Lesbianism later in life
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Anonymous
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One of my very good friends recently started a relationship with a woman. It is very confusing to me. I have known her since high school. She was definitely into guys in high school and college. We talked about her boyfriends all the time as friends do. She was in a 6 year relationship after college. Then she got married a couple years later, I was there through the dating, the engagement, the marriage. From all accounts as a close friend, they were madly in love. One of her other very good friends is a gay man (was in her wedding party) so homosexuality was not a taboo topic. After 8 years she found out her husband had cheated on her. She was a mix of absolutely devastated, heartbroken, and angry. She stayed with him for almost a year in an effort to work it out but couldn't. She moved out and into a new place. Her next door neighbor was a lesbian woman "Anna" and my friend befriended her and found a listening ear. However I noticed over the next few months my friend changed. Anna is very much angry at straight white men in general and kept reinforcing quite aggressively how bad men are etc. My fried started to parrot Anna and also to let Anna 'lead' her life and decisions. Anna is a very dominant and aggressive and loud person and doesn't take no for an answer. I kind of backed off my friendship a bit because I really didn't enjoy spending time around Anna. More and more of my conversations with my friend seemed to also be about Anna...that was all she talked about. Less than a year after she left her husband, my friend calls me to say Anna proposed and they are getting married in 6 weeks. I had no idea they were dating and no sense in my 20 plus years of knowing my friend, had any mention of her being interested in women every surfaced. She told me that Anna helped her see that she was a lesbian and that given they are in their 40s, they decided to get married. She hadn't told me she was dating Anna as she knew I wasn't a fan, it was all very fast, and she was still really confused about it all. So they got married about a year ago. I rarely see her anymore as I don't enjoy Anna's company at all. She draws attention to herself everywhere she goes...and I have this unpleasant thought (that I have kept to myself) that she kind of took advantage of my friend's vulnerability - being a friend but really wanting to get her to sleep with her / date her.
I still don't really get it. How does one at 40 just realize / decide that now they are a lesbian. I truly have an extremely hard time accepting that her marriage and earlier relationships were just all fake / acted / for show as I knew her then and she was as straight and in love with guys as anyone I know. If she was never attracted to men and just led her husband on, it also makes me see her differently. I have pulled away from the friendship but she keeps reaching out. I just feel like if the 20 years I knew her, I obviously didn't even know her at all, the friendship wasn't really a deep one. I feel hurt by it all and sad I lost someone I always considered a close friend. |
Anonymous
| It happens. Knew a woman in her 60's who came out after divorcing her husband and had a kid in college. She's white and her SO is from puerto rico I think. I guess if women keep experimenting and being curious about sex with others men or women they catch feelings. |
Anonymous
| I don't know. People either hail from the Isle of Lesbos, or they don't. |
Anonymous
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It's a thing for some women. Probably an attempt to avoid getting hurt by a man again. Maybe they think another woman won't hurt them like that. Not true, of course.
Even if your primary source of sexual arousal is the opposite sex I think if you are motivated it's not that tough to get off with the same sex. |
Anonymous
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I think a lot of women are bisexual or somewhere other than a 0 on the Kinsey scale without realizing it - with how our culture is with showing admiration for other women as a sign of jealousy or envy or just giving a compliment, many women might initially not realize they're anything other than straight because showing admiration for other women is seen as "normal" and the line between admiration and attraction is so fluid.
Coming from someone who's bisexual and realized it after I got into a relationship with the man I'm eventually going to marry, realizing that you're attracted to women can happen at any age, and it can happen in different degrees to different people. Your friend probably discovered a stronger connection to the woman she's marrying than she ever felt with men - and that is totally valid. Maybe she's like me and she just falls for people and gender isn't a deciding factor. |
Anonymous
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Bisexuality isn't always 50/50. Maybe she's mostly attracted to men and only somewhat attracted to women. Since she has been in relationships with men since she was young, she hasn't really had time to think about other options. And "Anna" is the first woman who caught her attention at a time that she was available.
Also, in our society, being straight is the default option. If your friend didn't have a strong attraction to women to begin with and haven't met a woman that she was attracted to (until "Anna"), why would she even think about women romantically? The whole situation also sounds like a mid-life crisis. So that's a possibility too. |
Anonymous
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Sexuality can be fluid for many people.
It is VERY possible she was only attracted to men for the first part of her life and was extremely in love with her male husband. She happened to fall in love with a woman later in life. It is what it is. If she wants to call herself a lesbian, have at it. Maybe technically she’s bisexual or maybe she was heterosexual and now she’s gay. Who cares. Is she happy? That’s what matters. People are complicated. -Lifelong lesbian |
Anonymous
| I think sexuality can be somewhat fluid, especially for women. And like PP mentioned, maybe a woman hadn't caught her attention when she was available...emotionally, physically, mentally etc. Could also be Anna caught her at a vulnerable time and if they hadn't met then, nothing would have happened romantically. It's not that uncommon for women (and men) to come out later in life. |
Anonymous
+1 |
Anonymous
This. |
Anonymous
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I have two friends who became lesbians after they were traumatized by rape. They don't know each other. |
Anonymous
Are you suggesting that getting raped caused these friends to come out as lesbians? Because I’m guessing there might have been other common experiences they had prior to coming out in addition to being raped. |
Anonymous
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I don't believe in sexual fluidity.
Your friend was most likely bisexual or had some tendency towards bisexuality but the cultural norms and even circumstances around her didn't allow her to explore it. Sexual attraction isn't something people switch on and off at will, contrary to what some people want to believe these days. |
Anonymous
In nature, being straight is the default option. |
Anonymous
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I’m bi and I fall in love with people not gender. I’ve always been in relationships with men and probably look straight. Tremendous social pressure from my family forced me to become married at a young age, but I’m happily married. Anyway it isn’t a mystery to me that women who love men fall in love with a woman, to me it makes sense. She maybe liked Anna and then felt sexually attracted to her. Because she is older and doesn’t give a crap what people think, she gets in a relationship.
Another possibility—I too have a friend who always identified as straight and once she was divorced fell in love with a very dominating woman who sounds like Anna. Most of us (previous friends) consider their relationship abusive because Anna has alienated us from our friend. The concern/question to us isn’t “how did our friend become gay suddenly” but “is our friend safe, has she been manipulated, how do we handle being around Anna?” It sounds similar to your situation. |