What Happens When a Lesbian Meets Mr. Right?

Understanding the complexities of forbidden female sexuality

Many lesbians recall their gay awakening as being the moment they met a specific woman.

They say she swanned unexpectedly into their life and completely upended their notion of love and romance. That their very existence adopted a new and improved complexion of brighter colours and sweeter smells – pleasures abound in the absence of men.

When I think about my own gay awakening, I realise that my experience was different.

I had met women – hundreds, if not thousands, prior to coming out.

I went to all-girls schools until I was 16 years old. I had majority female friends and almost exclusively female peers.

But it wasn’t until my twenties when I met a man (read: the perfect man) that I came to understand not just my own sexuality, but the interminable complexities of love and its significance.

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As a woman raised within the rigid confines of convention, settling down with a “good man” was the inevitable blueprint for my life.

There would be no deviation from that path, just dedication to keeping my head down and plodding towards the dreams and aspirations fostered for me by my mother, and her mother, and her mother before her.

You see, my mother is an extremely conventional woman. There is nothing radical or eccentric about her.

She’s obedient and deferential, and I was raised to follow suit.

And while she’s not solely responsible for my delayed gay awakening (ladies and gentlemen, please rise as comphet takes the floor), she was definitely an active participant in my sexual disorientation — something she blithely admits to.

Everything I was taught to embody was for the sake of male validation.

The way I behaved and communicated, my beliefs, the mannerisms I cultivated, and the imperfections I camouflaged.

My looks, my goals, and my essence were all carefully pruned and sculpted by my mother to shape me into the ultimate object of male desire — as though their approval were the grand finale and my life the dress rehearsal.

I recount her behaviour without any blame or judgement.

She was born into a poverty-stricken family in 1950s England, and her most viable life prospects lay in her acquiring a successful husband and finding salvation from those circumstances through marriage.

But the throttling chokehold of the patriarchy did not end with her, and, just like my mother, I was destined to be sacrificed at its altar long before I was even born.

“Men don’t like women who…”

Her most-used catchphrase, uttered just before critiquing female appearance or conduct. She still occasionally slips up and says it in reference to me, before uttering a “…-oop, never mind” and moving on.

Old habits die hard.

But one thing she couldn’t have accounted for… was Laura.

Laura was my childhood best friend’s big sister. The sister figure I never had, being born into a family of mainly men.

She enjoyed braiding my hair and adorning me with cereal box tattoos and reading me magazine horoscopes when I wasn’t playing Nintendo with her brother.

I suspect that I, too, was like the sister she never had.

Laura was the reason for my clammy palms and sweaty underarms, for simple sentences forming a bolus in my throat at the sight of her, for awkward silences, and clumsy, unarticulated reactions.

Laura brought about an eruption of feelings that ventured far beyond the permitted realms of my 8-year-old desires.

Because Laura was my very first crush.

The first of several female crushes throughout my adolescence and early adulthood that I was able to suppress as I forged ahead towards the fantasy life imposed upon me in my formative years.

I was void of any autonomy or willingness to self-direct – complicit in silencing my intuition that was screaming out for me to recognise my most natural, carnal impulses.

So, I followed the blueprint to the letter and I met an amazing man. The satisfaction and fulfilment were guaranteed to come along soon, right?

I mean, I’d done the thing.

I’d not only met all of the requirements, but my people-pleasing nature had urged me to far supersede them.

Where was my reward? Where was my happily ever after?

More importantly, why was the promise of everlasting love with a man violently eclipsed by deep-seated anxiety, aversion to physical intimacy, and the feeling of being an imposter within my own skin?

I searched frantically for answers to questions that occupied every modicum of free space in my mind.

How is it possible to not love this man in the way I know I should?

In an effort to lessen my anguish, I tried to find fault in him — a measly justification for my waning tolerance and non-existent attraction towards him.

But I was largely unsuccessful, as he is as close to perfect as any human I have ever met.

On paper, he was everything I had been taught to want; an amalgamation of the most stellar characteristics. All found in a person who not only exhibited them unfalteringly but also was deeply in love with me, in a way that inspired remarks of envy and admiration from my female counterparts.

The guilt was crippling.

Convinced that the solution lay in the expertise of a paid professional, I sought help from sex therapists, psychotherapists, and hypnotherapists.

I stopped taking the contraceptive pill in a desperate attempt to reclaim a libido that was proving impossible to unearth.

Maca root smoothies were choked down every morning and tantric yoni rituals were performed every other night.

This relentless pursuit of a “cure” was interrupted one evening when he leaned across the sofa, looked at me with his warm brown eyes, and calmly posited:

“Honey… I think you might be a lesbian.”

I really wish I could say that upon hearing that statement, all the shards of self-loathing and insecurity fell into place to reveal the answer to months of immeasurable guilt and confusion.

But they didn’t.

If I recall correctly, I laughed.

“Me, a lesbian? Don’t be silly! I mean, of course, I like women but… not like that.”

He kissed my forehead. “Okay then. Never mind.”

I spent that night wide awake.

Thoughts went hurtling through my mind with such force that I retreated to the living room for fear that they might be loud enough to disturb my sleeping boyfriend.

As I sat alone in the dark stillness of the early hours, I went leafing through the archives of my brain. I harked back to any and every female interaction I had ever had, searching for threads of evidence of same-sex attraction.

• There was Alice, an older girl at school who made my stomach churn like a washing machine. But that was surely because I was intimidated by her.

• There was Victoria and her shiver-inducing beauty, but she had pink highlights so I guess I just wanted to be like her.

• Then there was Julia, one of my colleagues who would immobilise me with her intense eye contact and need for physical proximity. She briefly held my hand at a work event once and I found it so electrifying that I avoided her for the rest of the evening.

• There was also that girl who kissed me for the first time in a gay bar in Valencia, and who made my heart beat so quickly afterwards that I suspected I’d been roofied.

But these examples don’t mean anything, right?

Namely, because all of these encounters induced a swell of notably uncomfortable feelings on my part. Discomfort akin to when you’re in the window seat of a long-haul flight and the sun is hot and bright and overbearing on your side.

I reached for my phone.

“sweaty palms, butterflies in your tummy, and an increased heart rate are all scientific signs of attraction! Pay attention to how your body responds the next time you’re around them. Feeling stressed or anxious can also be a sign that you’re into them…”

The words beamed up at me from the Google homepage.

My mouth fell open.

Wide-eyed and incredulous, I finally experienced that lightbulb moment. That feeling when a home truth hits you bluntly and then waves of assimilation bubble across your entire body like static on a television screen.

There, as I sat in quiet contemplation in my Barcelona apartment, my entire perception of self lay before me, shattered beyond recognition.

Oh my God, I’m gay..? I mouthed repeatedly in the darkness, the hushed words swirling in the vortex between question and statement.

So the jittery uneasiness around attractive girls and the wanton fantasies that would creep into my idle mind were indicators of attraction?

How had I subdued my critical reasoning to such a degree that I couldn’t differentiate deep admiration from infatuation?

Had pursuing approval from my family made me lose all sense of orientation and acknowledgement of my own desires?

Was I really surprised, despite being fully aware that I harboured feelings of physical repulsion towards the idea of being with a man? That all I was hinging my “straightness” on were amiable conversations and lukewarm platitudes?

The iteration of these ideas brought with them a bracing feeling of realisation. Acceptance of my new reality was very quick to follow.

It was a welcome departure from the agonising months of rudderlessness and uncertainty I had been drowning in up until that point. I was finally breaking the water’s surface and coming up for air.

It felt like I was coming home.

Home to a place I hadn’t yet inhabited, but where my essence had always been firmly rooted.

The months following this come-to-Jesus moment were more pivotal and life-altering than I could’ve ever prepared myself for.

As time passed and I garnered more agency over my choices and behaviour, elements of my life that were once integral were sloughed away as my new identity took shape.

My relationship inevitably came to an end, and I emerged from the ruins with a brand new optimism for the future.

For the first time in my adult life, I had sampled the delights of personal liberation.

And that delicious newfound freedom affected other facets of my life, such as my career, beliefs, and interpersonal relationships.

In coming out to myself, I had exposed the other ways in which I had convinced myself I was content, when I was really quite the opposite.

• I vacated my apartment in the centre of a bustling Spanish metropolis and moved into a beach town chalet in a quiet nook on the coast.

• I quit my in-house 9–5 to pursue various creative projects as a freelancer.

• I pierced my nipples, tattooed my throat, and adopted a cat. Friendships ebbed and flowed of their own volition and I let them.

Gone were the days of forcing connection, be it platonic or romantic.

I learned how I actually like to present myself, now unshackled from the desire for male affirmation and newly averse to outsourcing my autonomy.

To say a cloud had lifted is as painfully clichéd as it is profoundly accurate. But I’m willing to bet that its banality stems from how common this trajectory is for many gay women.

My story is far from unique — the stunting effects of compulsory heterosexuality feature heavily in most female coming-out stories.

The fact that “coming out” is even a thing denotes the repressive way in which the patriarchy binds personal and sexual identity like a conceptual straitjacket.

It’s scary to unlearn pre-established behaviours and to lead ourselves into the unknown, despite said unknown often being where we discover our greatest sense of genuine fulfilment.

So, I personally didn’t need to meet the ideal woman to realise that women were my future.

I needed to meet the perfect man to realise that men could never be.

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Thank you very much for reading! If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to leave them below.

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