept, and have to fight to remember who we are as separate from the people we are dating and fucking. I’m sorry that sometimes it is harder to fight for the types of relationships we want when we are with men, and that cis men aren’t given the tools to create expressive, collaborative, creative, and joyful sexual relationships with bi women, the way that queer people, by necessity, often must be creative since even now, our experiences are unrepresented and erased.

I don’t think it is impossible, however, for you to begin to heal the ways in which aggression and desire have become conflated for you with regard to cis male partners, and I think having a gentle partner now is actually a great place to start. You’re not the only person for whom cis male tenderness is confusing. Another respondent, Eve Ettinger, noted that it was her own conception of what it meant to be desired that factored into some of her confusion. “Desire for me was so defined by being needed,” she told me. “It’s hard to separate it now – and of course having needs of my own is antithetical, which made me most comfortable in stone/service top kinds of modes. Having tender male desire is hard to relate to unless I put myself in feminine terms in my head and cast myself as more male in the roles — meaning, needing comfort is easy to read as desire and to work with, but tender desire from a man often feels fake to me.”

I would encourage you to do some more reflecting on what desire and being desired means to you, specifically in the context of aggression, transgression of boundaries, and violence. There’s no wrong answer here, but if it feels heavy or frightening to consider this, be gentle with yourself – and perhaps seek the support of a professional if you find that you are working through lots of trauma. If you feel safe enough to do so, talk about how you experience sex differently with your current partner, how it was with previous male partners, and with non-men. It sounds like he has at least a modicum of working knowledge of how his identity as a cis man impacts the way in which he interacts with you. Ask him to tell you more about what he meant when he said he was trying to be “respectful.” Was it rooted in slutshaming ideas about what it means for women to “put out” on the first date? Or was he truly aware of how being more “forward” or taking more initiative might be experienced by you as pressure or aggression? Ask him where he learned that. Is he willing to talk about the difference with you without feeling attacked or guilty about his own identity? Is he the type of partner who is not only conscious of these dynamics, but also curious and willing to engage with them – not only for your sake, but also for his own? Is he willing to critique the scripts of masculinity as they apply to him, and be intentional about his own experience of gender (being a cis man, though often seen as the default, is still just one gender among many and therefore should be intentionally and thoughtfully engaged with!), and the ways that it plays out in your relationship? And if he is not, what would that mean to you?

It also bears mentioning that the interplay between aggression and desire are not, in and of themselves, bad things – though it sounds like in your life, you’ve experienced them mostly as violence and harm. Part of me wonders if, because of this, you judge yourself for sometimes feeling desired mostly in the context of aggression, and I want to let you know that that is not necessarily a “bad” thing, nor does it mean that you have been “broken” by your previous experiences. The energy of aggression, when consciously and intentionally engaged with, can be an extremely potent and erotic energy. It can be exciting. That’s what a lot of kinky experiences play with, after all – a conscious willingness to transgress what our normative sexual scripts tell us are taboo, within the deliberately and explicitly stated bounds of consent. Exploring that, if you choose to, could quite possibly be a healing and empowering experience. (It also doesn’t have to be, though – it just has to be what works for you.)

The question you end on is “Is this bad?” and that stands out to me as significant. I’ll tell you what I tell all my clients who come to me seeking help for sex and sexuality issues: I truly don’t believe that there is any one “right” way to be when it comes to our sexual and erotic lives. So many of us are put in the position of having to ask ourselves if we are “bad” or “broken” for being the way we are, and desiring the things we desire, but to me, whenever I hear a client use the word “bad” to describe some aspect of their sexuality or sexual experience, more than anything else it’s a prompt to explore with them some of the normative sexual scripts they are measuring themselves against. But you don’t need to measure up to any of the things you’ve been taught are the “right” ways to be as a sexual being. There is no way to do sexuality “right” by any objective, external standard. You only have to have the curiosity, and the gentle courage, to explore what feels right, and true, for you.

16 Ways to Grow Closer to Your Boo Without Actually Moving in Together

Feature image via The Gender Spectrum Collection.

We all know the stereotype: lesbians move in together really quickly. Too quickly, some might say! If you ask me, it’s because women and non-binary people are so fucking amazing that it’s hard not to become totally engrossed in them and forget that you also have to eat breakfast and go to work.

Moving in together can be a wonderful next step in your relationship, if taking “steps” in “relationships” is your thing. Cohabitation brings you closer together. It allows you to hang out with your BFF/boo as much as you want, and it’s also the most financially and logistically feasible way to start your future as a unit. However, it’s not 100% wise to leap into a living arrangement based solely on your dopamine levels. Love is not enough to sustain a partnership. Sometimes it’s better to just take your time and get to know each other in a low-pressure way without worrying about chores and rent.

So, how can you grow closer to your boo and feel like you’re taking the “next step” without signing away a year of your life and potentially making an enormous mistake? LOTS OF WAYS!

1. Make your quality time more quality.

It’s hard to grow closer when you’re Netflix and chilling most evenings, but luckily there are lots of ways to turn your bonding time up to 10. What about going on each one of the Gottmans’ Eight Dates? Or try this intense 36-question exercise that supposedly can cause anyone to fall in love with anyone.

2. Go on vacation together.

Many folks say that you should never move in with someone until you’ve been on a trip with them. Travel is a real test of your relationship. It’s also just a nice way to bond with your partner in a new setting! Take a trip! The longer the better. Between the planning and the hassle and the missed flights, you’ll feel about as irritatingly close to your partner as the most cohabitating-est of couples.

3. Start a joint project.

Much like living together, starting a joint project requires mutual investment from both of y’all. And there are so many possibilities to choose from! Maybe a podcast? Or a community gardening plot? OMG start a couples’ YouTube channel and send me the link!

It’s always easier to stick with a new project when there’s another person involved, and plus, now you guys have a special thing.

4. Learn a new skill together.

In every queer relationship, there is at least one person who has always wanted to be in a band. Go buy some instruments and bang on ‘em ’til you sound good! You could also learn to cook a new type of cuisine, speak a new language, or fix your own car(s). Seeing your hunny’s new ~skills~ in action might actually make you more attracted to them.

5. Go on vacation together again.

So you’re sitting there thinking, “Okay, we’ve DONE all the pre-moving in together stuff, I want an APARTMENT and a JOINT CAT already.” And you already know that you’d work well together as cohabitating boos, because you went to Mexico that one time and you barely even fought. But on the other hand, it’s only been two months and you have no idea what her credit score is.

DON’T DO IT SARAH. Go back to Mexico again.

6. Start a joint savings account.

Maybe you could start a joint savings account with your boo, like on Digit or in a shoebox. Your savings could go toward your next trip, a pet, an extravagant date — anything that gets you both excited. Is this a good idea? I don’t know. Why is anyone listening to me??

7. Get matching haircuts.

Now we’re talking! Even better, get matching haircuts and when people point it out, act like you’ve always had them. “We’re soulmates, Danny! We were born like this!”

8. Get a custom-made T-shirt with their face on it.

You can buy a shirt with your boo’s face on it from certain websites. Buy five, one for each day of the week. Or maybe buy one of those teddy bears with a custom voice recording in it, and the voice recording is her saying, “Sit on my face, Bianca.” That’ll be just like she’s there with you, all the time.

9. Buy a tent and put it in their living room.

It doesn’t count as living together if you sleep in a tent in their living room :) :) :) :) :)

10. Move into the apartment next door.

Have you met those people that say they never want to live with their partner, they want to live in separate houses next door, like Frida and Diego? Ha! Joke’s on them. You should move into the apartment next door simply because it will be much easier to spend six nights a week at their place if it’s next door. We all know you stay there six nights a week. Stop lying.

12. Legally adopt them as your child.

Fuck it! There’s no avoiding it — this person is meant to be in your life FOREVER. And yes, it’s still too soon to move in together. So just legally adopt them as your child instead. (Googles “can you legally adopt an adult”) Good news! You can legally adopt an adult. Now you’re tied together forever with no lease involved.

13. Donate your kidney to them.

Do they even need a kidney? Whatever, it’s fine. Give them your kidney. Then take one of their kidneys. It’s a kidney swap, you still don’t live together and everything is fine. This is what maturity looks like.

14. Write and star in an original Netflix series about you two living together.

You can technically live together as long as it’s in fiction. Quit your job, learn screenwriting and acting, and then write and star in a Netflix series about the dreamy life that you live with your boo in your shared apartment. Should your partner get to star in the series too, or should you give their role to Lena Waithe??? I’ll leave that part up to you.

15. Transfer your consciousness into the body of a dog and become their pet.

Somewhere, there is an evil scientist who is just dying to turn you into a dog. There are no rules re: “moving too fast” with dogs, so now you can become as codependent as you like! Maybe you can even pull the move from that book/movie A Dog’s Journey and continuously transfer your soul into new dog bodies whenever the current one dies. That, my friends, is a happily ever after if I ever saw one!

16. Colonize a new planet together.

Take your boo and leave this Earth forever for a very tiny planet that’s just big enough for the two of you. You’ll share your entire newly colonized planet, not a cramped house or apartment, so it’s totally casual! Whoa. A workaround for the ages.

There are around 30 billion planets in our galaxy alone, and surely one of them is approximately the right size and contains oxygen??? Surely. Scientists, back me up here.

You Need Help: What Does a Healthy Relationship Look Like?

Q:

I’m really struggling to regain a healthy sense of what relationships – romantic, platonic, and beyond – look like. I’ve struggled with abuse and mental health (anxiety and depression) for most of my life, and even though I’m dating, I’m having a difficult time unlearning this toxic behavior and relearning healthy habits, especially self-love. Any advice?

A:

About three or four years ago, I went through my second-ever really bad, heartrending break up. Now, from the perspective of four years (and another heartbreak) later, it’s clear to me what went wrong. The rush to intimacy via a closeness that was quick and insistent rather than slowly built and earned, was the first big red flag that helped me identify what my role was in that pattern. For a long time I had considered myself to be the victim in my relationships: helpless, innocent, and acted upon. It took four years and the end of another relationship, this time with a person who I thought was going to be my life partner, to realize – without blaming myself – how I had contributed to the pain that I was experiencing. At the time, I was hungry for love, ravenous for it. I was in my mid-twenties, and I has spent the entire decade since I had started dating as a teenager bouncing from one partner to another, trying all sorts of relationship styles, from casual dating, to attempts at ethical non-monogamy which in practice were messy and not as ethical as we aspired to be. I was also deeply, deeply lonely. Now, with years in between the person I was then, and the person I am now, it’s clear to me that I was acting from that lonely, desperate place, seeking lovers who seemed to promise that they would complete me, fix me, heal something in me that I was certain was broken.

If you had asked me then, though, if I thought I was broken, I would have laughed at you. I’ve always had what I consider to be fairly high self-esteem. In general, I like myself. But what I’ve now learned to be true is that there is a lot that we don’t know about ourselves, and the relationships we choose – especially in our twenties, as we are learning for the first time who we are, and who we want to be, in the world – become our mirrors; the portals that introduce us to our selves.

Almost immediately after this break up, I was scheduled to start my sex ed certification program live classes. One of the classes was called The Joy of Intimacy, about how we cultivate connection with others. I couldn’t think of a thing I wanted to do less at the time, but it turned out that the timing was perfect. I don’t remember the specifics of the class, to be honest, although I do remember that it was a moving one. It seemed like something magical happened in that class, because a room full of a dozen strangers somehow was able to form profound, though temporary, connections with each other. I remember looking into the eyes of people much older than me, people of different genders, from different parts of the country, people who I was to spend an intense two-week workshop program, and who afterwards I wouldn’t see again, and weeping, though none of us could explain in any eloquent way, why. Some of the people I partnered with told me that when they looked into my eyes, they felt safe, and they also felt sad, and that it was okay to express that sadness through tears. Inexplicably, wordlessly, I felt the same way as I looked into the eyes of some of my colleagues. The program wasn’t perfect, but those moments still stick with me: it was the first time I really understood what it meant to hold space with another human being, to bear witness to whatever was within them without judgment, and allow it to be expressed between the two of us, as well as among the group.

On the way home, though, it struck me that perhaps intimacy with others wasn’t exactly what I needed at that moment, as I waded through my heartbreak unsure of what was on the other side. Instead, I wondered about what intimacy with myself might look like. One of the workshop participants pointed me in the direction of The Universe Talks, a fairly innocuous little website that allows you to set an intention and then sends you “Notes From the Universe” in your inbox each morning that gently draw that intention out of you each day, becoming a small, simple daily practice. My intention was to “cultivate a sense of self-intimacy” – a somewhat clunky phrase for the bot to plug into my daily Notes From the Universe. Sometimes the notes are silly, or corny; sometimes they make me roll my eyes. But sometimes they’re uniquely timely, exactly what I need to read that morning, and I still check them every day.

Six months later, I got involved with another partner, and this past January that relationship ended, and I had to come face to face with the fact that I hadn’t done as much work as I thought I’d done to cultivate my sense of self-intimacy. Once again, in hindsight, it became clear to me that I’d started this most recent relationship, too, from the place of a hungry need for validation, rather than grounded assurance of my own self-worth. Things came to light, upon reflection, of the ways I had abandoned myself in the relationship – operated from a place of perceived scarcity, ignored things that made me unhappy in the relationship and made myself smaller, rather than trusting in a more expansive, abundant, authentic experience of love, a love more aligned with my values.

I think this is a not uncommon element of learning to love – how to find love, how to give love, and perhaps most importantly, how to practice discernment in how you receive love — especially if you’re someone who has experienced trauma and abuse. If you’re someone who (like you, like me), experiences anxiety and depression — those whispering lies and half-truths in that always echo around the backs of our minds, about who we are, what our worth is, and how we deserve to be loved — this is even further complicated. How you find your way back to yourself – because that is what the practice of self-love is — is different for everyone and is, as you note, an unlearning process.

What is it you are unlearning? What are the narratives about yourself that you are unraveling from your heart like so much tangled yarn? And can you be gentle through the unraveling?

Cultivating self-intimacy, or self-love, is a long and circuitous process. It happens in fits and starts and sometimes, just when you think you’ve made “progress,” you backslide. It takes time. It’s not easy. Sometimes it happens beneath the surface as time passes and you live your life. Sometimes it’s something you have to struggle for. It sounds like you’re already on your way; the intention is there for you just in the fact that you’ve written this letter and identified self-love as something you would like to cultivate in your life. Perhaps try “externalizing” the unlearning; that’s fancy therapist talk for getting it outside of yourself, to observe it with some distance. Write it down, maybe, in a journal, or on a scrap of paper you keep in your pocket, or wallet, or on an altar, to sit with and reflect upon.

In addition to unlearning, it might be helpful to reframe some of your behaviors in relationship with others in a different light, especially since you characterize some of your behavior as “toxic.” The way you are in relationship with others is not working for you now – but relational therapists will tell you that how you are in relationship with others did not develop in a vacuum but rather within a lifelong social and interactive process. At some point in your life, the way you interact with others – romantic partners, family, and friends – was all created in response to your needs within your environment. As vulnerable human creatures, the way we act is always informed by self-preservation, especially as a very young child. Your behavioral patterns (particularly the ones in response to trauma) were developed a long time ago, before you could consciously remember learning them, in order to keep you safe in a chaotic and unpredictable world – this is especially true for those who have survived abuse from an early age. If you are frustrated with yourself and your process, remember this, and thank and honor your past self for trying their very best to keep you safe and alive. Anxiety, by the way, serves a similar function – it’s a warning bell, attempting to alert you to when there is danger around, so you can find a way to circumvent it. Knowing this, does it change the way you relate to your anxiety and your relational patterns? Can you approach them with tenderness, and gratitude, and from that place, remind yourself, and your anxiety, that times have changed? And that you are safe now — safe enough to be doing this deep and profound self-work.

I read something recently about the movement toward self-love as something of a hero’s journey, though perhaps one that doesn’t have a neat and finite end to it. Life is an unlearning process, and who we are is always changing. The ways in which we practice love for ourselves, therefore, is dynamic too. For me, I know that there may always be a part of me that feels a little broken, and that longs for someone else to fix it for me. Fix me. Knowing that, bearing witness to it with tenderness, is what takes me forward, and what keeps me safe now in a healthier way – and frees me to seek love in a way that serves me, rather than hurts me. This time around, I am choosing to be alone consciously, and paying attention to the wisdom of my body and of my feelings in a way that I hadn’t with these previous relationships, when I choose to abandon myself by trusting the partners I was with over myself. Trust yourself. Be alone with yourself if you need to, or hold yourself closely while you’re dating – pay attention the way your body and your emotions are responding to the situations you find yourself in, and the people you find yourself with. Be brave when you look into the mirrors that others hold up to you. Be brave when you look into your own eyes, too. Allow yourself to sit with whatever feelings come up – fear, grief, loneliness – knowing that you are not alone, because you are in your corner, and you always have been.

Articles Published on The Toast That I Later Learned Were About Me, a Partial List

Feature image via Daniel Ortberg’s Instagram

One of the strange things about dating someone of whom you were, once, a fan (and certainly are no longer, once you have beaten them at chess roughly 85% of the time since you both started playing) is that you acquire information about your own place in the writing that you enjoyed so much. Danny and I were just gamboling and cavorting as lovers do, and we recalled a conversation we had when we met, about two and a half years before we kissed. And a good two years before we were at all secure in relation to our transitions — of which, as you all probably know by now, Danny’s was more epiphanic and mine more gradual.

The conversation we just recalled was this. Back in 2015, I had recently learned the phrase “down to clown” as a euphemism for sexual intercourse, and Danny offered me $100 if I could successfully secure a date from someone by asking them if they were, indeed, available for a trip to the big top. We used to meet in bars — I was still drinking when we met, though he wasn’t — and I would sit and get steamed while working up the courage to find someone to make the merry circus with me. It never happened. Anyway, just now, Danny revealed (and I suppose it was, in retrospect, quite obvious) not only that he was attempting to flirt with me, but that his frustration at my inability to tell that he wanted to make like Dumbo and get flappy led him to write a piece of his that I loved, “A Guide to Flirting With Plausible Deniability,” which was published on The Toast on January 11th, 2016 — a week to the day before my last drink, and two years, five months and five days before Danny finally became my Ringmaster.

I loved that piece! And the sequels:

– “How to Tell If Someone Is Flirting With You,” March 1st, 2016.

– “How to Respond When You Suspect Someone Is Flirting With You,” April 26th, 2016.

I asked Danny… were there other things you wrote to try to get my attention? Sheepishly, he admitted that there were and started sending me them. Looking back the flirtation was sort of obvious? Danny characterized the general tone as “I wanted you to know I didn’t speak French, but that I was still smart.”

– “High Water-Marks For Heterosexuality,” March 8th 2016.

– “Sondheim As I Understand Him, From A Woman Who Has Seen About One Cumulative Hour Of Sondheim’s Work And Almost Certainly Misunderstood It,” April 25th 2016.

– “Movie Yelling: Tea and Sympathy, Sixty Years Later,” May 2nd, 2016.

– “The Best Part of Jane Eyre Is Guessing What French Is,” May 20th, 2016.

I kind of knew that the Sondheim one was flirtation, and was irritated by it at the time. Which reminds me that, damn, it must just have been kind of sad to be hung up on someone that is just too fucking messy (I was so fucking messy) to be able to respond, however much she wanted to:

– “What Was the Most Dirtbag Summer of Your Life,” February 4th, 2016.

– “Prayers That Would Double As Excellent Pickup Lines If I Possessed Even An Ounce Of Real Courage,” January 19th, 2016.

I date my sobriety to the day before Danny published those prayers, some of which I had probably still never heard. Then there were the ones in which I made a direct appearance under my old name and pronouns, usually being negged (the first thing he said to me was a spiky little barb about my mustache). Often I am a bit of a prig in these appearances, in the first of which I made a joke about the Michigan Women’s Festival.

– “Movie Yelling: Things About The Witch That Got My Dander Right Up, Like The Ending And All The Stuff That Came Before It,” February 25th 2016.

– “Christina Rossetti’s Goblin-Market, As I Understand It,” July 26th, 2017.

– “Questions I Have Asked During The Only Episode Of Doctor Who I Have Ever Seen Until My Friend Said “Okay, Mallory, Why Don’t You Write Your Questions Down And Ask Them All After We’re Done Watching?”,” July 26th, 2017.

And, finally, here’s the Toast post that Danny put up the day we met.

– “Characters I Have Inappropriately Identified With When I Knew I Was Not Supposed To,” December 2nd 2015.

He can’t now remember whether he did so before or after he’d started clowning on my mustache. But anyway, I was down.

This article first appeared on The Stage Mirror — Grace Lavery’s newsletter on “Victorian literature, psychoanalytic theory, academic gossip, trans femme style, and scurrilous ribaldry from Califorinian writer and critic”, which you can and should subscribe to now — and is republished here with permission!

5 Unofficial Lesbian Relationship Milestones

As we have established in our previous discussions of situationships, gay relationships don’t necessarily follow the same timeline as the straight relationship model we’re most culturally familiar with; nor do they necessarily have the same major turning points. Whereas we are conditioned to expect a First Date, followed by landmarks like Carefully Crafted First Instagram Post as a Couple and Attending Family Event in Neutral-Toned Sweater, a gay relationship may look more like Be Codependent Best Friends for Three Years Before Realizing You’re In Love Without Ever Going on a Date, followed by Emotionally Turbulent Road Trip to Visit Your Ex’s Rural Co-Op Together. It just looks different! Here are a few big moments along the lifespan of lesbian relationships that are maybe more honest to our contemporary collective love life.

Following each other on Co-Star

Anyone can exchange sun, moon and rising on a first date (or in a tinder bio!), but to get into the juicy stuff like whether your mars and venus are :) compatible or :( incompatible, or whether your “shared spirit of inquiry” is “in harmony” or “in flux,” you need the Co-Star follow. It’s a vulnerable moment! You have gained the ability to screenshot their full charts (including houses!) to show to your group chat, but are also allowing them the same liberty and accepting that your extremely chaotic sun/moon dynamic is being roasted right now. Big step!

Meaningful tattoo™

Speaking very loosely, tattoo-prone gays fall into two categories: people who painstakingly plan out their ink for eight months and can perform a full monologue about its personal significance on command, OR people who get the “anytizers” section of the bar menu tattooed on them while still inside the bar because someone thought it would be funny. Especially for the latter group, the incidence of date-related tattoos can be HIGH. Matching tattoos? Tattoos based on an inside joke? Tattoos of their favorite tarot card, for some reason?

Telling your therapist about them

It can be tough to prioritize your messy life that you hadn’t realized until this exact moment needed SO much backstory until right now, when you have to decide what merits inclusion in the 50 minutes you’re paying for this week. What if you spend too much time on your dad issues and don’t even get to touch your increasingly paralyzing anxiety about climate change! In this strict emotional economy, introducing someone you’re interested in as a character in your life to a therapist, along with the attendant details, summary of your baggage and potentially screenshots, is a gesture of commitment! Also lets you to lay the groundwork for the stage in a serious relationship where you try to score points in an argument by citing what your therapist has said about them, and about how right you are, meaning that this could be a sign of really seeing a future with someone.

Shared streaming accounts

If you compiled everyone in all your group chats combined with the people whose streaming accounts you either use the logins to or have offered your logins to, would it not form a pretty accurate picture of your closest intimates? It’s like your oldest work friend, your real-world bff, your younger sibling, and one internet friend you’ve known since you were 17 but never met in real life. Those are all people it would be, you know, not nothing to introduce someone you’re seeing to in real life; in a way, you are inducting them into that circle when you make them a Hulu profile. You’re also accepting that when you two probably (I mean maybe not! Maybe love is real, idk) break it off at some point, you will have to either kick them off your login or deal with seeing the grisly true crime docs they like watching on your account forever, which is kind of a commitment.

Meeting each other’s exes

Everyone deals with their exes after a breakup differently, but if you’re both queer women the chances that neither of you have ANY continued relationships with ANY of your exes — including vague situationships that never got labeled but which, you know, you’ll be upset farther down the line when you find out you’ve been to brunch like eight times with this person without knowing your girlfriend hooked up with them for six months — are slim. At some point you have to meet! Likely no one involved will enjoy this introduction, really, but it’s a necessary step in getting to that other uniquely queer liminal relational space — friendquaintanceship with your girlfriend’s ex marked by the intimacy once removed of both having intimate knowledge of the same person and also her dog.

What Deeply Gay relationship milestones are missing from this list? Go ahead and tell me in the comments!

What I’m Saying Is You’re Stuck With Me

I gave you a bracelet for our first Valentine’s Day, something masculine and silver I bought from the basement book store at the last minute. I gave it to you in the student union, where we both spent most of our time at our respective student organizations when not in class. You pretended to be pissed that I got you something because you thought I hated capitalist, corporate holidays and also romance in general and you, a declared romantic, didn’t get me a gift. When I got to my office at the Women’s Center later that day, I found a vegan sub from the cafeteria wrapped in a napkin, a stuffed cow you named Janet, and a note reminding me to eat. It had been 11 days since I went vegan, seven days since I started dating you. That was 14 years ago today.

People tend to think I’m an open person, and I am. Open-minded. Open about my past. Open about bodies and sex and politics and difficult conversations. I try not to judge. I try to say things for which I might be judged when it’s important to say them. The truth is that I’m very open, but I also maintain complete control over how close people get to me. Open is not the same as close, though they’re often conflated.

Case in point, I wrote about my pregnancy for the whole internet specifically because I was so exhausted trying to protect myself in real life from heteronormative conversations I didn’t want to have. I wanted control over my narrative. It wasn’t about protecting private, personal info. I don’t mind sharing the details. It was about allowing people into my life in a way that let me maintain dignity and empowerment. It put up a clear boundary, this fourth wall of the keyboard and computer screen, that let me be deeply real without inviting unwanted intimacy.

I’m a person who has many acquaintances and only one or two close friends. Usually, this close friend is the person I’m dating. It’s a huge thing, to trust someone else with my whole self, the ugly parts and especially the raw parts. I don’t like to be vulnerable. I don’t like to cry in front of people, even. I’m much more sensitive than you’d ever guess and I’m genuinely afraid of being taken advantage of. I’m very open about giving of myself to others, but I don’t like people getting into my head. If I only rely on myself, if I keep my relationships mostly one-sided, it won’t hurt as much when someone I love leaves me.

I left you, over and over, in those first few years. There was the time I packed all my things in my car: two plastic tubs of clothes, a random assortment of personal items, kitchen appliances still in boxes. I stacked my little Dodge Stratus up to the ceiling and drove my things to my apartment, the one I’d never even slept in since I’d essentially moved into yours. There was the time I got to campus, lamenting our break-up that morning, and ran into you in front of the library and it was immediately apparent that you had no idea that my departure was meant to be a final one. There was the time I held you into the early morning after a particularly horrible night and when I went to work that day, we maybe both thought I wouldn’t come back home again.

Then there was that last one, the final breakup, the one after we’d moved into our semi-adult mid-twenties lives and had fallen into the bad old patterns and that one, that breakup was for real. Real like moving into separate bedrooms and real like splitting the rent and real like changing our relationship status on Facebook. Real like staying exes for long enough for you to get sober and for us to become decent friends again. Real like accidentally finding each other while out one night and real like the hair electrified on my arms as we touched skin-to-skin for the first time in months and real like crashing back into our old bed together and real like how familiar your mouth was on mine and real like you earnestly asking if you should go back to your room when we finished and real like me wrapped up in your arms breathing all of you in and replying through heartsick tears, “I don’t know.” You stayed.

The truth is that I never imagined myself with a long-term partner or with kids or married or a house or any of that. Before this one, my longest relationship was with my college boyfriend of roughly three years. We had plans to move to NYC, totally eschew marriage and children for feminism, and live in some crappy apartment somewhere while we pursued our dream careers. That was the vision.

When my college boyfriend and I broke up, it was because of cheating on both sides and the root of that cheating was the reality that we were going in different directions anyway. There’s some other version of my life where he and I stayed together, talked seriously about non-monogamy instead of inching towards infidelity, and where I shaped my grown-up life differently. Would I have moved to Long Island or NYC with him? Would we have grown up together, settled down, and ended up married and heteronormative anyway? Would I ever have found my way to my queer community or would I have always been this disenfranchised bisexual chick afraid to take up space?

You were so gloriously, unabashedly, visibly queer when we met. It isn’t your choice, really, and the hypervisibility makes life a lot more dangerous for you. I know and I can never understand. Not fully. You also made me more visible, more seen. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve been clocked as queer in public when I haven’t been a) in a queer normative space or b) by your side.

When we first started dating, I noticed hetero people staring at us all the time.

Coming out of three years passing as straight (not my choice), it was jarring and revelatory. Snagging the most visible and well-known queer and trans boi at school was a serious status upgrade among the campus gay elite. Suddenly I felt queer enough to sit with your friends, to go to the bar as a queer regular. Nobody ever told me I wasn’t gay enough, but I deeply internalized that biphobia until I was on your arm.

When I first started doing queer things on my own, like getting onto the board of our local LGBT film festival, you felt a little erased. Being visibly queer was your thing. Being an outspoken feminist was my thing. If I took your thing, too, where did that leave you in our relationship? What did your path forward look like?

I started one-on-one management coaching at work recently and honestly, it’s the first time I’ve really understood what I’m missing by not going to therapy. It gets real deep in these sessions. I’ve unpacked some stuff that I didn’t even know I was carrying.

For example, I get along with almost everyone at work and in life in general. Even people who I clash with, I tend to maintain a decently amicable relationship with. The secret is that I have a high degree of emotional intelligence and I can adapt to other people easily. I’m mostly able to let negative things roll off me by keeping up a lot of personal boundaries at work. Like in my friendships, I keep people at a distance while using my openness to be viewed as trustworthy. I’ve always seen this as a work superpower and it’s definitely served me well.

It’s also rooted, it turns out, in being adopted, using ambition to mask a fear of rejection, and being self-trained from an early age to learn how to make myself pleasing to others, particularly to white people. Before I started coaching, I knew I had a good grasp on how to “win” at respectability politics and how to code switch at life and in work. I’d never considered that it had to do with being abandoned and being a transracial adoptee in a white family and constantly managing my relationships from the place of “the other” in my family, among my peers, in my romantic relationships, and now at work.

This ability to read people and adapt to them quickly, to appear open while remaining closed, to neutralize my status as an “other,” makes me very successful at flirting and making friends. It’s easy to connect with people in the short-term. Sex and emotion were always easily compartmentalized for me. In fact, I have yet to have a serious relationship that didn’t start as, essentially, a friends with benefits situation.

I was attracted to you because you were so guarded and stone. I was attracted to you because you were powerful, dominant, and very quiet. Before I knew I wanted to be with you, I wanted to be friends with you. I wanted to know your secrets. I wanted to be your person. I wanted to be your best friend.

One day, I asked if you wanted to take a walk around the lagoon with me because you looked sad. I was wearing this long brown skirt and a tiny shiny green camisole and an orange vintage bandana around my hair. I remember I was feeling myself. I looked cute. We took a walk and we didn’t even really talk that much, but I could feel something warm growing between us. We were both with other people and it would be several months before we ended up causing a tidal wave of drama in the college queer community together.

You and I were walking around another night on campus after we were dating when I confided quite unnecessarily theatrically that I was “weirder than you know.” You said you already knew I was pretty weird. I laughed. You had no idea. What I meant to express is that I wanted to show you all of me, the complicated parts of me, that I thought we were on that path together and that you wouldn’t know what to do when you saw it all, when you found me curled up on the floor of your roommate’s closet sobbing after a fight and I was right. You didn’t know what to do when you saw me break down. “You’re always so strong,” you said. “It scared me to see you like that.”

People think we’re relationship goals. We are. I believe that. I don’t think we’re perfect; we’re far from it, but we’ve figured out how to make “us” work. What I want to tell people, though, who think we are just two spectacular beings cut from beautiful Instagram filtered cloth, is that we’re this good because we’ve been with each other at our worst.

I don’t know that there’s anything we can’t get through together because I know you at your lowest points and you know me at mine. I don’t know if there’s anything that we can’t talk about, because we know each other too well to keep secrets from each other. I don’t believe there’s only one person out there for me, but I believe you and I have put so much work into ourselves that it’s hard to imagine being with anyone else. I want to tell people who think we have this perfect relationship that we got here only because we fucked it up so bad in the beginning, because we had to become whole people apart from each other, because we’ve had to work at rebuilding trust and forgiveness over many years to get to this rock-solid place.

Now that we have a kid and we’re both working so much and so hard, I worry sometimes that we’ll float away from each other. Even now, as I’m typing this, you’re watching TV alone so I can work, coming off of a week where we barely saw each other and usually saw each other just long enough to catch each other up on the bare minimum. I sometimes worry we will lose our connection directly to each other, that we’ll become very good best friends but lose our ability to connect as partners.

You vehemently resisted going with me to Sleep No More the first time I dragged you along. “This sounds like your thing, not mine,” you lamented. Actually, I think you said, “That sounds stupid.” It was my first immersive show and I wanted to share it to you when I went back a second time. I knew you’d either hate it or fall in love with it. When you ran off on a whim and I didn’t see you again for three hours, I knew it was surely the latter.

Over 100 visits to the same show later, we’ve developed a semi-well-followed fan blog on Tumblr as a couple, gone to over a dozen other immersive shows and events and parties, and found a new shared love around this place and the friends we’ve made inside it. We’ve spent countless hours talking about it, re-hashing the same stories and talking trash and gushing about favorite moments and positing new theories.

We’re our best versions of ourselves in that space. You find this confidence and extroversion that you don’t have anywhere else. I put aside work mode and over-thinking and just exist as a person who doesn’t have to talk and who follows my own whims and who doesn’t owe anyone anything. It seems like such a frivolous thing to anyone outside our world, this show we keep throwing money at and this artificial place we return to again and again and this online fandom we treat like family. What we can’t really articulate to non-fans is how deeply it tethers us to our deepest selves… and to each other.

I didn’t know we could find new intimacy together like this again, so many years into a relationship and so long after we’d cooled off in other ways. It’s reassuring to know that we’re still exciting people, past the decade mark into our lives together, that we can still find ways to seek adventure now that the slick drama of our early years together has faded into well-worn comfort.

I’m not programmed for monogamy or non-monogamy. I don’t feel either one in my bones. Maybe it’s because I’m also bi/pan/queer/whatever, because I’m so obnoxiously tuned in to being open to everyone and able to adjust to where they’re at. Maybe it’s because I don’t like to commit to one true truth about anything. (I know, how queer.) I’ve just never felt strongly called to either and I’ve done both and found it about equally challenging. That said, I’ve also cheated — a lot — including in an open relationship where I broke our commitments.

At some point, the part of me that’s afraid of losing control or of showing my vulnerabilities or of letting someone get too close to the real me freaks out. It was always easier to cheat and run than to deal with what was actually wrong, which was usually that I was feeling hurt or suffocated or both.

You are the only person I’ve remained faithful to who I’ve dated for more than a minute. Even during our real breakup, I didn’t want anyone else. And I tried to want it! It hasn’t been hard. Despite the fact that you knew I wanted a city life, a childfree life, would probably put my career first, and that you wanted the opposite of those things — you chose to be with me. It’s only because of the sacrifices of your own needs that I realized that I wanted to give you all the things you want, too.

The truth is, I didn’t see myself married, in a house we own, with a child I carried, in a place in my life where I don’t want to move away or run off to the next tempting thing. I never thought I’d want stability, but here we are. I want this life with you, where we both have our dreams on the table, where we both have our needs met, where we make decisions together. I want it because you never tried to change me or hold me back or make me a different person than I innately am.

When I considered taking a job in DC or going to law school in NYC, you took a deep breath and said you’d move or we’d work it out. When I said I didn’t want marriage or kids, you never once tried to talk me into changing my mind. When I took a job in a city, you came with me and you made this your home. Whenever I wanted to try something new or go back to school or write a freaking book while our child was less than a year old, you encouraged me to do it.

I want these things with you — marriage, stability, children, a mortgage — because of you, because there are no expectations, because we aren’t following a cisheteronormative path towards assimilation, because we’re creating something new and deeply queer and true to us, because I know we’re in this together.

I still like to have an exit plan in the back of my mind and you indulge me in our unofficial discussions of who will take custody of which pet if we divorce, but I don’t actually have one foot out the door. Not anymore.

What I’m saying is, you’re stuck with me.

You’re stuck with my hurricane-level ambition and coordinating procrastination, my late night deadlines and my early morning meetings, and my inability to fold a piece of laundry. You’re stuck with my coffee breath and my dry shampoo routine and my general unhelpfulness when it comes to meal planning. You’re stuck with my always leaving my hair in the shower drain and forgetting to turn my phone ringer on and occasionally forgetting your birthday. (Still super sorry about that!) You’re stuck with my writing this, now, at 2:30 AM on the day it’s due, while you fall asleep on the couch. (I know you’re tired over there. Don’t lie. Go to bed, already!) This is what you signed up for, buddy. I’m yours. All of me.

February 7^th was our 14^th dating anniversary and our 8^th marriage anniversary. My Google calendar reminded me last week as I was setting up my computer for the night class I adjunct. The notification popped up in the corner of my screen where the whole class could see it. “I guess I should get a card on the way home!” I quipped. When I got home, I picked up the baby from the sitters and put in two delivery orders for us. Chinese food for me and, because I know you don’t love Chinese take-out as much as I do, beef empanadas and cheesy fries for you. When you got home, it was almost 11 o’clock. We’d barely seen each other or spoken a word all day.

“Happy anniversary! I got you something!” I said.

“Oh. I didn’t get you anything,” you replied sheepishly.

“Just kidding. It’s dinner!” I announced, gesturing toward the pile of lukewarm-ish take-out bags in the kitchen.

“Oh, good. I got you something, too, then,” you said, holding up a plastic grocery bag. “I had to stop and get diapers, anyway. I got you cake!”

Monday Roundtable: I Learned It by Watching You

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They say you learn your first lessons about how to be a person from your family, and that applies to chosen family, too. Today we’re sharing something we learned from watching another Autostraddle staffer that’s made our life better and brighter. Tell us about something you learned from someone in your life and how it’s helped you!

Laneia, Executive Editor

I’ve learned so much from these brilliant weirdos!! I think the most recent thing has been meditation, which I started practicing in earnest just in the past several weeks, but the reason meditation even started seeming accessible to me at all was because Heather told us what a difference it had made for her. And y’all! It really has made a fucking difference!

Oh and Yvonne’s sweet potato tacos. We’ll always have those.

Heather Hogan, Managing Editor

This is a very easy question to answer because I spent a significant amount of time in my mid-twenties reading Riese’s blog and and memorizing her The L Word recaps. My main dream back then was that I would one day maybe maybe maybe have enough courage to tell one other person that I’m gay. I was closeted and miserable and commuting almost three hours a day to work a 9-to-5 as an office manager and bookkeeper for a company that employed exactly zero other women. I learned a lot about how to write from Riese, and a lot about story from Riese, but more than that I learned about the freedom of being an openly gay person from Riese. It’s not hyperbole to say she was instrumental in empowering me to come out, and once I was out, to pursue my dreams of becoming a writer, which I now do full-time for the company she owns. Life is sometimes so magical.

Carrie, Contributor

Heather Hogan does not suffer fools, and as of about a year and a half ago, neither do I. It feels great! I recommend it! So much time and energy saved! So many possibilities! I’m sure at least 60 percent of the staff will cite some Heather-related epiphany for this roundtable, which only proves the point that you can have a low bullshit tolerance and still be beloved by those around you. It is a delicate, blissful balance that the world needs more of, and I can only hope to achieve it half as well as she does.

KaeLyn, Writer

I got my first Passion Planner because of Laura Mandanas and I owe her my life for it. I’ve recommended and even gifted it to many friends and colleagues since I started using one two years ago. I just got my beautiful dated 2019 planner in Ocean Blue and I’m so excited to start using it for my weekly spreads and planning and visioning in the New Year!

Reneice, Writer

Laneia taught me how to take my cheese boards to the most epic, delectable, instagrammable level ever and I will be forever and ever grateful. And so will all my friends who get to eat the cheese boards. Seriously, last year someone who needed to stay home to work decided instead to come to my party after I posted my cheese board to our facebook group the day of. That’s power. Laneia gave me that power. What a hero!

Alexis, Contributor

I honestly have spent at least five years rearranging my life according to staff writers on Autostraddle and their fucking spectacular writing and advice and existence. Two that I can name right now are Kate and their Butch series that taught me so much about being a tender butch that I still practice daily (and that I can be iffy with my gender and still claim butch) and Alyssa just from this past summer. I was going through some archives to jog my memory for this roundtable and I remember at camp, I was really frustrated that I couldn’t help with something and Alyssa told me that it’s alright that I can’t help right now, soon, there’ll be something I can help with perfectly and it’ll all be okay regardless. They said it in a significantly more poetic way, but it really helps me a lot. I think I internalized it and tried to put it to use when I came back home. A big part of why I stayed at my old job is because I thought I could protect other girls even if I couldn’t protect myself. But, I couldn’t and I always felt worthless and terrible because of it. What Alyssa told me this summer just helped me accept that I can’t force myself to be the kind of helpful that other people need. I can only do what I can and be at some kind of peace with that. I’ve been trying to be kinder to myself, and use Alyssa’s saying along with what my therapist has told me nearly every week (sometimes several times a week) for years: people need people. When I remember that, I feel less like I need to be everything so I can save the world and more like someone who can do some things and can fit with other people who can do other things and that doing those things when we can will be enough. (Also every staff writer that ever wrote a Glee recap basically got me through high school especially when Santana came out. Boy was I alone, but not really because you all were here!)

Valerie Anne, Writer

I’ve learned a lot from having Heather as an editor and friend over the years, but one thing that clicked for me like a light switch was when she told me I had to stop apologizing for existing within my writing. Every time I wrote a recap, I would open it by apologizing for my feelings, every time I wrote something that wasn’t a recap, I would spend a paragraph justifying to the reader why I was qualified to write about it. Once she pointed it out to me, I noticed it everywhere. Even after a paragraph of dissecting my feelings about a scene in a recap, I would have a line of apology for it — even though that’s sort of the point of recaps, and something anyone reading my recap probably already knows to expect. And even if they don’t, too bad, they can stop reading if they want to. Being more aware of this and owning the fact that I’ve worked hard to earn the right to write critically about TV and not have to explain it every time I start a recap or review has helped me write with more authority and lean into the experience I have, and not apologizing has opened up more space for me to make more points (or jokes). My writing is better for it, and I’ve been able to apply it to some other areas of my life, and pass the advice on to others when reviewing their writing as well. Such simple advice, and yet so impactful and powerful.

Vanessa, Community Editor

This is in a friend context, not a work context, but whenever I’m texting Rachel about something emotionally intense she asks in what I can tell is her very calm, deadpan voice: “How does that make you feel?” and it always makes me feel so cared for! Like, she’s listening, she wants to help me get to the root of the issue, she loves me, and she wants to know how I fucking feel. It’s such a useful and also caring question, and I have taken to using it in my life with other people I love and care about, and they have reported it also makes them feel really cared for! So, 10/10, would recommend asking the people you love, “How does that make you feel?” when they tell you something emotionally intense, and say a little thank you to Rachel in your brain when you do it!

Molly, Writer

It had been a tough year and it had taken my writing voice. I was choking out an essay and Yvonne championed me through that thing like she wasn’t actually leading me across a bridge to a new land and away from a fire. Her edits were so kind and thorough, and it helped me actually build a better essay while also getting a better idea of how I actually felt about the thing I was writing about. I’ve gotten the same kind of edits from most of the editorial team, and in a world where we have to fight tooth and nail to get anything published so there’s pressure to get it right immediately, this is a balm to my actual soul. So I guess what I learned is that a good piece of work takes time, and other people, if they’re the right people, make you so much better than you were on your own.

Mika, Contributor

I started thinking about my butchness in context and with love because of this column which btw lead to me exploring my masculinity/gender a lot more openly and confidently which inherently lead to the point of my life in which I am today so… no big deal.

Erin, Writer

Riese gave me the gift of being able to see the gay angle in any piece of media, clothing item, food item, person, or idea and I think that’s beautiful. After a decade of running a LGBT website, she can now efficiently and immediately fine-tune any scenario to meet a gay need, and after spending enough time with her, digitally or in person, this rubs off on you. This has ground me in a superior reality and I hope to pass on this gift to others.

Stef, Vapid Fluff Editor

Dr. Lizz Rubin’s article about how to look and feel less gross after flying has become my red-eye flight bible. I work nights so I generally prefer red-eye flights; I stay up all night and then sleep on the plane. Now whenever I get off a cross-country flight and kill the guaranteed half-hour between deplaning and actually receiving my checked luggage by going to the bathroom, brushing my teeth, washing my face, putting my contacts in and doing my makeup, I emerge ready to deal with my life. It seems like really obvious advice, but for me it changed the game.

Alaina, Writer

Quite literally everything Carolyn has written about sex and submission is inspirational and aspirational. My love of being a submissive, and the fact that to many people on the internet I’m “that bitch who writes about bottoming” is 100% because of reading her writing about it.

Rachel, Managing Editor

Writing this is so stressful! I’ve been writing for Autostraddle in some capacity since I was 21, and reading from its very first days; it’s not an exaggeration to say that the adult person I grew into was largely formed in the crucible of Autostraddle. I learned everything, literally everything, from all of you! Trying to talk about one thing feels like choosing a favorite child. One thing I do think about a lot was how much I grew in my understanding of approaching news coverage thanks to Yvonne. She came to this job with so much more j-school knowledge and news reporting chops than I ever did, and I learned so much watching how she approached a story, how she organized information within it, how she worked with sources and got to the heart of why a story mattered. For a long time we worked together on weekly news roundups, choosing what stories to link to and which coverage of them to work with as a source, deciding which should be the top story and how it should be discussed — it was so instructive, and so valuable to me; there are few more intimate things than sharing a beat or a story with another writer, and I’m so grateful for it and for Yvonne.

Carmen, Associate Editor

I tried – I really tried – to answer this roundtable. The truth is that I have no way of explaining what I’ve learned from an Autostraddle staff member because my entire life changed for the better because of this website. My story is a lot like some of you reading this. I stumbled across Autostraddle when I was still in the closet. This space, and generations of generous people writing here, held my hand through not only my coming out – but through my depression and the worst years of my life. I found light again because of Autostraddle. I believed in myself again, despite every sabotaging instinct that I had, because of these people and this digital home that we have all built together.

After years hiding of out in the comments section, Heather Hogan gave me the opportunity to contribute to the TV Team. A few months after that I was hired as a writer. Roughly a year later, Riese offered me the opportunity to work here as an editor. It was a life that I once wasn’t even brave enough to imagine, and now it was now being offered to me.

Carolyn and Riese taught me everything I know about lesbian sex. Laneia taught me how to get organized. Rachel got me into therapy. Dr. Lizz Rubin taught me fashion. Gabby Rivera made me prouder everyday to be a queer Puerto Rican. Heather Hogan… doesn’t even know it, but saved my life.

I’ll wrap it up. I’m not unique. Autostraddle has been there for all of us when we needed it most, in its own little (and big) ways. Instead, I’ll end with these words from Heather Hogan in 2012 – written before she even started working here – that I had taped to my bedroom mirror for years:

“I tell everyone when I get to Hogwarts it will be Hufflepuff, but my secret hope is Gryffindor. I tell everyone it’s my empathy that will sort me, but my secret hope is valor. Not because I think I’m brave, but because the deepest, most desperate hope of my heart is that courage, like magic, is hiding somewhere inside of me.” 

Autostraddle helped me find courage and magic.