Y’All Need Help #6: You Can Still Trust Yourself
Before we get started, I want to point out that Y’All Need Help was conceived as an either bi-weekly or monthly advice column and, I believe, was cruising along quite nicely, doing its very best. The last installment came out on September 13, 2016, which means the next one should’ve come out mid-November. Ahem. It’s taken me eight months to summon the whatever-it-is I need to write this advice column. That is a long time. If I’d asked you for advice re: “How do I get back into the swing of things when it feels like the world is exploding every 20 mins/however frequently I check Twitter?” what would you have said? Just curious!
Hi! I am 28 years old and about a year and a half ago I realized that I am not straight. I am so embarrassed that it took me so long to figure it out. The main reason is that six years ago I met a guy and fell in love, and during the first couple of years I didn’t even want to think about being with anyone else. I was so happy and so so sure that I wanted to grow old with him. Now we are married and have a child. Generally, things are good between us, but my identity crisis has been hard on our relationship. I have been so scared and sad, and he has been trying to support me while going through a lot of emotions himself.
I identify as bisexual/queer but haven’t told anyone except my partner. He wants to be supportive, but I can tell he is ambivalent. Part of the reason why I haven’t told anyone else – except dropping a few hints – is that I am not sure how he would feel. Another reason is that I am not completely sure about my label. I have been wrong my entire life. What if I am still wrong and I end up identifying as a lesbian? Is there any way a relationship can survive this? Should I just leave now before I hurt him even more? How do I embrace my new identity and convince people that I am not just making this up?
Hey great job learning a new thing about yourself! I’m sure that wasn’t an easy, chill realization to come to, so take some time to be grateful for these new pieces of your puzzle. Now where do those pieces fit? Good question. You get to decide!
Wrestling with if I didn’t know this huge thing about myself, how can I trust that I really know anything about myself? is HARD. It’s a total mindfuck. The thing to remember is that you were telling the truth about yourself this whole time, based on the information available to you. It’s valid to be annoyed or even super pissed off that some crucial info was somehow just out of your grasp for so long (and it’s probably useful and necessary to investigate why, and take some time with that), but the truth is that we make all our decisions based on the information we have at that exact moment. That’s what you did. You weren’t wrong your entire life. Every day that you identified as a straight woman, you were going off of exactly what you knew about yourself. It was true! It was all true and honest. You can still trust yourself.
Lots of things can and will be hard about your relationship with your husband (or anyone), but yes, there are ways it can survive. Actually, plenty of bisexual/queer women — women who’ve known they were bi forever or had no idea or just kinda thought maybe they were — marry men! Some lesbians marry men! Some straight women marry men and then realize they’re actually lesbians and stay married to that man anyway! Relationships change and grow and survive so many things, including gathering new information about your identities. I left my husband after realizing I was gay because, first and foremost, I wasn’t happy in that relationship. We’d been together for nearly nine years and I’d never been able to come up with a concrete reason why I was so unhappy, so I’d stayed and stayed, because why not? Then I saw an episode of The L Word and subsequently received my own queer puzzle pieces, which quickly became the concrete reason I’d been holding out for. But listen, if you don’t want to leave him, don’t! Follow your big ol’ thumping heart. Be honest about what you both want and what you’re willing to do to get it, and that’ll require some communication. Ask him how he’d feel about you coming out to more people, and then figure out if that even sways your decision one way or another. For the record, you do have the right to come out to whomever you damn well please, because we’re all just doing our best in this world and sometimes that means telling people you’re bisexual!
And another thing! You might identify as a lesbian one day down the road, but also it’s just as likely that you won’t. You might wake up at 50 years old, married to the same man and just hoping there’s coffee, or maybe you won’t. The important thing is that today, right now, you’re honoring your own truth.
Trust yourself, and be kind and gentle with that internal monologue. That’s one of the best ways to embrace your queerness. Read about other queer people throughout history and learn from them. Investigate your politics and see if they still line up with the You you know now. As far as convincing other people of anything, let that worry fly away from you like so many pigeons in a park. You weren’t delivered into this universe to convince anyone of anything. All you have to do is live up to your own high standards and love your babies. And label yourself however you fucking want, because it’s true.
I’m currently facing the possible (probable) end of my first serious relationship with another woman. All train wrecks aside, one particular issue has come to my attention. I U-Hauled with this girl hard core starting day one for reasons that all felt right. Now I’m regretting it, as the relationship quickly became codependent and after only a year I’m exhausted and I want out. Trying to change the terms of this relationship to take some of the codependency out of it may lead to its demise. So my question is, how do I get to experience all those exciting feelings of wanting to run away with someone and be wrapped in a love burrito without doing it to such an extent that it leads to codependency and resentment?
Oh this is an easy one! The quickest and dirtiest advice I’ve ever had the pleasure of giving: You just do. You just learn a lesson and you don’t make the same mistake again. I’m sorry about the train wrecks and the exhaustion, but it’s great that you’re taking steps to make the relationship a healthier one for both of you, however that ends up.
Now you just needlepoint an elaborate wall hanging that says No U-Hauls, No Problems. Let every potential partner know that you are super into your independence but are still excited about the love burritos. Set boundaries and keep them (until you don’t, and then learn from those times, too). You’ve been given a wonderful gift: the gift of hindsight. Use it for good and use it often!
After many years of failing to deal with my mental health problems I finally started seeing a therapist a few months ago! I spent weeks finding one that looked perfect and despite having a shitty experience with counselling in the past I was excited to start owning my shit. Except…I’m not finding it that useful. We mostly just end up talking about the internet. And it’s so expensive! Having to borrow money off my girlfriend to make rent every month is making my mental health worse than before I started! I want to quit, but I’ve already tried medication and exercise and everything else the internet recommends and I don’t know what else I can do. I need help!
First of all congratufuckinglations on taking these steps for your mental health! It’s not easy to get to where you are right now and I’m impressed and excited for you and your goals. I say this as a woman who’s put off making an appointment with a therapist for months — I even have her cell number and she is so nice, and so accommodating, and yet! So anyway NICE WORK, seriously.
Having said all that, you should look for a different therapist! Finding a therapist you click with — meaning you actually feel like your time together is useful and building onto itself in a productive way — isn’t easy, and can take several tries. You’re only around most other healthcare professionals for what? About 10 minutes per visit, maybe less? So maybe you don’t care if you click with your pediatrist or your ear nose and throat specialist, but a therapist is staring you right in the eyes for the better part of an hour, and it’s all supposed to mean something, and there’s so much to say and hear. And you’re paying them! It’s a lot to put on any relationship, really.
Go ahead and admit that this therapist simply isn’t right for you, and get to work finding another person who might work better. It will suck and be exhausting and annoying, but you must. Keep trying until you find someone who fits your needs.
Y’all Need Help is a now-biweekly advice column in which I pluck out a couple of questions from the You Need Help inbox and answer them right here, round-up style, quick and dirty! (Except sometimes it’s not quick, but that’s my prerogative, OK?) You can chime in with your own advice in the comments and submit your own quick and dirty questions any time.
Y’All Need Help #5: Being a Virgin Doesn’t Make You Straight
I’ve never been really ashamed of my orientation, and I’m fairly open about being gay as well as my stance on gay politics on Facebook. My cousin has been dating a preacher for about three years, and they are engaged and getting married in a few months. Recently, I made a post about the shooting at Pulse Nightclub, with a link to my city’s LGBT center offering mental health and grief counseling services. Within minutes, my cousin sent me an extremely homophobic private message, filled with liberal use of homophobic slurs and claims that I and every other gay person are going to hell. I blocked her and that’s been the end of that.
My family received an invitation to her wedding a few days ago. I was planning on attending at first, but now I’m not so sure if I want to. However, my parents are insisting that I go for my aunt’s sake. I didn’t tell them about the homophobic message because I didn’t want to cause any conflict between my dad and his sister. Technically I don’t *have* to go, but I’m in that weird transitional stage in my life where I’m still living with my parents and am still involved with my extended family. What do I do? Should I tell my parents about the message, stand my ground and refuse to go and risk upsetting my family, or should I go and potentially open myself up to more homophobia from my cousin?
You’re under no real obligation to attend any event that puts you in a position of possibly defending your personhood! Sometimes you make sacrifices for your family, but that should be your decision based on your own feelings and ideas, not someone else’s. It doesn’t have to be you taking a stand by not going — you could become “very sick” on the day of the wedding and be unable to go. Or maybe you couldn’t get out of working that day?
Another angle is that the couple at center stage on this day might have a better time if you aren’t there. You save them from having anyone to talk shit about or glare at, and you save yourself from having to pretend to like or forgive a person for being a real shithead to you. This is very win/win.
If it were me, I’d calmly and matter of factly tell my parents what my cousin had said to me on Facebook. I’d show them the message and let them know that I’d feel more comfortable passing on this event because these people clearly have a problem with you. Then I’d make a pan of nachos to share. Any conflict that might arise between your dad and his sister won’t have been caused by you exposing your cousin’s homophobic bullshit, it will have been caused by your cousin being a homophobe. Period.
I thought I was going to be friends with someone, but turns out we’re headed towards more than friends. I haven’t told her that I’ve slept with her ex (someone significant to her, but not significant to me), even though I had plenty of chances to, but I want to tell her before we have sex. Can I be super casual about it?
If you think she will not be super casual about receiving this news, no, you shouldn’t be casual when you deliver it. That’s just setting up a situation where it either seems like you don’t know her well enough to guess her emotions and reactions to this subject, or that you do know her well but don’t care enough to deliver it in a sensitive way. Both of these are terrible and also not true of you, so let’s check out the honest route.
You should choose a time and place to tell her — a time that’s considerate and allows for her to have a negative reaction without ruining her workday or other plans, and a place that’s private — and then stick to that plan. Be honest and let her know that you couldn’t figure out a casual way to tell her, or a time that wouldn’t be awkward or forced, but that you never intended to keep it from her forever or even for this long. And then let her have her reaction! Wheeee! You could also make a pan of nachos to share. Wouldn’t be a bad idea.
Or you could give her this:
Do I need to prove that I’m gay? During an alcohol-fueled game of ’Truth or Dare’ with my softball team, I admitted to them that I’ve never done anything with a women before. I feel like they judged me hard. They are pretty much the only ones that I was out to. What they don’t know, however, is that I’ve never even kissed a guy either (mostly because I spent many years uninterested in guys, but not yet into girls). Now I just feel stupid and that my inexperience=not actually gay. I’m 22, shouldn’t I have my shit more together by this point? I’m tired of being alone and disbelieved.
Ugggghhhhhh people who judge other people based on sexual experience one way or another make me want to scream and throw cake at birds! It’s so juvenile and basic as fuck, and tired. I had to take a break from typing this so I could groan out loud for several seconds. UGH.
The very simple answer to your question is, nope! You’re doing just fine! Not having any sexual experience with women doesn’t make you straight. It doesn’t even make you slightly-less-gay. You’re gay! You’re as gay as you’ll ever be! Some people would argue that being on a softball team is gayer than gay sex, so keep that in mind.
And another thing! Sexual experience ≠ having your shit together. If you’re tired of being alone, that’s a separate thing worth exploring, for sure, but just being alone doesn’t mean your shit is inherently less together. I think most people have their shit more together when they’re alone, actually? You get your ducks in a row, you prioritize yourself and your goals, you save money and make your own decisions, you get to know yourself — things that are generally easier to do when you’re not coupled up. But if you’re ready to date and press some body parts together, then go for it! And no, you don’t have to tell potential partners that you’ve never done X or Y (unless you want to, which is totally your call).
We’re all just people trying our best! If someone sees you as less gay because you’ve never kissed a woman, that someone is a trash rabbit and they should grow the entire fuck up real quick and get on everyone else’s level, up here with the adults. You should make a pan of nachos and keep them all to yourself! Maybe pair them with a seasonal beer.
Y’All Need Help is a monthly advice column in which I pluck out a handful of questions from the You Need Help inbox and answer them right here, round-up style, quick and dirty! You can chime in with your own advice in the comments and send your quick and dirty questions to youneedhelp@autostraddle.com.
Y’All Need Help #4: You’re a Person with Complex Emotional Responses to a Variety of Situations
Q:
A close friend of 11 years (that’s just under half of our lives thus far) confided to me in February that she’s, in her words, “””bicurious”””? Which in her case means that she likes “””hooking up””” with girls, but only likes dating guys. Her on-again off-again boyfriend knows and is cool with it. And it’s really bugging me, and I’m not sure why. It gives me, very…Katy Perry vibes, you know? She kissed a girl and her boyfriend apparently didn’t mind it at all. Like, straight women in bars trying to titillate men by kissing each other. It super bothers me and I feel like this is really similar to that.
Also, I’m the only queer woman in my friend group, and I kind of feel like maybe if this is something that she’s exploring, it’s like, encroaching on my territory? Is that super weird? Am I actually being territorial? Is that normal? Why does my straight friend have more lesbian experience than I, the lesbian friend, have?
We’re rolling through summer and I’m still dwelling on this, and I have the worst suspicion that it’s actually only bothering me because I’m a big jerk. Am I a big jerk? Does this even make sense? What am I even asking for help with? Help me understand why I feel this way? Do I need to sign this with a cool code name in the style of a newspaper advice column?
Threatened Token Gay Friend
A:
Hey TTGF! I love it when people sign off with a codename! You wouldn’t believe how much time I’ve spent just staring at my walls, wondering whether or not other publications make up the codenames themselves, or if the advice seekers make them up. They’re so damn clever sometimes! It’s a lot to think about.
Anyway Toke, here’s how I see it: you’re feeling territorial (re: token gay), you’re feeling slightly jealous (re: ‘experience’), you’re feeling frustrated as fuck with the patriarchy (re: life and how we’re reared to seek legitimization from people unwilling to even give it, and what that does to us in the long run, and how bar culture is the worst) and you’re wondering, what does this all mean??? And to that I say, it means that you’re a person with complex emotional responses to a variety of situations. NICE WORK. Cool. Ok so don’t worry about whether or not it’s a good emotional response because you can’t control your emotional reaction, only the manifestation of that reaction. So here we go, this is where it gets crunchy.
Maybe your friend is the kind of gal who makes out with other gals in order to turn men on. That’s cool. Her existence and that kind of practice doesn’t take away from your existence and your kind of practice, whatever that may be. She can be she while you be you. There’s room enough at the inn.
There is.
So if everything you’re feeling is normal as fuck — and it is — now it’s up to you to manifest those feelings into something positive as fuck. Be welcoming to your bicurious friend. Give her space to clomp around and slam into all the other body-shaped wads of feelings that are willing to be her bumpers. Let her be whomever she really is, without judgment. Be the chill you wish to see in this world.
You’re still you, Toke. You’re still the only you that’s ever been. You’re as gay as the gayest gay. You’re destined for the utmost greatness and also the utmost gayness. You’re doing GREAT. You’re not a jerk. You’re a body-shaped wad of feelings with the opportunity to shine some sunlight onto another wad of feelings. Ain’t life grand?
Q:
Hi. I am a 28 year old closeted lesbian and mother of three little kids. I was out-ish but never had any serious relationships with women. Then life happened and here I am.
I am not sure it matters how I got myself into this mess. I just need to get out. But I feel like coming out at this point is an incredibly selfish thing to do. My husband is a good man. He has done some really shitty things to me, but he loves being a dad. I don’t want to destroy him.
I am also really intimidated by the sort of…gay culture that I’m seeing online. Like, Being a mom, I’m never going to fit in. It’s not like I am even thinking of dating right now. I just want to be myself, and be seen, but I’m afraid nobody will accept me. Or they will think that because I was married to a man, that I must be bi. I am not, and have never been.
I wonder if I am going to screw up my kids for life. I know my mom will never forgive me.
Can you please help me figure out what to do?
A:
Well indeed I do believe I can help you figure out what to do! Because I had a very similar experience and now here I am, alive and well and wishing we were talking about this over a basket of fish and chips.
FIRST: Coming out and divorcing your husband will not screw up your kids for life. Other things will, but not this.
I know that you’ve been living in a world where you come fourth at best, probably fifth for the most part. You think putting your needs out in front of all of theirs is the most selfish, self-serving, unexpected bullshit you could possibly pull on these angelic baby people. You think you should’ve already been the most perfected and practiced version of yourself before they got here — before you called upon them to exist — and now that they’re here, your time is up.
But it’s not. Your time isn’t up. Your needs have a vital place at your table. If getting out of this marriage is on your list of needs, prioritize it right up there with this week’s grocery list and your summer reading and explaining how neutrons work over dinner. Put it on your list.
What you’re looking at here is a trading card from 1991/92 that I personalized at age 10 by glueing a photo of my face over the face of Lady Marian (played by Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) so that I could be “happily every after!” with Kevin Costner who, by the entire way, was 36 years old at the time he filmed this movie. AND LOOK AT ME NOW.
SECOND: Leaving your husband will not destroy him. He will still be a father — you can never (nor would you ever want to) take that away from him. This isn’t about undermining his role as their dad. He’ll have the opportunity to build a life with a person who isn’t a closeted lesbian. I can think of only one or two other things a straight cis man in America would want more than that.
THIRD: The gay culture you see online is only a fraction of gay culture. Also your version of gay culture is literally whatever in the fuck you want it to be. You’re not breaking into gay culture, you’re breaking into yourself. You define yourself here. No one owns queerness. There is no Arbiter of Gay. If you’re gay, you’re part of gay culture, and anyone who disagrees with this truth is confused, and they’re not yours to save.
I used to think that no one my age (25 at the time) would want anything to do with a newly out lesbian who had two kids and an ex-husband, so I kept them all a secret for months, years. It wasn’t until I was 28 and I couldn’t stand it anymore, I needed these strangers’ hearts to keep me afloat, that I told everyone everything. And you know what they did? They floated me, for years. People sat inside their lives and reformulated their ideas of me, and they floated me.
The people in your life are entirely capable of reformulating their ideas of you. They can love you even when they’re confused or sad or angry. They can be whole while you’re also whole.
Coming out is hard. Divorcing your children’s parent is hard. Potentially disappointing your mother is hard. But being silent and miserable is harder. Being scared and fake is harder. Being anyone other than who you are or who you want to be, is shit. Your kids need to see hope and honesty in action, even when it’s hard, especially when it’s hard. Your kids deserve the entirety of you. You deserve the entirety of you.
How to Leave Your Husband (Because You’re a Lesbian)
Y’All Need Help is a weeklyish (kinda?) advice column in which I pluck out a couple of questions from the You Need Help inbox and answer them right here, round-up style, quick and dirty! You can chime in with your own advice in the comments and send your quick and dirty questions to youneedhelp@autostraddle.com.
Y’All Need Help #3: Maybe You Just Don’t Like Bars
Welcome to Y’All Need Help, a weeklyish (kinda?) advice column in which I pluck out a handful of questions from the You Need Help inbox and answer them right here, round-up style, quick and dirty! You can chime in with your own advice in the comments and send your quick and dirty questions to youneedhelp@autostraddle.com.
Hello I am back! Did you miss me and my advising words? I sure missed giving them to you. This week we’re tackling postpartum depression, relationships, and looking for love in maybe all the wrong places. We’re also listening to this Moon Catchers playlist I put together for an A-Camp workshop in 2013 because it really fits the vibe. Once again, everyone gets an inspirational poster and nothing hurts! Some things hurt, maybe. I don’t know, we’re all going to be ok.
I’ve been traveling around the world chasing my (non-relationship-driven) dreams, and I’ve been single for all of the five-ish years since I came out. Which is … awkward. I find myself always having to go to bars to try and find other gay/queer women, and every time I have to talk myself into going.
I’m naturally reticent but have been making an effort to be friendly and outgoing. I know it’s only my stupid inner fears, yet even then I get to the bar and sometimes just run away. It seems like this situation is going to continue for the foreseeable future. How do you talk yourself into going to bars and striking up conversations? How do you ignore your fears?
Thanks,
Not Painfully Shy But I’d Forgive You The Comparison
Dear Not Painfully Shy,
Have you considered
that you may
not
like
bars
?
Because to be quite frank, I feel similarly about going to bars and striking up conversations. Walking into a room full of people you don’t know and attempting to create any sort of real, one-on-one dialogue with one or several of them is not an easy task! It’s a legendary feat actually. It’s for a very specific type of person and lord bless those people, for they are a world apart. Every space has its own culture and hierarchy and rules, including bars, and I’m not familiar with any of them because I had my first child before I could vote and then just never found a babysitter. Maybe you would be better off going to other places or events or gatherings that are more conducive to chill conversations and intentions — and are less like bars — like an Autostraddle Meetup, roller derby anything, dog parks (provided you have a dog or could borrow one), shows at small music venues, or volunteering at a space or for a movement that’s relevant to your interest. Which brings me to…!
Hey, what are you interested in? What’s something you’re willing to be afraid of, and then do anyway? If the answer is bars, then okeedoke! You’re just gonna have to keep going to those bars and trying and trying again and again. There are probably at least a handful of articles about how to flirt and/or conversate with queer women in bars. But if it’s literally anything else, go there. Go be yourself in the spaces that genuinely interest (if terrify) you — somewhere where you can give and take in a way that doesn’t leave you literally running to the other end of the parking lot.
Your last question was “How do you ignore your fears?” and I think you don’t. You stare them down and ask them what the fuck their deal is, and then you take notes and get to know them inside and out because you can’t get above a thing you don’t understand. You climb up to the top of yourself and look at how small things are from way up there. You do some cross-referencing and cartography. You make a list of what you can still see from the top of your very self and you scribble stars around them because they’re what matter. You think about your intentions so hard and for so long that they almost manifest themselves right there, because your intentions are your Patronus. Then you climb down and keep your fears close and your intentions closer, and you set out on a noble quest to be your selfiest self.
I don’t know why it’s true, but people who match your guts and intentions seem to pop up when you’re mostly involved in anything other than looking for them. And the most crushingly beautiful part of this truth is that you are someone’s gut match, someone’s intention, and you’ll pop up for them without even meaning to, maybe without them even asking for you. Isn’t this universe just the most ridiculous?
I’ve been in a relationship with a girl for eight months now, and though it hasn’t been that long, things have gotten pretty serious pretty fast. The problem is that I’m 24 and this is my first relationship, so I’m very used to being on my own, and was honestly quite happy that way. I do love her dearly, but I know myself so much better than she does, and I often feel that I love my own company more than I love hers. I’m prone to very elaborate daydreams and flights of fancy that are hard to indulge in when I’ve got a very real person in my life. So I guess my questions are: Is it normal to miss a very core part of who I am when I’m with someone (and I’m pretty sure that no matter who I’m with, I won’t be able to maintain my inner fantasy life) and is it normal to feel a little lonely when in a relationship, because my girlfriend doesn’t know the “true” me, the parts of me that I love most about myself? We have all these grand plans for the future, and it would devastate both me and her to break up, but these nagging doubts about how a relationship should feel are kind of destroying me right now.
This was hard to reply to because I RELATE. I relate so much I could burst. The dull answer is that you’ll have to communicate your needs to your partner, and if she’s into your happiness and this relationship, she’ll work with you to figure out how to best navigate this space so that you both have the most of what you want/need while still giving enough to the other. WOMP BORING ANSWER
But I want to dig a little deeper, so. It’s like you’re asking two separate versions of a question here: a) are we really honestly in a good relationship if I’d rather be by myself sometimes, and b) are we really honestly in a good relationship if I don’t want to show her my true self? And the answer to both of those questions is: sure. You’re in a fine/ok relationship and if you’re happy with not taking a chance on sharing your true self with her, that’s cool. And it’s totally normal to sometimes want to be by yourself, even when (or especially when?) you’re coupled off. Being alone and having time to catch up with your weirdo insides is, for some people (like me!), a vital part of being a functioning human.
Howeverrr, have you considered introducing her to the true you? You could, you know. You might feel less lonely. I mean, for many people, the ideal relationship is one in which they have the time and space to pursue their own dreams and where they also feel comfortable being their truest self. Not every relationship can or will be an ideal one, though, so maybe this one is perfectly fine the way it is! Only you and your girlfriend can really speak to that. It might even be that for you, an ideal relationship is one where you hide your true self forever and ever. Also you can show her your true self and still maintain time and space for being alone.
I don’t know man, relationships are all about balance and learning about other people and new things about yourself and growing and supporting each other. They should be fun, if possible. Are you at least having fun?
My partner and I had a second baby about a month ago and I have pretty severe postpartum depression. I’m not the one who carried, but apparently it is really common in partners? I’m not attached to the baby at all and it is really hard having two kids and I feel really isolated and constantly exhausted and overwhelmed.
Wow, I also really relate to you! What if I only chose questions from people I really relate to? That’s probably what I’m doing here. ANYWAY you are correct: having a [second] baby is really hard and isolating and exhausting and overwhelming! You should seek professional help immediately. I’m so truly, truly sorry that you’re going through this, because it’s absolutely horrible and one of the more isolating forms of depression available to the human experience. The apparent source of your depression has a face and a heart and needs you to be so kind and loving to it, and unless someone’s experienced this themselves, it’s nearly impossible to convey how bottomless-pit-of-despair it feels to not be attached to your baby the way you know you should be. You absolutely have to get in touch with an experienced professional and seek help.
I had a late onset postpartum depression with my second child that went untreated and eventually morphed into several years of misery. I’m still working through the remnants of not only the depression itself but also how long it took me to do anything about it and the repercussions of all that time. My brain and heart are in spasms as I type this because just thinking about my life during those years and what I missed out on and all the ways things could’ve been better if I’d just known — if I’d had even the slightest idea what was happening — is enough to wipe me out for weeks. The HILARIOUS thing about depression is that the leftover regrets are sometimes, in some ways, worse than what you lived through. Isn’t that NEAT.
So really, I can’t stress this enough! Get help! Get help get help get help. You can feel better and you deserve to feel better. I LOVE YOU YOU ARE GOING TO BE OK.
This is funny because I took it in a corn maze. Get it? AHAHAHAHA
I really, really wish you all the very very best! Do you have advice for these advice seekers? Drop your thoughts in the comments! Need some quick advice for yourself? Email youneedhelp@autostraddle.com!
Y’All Need Help #2: You Can’t Avoid Your Ex Forever
Welcome to Y’All Need Help, a weeklyish (maybe?) advice column in which I pluck out a handful of questions from the You Need Help inbox and answer them right here, round-up style, quick and dirty! You can chime in with your own advice in the comments and send your quick and dirty questions to youneedhelp@autostraddle.com.
Another week, another adventure in mixing metaphors and not necessarily being right about things! But, I mean, I am right. Let’s get to it!
I was straight my whole life. I never questioned my sexuality. I became friends with the new girl at work — a gay butch woman — and started hanging out a lot. I never had a clue that she was into me and she never gave out any hints. Then one day, we were sitting on the couch, and BAM she was kissing me. I went with it obviously, I didn’t want to make her feel bad by rejecting her, especially because she was not only my friend but my co-worker and I had to see her everyday. After that night, I went home confused as all hell because I had this weird feeling of wanting more. So I kept hanging out with her, and the kissing kept happening. Next thing I know, its a month later, my clothes are all over her room, I haven’t slept at home that entire month, and I’m sitting on her bed stuck right in the middle of the “are you my girlfriend” conversation. Like I said, I was never gay, never liked or thought about girls until one day I was slapped in the face with the realization that I WAS, in fact, dating a girl. We were together for three years and every time I was faced with the “are you gay” discussions, I always denied it. I didn’t honestly believe I was gay. And I still wasn’t attracted to girls (even though I was dating one). It wasn’t until one day, shortly after our break up, that I literally woke up and thought “Omg butches are fucking hot”. I suddenly became obsessed with women and completely attracted to them.
So now for the real question behind all the seemingly redundant history.
Since I am soooo new to the lesbian world, I don’t even know where to start. I feel like a fish out of water. I don’t have any friends that aren’t straight to help guide me. I feel like I don’t fit in because I wasn’t a lesbian from the “beginning.” I don’t know how to go about meeting others or even how to spot them if I did cross paths with them. I don’t know any places to go (besides the bar), that I can make new friends and satisfy my new found obsession with women. I live in Chicago. What are some fun places to go or things to do that I’ll likely meet other lesbians? And will the new LGBT people I meet reject me for not always playing for their team? Will they think it’s just a phase or treat me like a poser? I certainly know this is not a phase, I’m not just curious, I’m literally just a lesbian who took a little longer to figure it out.
Sincerely,
A clueless baby
Holy cats, Clueless, do you have any idea where you are?? You’re practically sitting on a lesbian volcano right now. Chicago is like, one of the prime places for cool queer women — I mean it’s up there with Oakland/Berkeley, LA, Portland, Bushwick — you are SURROUNDED by other lesbians. Do you have a dead cat handy? Swing it around. YOU ARE HITTING SO MANY QUEER WOMEN.
Ok but seriously listen up, here’s the deal with being a lesbian who took a little longer to figure it out: That’s fine. It’s totally fine. Look at all these queer women who came out well beyond their teens/early 20s! So many, right? And while you’re there you should just read the whole article because Laura nailed it. Everyone figures things out about themselves in their own time. I didn’t know I liked dark chocolate until I was 28, Clueless. Twenty-eight! Twenty-eight stupid years without dark chocolate! That’s a goddamn tragedy, but it sure as heck doesn’t make me a poser. I will fight any one of you for the last delicious square of 85% cacao, and I’ll win. I also didn’t know I was gay until I was 25 or so, and would you just look at me now? All I do is have lesbian sex and eat dark chocolate and hang out with queer women on mountains and executively edit this very website you’re reading!
And yes, there are some butthurt, petty, pathetic children in this world who spend their lives trying to make other people feel like shit about themselves, and those children may very well attempt to do this to you. They might discount your identity, make fun of you, even call you a ‘failed heterosexual’ (a personal favorite). If they do, be grateful, my Clueless, for they have made it supremely easy for you write them off as complete fucking idiots. Isn’t it nice when people show you upfront what an asshole they are? Bless their hearts. People like us don’t bother with people like them, because we’re having entirely too much fun supporting each other and living fulfilling lives and having dark chocolate lesbian sex parties.
I’m gonna let the Chicago Straddlers play us out in the comments, because I know they have some great suggestions re: how to go about meeting awesome lesbians in Chicagoland. Also here is their Facebook group for meetups and other rad happenings! Crystal, who is moving to Chicago from Australia to marry her fiancée and be adorable forever, says there’s also a very active Straddlers book club. Now get out there and live your life!
I ended a years-long relationship about eight months ago. It was long overdue and I was more than ready to pull the plug. The problem is that my ex and I live in a small town and see each other often, including at 100% of gay lady events. I’m completely over her, so it’s not really about being hurt so much as feeling super awkward talking to other women and watching her do the same while we’re literally in the same room.
I’ve rearranged plans to avoid seeing her a few times, but obviously this can’t go on forever and not doing something I want to do because of this feels cowardly. I’ve gone through break ups and had to hang out around an ex before, but never when the relationship was this serious or the break up was this ugly.
I know there’s no actual solution here, so I guess my question is just: What’s the best way to suck it up and act like an adult about this?
This is a tough yet extremely simple situation, because the truth is that you just have to look at your priorities and then act accordingly, and that’s really it. It’s what adults do and it isn’t always easy or fun, but it’s how people live! You’ve actually been doing this, you were just working with a different set of priorities, and now they’ve evolved. The original set of post-breakup priorities you were working with were probably like:
1. Limit the possibility of confrontations.
2. Only participate in activities and thoughts that are the least likely to end in me crying/yelling.
Those are very valid priorities! Your well-being and emotional balance post-breakup are fragile, itty bitty little things, like a basketful of bubbles. Everything could pop or float away at the slightest breeze or stumble. It takes a lot of time and energy to prioritize the care of these bubbles because without them, you’re kind of nothing, but even with them you’re sort of nothing, because all you are is them and the caring of them, and they are bubbles. It’s exhausting but necessary work.
Over time the bubbles eventually turn into something like… an egg? Like if your heart was in an eggshell; a heart egg. So the moment you start thinking, “Ugh I feel stifled and annoyed by this situation with the basket full of bubbles,” it’s because your bubbles are a heart egg now. Congratulations! Your heart/egg thing still needs near-constant protection, but also some oxygen and music and other people. They need to be carefully moved around and inspected for damages. They need warmth and attention! But also air.
And you know this! You know it because you wrote this email and you’re ready to breathe; ready for your fragile little heart to see the sun again. Sticking your heart egg in the sun will be horrifying and dangerous, but it’s time. It might get bruised, you might feel so awkward that you want to claw your brain out of your skull (graphic!), you might feel extremely sad or guilty about a number of things, but also? You might have a great time. You’ll definitely get better at not clawing out your brain, and at forgiving yourself and other people, and letting things go. And you’ll absolutely build a stronger, healthier little heart, so that when it’s ready, it’ll punch right through your chest and fly out into the world with its own agenda and you’ll have to run to keep up.
This is just something you have to do. You’ll have to live through awkward, weird, sad, uncomfortable situations — right through to the end of them — and you will make it to the end of each and every one of them, with your heart still beating and your skull still full of brains. You’ll go home and wake up and do it again. You’ll get really good at it, because that’s life. This is a thing you can do!
I have two groups of friends who I hang out with — one from high school and the other from my area. My high school friends have continued on with our friendship exactly the same as before I came out, but my other friends have made me being gay one of my biggest characteristics. Being gay is a huge part of who I am, which is why I wanted to come out, but it also doesn’t define me. For my local friends, me being gay is treated in the same manner in which we tease one of my friends for being a bit of a ditz. Its a constant talking topic and related back to everything I do or say. I don’t think they are doing so in a malicious way, and I sometimes join in making jokes about it. I’m just not sure about how to try and resolve the situation.
I don’t want to confront my friends because I don’t want it to come across as an attack. How are they supposed to know they are making me uncomfortable if I sometimes take part in the ‘joking’. I’m just nervous that any new people I meet through this particular group of friends will only come to know me as The Gay One. I have no intention of ever hiding my sexuality, but its not the only thing I’d like to be known for. Not only to new people, but this isn’t only what I want to be known for to my friends. I know this probably isn’t the most pressing situation, but I’m sure if I don’t deal with this situation now, it will shape the rest of our friendship moving forward.
Oh damn that would irritate the heck out of me! They’re probably doing this because they’re either very excited to finally have a queer person in their friend circle, or they’re still sort of uncomfortable about it and they’re trying that thing where you normalize something by just repeating it over and over again. Like when I spent my first summer in Phoenix saying to myself “You’re awake, in the desert! You woke up in the desert this morning and this is where you live now. In the desert! Living that desert life! In the desert! Desert-dweller! Aaaah!” because few things are more jarring than waking up in the fucking desert in the summer. People aren’t meant to live in the desert, you know? It’s fucking hot here. If you will literally die in an environment without air conditioning — and I’m not talking about being uncomfortably hot or even heatstroke, but actual death — you should not build your home in that environment! It’s very simple! But I DIGRESS, READER.
So maybe your friends are either extremely psyched or still weirded out, maybe both, maybe neither (this is a professional advice column), and you’re worried that the new people you’ll meet through this group will only see you as The Gay One, and I have to say that that’s just not going to happen (or it will happen, but more on that in a second). People who are the kind of people who you want as friends will go out of their way to learn more about you beyond the surface things, and you’ll feel comfortable letting them in on the deeper parts of yourself, and they’ll interact more and more with those deeper parts, and respect them more and more, and that’s how you’ll become actual friends. People who don’t go out of their way to learn more about you aren’t the kind of people you’ll be friends with, and that’s true for any situation, whether we’re gay or tall or ditzy or whatever.
There are definitely people in my own family who think of me strictly as ‘the one who got pregnant in high school, moved off to California, became a lesbian, and now lives a life of sin in the desert of all places,’ and while all of those things are true about me, they’re certainly not my entire story. It’s just tough titties for them because little do they know that I’m also getting into herb gardening and one time I made a quilt! I can recite all of Dirty Dancing, my wife is the most selfless human on earth, my kids are brilliant, Brittani Nichols is following me on Twitter, AND I’m really, really good at making mashed potatoes! Like I frighten my own self with how amazing my mashed potatoes are. Those poor motherfuckers will never know, ever. Any new people in your life who don’t make an effort to get to know you beyond being The Gay One are missing out on all of your unique talents and world views and quirks, and that’s just sad for them. Womp.
As for the people who are already your friends but can’t seem to move past your queer identity, what if you played a fun game where you only referred to them as The Straights, and brought every interaction back to their straightness? For example:
“Oh I bet you and your girlfriend like this boring, mainstream romcom, don’t you Todd? Since y’all are just straight.”
“I was reading an interesting article about straight people the other day — did you know y’all are 80% less likely to have an orgasm with your partner than queer people are? That’s sad, friend. Damn. Do you need to talk about it?”
“Does this shirt make me look straight?”
“Some of my queer friends think that all sexuality is fluid, but I stood up for you guys! I said ‘No, Alex, some sexuality ISN’T fluid. I know at least four people who are so dedicated to their straightness, you have no idea. Don’t ever talk about my friends like that again!’ Because I’m such a good ally for you people.”
“Hey, is that girl straight? I mean, she’s wearing mom jeans and an almost-mullet, but I can’t tell if it’s literal or… I don’t know I just figured you could tell when people are straight like you.”
“Do you think you straight people have as much fun at Disneyland? I don’t see how you can, Jennifer. I really don’t see how you can.”
But seriously, I think you can just tell them that it’s annoying and encourage them to knock it off, if it bothers you that much! I think most people are interested in not being accidental assholes to their friends, and would maybe appreciate you telling them how you feel. This might also be a good opportunity to reconsider how you treat your ditzy friend, now that you’re on the subject. I’m just saying!
I wish you all the very very best! Do you have advice for these advice seekers? Drop your thoughts in the comments! Need some quick advice for yourself? Email youneedhelp@autostraddle.com!
Y’All Need Help: Quick and Unprofessional Advice for Queers Who Need It
Welcome to Y’All Need Help, a weeklyish (maybe?) advice column in which I pluck out a handful of questions from the You Need Help inbox and answer them right here, round-up style! You can chime in with your own advice in the comments and before you know it, we’ll be on our way to a kinder, gentler world full of people we’ve helped.
Here at Autostraddle we have a lovely and thorough advice series called You Need Help, where people just like you send in detailed, complicated and delicate questions, and various team members get to work writing full posts’ worth of advice for you. But recently I thought to myself, what of the shorter questions? The ones that just need some quick and dirty advice; things that maybe wouldn’t fill an entire post? And so Y’all Need Help got born!
Remember the early days of You Need Help and Formspring Friday? Well Y’all Need Help is kinda like those two things, except guess what? We obvs don’t use Formspring anymore and it’s not even called Formspring now, so get over it. If you want this column to be weeklyish, you’ll need to send your shortish/quick and dirty questions to youneedhelp@autostraddle.com. Otherwise it’ll just be published whenever I can accumulate a pile of quick and dirty questions to reply to. The future is in your hands, is what I’m saying. Oh and if y’all want to sign your questions with little situation-specific pseudonyms for yourself that would be so great! I love it when you do that.
Let’s get crackin’!
I recently made a great group of lesbian friends who live pretty close to me. We go out almost every weekend and have a blast together. Two of the friends are engaged (let’s call them Shane and Carmen). I’ve had a huge crush on Shane since I met them, but I’ve kept my feelings to myself, hoping they would eventually pass. Fast forward a few months and Shane and I are making out in a bathroom stall after getting drunk at a concert after Carmen left early.
I felt guilty, and eventually told Shane I had feelings for her, hoping that would help me get over them and help hold us accountable for any future bad behavior. Well, she told me she has feelings for me, too, and the bad behavior continued. No more making out, but more touching, cuddling, and holding hands when her fiancé wasn’t present. I told her she needed to tell Carmen we kissed. I feel like a terrible friend for keeping it from her, but Shane insists that she’s “doing what’s best for her” by keeping it a secret. I disagree, and don’t know what I should do.
Carmen wonders why I haven’t wanted to hang out with them as much, my heart is aching over Shane, and I’m pissed that she’s trying to convince herself that covering her own ass is the best thing to do for Carmen’s sake. She doesn’t want to break up with Carmen, and I’m not expecting her to. I just don’t know where to go from here.
Do you have any wisdom you can impart about this sticky mess?
Sincerely,
Homewrecker
Oh damn, kitten. Mistakes were made. I believe you should get the entire fuck away from Shane as quickly as possible. Don’t even pause to look around at the rubble, don’t think whimsically about what could’ve been, don’t wonder if you should intervene and come clean to Carmen — just get away from this situation. Your top priority right now is making sure that nothing else happens between you and Shane, which should be very easy if you literally have nothing to do with her.
Unfortunately for Carmen, you’re not actually a home wrecker — Shane is. You definitely played an active role in it, but Shane probably would’ve done this with anyone (and perhaps already has with other people), because the home that Shane’s wrecking is one she doesn’t want to begin with. She isn’t completely happy with her life and instead of taking appropriate steps towards fixing anything, she’s making out with people in bathroom stalls. That’s sad for Shane, for Carmen, and for you!
Here is an excerpt from a conversation I had with Rachel and Riese about your life and the lives of your anonymous friends:
Riese: i hope, much like the l word’s shane and carmen
that shane and carmen do not get married
because carmen should not marry shane
that is a bad idea
very bad idea
Rachel: no
they should not
no one should touch shane with a ten foot pole, basically
Riese: nope
and also i mean like, if shane thinks that she can still marry carmen under these conditions then that is bad news
like if shane was like, look, i am not into carmen and i want to be with you, then i might give her like one more chance to do something good and prove herself, b/c that does happen, even though most people besides me would advise “run”
BUT if shane is like “no this is fine, and i’m still getting married”
then
nope
Riese and Rachel are right. Also, in general, it’s probably never a good idea to tell someone you have feelings for them in an effort to stop having feelings for them. I just don’t think the world works that way.
Today is when you stop having achy heart feelings for this person! Right now Shane is a shell of herself. She’s not living her best life and she’s not even trying to. You’re not having achy heart feelings for a whole real person — you’re having achy heart feelings for the idea of a person you’ve imagined up in your own head. Don’t do that! Think of Shane as a character in a book that you could write if you wanted to — you’ve probably done a great job with the details and some swoon-worthy traits. But even if you wrote a million books, that character would still be made-up, and you wouldn’t be any closer to dating them. Shane is not real.
Seek out and surround yourself with people who are whole and real and building happiness with their free time. Better yet, BE a person who is whole and real and building happiness for yourself. You deserve friends who would never ever make-out with you in a bathroom stall while their fiancées were home in bed.
I identify as bisexual and have since I was 14. I’ve never had a girlfriend. I’m currently in a straight relationship (my longest ever, almost two years now) and I can’t help but think about women all the time. This is how it’s been in every relationship I’ve had. I always question it, and I’ve even talked to past boyfriends about how I think I’m really gay.
I fantasize about women while I’m having sex with my boyfriend. This has been going on for the last year (maybe longer). We live together and we have been making all these plans to stay together and settle down, but I can’t help question it. I am awake in the middle of the night crying right now. I really love him and want him in my life, I don’t want things to change, but I feel like I’m lying to myself.
I wanted to scream “I’m gay” during sex last night because that’s how much I just wasn’t feeling it. I could care less about my feelings and my happiness. It breaks my heart to think that I’ve done this to another man in my life. Maybe I am overthinking everything. I enjoy having sex with men, but something never feels right. I’ve never been able to orgasm during sex. I get that this shouldn’t be the goal of sex, but I want to be able to orgasm from sex because masturbation makes me come hard and I want to be able to experience that with another person. Maybe that’s selfish or asking for too much. I don’t know.
I just really need advice. I don’t have any friends to ask. I don’t have anyone to talk to about this. I don’t know what to do.
I’m going to write a song for you titled, “It Is OK To Break Up With This Person” and I’m gonna stand outside on your street at night and sing it over and over and over again. The chorus will be like, “It’s ok to break up with this person, dear heart! / You have the answers inside of yourself and wanting to be happy is reason enough!” It won’t rhyme because it’ll be a progrock experimental thing and I’ll make up for the lack of rhyming with laser sounds and cat noises.
Here’s a true thing about this life: you deserve to be excited about it. You deserve to come hard with another person. You deserve to care about your feelings and your happiness. When you think about the impact you’re making on another person’s life, you deserve an unbroken heart. You deserve your fantasies. You deserve your truth, whatever it is.
Maybe it seems easier to just keep dating men because that’s what you’ve been doing forever. But what you’re going through right now isn’t actually easy. Crying in the middle of the night, questioning your life, things never feeling quite right — that’s not easy at all, that’s torture. Just because you know how to live a lie doesn’t make the lie any easier to live. You can be practiced at a specific type of torture, you can even be very good at it, but that doesn’t mean you should have to keep doing it. Do something you might be terrible at: date a woman. Break up with this person who seems easy enough to settle down with and try on some other people who might not fit.
It might feel incredibly selfish to break up with someone who hasn’t really done anything ‘wrong,’ and in a way it is — you’ll be looking out primarily for yourself and your own well-being. Your well-being is a thing worth looking out for, though. Your life is a thing worth being excited about. Letting someone go when it’s not working for you is also beneficial for them, because they deserve to be with a person for whom it does work.
Here’s a playlist for you from an earlier post: It Was Time to Go.
Is there a graceful way to live in the closet without losing your mind? I have it easier than many — I’m only closeted to my family. But how do I navigate familial relationships even while feeling they are completely built on a lie and might not exist if they knew the truth? I’m in my late 20s and it’s stupid that I’m even still in the closet with them but trust me, at this time, I just can’t. This is the south and things are different and I just can’t, I don’t want to lose them. I get pressure from the LGBTQ community to come out to them, advance the cause, shake up their heteronormativity etc. But I’m not trying to start a revolution, I’m just gay and want to keep my family. SO I am closeted. I’m not sure what I’m really even asking, I guess just affirmation that I will not lose my mind and that it’s okay with the queer community if I take this one step at a time and live in that grey area of lies and love. Gay South is not the regular gay. It’s more complicated than anyone not in the South could ever imagine. Thanks for any advice
Hello fellow southern person! I’m sorry that you can’t be completely honest with your family and that it feels like your relationships are built on lies. That is genuinely fucking terrible. They’re missing out on knowing who you really are, and you’re missing out on so much by having to close yourself off to them.
The South has a second language of weighted contradictions and deep secrets we’re expected to take to our graves, and you learn this language right alongside English and how to cross a street. We’re taught to be humble and to keep our private lives to ourselves — if people find out something about us, they’d rather hear it from a third party, and then they’d like to pretend they didn’t hear it at all. Coming out in the South isn’t just about bucking heterocentric norms and religious teachings, it’s about bucking the entire system of prudence and no, not everyone wants to do that. Plenty of people don’t. I know of several closeted queer people living in my hometown — young and old — who will very likely never come out. Nearly all of them have longtime partners that they live with, and most everyone knows about them being gay, but it’s just not discussed in broad daylight. There are definitely hellraisers in the South who don’t give a single fuck about norms and systems, but if your grandmother wasn’t a hellraiser and you want her to let you in the house on Sundays, you don’t do what hellraisers do. I get that.
I honestly don’t know how to tell you to navigate those relationships in a healthy way, but I do know that humans do this a lot, for different reasons and with varying degrees of success. We lie by omission and we guard ourselves against threats and we decide what’s best for us based on the information we have about a situation. You’ve appraised your situation and decided that coming out would be very detrimental to your family relationships at this time, and your queer peers will need to honor that. Having a closeted friend or partner can be frustrating, sure — and possibly even a dealbreaker for some, and you’ll have to respect that — but their frustration probably pales in comparison to what you think you’ll be faced with if you tell your family the truth. And since it’s your family and not theirs, you get to call the shots! It’s an imperfect situation with no real winners, unfortunately.
If you ever do decide to talk to your family, we have a whole collection of coming out stories, including this gem that I found last night. I can’t change your family and I can’t wave a magic wand to make the whole world a more accepting place, but I did make these inspirational posters for you using pictures from my Instagram feed!
I wish you all the very very best! Do you have advice for these advice seekers? Drop your thoughts in the comments! Need some quick advice for yourself? Email youneedhelp@autostraddle.com!