Soccer Stars Ashlyn Harris and Ali Krieger Are Indeed Divorcing, Thus Deeply Saddening the Lesbian Community
It is a devastating day in the lesbian sports world and specifically the world of women’s soccer, as months of rumors regarding the possibility that Ashlyn Harris and Ali Krieger had broken up were finally confirmed. People Magazine is reporting that Ashlyn Harris, 39, filed for divorce from Krieger, 37, on September 19. The couple share two children: daughter Sloane, 2½, and son Ocean, 14 months. The divorce filing has been confirmed by the Seminole County Clerk’s website.
In March 2019, news broke of the pair becoming engaged. Subsequently, they were married in December of that year, thus producing one of lesbian cinema’s most enduring and heart-rending shorts: “Our Wedding: Ali Krieger + Ashlyn Harris – 12.28.19.” In February 2021, they adopted Sloane, and the two were traded to Gotham FC that same year. Ocean was adopted in August of 2022, shortly before Harris retired after a 13-year career that included two World Cup championships.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – MARCH 12: Ashlyn Harris and Ali Krieger attend The Launch of The New Connected Watch by TAG Heuer at The Caldwell Factory on March 12, 2020 in New York City. (Photo by Brian Ach/Getty Images for TAG Heuer )
Lesbians with a deep investment in women’s soccer and the relationships between women’s soccer players have been concerned about Ali and Ashlyn’s relationship health for some time now, as the two had begun attending events separately and were no longer appearing together on social media. For example, they both attended the NSWL video game launch party two weeks ago but were photographed separately and posted pictures separately. Despite these ominous signs, we sought some measure of comfort in the fact that as of mid-September, Ali still had “proud wife” in her instagram profile. It has since been confirmed that both women have since ceased identifying as “proud wives” in their instagram bios, but Ashlyn still has “Proud Wife and Mom” and her wedding photo in her X-Formerly-Known-As-Twitter bio. To be fair, I think all of us have been neglecting our X-Formerly-Known-As-Twitter bios a bit lately!
Helllooooo??? We’re no longer proud wives??? We knew it gang 😭 the worst news 😭😭 #teamAli ali krieger and ashlyn harris are no moreeee. Can’t believe Krashlyn is over pic.twitter.com/Ll3yuomuwl
— Avalon (@AvalonReigns) October 7, 2023
Ashlyn and Ali met while playing on the United States National Team in 2010, telling People of that time, “we always sat next to each other on the bus and on flights, and we kind of just talked about our dreams and our hopes and what we wanted to do one day when we grew up.” They kept eventual their relationship a secret to avoid creating a “distraction” for their Orlando Pride teammates and franchise, but fans had already begun to suspect that the two were more than friends, dubbing them “Krashlyn.”
In July, Ashlyn Harris and Ali Krieger celebrated Ocean’s first birthday, an event at which they both appeared happy as clams, but it’s been a minute since the duo posted anything together that wasn’t sponcon. Ashlyn’s most recent instagram post is from yesterday, congratulating Megan Rapinoe on her epic career and retirement. Ali’s most recent Instagram post was about her own final match — because Ali announced her retirement in March of 2023. Now the world has two more Hot Divorced Retired Mommis in it.
According to a tweet from NWSL journalist Jenna Tonelli, there will be no pre-match Gotham FC press conference this week. She reported that the virtual media availability previously scheduled for today with Ali Krieger and head coach Juan Carlos Amorós was cancelled, but followed up an hour later to say that actually the head coach would in fact be available, and did speak to reporters.
In anticipation of her final game with the Gotham FC on October 15th, Ali’s teammates released a tribute video to their dear friends and leader:
A love letter to our leader, our captain, our friend.
🖤 @alikrieger | #ThankYouKriegs pic.twitter.com/NxqkuszbWb
— Gotham FC (@GothamFC) October 11, 2023
In conclusion, it’s possible that love is a lie. I’m sorry!
JoJo Siwa and Her Girlfriend Kylie Broke Up and We Are Moving Through It With Grace
Feature Image Photo by Leon Bennett/Getty Images // This post was originally published on October 20th with the headline “I Think JoJo Siwa and her Girlfriend Kylie Broke Up and I Am Devastated,” and has been updated to reflect JoJo’s confirming the breakup on “This is… Paris” podcast.
Wildly famous teenage entertainer JoJo Siwa — who you may recognize from YouTube, other posts on the topic of JoJo Siwa and/or a 30-second clip of her swinging a bat released by Major League Baseball — has been pretty busy these past several weeks working her way towards winning Dancing With The Stars as one-half of the first same-sex pair to compete on the program. But amid her stunning rise and unforgettable performances on a show I had not watched until this very year, another story came through: JoJo Siwa and her alleged favorite person in the entire world, Kylie Pews, have broken up.
On a November 2nd episode of Paris Hilton’s podcast “This is Paris,” JoJo confirmed the breakup, declaring:
I’ve yet to talk about this officially publicly but we broke up… but she is literally still my best friend, I talked to her yesterday, she just got a new puppy, she’s awesome, she’s having the time of her life, I’m having the time of my life, so I’m really lucky that I didn’t lose her completely because even though relationships end, friendships don’t have to end, and I think that’s something that I didn’t even know could happen and I was very thankful that it can because it was all I wanted but I’m really happy that I remembered all the fun times and all the good times, and nothing bad happened, it just is the definition of a cheesy saying of “right person, wrong time.”
JoJo added that they’re both so young and also, she would take a bullet for Kylie and she knows that Kylie would take a bullet for her. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that!
On October 10th, TikTok user Kaelee had arrived on my feed claiming that JoJo and Kylie had broken up, a theory I found troubling. She followed that video up with additional videos containing additional pieces of information supporting the concept that Kylie and JoJo had broken up, which I simply could not abide but on the other hand, was forced to abide.
Evidence included: they weren’t commenting on each other’s social media posts and that Kylie had stopped attending JoJo’s Dancing With the Stars performances. The latter could be explained by the fact that Kylie’s family and life is actually in Florida, not Los Angeles — she’d U-Hauled with JoJo immediately and even began homeschooling to spend more time with her. But alas the actual reason was in fact that JoJo and Kylie broke up.
LOS ANGELES, CA – SEPTEMBER 04: JoJo Siwa and Kylie Prew are seen on September 4, 2021 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Wil R/Star Max/GC Images)
“Those of you calling me delusional for suggesting that JoJo and Kylie’s social media hiatus is not just a fluke have never been in a codependent young lesbian relationship,” noted @kales_0 on October 15. A few hours after that video, she revealed that Kylie had posted Adele’s new single on her instagram story, claiming to have been listening to it on repeat all day.
“i mean, i’ve been married for 8 years and have two kids and i also have adele on repeat,” noted one astute commenter.
Shortly thereafter, Out Magazine made a video about it, highlighting JoJo’s red carpet interview with People in which she said she was “missing a piece” of herself. JoJo added: “I cried about it last night and I’m probably gonna cry about it tonight because I’m 18 and I’m missing a piece of me that is the biggest piece of me, and that’s okay.”
On October 20th, the story transitioned from speculation to confirmation. According to OK Magazine, “after fans speculated JoJo Siwa and girlfriend Kylie Prew were having trouble in their relationship, a source squealed the duo have called it quits.” Us Weekly then claimed to have their own exclusive source who confirmed: “JoJo and Kylie did break up. Some Dancing With the Stars cast are aware about the breakup.”
A mere year ago, I had no idea who either of these people were, and now I am finding myself caring deeply about their future. It was just so cute, you know? It was very cute. They were so out and cute! Also, they just adopted a puppy!
It’s good to hear that Kylie has gotten herself a new puppy and that they continue to embrace lesbian cliches like being best friends with your ex.
25 Quotes From Queer Authors About Heartbreak, Loss and Moving the F*ck On
Sometimes a good breakup quote can be the thing that helps you be strong or move on when you’re dealing with heartbreak and the concern that you will never be whole again. (You will be, we promise!)
“Every woman I have ever loved has left her print upon me, where I loved some invaluable piece of myself apart from me — so different that I had to stretch and grow in order to recognize her.”
– Audre Lorde, Zami: A New Spelling of My Name
“I know I’m running away but my heart has become a sterile zone where nothing can grow. I don’t want to face facts, shape up, snap out of it. In the pumped-out, dry bed of my heart, I’m learning to live without oxygen. I might get to like it in a masochistic way. I’ve sunk too low to make decisions and that brings with it a certain lightheaded freedom. Walking on the moon there’s no gravity. There are dead souls in uniform ranks, spacesuits too bulky for touch, helmets too heavy for speech. The miserable millions moving in time without hope. There are no clocks in Misery, just endless ticking.”
– Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body
“The art of losing isn’t hard to master
Elizabeth Bishop, “One Art”
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.”
“We had fallen in love; that was still true. But given the right psychological conditions, a person could fall in love with anyone or anything. A wooden desk—always on all fours, always prone, always there for you. What was the lifespan of these improbable loves? An hour. A week. A few months at best. The end was a natural thing, like the seasons, like getting older, fruit turning. That was the saddest part—there was no one to blame and no way to reverse it.”
– Miranda July, The First Bad Man
“A reminder to remember: just because the sharpness of the sadness has faded does not mean that it was not, once, terrible. It means only that time and space, creatures of infinite girth and tenderness, have stepped between the two of you, and they are keeping you safe as they were once unable to.”
– Carmen Maria Machado, In the Dream House
“You know, a heart can be broken, but it still keeps a-beating just the same.”
Fannie Flagg, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle-Stop Cafe
“All the way to the lot, I try to think about life’s vast possibilities. Not as a means of self-torture, because I’m not that type of girl. But as a means of trying to get over Morgan. Life is vast. Many things are possible. Morgan was right about that. So even if she is dating Rebecca now, maybe the world isn’t necessarily over for me. There are still Ava Maddoxes to find and sets to create and girls to kiss and colleges to attend. It’s possible that someday I will hear a Patsy Cline song and the heartbreak will barely register. It will be some distant, buried feeling. I won’t remember how much it once hurt.”
– Nina La Cour, Everything Leads To You
“For to wish to forget how much you loved someone —and then, to actually forget — can feel, at times, like the slaughter of a beautiful bird who chose, by nothing short of grace, to make a habitat of your heart.”
– Maggie Nelson, Bluets
“Someone I loved once gave me
Mary Oliver, The Uses of Sorrow
a box full of darkness.
It took me years to understand
that this too, was a gift.”
There are two rumors about breaking up that I feel might be helpful to address here.
One is that breakups should be clean. The other is that you should only breakup when you’re not in love. The truth is, breakups are usually messy, the way people are messy, the way life is often messy. I’s okay for a breakup to feel like a disaster. It doesn’t feel okay, but I assure you it is okay. It’s also true that you can breakup with someone you still love. Because those two things are not distinct territories: love and not loving anymore.”
– Mariko Tamaki, Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me
“It seemed like someone was always leaving someone, like that’s the way the world worked—people were born and people died, people left and people came. It was like the world was saying you can’t have everything you want at the same time.”
– Jacqueline Woodson, Lena
“People have long and complicated lives, and it behooves every one of us to understand and accept that the older we are when we meet our life partner, the more likely each of us will be dragging baggage, and that we’ve only been able to grow into the person we became because of that baggage —by having fucked up and learned, fucked up and learned, again and again, and the graver the mistakes we made and the heavier the loads we carried, the bigger the leaps we would have been forced to perform, and it was those very leaps that made us today into better, stronger, more resilient people.”
– Shani Mootoo, Polar Vortex
Even as I hold you, I am letting you go.
Alice Walker
“The more I thought about it, it made sense that these adult women worked hard on their friendships, even when sex and romantic love weren’t part of the equation. It made me wonder about all the ways that we are able to love each other and how movies and TV make it seem like you have to discard people once they break your heart or once the love disappears. Maybe that was a horrible lie, a complete disservice to real love. Maybe those women in that house were renegades and I needed to take notice.”
– Gabby Rivera, Juliet Takes a Breath
“It hurts to love. It’s like giving yourself to be flayed and knowing that at any moment the other person may just walk off with your skin.”
– Susan Sontag, Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963
“I don’t want you if I’m going to have to feel this pain. I don’t want you, or rather I don’t want these feelings of wanting you more than anything else in the world. If having these feelings which you blithely call love means most of the days I live through are spent in wanting that which I can’t be relieved: this is no fucking way to live and I won’t stand for it.”
Kathy Acker, Memory (One Kind of Time)
“I believe in the remade life, the possibilities inherent in our lesbian and gay chosen families, our families of friends and lovers, the healing that can take place among the most wounded of us. My family of friends has kept me alive through lovers who have left, enterprises that have failed, and all too many stories that never got finished. That family has been part of remaking the world for me.”
– Dorothy Allison, “Skin: Talking About Sex, Class, and Literature”
“She let all the memories find their way to the top of her thoughts. Although the loss made her wistful, there was little sadness this time — having made one home, she could make another.”
– Jewelle Gomez, The Gilda Stories
Alone and longing for you
June Jordan, Poem for Haruko
now I do
“I found my fingers once again on my breast bone, probing and chafing, searching for the thickening organ behind it. This time, however, it seemed to me that I found it. There was a darkness, a heaviness, a stillness, at the very centre of me, that I had not known was growing there, but which gave me, now, a kind of comfort. My breast felt tight and sore —but I didn’t writhe, or sweat, beneath the pain fo it, rather, I crossed my arms over my ribs, and embraced my dark and thickened heart like a lover.”
– Sarah Waters, Tipping the Velvet
“If there had been enough room for two in our world, maybe we could have moved it anywhere. But there wasn’t. I needed her to make more space for me. I needed real parity — something we’d never had. I think she knew that she was losing me. That her only options were to change how we worked or to let me leave. She didn’t want to do either of those things, so she invented a third option: this life in the suburbs, where i would have more time and money, and we could be happy. She wanted me to be happy, I know. And this way, she wouldn’t have to change anything. But it was like a necklace of maggots. If I turned it this way, they looked like pearls. But they weren’t pearls. It was a sacrifice wrapped as a gift.”
– Melissa Febos, Abandon Me
Whenever
Andrea Gibson, “How it Ends“
However this ends,
I want you to know, that right now,
I love you forever
I love you for the hardest mile we walked together.
“I couldn’t tell you that you can’t re-do a thing that’s been undone. I couldn’t tell you anything that you would understand. I couldn’t tell you that it wasn’t just the fact that you had ripped it out of me and taken it and mounted it, then left with it then lost it, how it wasn’t only that, but it was more. How it was that when you asked me, I believed you and I told you yes. How, though I had tried a long time to replace what you had hacked away from me, I never could undo the action of your doing so, that I had, and only ever would have, more belief in your faulty memory, your stupid sloppy foresight, than in your claims of change. How I believed, yes, I believed with all my heart, that given time, you’d do something else again. And then I thought, but this was only half a thought, that even if you had changed, no really really changed, truly and at last, and even if you knew me better than I know myself, and even if I’m better off than I’ve ever been, and even if this was the only way we could have gotten to this special place where we are now, and even if there’s a reason, darling, something bigger than both of us, and even if all these even if’s are true, that I would never believe you again, never forget what I know of you, never forget what you’ve done to me, what you will do, I’ll never believe the myth of forgiveness between us.”
– Rebecca Brown, The Terrible Girls
“In hindsight, I see it was my decision not to let go. I didn’t know how, though some days I focused completely on it: using therapy, distraction, exercise. Other days I left myself wildly grieve. Finn affects it all: every conversation I have, what I choose to wear, what books I read, what films and shows I watch. There’s that Buddhist quote, (S)he who angers you owns you. She owned me. I allowed it. She controlled me. I knew this feeling of misery would pass, that what I needed was time, but I was impatient. Unfortunately, we must live through the present to get to the future, writes Hanif Kureishi in his novel Intimacy.”
―Chloe Caldwell,Women
“… it seems to me that life is just a series of long, jagged peaks of joy — accompanied by a brooding and enduring sense of a loss — of powers, of love, of favorite shirts, of moments and opportunities and notebooks that together constitute the passage of one human, me, bobbing floating skipping like a flat stone down the river of life. It’s massive, this sense of things; it’s anonymous yet it feels personal from here.”
Eileen myles, Lost in Canada: A 3,600 Word Advertisement For My Missing Notebook
31 Reasons Why It’s Fine That We’re Single in a Pandemic, Thanks!
Is love a lie? Great question! We like to joke about it, because nihilism is one (1) free and legal coping mechanism that’s available to us all at any given time of the day and night, but what do we really think? Today we’re attempting to find an answer, once and for all, for the record and for the good of the people. On which side of this proverbial and eternal fence will we land? Keep reading to find out!
So an entire damn year in quarantine, huh? And single the whole time, you say? Ok sure! That’s fine! In fact, in many ways, it’s WONDERFUL. Don’t believe us? Well here are exactly 31 reasons why we’re doing just great, thanks for asking!
https://twitter.com/figwidow/status/1359501974216007681
- you can do Baby Foot as much as you want which is the ultimate disgusting thing to do by yourself (which I have done FIVE TIMES in quarantine so far)
- an opportunity to reflect on past experiences and get more in touch with your deeper desires, and what you’re looking for moving forward
- freedom of not being suffocated by the constant presence of another person/other people
- nobody cares if you showered in the last week
- the devastating solitude gives you more time to work/make stuff/get new hobbies
- yes, the never-ending silence really lends itself to um, clarity?
- endless time to wrap your mind around what was really wrong with all of your exes
- or, time to think about how if I died in this apartment nobody would know for weeks
- really strong bonding with your cat
- you can catch up on all the movies you’ve never seen so if this ever ends and you’re ever on a date again you can talk about those movies, or you can just stare into space and rewatch very bad reality shows you’ve already seen for no reason while eating peanut butter from the jar, feeling nothing
- also a great time to read the books you kept saying you were gonna read
- the most obvious answer is midday masturbation on the couch in the living room
- definitely not having to see someone else’s stupid face every day, for all the rest of the days, 24 hours at a time with no break
- one! half! less! laundry! which really matters in a pandemic when we are all too depressed to do laundry to begin with anyway
- having lots of time in the day to sharpen your humor about your crush never texting you back, and then launching them on your group chat like a comedy set
- sleep dead center of the middle of the bed, spread eagle
- taking obnoxiously long showers until you use up all the hot water, just for yourself
- reading a brand new book in bed at night, Cardi B playing off your phone at full volume, with all the lights on everywhere even though its like 2am
- a box of brownie mix and a bottle of rosé can be dinner if you believe in yourself (bonus points for adding peanut butter for “protein”)
- middle of the night sob cries
- also, midday sob cries
- nobody has to know the disgusting secret meals you make for yourself which is a plus
- a lot of time to dramatically alter your appearance so the next time anyone ever sees you you can make a dramatic entrance! if you feel like it
- you can feel very smug about your friends complaining about their partners
- you have SO MUCH TIME to overthink your last interaction with a hot person and analyze every angle to figure out how you embarrassed yourself
- will you ever meet a hot person again? probably not, no, maybe you ran out, there aren’t any more
- if you are having a bad mental health time, you can’t really reach out to anyone because everyone is having a bad mental health time, that’s probably my favorite one so far
- nobody is there to affectionately call me on my shit when i’m being ridiculous and as a result my ridiculousness has multiplied to an absurd degree
- you can decorate your space the way you always wanted without someone else’s potentially not so great taste getting in the way
- nobody looks at you sideways when the weird impulse purchases you made at 3 am just to feel something arrive
- being single during a pandemic means no one can hurt my feelings but me and THAT’S THE WAY I LIKE IT
How about you? What’s the best part of being single in a pandemic? Tell us!
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Love Is a Lie: A Vapid Fluff Timeline of Heartbreak
Is love a lie? Great question! We like to joke about it, because nihilism is one (1) free and legal coping mechanism that’s available to us all at any given time of the day and night, but what do we really think? Today we’re attempting to find an answer, once and for all, for the record and for the good of the people. On which side of this proverbial and eternal fence will we land? Keep reading to find out!
It would be a lot easier to believe that love is real if very famous queer women weren’t constantly cheating on and breaking up with each other and then dating each other’s exes who they also cheat on and break up with! There are four million people in Los Angeles and eight million people in New York City, the only two places famous queer women live, and yet they’re still out here very publicly destroying each other like it’s that town from Footloose and there’s only six people, total, to make out with. They’re Shane-ing around town when they know everyone’s taking photos of them! They’re Shane-ing around town when they know their insta DMs are gonna get leaked! It’s like they cannot help themselves!
And if they’re doing it, what hope do any of the rest of us have? All relationship therapists agree that the main things couples fight and break up about are: money (not a problem for celebs because they’re loaded), sex (not a problem for celebs because they can buy as many sex benches as they want), kids (not a problem for celebs because they can hire wise and compassionate British nannies to care for them and teach them the power of music), and religion (not a problem for celebs because everyone knows they’re all liberals and all liberals worship Beyonce, as is right and was foretold).
Anyway, love is always a lie and here’s a timeline of Vapid Fluff heartbreak to prove it.
Rosie O’Donnell and Kelli Carpenter (2007)
Rosie and Kelli were together and out when hardly anyone was together and out, and then one day, out of the blue clear sky, Rosie said in an interview, “Oh, Kelli? Yeah, she moved out two years ago.” We were believing in their love for SEVERAL YEARS in which they HADN’T EVEN SPOKEN.
Melissa Etheridge and Tammy Lynn Michales (2009)
Okay Melissa Etheridge said there was no one else and Tammy Lynn believed her, but then one day Melissa’s assistant accidentally delivered a box of dildos to Tammy Lynn that were meant for Melissa’s mistress! And then Tammy Lynn wrote a poem called “Box of Dicks” about it on her Blogspot.
Lindsay Lohan and Samantha Ronson (2009)
The first queer couple to have their love deeply investigated by Tumblr. They burned up hard and bright, and then got together and burned up hard and bright again, and again, and again, and honestly maybe they’re still breaking up a decade later.
Sheryl Swoopes and Alisa Scott (2011)
We were always finding out everything about this relationship months or years after it happened. Like by the time we were finally celebrating it, they’d been broken up and women’s basketball legend Sheryl Swoopes was already married to someone else.
Queen Latifah and Jeanette Jenkins (2011)
🧐
Evan Rachel Wood and Kate Moennig (2014)
These two apparently met on Twitter and started up a thing and were only ever photographed together one time? Honestly for the best — as The Cure taught us, it’s better not to have pictures of your exes lying around because it feels like the DEATH OF YOUR HEART.
Kristen Stewart and Alicia Cargile (2015)
Not only did Alicia Cargile presumably make Kristen Stewart gay — and don’t get us wrong, we are forever thankful — she also one time carried Kristen’s Vans on the red carpet at Cannes so she didn’t have to wear her Christian Louboutin heels around all night! Everything dies.
Angel Haze and Ireland Baldwin (2015)
They were so public and adorable with their love! And just when we started to wonder if, perhaps, this time it was real, Angel Haze tweeted: “lol at my life, break up with someone right after you put out a love song about them, looool gonna go cry forever.” US TOO ANGEL.
St. Vincent and Cara Delevingne (2016)
Cara was, according to St. Vincent’s “New York,” the only motherfucker in the city who could handle her. Alas.
Carrie Brownstein and St Vincent (2016)
There has honestly never been a couple that makes more sense than these two. Unfortunately, apparently, Brownstein was not a motherfucker who could handle Annie Clark. They’re still friends though! Which is probably because Brownstein breaks the rules and lives in Portland and it’s like the law in Portland that all queers have to be best friends with their exes and invite them to all holiday gatherings for life.
Abby Wambach and Sarah Huffman (2016)
Woof. This was a rough one. They were teammates! And they smooched in their uniforms in front of a bazillion people! It made the One Million Moms go BERSERK. Again: alas.
Cori and Kacy (2017)
The actual real L Word is LIES!!!!!
Janelle Monae and Tessa Thompson (2019)
We’re still not ready to talk about this one.
Demi Burnett and Kristian Haggerty (2019)
These two did not fall for the Bachelor in Paradise! They fell for each other in Paradise! And then they got home and realized the real world was not Paradise and they were not made for each other in the real world — but they still had to do a bunch of press for the show about how they were the first queer women in Bachelor history! Or, as John Milton said in Paradise Lost: Me miserable! Which way shall I fly! Infinite wrath and infinite despair!
Ashley Benson and Cara Delevingne (2020)
How many orphaned sex benches line the streets of Hollywood? HOW MANY.
Lena Waithe and Alana Mayo (2020)
Their love story was so sweet and swoony and then Lena apparently cheated on Instagram and is now making a feature film for the woman she cheated with? Team Autostraddle fully believes Mayo, a very successful producer, is going to end up making a movie about this mess and we will obviously all be lined up to see it to continue to find comfort in our shared belief that love is garbage.
10 Times Queer TV Taught Me Love Is a Lie
Is love a lie? Great question! We like to joke about it here, because nihilism is one (1) free and legal coping mechanism that’s available to us all at any given time of the day and night, but what do we really think? Today we’re attempting to find an answer, once and for all, for the record and for the good of the people.
I’ve never loved anything more than I love television. The problem is, love is a lie and TV doesn’t always love me back. Or sometimes it pretends to love me back but hurts me anyway. And so I am here with definitive proof that love is, in fact, a lie. This is just a short list of some examples that came to me off the top of my head, but I know there are more and want you to put them in the comments so we can make our case and let the defense rest once and for all, I’d be grateful.
Teenage Bounty Hunters
Also a lie: that you have to leave room for the holy ghost between you.
If love was real, Netflix wouldn’t have cancelled Teenage Bounty Hunters after one season. We left Sterling and April in a broken place that they totally could have come back from, but instead they will just be hurting and apart forever. I fell hard for this show and it’s silliness and heart and twist after twist. And its UNIQUENESS. It was different than any show at the time and despite ending with the door wide open for a second season…NADA. Ripped out from under me. Because LOVE IS A LIE.
Criminal Minds
This show serial killed my belief in love.
Somehow, despite there being FIFTEEN seasons for them to go this route, neither SSA Jennifer Jareau NOR Unit Chief Emily Prentiss came out as queer. They should have been TOGETHER but neither of them even hinted at being a little bisexual in canon? I’m rewatching this series right now and the amount of power suits, improper sitting, and loving glances tells a different story. We could have had it all, and yet, instead, we only have fanfiction. Love is a false confession.
The L Word: Generation Q
Maybe Tasha is better off not coming back BUT ARE WE BETTER OFF? The answer is no.
Have you ever heard Autostraddle’s own Carmen Phillips talk about how much she loves Tasha? And yet, despite so many of the original cast members returning, Tasha is nowhere to be seen in Gen Q? It hardly seems far. In fact, one could even say it’s rude and proof that no matter how much you love someone they could just disappear forever! Because love is the f word (and F is for FAKE.)
The Bold Type
LOVE IS A CAGE FROM WHICH THERE IS NO ESCAPE
If love was real, there’s no way on this green Earth that KAT EDISON, of all people, would fall in love with a REPUBLICAN. Kat who risked her job for social justice reasons, Kat who got into hot water for standing up to THIS SAME REPUBLICAN’S PIECE OF SHIT FATHER. It makes no sense! Love is a ruse.
Dracula
I think Lucy’s on my side of this argument, just saying.
Not only did NBC’s Dracula feature the illustrious Katie McGrath as Lucy Westenra who was hopelessly in love with her best friend Mina (playing by out queer actor Jessica De Gouw) and seduced by the intimidating Lady Jayne, but at the end of the first season she got turned into a VAMPIRE. If love was real, we would have had an entire season of television with lesbian vampire Katie McGrath. LESBIAN. VAMPIRE. KATIE. MCGRATH. The fact that the show was cancelled and that this is a thing we may never get to see is PROOF. LOVE IS FICTION.
Vida
Me when someone tries to talk to me about romantic love.
Now, Vida was a near-perfect television series, but I think any fan of the show and also Emma herself would agree that love is simply not worth the pain. Her mother tried the whole love thing, and ended up being with a horrible man who is the reason Emma got kicked out of the house at a young age. Emma herself spent many years WISELY building walls around her tender heart and when she FINALLY let some of them down to give love a try…she got her heart shattered almost immediately. Sure, by the time the series ended Emma was arguably happy and potentially getting back together with the person she was in love with BUT CAN WE EVEN TRUST IT? Who’s to say. Amor es una mentira.
Warehouse 13
If only I had a grappling hook to use every time someone tried to tell me love is not a lie.
If love was real, the fifth season of Warehouse 13 wouldn’t have happened. Love smells like rotten apples. Love is imaginary.
Pretty Little Liars
“What do you mean you thought I was DEAD?”
I could have pulled 900 examples from this show that prove love is a lie, but in my opinion, the most egregious is that Maya, despite being VERY MUCH ALIVE, never officially returned to the show. Bianca Lawson can play any age, so she could have easily come back before or after the time jump, and she would have been a fun foil for literally any of Emily’s future girlfriends. Just imagine the drama of your ex coming back seemingly from the dead! But no. She remained gone despite the fact that everyone knows #MAYALIVES. Love is a mask of a mask.
One Day at a Time
Me at weddings battling between being happy for my friends and believing love is a lie.
If love was real, we would have had at least five more seasons of the Alvarez family filling up our hearts with joy. But instead, it got kicked around from network to network like an empty can of Café Bustelo and then finally torn from our desperate embrace. You want proof love is a lie?? Let me dramatically pull back the curtains and show you the broken shards of my heart on the floor!
Supergirl
VALENTINE’S DAY WEEKEND MOOD.
If love was real, then Supercorp would be canon. Lena has sacrificed entire people for Kara, stood full-bodied between Kara and danger on more than one occasion, filled Kara’s office with flowers and called Kara Danvers – not Supergirl, KARA – her hero. Kara has swept Lena off her feet and saved her life, flew literally around the world to get all of Lena’s favorite foods and told Lena her deepest, most dangerous secret. Kara and Lena, at one point or another, have done or said almost everything they tried to tell me meant someone is in love with you, and yet, they have not even ever kissed just to try it. Not once! And thus, it stands to reason, that love is a big fat lie that you should all stop trying to tell me.
Happy Love is a Lie Day!
Support Independent Queer Media
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Playlist: That Love Was a Lie
Is love a lie? Great question! We like to joke about it, because nihilism is one (1) free and legal coping mechanism that’s available to us all at any given time of the day and night, but what do we really think? Today we’re attempting to find an answer, once and for all, for the record and for the good of the people. On which side of this proverbial and eternal fence will we land? Keep reading to find out!
We, the somewhat/sometimes brokenhearted writers of Autostraddle dot com, would like to submit the following playlist of breakup songs to kick off today’s debate: Is Love a Lie? Not necessarily choosing a side or anything here, just sharing some tunes okay! Just sharing some breakup singalongs. Is love a lie?? I mean, you tell us.
Did we miss your favorite heartbreak anthem? Let us know!
Support Independent Queer Media
We’re raising funds to make it through the end of July. 99% of the people who read this site don’t support. Will you be one of the ones who do? Joining A+ is one of the best ways to support Autostraddle — plus you get access to bonus content while keeping the site 99% free for everyone. Will you join today?
Also.Also.Also: Elliot Page Is Getting Divorced, Another Day in the Books for Love Being a Lie
It’s Broccoli Cheddar Soup Night! And I cannot f*cking wait.
Queer as in F*ck You
Elliot Page and Emma Portner Announce Plans to Divorce: We ‘Remain Close Friends.’ The AS editors conferred about this during the afternoon, and we all agreed that Drew had the best take:
Cis celebrities get divorced all the time!! As a future divorced celebrity, please grant me the humanity of having a messed up personal life separate from my transness thank you so much
— Drew Burnett Gregory (@draw_gregory) January 26, 2021
With all our hearts, wishing Elliot and Emma peace and privacy at this time.
In a new exhibit, LGBTQ elders share what it was like to spend most of their lives in the closet.
Saw This, Thought of You
Bernie Sanders Turned His Inauguration Meme Into a Sweatshirt for Charity. All proceeds go to Meals on Wheels Vermont.
Andra Day Bares All — Here’s What It Meant To Play Her Icon, Billie Holiday. (Exactly 30 days left until The United States vs. Billie Holiday and I cannot wait!!)
https://twitter.com/realcaunsia/status/1315072716005953538
Charmay has been a GIFT during this last year, and I have learned so much about Black American Sign Language from her: Black, Deaf and Extremely Online
And while we are still on the topic of young, gifted, and Black — did yall see Nia Dennis’ gymnastics floor routine for UCLA that’s gone viral?? Including Kendrick Lamar, Beyoncé, Missy Elliott, Megan thee Stallion, and 2Pac among others.
https://twitter.com/uclagymnastics/status/1353398409038680065
If you are white, this is your “must read” of today — and it won’t be easy, but wow I promise you that it is necessary, Breaking Up With White Supremacy Was Always The End Game: “If you follow all the prescriptions of checking your privilege, unpacking your invisible knapsack, centering the marginalized, excavating your deeply held white supremacist notions and not becoming a Karen, you will absolutely positively have to break up with actual white people.”
Related to above, White People Least Likely to Wear Masks Consistently, Study Finds — “The essential values this country was founded on are individualism and personal responsibility, and this idea of community is not something that is necessarily inherent in (white) American culture.” The parenthesis is my own.
Political Snacks
Biden Overturns Trump Ban on Transgender People Serving in U.S. Military. I have A LOT of feelings about the role of the U.S. military and imperialism and war and war profiteering and the military industrial complex. I also acknowledge that the ban itself hurt a lot of trans people who were trying to serve their country, and I hope that those people found some healing in this week.
Also.(also.also), a reminder that Joe Biden Will Lie to You. All presidents do.
But that said, this is a step in the right direction, Biden Orders End of Federally Run Private Prisons. (And yet! To my previous point, Biden’s Order to End Use of Private Prisons Excludes Immigrant Detention Facilities)
And Another Thing!
Crissle West coming thru with the laughs for your mid-week slump:
https://twitter.com/crissles/status/1352803696179097600?s=21
You Oughta Know: The Letters to Our Exes We Won’t Send
For everyone who found Alanis Morissette’s “Unsent” to be a deeply impactful work, and for those of us who haven’t heard it yet (the only two groups), we took our our pens and our unresolved issues to write these letters to our exes that they’ll never get to read, but you will.
BREAKING: Cara Delevingne and Ashley Benson Reportedly Split in Quarantine, Love Remains a Lie
Things are hard enough in these trying times without adding heartbreak to the mix, but apparently multiple sources have confirmed to People that actress Ashley Benson and vocalist, author and sentient pair of eyebrows Cara Delevingne have gone their separate ways.
Reports are swirling that the pair, who dated for just under two years and only really confirmed their relationship at all in June 2019, chose to split in early April. Depending on how time’s working for you in quarantine, that is roughly either one month, ten minutes or fifty years ago. A source told People, “Cara and Ashley always had their ups and downs before but it’s over now… Their relationship just ran its course.”
Benson and Delevingne enjoyed a colorful time as a couple, and famously adopted a sex bench together in May 2019. In October of that year, Cara told Elle UK, “I don’t want to be so secretive that people think I’m ashamed of anything, but I’ve never been in a relationship where things are so public, or where I posted pictures of someone else… This seemed different. We had gotten to the point where we had kept it a secret, or at least not wanted attention, and now I feel like I’m not going to not be proud… It just feels incredible when you’re not alone, when you’re facing the world with someone else.” She also announced her love to the world via an acceptance speech at the TrevorLIVE Gala, when she let the world know that her pet name for Ashley was “Sprinkles.” Remember when we thought they’d maybe gotten married? What a ride!
Splitting up during quarantine seems like a tough choice, and we here at Vapid Fluff HQ wish only the best to both Cara and Ashley. Reportedly, Cara is coping by spending time with other famous supermodels and beautiful celebrities, hopefully over Zoom or from a minimum of six feet away with frequent breaks for handwashing. As of this article’s publication, custody agreements regarding both the sex bench and the puppies the pair had been fostering during quarantine had not been made available to the press.
You Need Help: Will I Ever Get Over My First Ex or Is Closure a Myth
Q:
Hi! Is closure a myth???? Will I get over her completely?? I’ve done a lot of work this year to heal from a very devastating first breakup. In summary: after four years and tbh a lot of codependency, I moved across the country, she emotionally cheated on me, and after me struggling to end it, she finally broke up with me. I sent one (1!) very civil email a month no contact after the breakup being like idk how to be friends? (When we broke up over facetime there were so many tears and promises of us remaining friends lmao.) I’m not proud of this, but I had our mutual friend check her email to see that she had left it unread. Shortly after, I caught myself posting snapchat stories because I could see her watching them (not healthy I KNOW), so I eventually unfriended/unfollowed her and all her family on every social media thing I could think of. Flash forward- I’ve been living my life WELL and away from my home state, and in a few months I’m visiting family where she will presumably still be. Would it be crazy to text when I’m there and try to get closure/establish friendship contact??? out of a face to face? A year later? I really thought we were going to grow old together, but I recognize I was hurting myself so much trying to make it work. And really, thinking about it, I don’t even know if I want to be friends? Any advice is so welcome!
A:
Closure is not a myth. However, the type of closure you seem to want is… mostly a myth. It sounds to me like you want to receive the kind of closure that relies on another person either meeting you halfway or providing the sense of closure entirely. I am here to tell you that closure is a choice. It’s one that you make for yourself. You can’t bank on someone else giving you closure, because when it comes to breakups, most of the time you’re just not going to get it.
There are exceptions, of course. But for the most part, the kind of closure you’re talking about takes a lot of time and a lot of work—work that doesn’t really make sense to do outside of the context of a relationship and friendship. And it sounds to me like even though there were promises of staying friends during the initial breakup (which is very common!), neither of you have a lot of interest in being friends. You yourself admitted to her that you don’t know what that looks like, and she made it clear that she doesn’t want to move forward with friendship since she did not open the email or reply (I know it may feel shitty to you that she didn’t verbally set this boundary, but it’s still a clear boundary that she set, and as hard as it is to leave that email just dangling there, you should respect it).
You even end your question with saying that you don’t even know if you want to be friends. This makes it pretty clear to me that it’s not something you want, especially since some of your behaviors reflect it (the unhealthy social media habits are not a great way to build friendship, for example). It’s perfectly fine to not want to be friends with an ex. It’s one of those things that sounds good in theory but is difficult in practice, especially since there was some element of betrayal before the breakup. I don’t know exactly what emotional cheating looked like in your situation, but if it was enough to make you classify it as such, it does sound like some form of betrayal. And the thing about friendship is that it requires trust, too! If you weren’t able to rebuild that trust before the breakup, it’d be very difficult but necessary work if you were going to pursue a friendship with this person. And you even say that it hurt you to try to make things work. That really signals that a relationship is broken, and you can’t start a friendship from that broken place.
I try to veer away from being too prescriptive when I give advice, but if you want me to be plainly honest: I don’t think you should text your ex. You have reservations about friendship, and she appears to tacitly have reservations, too. Also, if you go into a situation expecting closure, I think you could be setting yourself up for disappointment and more pain. Closure that relies on another person is extremely hard to come by.
But like I said, closure can be a personal choice. Closure can look like you doing the work to move on. Your ex can’t help you with that. It sounds like you’ve already taken great strides toward moving forward with your life. You said so yourself that you’re living your life WELL in the time since the breakup. If you’re doing well without your ex, doesn’t it sound like a risk to invite them back in, especially when you struggled so much when working on the relationship pre-breakup?
And I get it: Breakups suck! In general, losing someone who was once a constant part of your life really sucks. But based on the information you’ve provided, the cost of keeping this person in your life seems to outweigh the benefit. Being friends with an ex is lovely and works in some situations, but don’t fault yourself for not being able to make it work. I think there’s sometimes extra pressure in the queer community to stay friends with exes, and that comes from stereotypes and cultural expectations. But it simply doesn’t work for everyone, and that’s absolutely okay.
Letting go is sometimes all that closure really is. Honestly, you’ll probably never get to a point where you never think about this person. Eternal Sunshine technology does not exist! And a person’s first breakup can feel especially dire. Again, it takes time. And I think if you start to let go of this idea about receiving closure from her, it will help you get to a better place.
You Need Help: How Do I Stop Thinking About the Ex Who Cheated on Me?
Q:
I’m in my late 20s and until recently, I’d never been romantically involved with anyone. I’d never been asked out, never been on a date, never really had a crush, never anything. Then a couple years ago, I met someone who very quickly became my best friend. I’d never had such an intense, close relationship before. We had so much in common and we clicked in a way that I didn’t even know was possible. We quickly became inseparable and ended up dating for several months. I really loved them, and I felt safe and happy with them… until they dumped me out of the blue and essentially dropped out of my life overnight. Though they’d been telling me they loved me, they backtracked said that they’d always meant it as a friend. I was confused and hurt, but I accepted it and tried to move on. I later found out that they’d cheated on me towards the end and began a serious relationship with someone new before they broke up with me. This news devastated me. But I went to therapy and I worked very hard to heal and I put myself back together. I can confidently and genuinely say that I’m no longer in love with them. I know that I deserve better. I know I didn’t do anything wrong and that their actions are a reflection of them, not me.
But I think about them all the time.
It’s been over a year, and they’re still on my mind. When they left, they said they wanted to be my best friend forever, but they never made any effort to communicate or try to repair our friendship. They never took responsibility for cheating. We haven’t spoken in months, but I still think about this every day. I don’t miss them anymore, I just wish they’d apologize, but I know they never will. I don’t understand why they said they wanted to be my friend and then disappeared. I don’t understand why they told me they loved me and then took it back. How can I let go? How can I forgive them without condoning their actions? It’s clear they don’t actually want to be my friend, so why can’t I just accept that? I don’t want to be haunted by this anymore. Please help.
A:
Your use of the word “haunted” is apt, because betrayal is a haunting. You say that you are no longer in love with this person and yet you think about them all the time. I don’t think you’re inundated with thoughts about this person because you’re hung up on them; I think you’re experiencing the deep mental side effects of being betrayed by someone who you trusted. And unfortunately, that’s a force that can sometimes linger even longer than a breakup where someone is holding onto feelings for another person.
To be completely frank, it is going to take loads of time and a lot of emotional work to get to a point where you don’t think about this person all the time. Betrayal burrows into brains. When cheating comes to light, there’s a tendency to obsess over the minute details. You’ll replay things in your head, wonder how they were able to get away with certain things, and sometimes even be hard on yourself for it. These can become really obsessive thoughts. It also means that this person who hurt you is taking up a lot of your brain space.
Therapy helps immensely, though I know it’s not an option for everyone. I found the book Why We Think the Way We Do and How to Change It helpful. There are also small things that you can do to take yourself out of this obsessive space, but it looks different for everyone. Puzzles or other activities that require a lot of concentration can help in the short-term. I personally found silence to be really hard when I first experienced betrayal from a long-term partner (meditation was definitely not an option for me, though it does work for some), so I kept a steady stream of music, podcasts, and radio shows on. Meanwhile, I was unable to watch TV and movies as a coping mechanism, but it’s sort of different for everyone! One thing that can help is if you find yourself going several hours or a whole day without thinking about this person and suddenly they do pop into your head, instead of following whatever dark path that first thought might take you, pause and think back to what you were doing in the time leading up to the first thought. You might then be able to unlock what distractions work for you and then replicate them.
As you’ve probably gathered, I went through a similar but not exactly the same experience. I’ve learned through talking with friends who also went through similar things that a lot of cheating experiences have a ton of overlap. The backtracking on loving you part is something that happens a lot. People who have cheated will sometimes try to absolve themselves of some of their guilt by convincing both themselves and the person that they cheated on that they “never really loved” them or loved them less than they previously said. It’s easier for them to justify their own actions of stepping outside of the relationship if they claim they were never fully committed to the relationship in the first place. Of course I can’t say for certain that that’s what’s happening with your ex, but I think it’s a very strong possibility. They could be downplaying the relationship in order to make themselves feel better about cheating. I think especially because this person has not taken responsibility for the cheating that this is very likely the case! And it sucks, because it makes you question your own sense of reality and your feelings about the friendship and the relationship. Distorting reality and cheating often go hand-in-hand.
You do not have to forgive this person. If you really, really want to forgive them, then that is definitely a personal choice you can make. But I think it would be incredibly difficult to do when the other person never even took responsibility. When I went through my cheating experience, I wish someone had told me that forgiveness did not have to be the goal. I think pop culture and other forces fetishize forgiveness. I think it gets conflated with the concept of “letting go.” In reality, sometimes realizing that you don’t need to forgive someone is what letting go really looks like.
You said yourself that you KNOW this person is never going to apologize. How could you be expected to meet that with forgiveness? And not forgiving someone does not equate to holding a grudge. There are still ways to healthily move forward in your life without complete closure or forgiveness. It will take a lot of work, but it’s work that you really have to do for yourself, because they’re not going to help you with it. Perhaps accepting that it is okay to not forgive them will help you to even think about them less. The desire to forgive can sometimes become a counterproductive obsession and a way to continue to give that person power over you.
You do deserve better, and their actions are absolutely not a reflection of you, so I’m glad you have come to those realizations on your own. I’m sure it took a lot of work to get there, and I’m sorry if it sounds scary that there’s still probably more work to be done on yourself to get to a place where you are thinking about this person less. I do think that letting go of the idea of forgiveness could be extremely helpful in this case, and I also think you shouldn’t read too much into them backtracking on loving you, because people will say all sorts of things after they’re caught cheating and you can’t really take it at face value. The haunting will lessen over time as you develop more ways to keep it in check by really focusing on the things and practices that make you feel good and keep your mind from wandering to that person. But don’t be hard on yourself when you do think about them, because that’s only going to worsen the feeling of being haunted. Accept that thoughts about this person and this experience aren’t necessarily holding you back from still moving forward. The betrayal is the reason you’re holding on, and that’s not your fault. Be patient and be gentle with yourself.
“Killing Eve” Season Three is Like a Bad Breakup
No one edges quite like Killing Eve. No one yearns quite like Killing Eve. Even in its moments of becoming overwhelmed by its own plot machinations, the tension and mushrooming intimacy at its core hums. No longer exactly cat and mouse, no longer exactly unlikely buddy cops, no longer exactly Holmes-Moriarty-esque nemeses, Eve Polastri and Villanelle’s relationship lives somewhere else entirely.
It’s no shocker that Killing Eve has, uh, let’s say, resonated with lesbians. The show has managed to map an intense, countries-spanning, long-distance, yearning romance onto the relationship between a serial killer and her pursuer. For Villanelle, there are no distinct lines between what she has with Eve and a relationship. She has always talked about their bond in terms of a complicated relationship. In the time between season two and three, she has somehow managed to get a wife, which actually isn’t all that surprising given her controlled charm, general horniness, and tendency toward impulsivity. The premiere opens on her wedding day—which takes a hilarious turn for disaster, naturally—and Villanelle even talks of Eve here. She makes it sound like a breakup. Later in the season, she relates to a story about unrequited love.
And Eve’s unraveling in season three certainly looks like a breakup. Technically, she is dealing with the fallout of her relationship with Niko, which has an extra layer of tragedy in the form of his very apparent depression and PTSD after finding his new girlfriend killed by Villanelle at the end of last season. But even more potently than that, Eve’s dealing with the undoing brought on by her last encounter with Villanelle and her first experience killing. She’s working back-of-house in a restaurant, chopping chickens and crimping dumplings for long shifts after which she goes to her dismal apartment for a lot of red wine and endless packs of Shin Ramyun.
That fiery light in her eye that she always had in the pursuit of Villanelle is gone. It’s like someone has slid the dimmer down on Eve. When she overhears a grocer gossiping about her upcoming honeymoon, the mention of the romance of Rome inspires just the slightest reaction from Eve. It’s in moments like this that Killing Eve is so achingly intoxicating. The romance of Rome. The last time Eve was in Rome, her employer betrayed her. The last time Eve was in Rome, Villanelle shot her and left her to die. Yes, Eve definitely has a lot of complex feelings attached to Rome, and as she listens to this woman talking about her upcoming honeymoon you can practically see her urge to tell this woman to run. The promise and anticipation of something grand and special can sweep a person into fantasy only to bring them crashing down. Eve got caught up in the idea of working together with Villanelle, and it blew up in her face spectacularly. Of course it did. Now she’s facing the fallout, a dimmed Eve ambling through life, exhausted and uncertain and purposeless.
Villanelle, meanwhile, has taken a break from her own purpose, too. She’s not taking any jobs. And when she finally returns to the fold of The Twelve, she wants a promotion. She presumably wants more control over her life. But she’s also after the high of that passion that was felt when Eve was bound to her. Season three finds both women waffling over what they want. Villanelle was never going to settle down in a happy wife, happy life sort of way, but the fantasy of that opening wedding scene is indeed easy to get swept up in. What does Villanelle’s life look like without Eve and what does Eve’s look like without Villanelle? Neither seem to know. And thankfully, neither will have to figure it out all too soon. Eve is, after all, still alive.
Season three also introduces another complicated relationship between Villanelle and her mentor Dasha, a former young gymnast-turned-serial killer who helps train new recruits for The Twelve. Dasha and Villanelle’s dynamic is a fun, fraught one. They seem poised to snap each other’s neck at any second but also like they have genuine respect for one another. Or, at least, they know exactly what to say in order to get something out of one another. Nobody manipulates a psychopath quite like a psychopath. Villanelle and Dasha are certainly different but cut from the same cloth—perhaps the closest thing Villanelle has to a mother-daughter relationship. When Villanelle completes a job and stages the body in an homage to one of Dasha’s early kills, Villanelle says she wasn’t mimicking Dasha but rather improving upon her work. That edge of competition is fire-fuel for Villanelle, but it’s only a small hit of what she gets out of her relationship with Eve.
The show has had a change of showrunner yet again, this time passing from Emerald Fennell to Suzanne Heathcote, who needles into the darkest parts of the show. There’s a brutality to her approach to the show, but it’s warranted given the dismal place where the show picks up. And she still maintains that underlying and often surprising wit to the show, always best encapsulated by Jodie Comer’s timing and physical comedy. Gorgeous costuming and set pieces abound, too, including a new sprawling mansion for Villanelle. The show’s intermingling of beauty and terror has always been a compelling part of its visual storytelling.
For now, Eve and Villanelle are grappling with their new lives without each other. But an unnerving death in the premiere tugs Eve back down the rabbithole. She’s more skeptical now of the system, freshly burned by MI6. She hasn’t gone full rogue yet, but there’s early hints of it. Eve’s sense of sides—of good versus bad—has by now been completely eradicated. That heightens the stakes by further blurring the lines between The Twelve, MI6, and every character on the show. And since Villanelle and Eve are separated, season three gets to live once again in that foreplay place. The anticipation. The teasing. The buildup to a Villanelle-Eve reunion. It’s enough tension to choke.
Breakups and Being Alone 101: The Autostraddle Guide To Life After Love
It’s I Think We’re Alone Now Week at Autostraddle — a micro issue dedicated to being on your own, whether on purpose or by chance, and all the ways we’re out here making it work.
Let’s look back on the wealth of relevant content we’ve shared with you all in order to best navigate you through periods of heartbreak and solitude! You got this!
Unhinged Post-Gay-Breakup Activities
https://autostraddle-develop.go-vip.net/how-to-change-your-hair-dramatically-after-a-breakup/
https://autostraddle-develop.go-vip.net/top-10-weird-things-ive-done-in-the-two-weeks-since-my-first-break-up-221505/
https://autostraddle-develop.go-vip.net/for-your-consideration-what-to-do-after-a-breakup/
https://autostraddle-develop.go-vip.net/25-reasons-im-finally-starting-to-enjoy-being-single-that-arent-sleeping-around-151784/
https://autostraddle-develop.go-vip.net/57-questions-to-obsessively-ask-yourself-after-a-lesbian-breakup-421810/
https://autostraddle-develop.go-vip.net/watching-the-l-word-with-exes/
https://autostraddle-develop.go-vip.net/valentines-day-date-ideas-ive-had-since-my-wife-left-me-six-months-ago/
https://autostraddle-develop.go-vip.net/37-delicious-things-that-become-infinitely-more-delicious-after-a-breakup-146472/
Soundtrack to Your Lesbian Breakup:
https://autostraddle-develop.go-vip.net/a-playlist-for-when-you-break-up-in-autumn-394710/
https://autostraddle-develop.go-vip.net/playlist-oh-wow-so-im-starting-all-over-then-i-guess-2419788/
https://autostraddle-develop.go-vip.net/playlist-breaking-up-is-hard-to-do-85699/
https://autostraddle-develop.go-vip.net/playlist-instead-of-texting-your-ex-listen-to-these-songs-339293/
https://autostraddle-develop.go-vip.net/why-is-it-so-damn-hard-to-build-a-good-lesbian-breakup-playlist/
https://autostraddle-develop.go-vip.net/playlist-one-more-time-without-feeling-262621/
Breakups in Books, Movies and TV Shows:
https://autostraddle-develop.go-vip.net/9-books-that-got-us-through-breakups-well-just-leave-them-right-here-for-you-420994/
https://autostraddle-develop.go-vip.net/top-17-most-devastating-lesbian-breakups-in-television-history-281168/
https://autostraddle-develop.go-vip.net/the-perfect-queer-poem-when-you-need-to-break-up-with-your-lover-who-is-also-your-best-friend/
https://autostraddle-develop.go-vip.net/top-5-movies-to-watch-before-you-break-up-with-someone-173539/
https://autostraddle-develop.go-vip.net/55-ways-to-leave-your-lesbian-vampire-lover-according-to-true-blood-191229/
https://autostraddle-develop.go-vip.net/15-movies-and-books-that-will-make-you-glad-youre-single-on-valentines-day-326786/
https://autostraddle-develop.go-vip.net/24-quotes-from-queer-authors-about-heartbreak-loss-and-moving-the-fck-on-kinda/
Solid Queer Break-Up Advice
https://autostraddle-develop.go-vip.net/the-best-break-up-advice-youll-ever-get-84054/
https://autostraddle-develop.go-vip.net/there-must-be-at-least-five-ways-to-text-your-ex-girlfriend-138626/
https://autostraddle-develop.go-vip.net/family-business-how-to-break-up-with-your-exs-family-too-143414/
https://autostraddle-develop.go-vip.net/you-need-help-why-do-i-miss-my-terrible-ex/
https://autostraddle-develop.go-vip.net/5-things-to-know-about-dating-again-after-your-gay-breakup/
https://autostraddle-develop.go-vip.net/call-it-off-a-very-subjective-primer-on-breaking-up-with-someone-youre-casually-dating-443612/
https://autostraddle-develop.go-vip.net/you-need-help-post-divorce-feelings-417632/
https://autostraddle-develop.go-vip.net/you-need-help-so-your-first-girlfriend-broke-your-heart-now-what-313777/
https://autostraddle-develop.go-vip.net/how-i-claimed-being-thirsty-as-a-personal-lifestyle-and-learned-to-live-my-dreams/
https://autostraddle-develop.go-vip.net/you-need-help-how-do-i-break-up-with-a-casual-someone-346980/
https://autostraddle-develop.go-vip.net/holiday-breakups-10-reasons-to-buck-up-and-do-it-150084/
https://autostraddle-develop.go-vip.net/you-need-help-was-breaking-up-a-mistake-278869/
https://autostraddle-develop.go-vip.net/how-to-honestly-tell-when-its-time-to-break-up/
Personal Breakup Stories, Essays and Anecdotes
https://autostraddle-develop.go-vip.net/the-museum-of-broken-hearts-99411/
https://autostraddle-develop.go-vip.net/monday-roundtable-breaking-up-and-fucking-up-428216/
https://autostraddle-develop.go-vip.net/for-your-consideration-for-your-consideration-442895/
https://autostraddle-develop.go-vip.net/stewing/
https://autostraddle-develop.go-vip.net/the-lifespan-of-a-lesbian-heartbreak-130370/
https://autostraddle-develop.go-vip.net/interview-with-my-ex-girlfriend-mila-297922/
https://autostraddle-develop.go-vip.net/breaking-the-habit-exes-past-and-future-239772/
https://autostraddle-develop.go-vip.net/interview-with-my-ex-girlfriend-marni/
https://autostraddle-develop.go-vip.net/second-to-last-218899/
https://autostraddle-develop.go-vip.net/a-monday-roundtable-my-achy-breaky-heart/
https://autostraddle-develop.go-vip.net/interview-with-my-ex-girlfriend-laura-257028/
https://autostraddle-develop.go-vip.net/the-good-china-396609/
https://autostraddle-develop.go-vip.net/all-my-exes-live-in-brooklyn-347651/
https://autostraddle-develop.go-vip.net/nuggets-milkshakes-nosebleeds-love-after-heartbreak/
https://autostraddle-develop.go-vip.net/im-single-im-36-and-i-think-thats-fine-313490/
How Social Media Fucked Up Lesbian Breakup Culture
It’s I Think We’re Alone Now Week at Autostraddle — a micro issue dedicated to being on your own, whether on purpose or by chance, and all the ways we’re out here making it work.
In 2016, YouTubers Cammie Scott and Shannon Beveridge broke the (small, lesbian, YouTube-obsessed) internet with their breakup video, titled, simply, “why we broke up.” The 11-minute video has, in the last 3 and a half years, amassed over 3.1 million views, and its own wide range of spinoff videos, with other YouTubers creating compilation videos made up of clips from their Instagram Stories and Snapchats and rumor-filled vids with salacious titles like, “WHY SHACAM REALLY BROKE UP.” Despite the two being on apparently fine terms in the years to follow, and the fact that they’ve both been in new relationships since the breakup, this one breakup shapes almost the entirety of their social media presence. Even if the YouTubers want to move on, and don’t talk about the breakup much on their own accounts, their personal presence is almost less important, or impactful, than the presence surrounding and about them: Their tagged photos on Instagram are flooded with Shacam-stanning accounts with Instagram names like “cammiebeveridge” and “shannonscott” and other mashings of their names. In their lives, their identities may have little to do with each other, but to their online fans and followers, they’re seemingly forever linked via shitty photoshopped collages and screencaps and a plethora of gifs, doomed to kiss forever on the internet.
In 2020, breakups, especially queer and lesbian breakups, are so fucking messy — and social media is to blame. In a world where we’re all, kind of, influencers, and where queer influencers are almost more powerful than queer celebs, social media is a way to make things permanent whether we want them to be or not. As my own relationships have shifted and changed, both with friends and with partners, I’ve found myself with jarring questions to answer. On Instagram, should I hide photos with this person in them? Delete them, or simply archive? What about my Instagram Story highlights? Do I mass delete or just save for later? Bouncing from photo to photo trying to decide which ones you want to get rid of entirely versus which ones warrant archiving versus which ones to let live on in digital memory is such a baffling experience, and one (I assume) none of us want to have while we’re like, mid-vomit and sobbing against a toilet seat.
These questions didn’t even exist ten, fifteen years ago. Twenty years ago it would have been almost impossible to imagine a world where you have to decide which posts to archive, or which accounts to unfollow. But we’re in a world of the Facebook graveyard, a digital world where we fly toward more dead Facebook accounts than living ones, and our Facebook and Instagram Story memories love little more than to pop up in the literal worst moment possible to remind us of people we once loved, or thought loved us, or maybe a little bit of both.
When Instagram and social media first became a Normal part of our lives — something we pretty much all had, something we used to keep in touch with friends, something that we checked in on daily — it was something we felt like we had control over. I would post photos I was proud of and write comments that felt thoughtful and like pages because, well, I liked them. Now, it feels like that control has flipped. I take photos for Instagram, I write comments because the algorithm wants me to (and because if I don’t comment on my friends’ photos, I’ll never see them again in my hourly scroll) and I follow The Right accounts, not necessarily the accounts I actually want to follow. A lot more of us live according to social media, rather than social media acting as a simple tool for us to use to build our digital lives.
Breakups can feel just as impacted by this social media control. Because of social media, people have thoughts on our relationships, all the time. In my own breakups I’ve been confronted after posting an Instagram Story via DMs by eyeball emojis as people wait for an update, or make assumptions about who I am or am not sleeping with. People I’ve never met in real life DM me on Twitter and tell me my relationship is their everything. It’s not even about friends and their commentary; it’s about followers and fans and strangers. It feels gross and invasive, but it also feel strangely caring, and builds a sense that there’s this weird community that’ll come out of the woodworks when they notice your highlight with all of your favorite girlfriend moments has been deleted, or that your anniversary Twitter thread has disappeared. The content is meant to feed the platform, rather than the platform serving the content, so when you’re not doing couple photo shoots or tagging each other in memes or appearing in enough Stories, people have questions. And a whole fucking lot of them ask them.
Now, on TikTok, lesbian influencers and baby gays face a similar world, albeit perhaps and even more invasive one. While YouTubers might post one video a week if we’re lucky, on TikTok, gay influencers post almost constantly, filming upwards of five videos a day to stay relevant. When they start commenting on other gay TikTok accounts, we see it; when they start dating a new gay TikTok user, we see it; when they break up, we see it. The subsequent crying videos flood our feeds, and I find myself watching as 19-year-old lesbians sob in different ways to different songs on a loop that lasts, seemingly, forever, if only we let it keep playing.
Breakups are so often garbage and hard, and managing the social media that surrounds it is just another gross layer that makes them even more garbage and even harder. In April 2019, Shannon Beveridge posted a video titled, “Do I regret my public relationship?” In it, she says that she doesn’t regret the relationship, but that there’s a reason she doesn’t post as openly or publicly on social media about her relationships as she did about her relationship with Cammie. I don’t know that abandoning social media is the answer, but I also know that I don’t blame Shannon, or any of us, who choose to take a step back. Maybe balancing out the weird power dynamic so many of us have with social media means actively deciding not to post when we don’t want to post, even if the app (and the voices that live within it) are expecting it.
Lena Waithe and Wife Alana Mayo Broke Up, We’re Back to Love Being a Lie
To quote the great Ferris Bueller, “life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”
2019 lulled us into the feeling of warm, sweet, heart-eyed celesbian romance (Kristen Stewart got a new girlfriend; Roxane Gay got engaged; soccer stars Ashlyn Harris and Ali Krieger had the gay wedding of the century!!). But 2020 is a new year and thus we are faced with the harsh truth of our reality: Love is a Lie.
Just two short months after publicly announcing their marriage to gays everywhere on The Ellen Show, Lena Waithe and her fellow Hollywood producer wife Alana Mayo have announced they are separated.
The couple originally broke news of their engagement back in 2017 on Thanksgiving, a wink to the famous “Thanksgiving” episode of Master of None that catapulted Waithe’s career into another stratosphere. They were together for three years total.
Following the hallowed tradition of straight celebrities before them, the couple shared a joint statement from their reps: “After careful thought and consideration, we have decided to part ways. We have nothing but support for one another and ask that you respect our privacy during this time.”
Word spread overnight while we were sleeping soundly, with many insiders speculating that Lena’s infidelity may have been at the root of their split (we, your trusted experts, have no confirmation of that intel, but I am duty-bound by internet gossip law to report it, that’s the deal I made with the devil to keep my hair so soft).
The real question I have is who will gain custody of their dog’s Instagram account!! I’ve grown very found of Simone Mayo-Waithe! Will no one think of the kids??
And now please gather together in a circle, join hands, burn the herb of your choice, and repeat the Autostraddle motto after me: Love is a lie. It’s a lie. It’s a damn, damn lie.
Joking aside, we wish Alana and Lena peace – and for Alana, some much deserved privacy – in the next steps of their journey.
50 Ways to Leave Your (Lesbian) Lover
1. Just Return Her Jeans, Irene
2. Slip Out the Back, Jacq
3. Run for the Hills, Jill
4. Get on a Barge, Marge
5. Don’t Open Her Texts, Lex
6. Ask for Her Keys, Bree
7. Break the News to Your Moms, Yvonne
8. Discuss Custody of Your Favorite Brunch Place, Grace
9. Give Back the Lelo Mia, Leah
10. Just Ignore Her, Nora
11. You Can Stop Trying to Communicate More, Eleanor
12. Sometimes Love Doesn’t Win, Quinn
13. Be Free, Sophie
14. Pull a Slow Fade, Jade
15. Her Favorite Movie is “You, Me and Dupree,” Aubrey
16. You’re Right It Would be Tough for Your Eventual Marriage to be Interfaith, Faith
17. There’s Nothing Left to Process, Tess
18. She Never Cut Your Bangs Even, Eden
19. You’ve Already Tried Couples Therapy, Leslie
20. Turn a New Page, Sage
21. You’ve Already Gotten Back Together Twice You Don’t Need to Do This Again, Jen
22. Lean Into that Breakup Hair, Blair
23. Literally Please Just Leave, Eve
24. You Don’t Need to Stay Friends, Wren
25. You’re Ready to Run Just Like the Dixie Chicks, Beatrix
26. Just Take Some Space for Two Weeks and See, Avery
27. She Stretched Out Your Favorite Tee, Holly
28. Breaking Up With Your First Girlfriend Won’t Mean You’re No Longer Gay, May
29. Take Her Dog Crate Out of Your Van, Anne
30. Get Your Own Hulu, Lulu
31. Get a New Gal, Val
32. Accept You’re Losing Your Copy of Valencia, Alexia
33. Unfortunately You Two Aren’t Brittana from Glee, Kayleigh
34. She Bought a Rearview Dreamcatcher for Your Jetta, Etta
35. Your Enneagram Types Don’t Mesh, Jess
36. You Could Probably Get Accepted to Raya, Naya
37. It’s Time to Get Out, Scout
38. You Can’t Make It Work with an Aries, Louise
39. She Didn’t Like One Day at a Time, Coraline
40. She Was Serious About Living Off the Grid, Astrid
41. Do You Really Want to Cosign on a Car Loan, Joan
42. It’s Not Worth Her Eyes of Emerald Green, Jolene
43. She Honest to God Actually Speaks like Alexis from Schitt’s Creek, Angelique
44. Her Relationship Role Model is Shane, Jane
45. Take Your Kombucha Starter and Go, Shiloh
46. Just Say Bye, Lorelai
47. Remember When She Didn’t Believe Your Allergy to Citronella, Stella
48. You Don’t Ever Have to Make Another Couples Trip to IKEA, Aliyah
49. She Never Waited for You to Watch Pose, Rose
50. You Have to Start Calling Her Your Ex, Alex
First person to record a cover wins a shiny new penny!
For Your Consideration: 30 Slightly Unhinged Post-Breakup Activities That Aren’t Actually That Bad
Welcome to For Your Consideration, a series about things we love and love to do — and we’d like to give you permission to embrace your authentic self and love them too.
1. Collect bottle caps like you did when you were 12.
2. Bleach your hair. Duh.
3. Get really into face masks.
4. Suddenly start using Instagram stories way more frequently.
5. Throw things at other things — but in a safe, purposeful, socially acceptable way. Horseshoes, bowling, darts, corn hole, skee-ball, etc. Anger feels like the least productive emotion, but you’re feeling a lot of it. Throwing things can be nice.
6. Develop a new hobby or two or seven. Preferably something with your hands. Because your hands hold onto so much that isn’t even there anymore, and when they’re still, you start to feel out of order, submerged. If you keep them moving, if you jolt yourself from being too still for too long, it’s easier to stay afloat. There’s no better time than now to learn how to knit or weld or watercolor. Haven’t you always wanted to garden?
7. Go on a 72-hour bender of playing the Sims. Delete the game when you accidentally make your characters break up with each other.
8. Start cooking again but make chaotic meals like lasagna for breakfast and a Virginia-style peanut pie for dinner.
When you can’t decide between steak and clams one night at the fancy grocery store, buy both. Make a ridiculous dinner-for-one:
Rub the ribeye with salt and pepper and garlic powder and sear it on both sides for under a minute before throwing the cast iron in the oven for another eight.
Wash the outsides of the shelled littlenecks and arrange them in a shallow pan with melted butter and chopped garlic and some of the white wine you’re also drinking. Turn up the heat and put a lid on top and wait for the steam to make them open up their mouths.
Throw broccoli and bok choy in the oven with some lemon and sesame oil and garlic. Cook until charred.
It’s an elaborate dinner that all takes less than 30 minutes to make. It’s perfect. Eat every last bite in bed.
9. Download two different astrology apps and throw your phone across the room when one tells you something you’re not ready to hear.
10. Watch so much goddamn reality television that the seams of reality start to unravel.
11. Re-read Bluets by Maggie Nelson over and over and over. It is the perfect breakup book, and when you dye your hair blue it isn’t technically because of it, but it also maybe is just a little bit. Start seeing blue everywhere, the temporary side effect of reading this book always. But it’s nice this time, because it means a little break from the latest repeated image you can’t seem to escape: seeing her name everywhere — you know, the other girl’s. Could it really pop up that often? (It can.)
Maybe obsessing over the color blue for a bit will help you stop obsessing over that number, too, the number you never knew and never will. Why does it bother you so much? Not knowing how many times they fucked? Why did you ask so many times? That number wouldn’t change anything, wouldn’t matter at all. But you hate not knowing it.
Re-read Bluets exactly three times and then put it back on the shelf where it belongs.
12. Re-organize your bookshelves.
13. Cross a very important item off of your bucket list: making out with someone while “Everywhere” by Michelle Branch plays.
14. Smell. Everything. It will be a very long time before you stop associating certain smells with her, you think. It may take approximately forever, you’re told. But in the beginning it’s too much. It’s all the time. It’s every goddamn smell. Well, if “smells, like music, hold memories,” like Arundhati Roy writes in God Of Small Things, then you’re just going to overwhelm your scent glands with so much smell-noise that maybe just maybe you can rewire something.
Cook with even more garlic than usual — an impossible amount. She used to tell you the spot behind your ears smelled like garlic because you spent so much time engulfed in it in the kitchen.
Place a sunflower on your windowsill and smell it in the morning.
Dab tea tree oil behind your ears. But not too much, because it dries the skin, leaves it feeling abrasive in a way you kind of like but also probably isn’t good for skin. (Despite all those face masks you’re doing, you have no idea what you’re talking about when it comes to skincare.) She used to always have tea tree oil-laced toothpicks in her mouth when you first met her, would chew them down into a gummy mash and then spit them out. She stopped when they started hurting her teeth, and you missed their taste for a bit.
15. Try every kind of dumb, fancy bottled cold brew drink at your grocery store.
16. Make a map of all the places you’ve cried in the city. You’re bad at drawing maps and always have been. You remember in elementary school when you had to make a map of your neighborhood and you couldn’t quite grasp the concept of a consistent scale, placing your house way too close to Stacy’s house and the field too far away.
Your map is equally fucked up this time, and that’s okay. It’s a shitty map to commemorate a shitty thing. Sometimes, you have to commemorate the bad stuff because it’s not like your brain will let you forget anyway.
17. Make bad art, but make good art, too.
18. Reinvent your sense of personal style approximately every two weeks.
19. Post photos of yourself on Instagram and only photos of yourself. Flood your feed with selfies. You never thought you’d be the kind of person who only posts themselves, but here you are.
Someone tells you that the first thing that gets better in the wake of a breakup fueled by infidelity is your self-confidence. It’s the first thing to come back, they tell you. (Trust, meanwhile, will take forever.) And you want to believe it, but you aren’t quite sure. So take selfie after selfie after selfie and shamelessly crave attention from everyone because the one person you want it from won’t give it to you.
Eventually, you really will just be doing it for you.
20. Train to become a dungeon master for Dungeons & Dragons and rope a few friends who have never played before into becoming your players. Eventually. Because it will take some time to read the 300+ page book on how to get started as a dungeon master, and you want to get this right, because you want to get everything right. You hate when things go wrong, even when it’s not your fault that they do. (But somehow, you always think it’s your fault.)
It turns out you have to draw maps for this shit, too.
Build a whole world. Spend hours on it. Too many hours. Put so much time into planning to play Dungeons & Dragons that it becomes unclear if you’ll ever actually play. (You will. In time.) There’s nothing wrong with being thorough. There’s nothing wrong with replacing the bad obsessive thoughts with good ones, with playful, fantastical ones that remind you what it was like to build whole worlds as a kid, to learn a new game and struggle at it happily.
21. Quote a T*ylor Sw*ft lyric in a sext and then immediately regret it.
22. Build a table?
23. Go to the same museum once a week every week for a couple months. You don’t even need to look intently at everything every time. Sometimes, you can just sit there, just let the work sort of permeate you passively like when you would jump through a cloud of body spray a very long time ago.
24. Take everything off the walls of your room and leave them blank and punctured for a few days before putting new things up. Or the old things in a new arrangement.
25. Yes, make that breakup playlist, bitch.
26. Write letters — some that you send but most that you don’t.
27. Develop one million crushes.
28. Start carrying an absurd amount of non-essential things in your bag every day. Those bottle caps. A cribbage board and cards. Several essential oils. Books you’ve already read. Smooth rocks that you can reach for when anxiety kicks in. Dried, dead flowers that you forget about and turn to dust when you’re rummaging around for your keys.
29. Tweet your drafts.
30. Move across the country. Or think about moving across the country but then realize how much you like it here, now, and start to see here in a different light. Burn that map of every place you’ve cried.
How To Change Your Hair Dramatically After a Breakup
Maybe you’ve just gone through a horrible, terrible breakup. Maybe it feels, as my friend put it to me once, like you’re at the bottom of a well but also in quicksand? Stuck, sinking, swallowed up in darkness. Maybe it feels like nothing is in your control, like imagining the future is impossible. Breakups tend to thrust us into the past but also keep us shackled to the present. How do you remember to move forward again? How do you gain back a little bit of control? Well, one way is to just absolutely demolish your hair and turn it into something exciting, new, and beautiful.
Ah, yes, the post-breakup dramatic hair change. It’s a concept familiar to many of us. When anything in my life is going just the slightest bit wrong in a way that makes me feel not quite like myself, I like to match my internal identity crisis with an external one. I should have listened more to my gut last year when I had the sudden urge to spontaneously dye my hair a purplish-red, strutting into a salon after work with what I’m sure was completely unhinged energy and asking if anyone was available to lift and color my hair in the two hours before the shop closed. I tried to convince myself I was being FUN and IMPULSIVE. Maybe I was being both of those things, but the need for a physical change was also my way of just beginning to grapple with the psychological effects of my then-girlfriend long-term lying to me.
Then we finally broke up, and I bleached the hell out of my hair — at home, in my bathroom, with a dear friend, while listening to the official Spotify curated playlist called Teen Party. It felt great, and it still does. And I am here to give you permission to do whatever you want to do to your hair in the wake of heartbreak or sudden change. But maybe you’re not exactly sure what you want — in more ways than one! Well when it comes to the hair, I’m here to help. Here are some options for post-breakup dramatic hairstyle changes as well as some words from my pals who have gone down this path before and come out on the other side looking hot, even if they still felt like they were decaying on the inside for a bit.
Chop It Off
This is the most obvious breakup haircut. Just hacking as much as possible off. Maybe you’re considering doing it yourself—in which case, my advice to you is to take several deep breaths and really make sure that it is what you want. Listen, I’m the queen of impulsive decisions when it comes to my hair. But a self-chop is a whole different game and something that I do not personally have experience with, because if I were to cut my own hair it would, uhhh, not go too well. Does that mean I have never had the urge? Absolutely not! I have often, in particularly emotionally tumultuous moments, threatened myself to cut my own hair. But after some deep, intentional breathing, I realize it is not what I actually want, that it would actually be the exact opposite of what I want by making me feel very reckless and out of control. So decide if it is coming from the right place, if taking matters literally into your own hands is what’s right for you. And if it is, by all means proceed!
My friend Emily self-cut her hair into what is easily one of the best post-breakup glowups I’ve ever seen? She went from long to a bob and even self-cut bangs, which makes her the bravest person I know. If you have skills like Emily, then definitely go for that drastic self-cut.
But if you are, like me, not skilled with this particularly kind of scissoring, then book an appointment with your stylist. Or just walk in somewhere! A big part of the breakup haircut appeal for me is at least some sense of spontaneity. Another thing I love is getting my hair cut in a city I don’t live in? That can feel very fun and luxurious!
Go short! Go funky! Go layered, because you yourself are layered despite the fact that you might feel completely reduced into just blanket sadness in this moment in time. Get a bisexual bob! Get an undercut! Get something you never thought you’d get before or that you always kind of wanted but never pulled the trigger on.
Autostraddle’s own Sarah had her hair cut to her shoulders and got bangs (in my research, Breakup Bangs certainly do seem to be a thing) after her breakup despite always having had long hair for her whole life. “It made me feel more confident and my hair felt lighter, like shedding all that weight made my hair more bouncy and curly,” she told me. “I don’t think it was part of the healing process, but it was definitely part of the aftermath of settling into my new reality after moving across the country and wanting something new.”
Color/Bleach It
I love coloring my hair. And unlike cutting my own hair, this is something I will indeed do at home. If you’re choosing that route, my number one piece of advice to you is to read the box in-store and read the directions thoroughly multiple times. When selecting a dye, make sure you’re buying a product that’s right for your hair type and color (that’s where reading the box comes into play). The guides on the back of the box that show before and afters are often VERY exaggerated. If you have dark hair, expect less drastic results, unless you plan on bleaching first (more on that in a bit). If you have a lot of hair, buy two or three boxes of whatever color you’re getting. The box kits will come with gloves and other tools, but it helps to also have extra gloves, a wide-toothed comb for pulling color through, multiple hair clips, and old towels and t-shirts that you don’t mind getting dye on.
If you’ve colored your own hair before, then go for it. But this is another instance where even if you’re doing it at home I’ll gently suggest getting a friend to help out. My mother usually colors my hair, but after this most recent breakup I enlisted my friend Caroline to help me out, and we made a very fun night out of it! You have to wait for large chunks of time while it processes, so get some snacks and make it a hair dye/movie night.
Ok, so, BLEACH. In talking to a lot of people about their breakup hair, bleach came up a lot. I think there is something very appealing about stripping away all color. I will say this: There is literally no healthy way to bleach your hair. There are other lightening tricks out there that only really work on hair that is already light. Bleach does the trick, but it’s also super damaging. Maybe not as damaging as the fuckery that your ex did to you! But damaging nonetheless. So just… be warned if you’re a first time to the Breakup Bleach Club. Bleach is also, admittedly, harder to tackle at home (though that hasn’t stopped me!).
@shrillhouse on Twitter reached out to tell me her friend helped her bleach her hair after a complicated breakup but then she eventually had to go to a salon to make it less orange, which is definitely a common issue with at-home bleach. But once she got the look right, she told me she felt fun! A hard feeling to feel after a breakup! “It was really refreshing to just do something different and be able to literally see myself as someone else than the person I was in that relationship,” she said.
Because of the aforementioned damage associated with bleach, you can also opt to do a partial bleaching, like my friend Lucy who had a hairstylist friend bleach the bottom third of her hair after her first major breakup. It started a three-year period of changing the tops of her hair to different colors every few months. (If you have dark hair and want to experiment with wild colors, you have to bleach first and then put color on top.) “It felt really good to differentiate myself and to do something that I thought was edgy and hot—and to assert my individual identity,” she said.
You can, of course, also just have this done in a salon, but be warned that it can get pricey. A lot of salons require a consultation at least 24 hours before major color jobs, so look into that. Have a clear idea of what you want. A plus side of having it professionally done is that the stylist can mix colors to get a shade that is perfectly tailored to you and what you want. Bring photos!
Get Creative
Not everyone is down to permanently color their hair with chemical poison, and not everyone can just chop off their hair on a whim, but there are plenty of other options that still can yield drastic results. If you have light enough hair, you can use semi-permanent dyes or products like Overtone or Lime Crime Unicorn Hair, which are color depositing conditioners that are way less harmful on hair.
You can also get extensions or a weave or braids or wear a wig. (If you’re white or a non-black POC, just don’t culturally appropriate hairstyles that don’t belong to you, please.)
My friend Vivian got a breakup perm which is, frankly, genius! And she told me that she likes the passiveness of going to a hair stylist after a breakup. You just sit in a chair; they work their magic; the results are immediate.
Another friend, Celina, started blowing out her naturally curly hair after her most recent breakup. “My former partner would often comment on how beautiful my curls were, so this felt like a direct fuck you to her,” she said. Damn! She, too, expressed the feeling of accessing a version of herself that was different from who she was in the relationship via a new look. It’s also about protecting herself a bit. She explained to me that she doesn’t want to let women see her in her realest and most natural state until she knows things are serious. For her, there’s a genuine connection between hair and intimacy.
You can even, I learned, grow out your hair as a deliberate breakup choice? It’s not what I gravitate toward after a breakup since it takes time, and I want that sweet, sweet instant gratification and also the shock factor of other people’s reactions. But Stephanie reached out to me and shared her story, explaining that cutting her own hair used to be something she did in crisis and manic modes, so when she left an abusive relationship, she stopped cutting it herself and went from a chin-length bob to long hair. “I hoarded my hair like I was regaining and healing myself,” she told me. “It was a sign that I was finding my happiness again instead of cutting my hair as a form of self-mutilation.”
So there are, it turns out, many ways to accomplish a striking Breakup Look via drastic hair changes. Seize control of your image! Be hot as a form of revenge! Do it for you! Just feel good about something in a time when it’s so easy to feel bad about everything.
For Your Consideration: Changing Associations After a Breakup
Welcome to For Your Consideration, a series about things we love and love to do — and we’d like to give you permission to embrace your authentic self and love them too.
Never have I ever put forethought into a drastic hair change. Be it an undercut, blunt bangs, highlights, or full color, the one area of my life where I let impulsiveness and spontaneity in is via my hairstyle. If you’re contemplating doing something dramatically new with your hair, I’m either the best person to come to or the worst because I’ll always say yes. I’m a New Hairstyle Enabler; there’s no such thing as regret when it comes to hair in my book, and there’s no better way to physically express inner turmoil than a radically new look! It provides control, even if you’re internally unraveling, and it signals to the world that, yes, you’re going through something, but you’re still HOT and able to make CHOICES. Or maybe you get your hair cut or dyed for perfectly stable reasons like wanting a new look for no other ulterior motives — can’t relate!
This is, however, not an installment of For Your Consideration about impulsive hair changes. Or maybe it is! Are you thinking about doing something? You should go for it.
I underwent my latest hair change very recently, calling upon a brave friend to assist. She asked what I wanted, and even I didn’t know. Just something different. So I bought several options at three different CVS stores around Brooklyn, including two boxes of bleach. Whatever color I was going with, I needed to start with a blank slate. I needed to strip my hair of its color entirely so I could put something new, bright, extreme on top. Tabula rasa but make it fashion.
Wouldn’t it be nice if I could apply this process to other things in life? To places, too? Wouldn’t it be nice to strip them of their current color and add a new one on top? Because almost everything I see right now is colored by the affair, by the breakup that followed too long after. “You’re wearing your affair lenses again,” my therapist tells me. Yeah, well, I don’t know how the fuck to take them off.
(I lightened my hair once in the middle of her affair, before I knew but after I’d already had an inkling. But it wasn’t enough, just a three-shades lift with some red thrown on top. This time, I went full bleach.)
At times, the list of specific things that have been colored (poisoned, really) by my two betrayers feels impossibly long and far-reaching — from the movie Disobedience to Hayley Kiyoko’s music to the beaches of the Rockaways to a restaurant in West Village to the entire goddamn country of Norway. Then there are the broader things, like patches of grass, rocks, the blueish light of dawn, the whole concept of dinner. People tell me that certain associations will change over time, dull with distance, and I know from experience for that to be true. I also know that some will never change, not really.
I sway between wanting to preserve every memory of this relationship, to keep it in a jar that I can open and close whenever I want, and wanting to wipe it all, bleach it out Eternal Sunshine-style. Neither option is healthy, I know. Neither is even possible. The memories will stay, and they’ll pop up whether I want them to or not, because brains retain and run amok.
Avoidance is often the easiest solution. Don’t go back to that restaurant. Don’t drink that cocktail you used to share with two straws. Don’t listen to that song that you know is going to fuck you up. Don’t turn down that particular street; walk the long way instead. But Big Breakups suck in how much they touch everything all the time. It becomes impossible to untangle anything from the context of heartbreak. This lemon? Reminds you of her. This broken chair on the sidewalk? Somehow, it makes you nostalgic for what was. This random story a friend is telling about a time they got lost on vacation and ended up at a weird bar full of grandmas? You better believe you can find a way to segue back to the breakup. There’s always the one friend who snaps, who questions how you could possibly still be talking about it this often, this much. And they’re wrong, but they’re also a little bit right, because you’re starting to annoy even yourself. But it’s also okay. It’s okay to be insufferable right now.
Avoidance is easy, but it’s a temporary solution for what feels like a permanent problem. You have to learn to change the associations. I’m learning bit by bit. A full bleaching might not be possible, and like my friends have cautioned me, some associations will always linger, even if they eventually become maybe the third or fourth thing you think about when you step into a certain place or hold a certain thing. I thought I had to avoid every place and everything our relationship touched for forever. I thought I had to chop it all off and keep on chopping so it could never grow back. A friend gently suggested a different way. Maybe you just need to do the old things in a new context, with different people, she nudged.
So I went back to that bar with someone else and felt something else, mere feet from where I’d first caught the ex kissing someone else (“don’t worry” / “it’s nothing” / “we’re just friends” / has there ever been a creative cheater?). And I didn’t think about it, not right away at least. I changed the color, and it didn’t feel like a loss. It’s not a blank slate but an altered state. Having friends around helped. Scream-singing “Wanna Be Missed” on a dance floor with a group feels a hell of a lot better than listening alone, on repeat, in bed. I can share that drink with someone else. My next trip to Norway will be for me and me alone.
We rewrite histories of people and places and things all the time. Of ourselves, too. It seems like the most obvious advice in the world to tell someone going through a breakup to overwrite old memories with new ones, but it’s also hard as fuck to figure out from inside it. It’s still hard, even though I’m doing it more and more. But it feels surprisingly good, a relief, a crucial part of that nebulous, nonlinear healing process that has subsumed me. And in the meantime, I’ll keep bleaching my hair.