On being attracted to the wrong women, part 2

As luck would have it, a few minutes after I’d submitted my last blog, I received a text from Elly. For those of you who are unfamiliar with my blog, Elly was the one woman I had a date with last week who I felt a lot of chemistry with. More than that, Elly is the boyish type I’m so darn attracted to. She is smart and really funny. We drank a lot of wine on our date and spoke about everything including our mutual work in social work, our government, feminism and sex.

The days after our date, I had Elly on my mind. I regretted not kissing her that evening and I wondered if I’d have the opportunity of seeing her again.

We had made plans to see each other on Sunday but she texted me during the morning asking if we could reschedule as she’d over-committed herself and agreed to help a friend move house. I suggested we meet Tuesday evening instead for an after work drink and she texted back saying that she might be playing netball and that she’d let me know. I was more disappointed than I thought I’d be. Was I too keen? Should I have waited for her to initiate meeting again? I told myself off for always liking the women who don’t like me back.

And then she texted me yesterday afternoon saying that her netball game had been canceled and she was free to catch up afterall! Considering I’ve only met this woman once, my level of excitement was a little bit ridiculous.

I’m going to try to walk into this date with realistic expectations. I know this; Elly broke up with her girlfriend of seven years only two years ago. I asked her if she feels ready to date again and she said she thinks so. SEVEN YEARS! It’s an awfully long time. I’m telling myself this one is also not going to want a relationship because she’s not over her ex.

So I’ll be seeing her tonight in just a few hours and will try to be reasonable and will keep reminding myself that this one, like all the others will end in heartbreak.

Ironically, I’ve also been receiving lots of texts from the beautiful femme, Jennifer. Jennifer is smart and warm and sweet and very much interested in me and yet I feel no chemistry with her. No attraction, nothing.

Is attraction something that you can learn? Or unlearn?

On being attracted to the wrong women

I went on three dates with three women last week. Partly as a social experiment and so I’d have lots to blog about. Partly because I want to get back into the dating scene and put Adelaide behind me. I wrote about my first two dates in my last post, but for the time-poor; the first date was probably around ten years older than she’d described herself as, the second date, Elly was great; good chemistry, lots in common and plenty to talk about. She was also boyish and definitely the type I usually go for. We arranged to see each other again on Sunday evening. My final date was on Saturday evening with the very femme Jennifer. I was reluctant to arrange a first date on a Saturday night. If the date goes terribly, you can’t exactly pretend you need to get home early so you can have a good night’s sleep in preparation for work the next day! I told Jennifer I could meet her in the early evening but I that I had a party to attend later in the evening. This is known as a decoy plan. I suggest all blind-daters or tinder-daters to consider the decoy plan! Jennifer and I arranged to meet at a cosy bar near the beach at 6pm. I was running late as always and texted her to let her know I’d be fifteen minutes late. I decided to drive which was a mistake. I took one of the busiest roads in the city and I ended up being half an hour late. I arrived flustered and apologising profusely. Jennifer had found herself a table and was reading when I arrived. She was remarkably calm and reassured me there was nothing to apologise for and that she had been content reading her book. I would have been a little annoyed if my date had been so late, but if Jennifer was annoyed, she certainly didn’t show it. I bought us both a glass of Pinot Noir and we conversed. It came out early on in conversation that we had both deviated from our usual pattern when we swiped right to each other. She admitted she usually goes for women who are bad for her. I admitted the same. She said she is usually attracted to older androgynous types. I told her I usually only date boyish or androgenous women and that they tend to be older than me. Jennifer told me she is quite shy and never the one to make the first move. She described herself as more subservient and passive and that, as much as she hated to admit it, she found herself subscribing to traditional gender roles when she dated women who appear more on the masculine side of the scale. She said this translated sexually and generally in her relationships. Call me naive, but it had never occurred to me that I do the same. Isn’t one of the positives about being a gay woman the fact that gender roles go out the window when you date another lesbian? I would have thought so, but truth be told; I do tend to date more masculine women and I like them to be the more dominant, assertive ones in the bedroom and otherwise too. Am I subscribing to traditional gender roles? Jennifer and I talked about being a femme in the lesbian dating world. We talked about femme-invisibility. We shared our experiences of being at lesbian events and gay clubs and having other gay women eye us suspiciously. Jennifer said she had once been approached by a butch lesbian who informed her that she was in a gay club. Jennifer had replied that she realised that, and she was there because she, too loves women. Talking to Jennifer was cathartic. It was therapeutic. We had so many similar experiences with dating and life in general and I felt she was very much like me. I noticed that we also look very similar; we both have long dark hair, glasses, are both voluptuous and attempting a ‘naughty secretary’ look. I wonder if she also noted our similarities. A couple of glasses of wine in, we both realised how hungry we were and we walked to a Malaysian restaurant for dinner. The conversation turned to our most recent exes. This is a conversation I like to avoid. I told her it didn’t work out with Adelaide because she wasn’t over her ex. I asked her about hers. She told me about her emotionally damaged ex, the ups and downs. The days or weeks when her ex would go cold on her, stop communicating, stop making her feel loved or wanted. Jennifer may as well have been describing my relationship with Adelaide. The similarities were so apparent. Jennifer said she feels the fact that she gives the women she dates so many chances and is forgiving and kind inevitably means she is the one who is heartbroken. ‘It’s like they can sense that I’m a softy, that I will put up with bad behaviour and will take them back at the end of it all’. She said. I started feeling unwell. I was no longer interested in my crispy noodles. I told Jennifer I had a stomach ache and I asked her if we could wrap up the date. Jennifer walked me to my car and seemed genuinely sorry that I wasn’t feeling well. She said she’d like to see me again and she gave me a warm hug. I went home and reflected on the evening. I felt like I’d experienced an epiphany. Jennifer had so much insight on her own life and dating habits and she’d forced me to see my on dating experiences and habits. My best friend texted me asking how my date had gone. I replied that she was beautiful, intelligent, interesting and sweet and that I hadn’t felt the chemistry. My friend texted back saying: ‘She sounds perfect for you. Of course you’re not interested!’ I want to have a relationship with a woman who is sweet and kind and emotionally available but the truth is I’m interested in women who treat me poorly and who aren’t in a position to be dating whether it be because they’ve just exited a relationship recently or for another reason. I know a psychologist would say I need to believe I deserve to be loved and that I’m worthy. I do believe this, though! I wholeheartedly believe it. I guess attraction is just very complicated. The next day, I woke up with a headache but was excited about meeting Elly in the evening. Then I received a text from Elly. She said she’d agreed to help a friend move, that she had over-committed herself and could we rain-check. I suggested we meet up on Tuesday evening instead and she replied something very non-committal. I can’t say I’m even surprised.

On being back in the dating world

I caved. I went back on Tinder. I feel it’s time to give myself the push. I have been thinking less of Adelaide. So, I reinstated my profile, added a couple of witty sentences, listed my interests and started swiping. I did see Adelaide on Tinder in the first few swipes, but I didn’t allow myself to be deterred by this minor set-back and I became quite active on Tinder. I swiped right to a few women who I wouldn’t necessarily say were my type. I’m usually only date boi-ish or androgenous women who are emotionally unavailable and don’t treat my very well. I’m trying to change this. I was pleased with my matches. Very pleased. I messaged matches, they messaged back. Pleasant conversation followed and I agreed to meet the women who I thought I had enough in common with. I lined up three dates with three women this week. The first one was on Tuesday. She is an academic, bisexual, a little older. She stated in her profile that she’s 39, but on meeting her, I would have placed her in her late forties. Everything about her appeared middle aged. This was problematic for me and there definitely wasn’t any chemistry or sexual attraction. We did have some great discussions about feminism and about our appalling government and that was enjoyable. The second was on Wednesday evening. Elly. Elly messaged me on Tinder a truly dismal line which I ignored. I may have even rolled my eyes on receiving it. She messaged and hour later, apologising for her terrible attempt at starting a conversation. She asked me how my weekend had been. I looked at her profile. She was wearing a monkey suit in her first photo. She appeared boi-ish and goofy and was smiling in all her photos. Her bio was upbeat and friendly. She was quirky looking with prominent teeth and a long nose. There was something that really appealed to me about her. So we met on Wednesday at a local bar which had recently opened. I was running late. I texted her to apologise for my lateness and let her know I’d be there soon. She asked what I felt like drinking and she had a glass of red wine waiting for me when I arrived. I think the attraction was clear early on. She was funny and smart and really cute. It was easy talking to her. We talked about social work and domestic violence; we both have worked in the area. We drank a lot of red wine. The heavy red suited the heavy conversation. I told her about the reason for my leaving my DV job; the terrible thing that had happened to a client of our service and my subsequent breakdown. I felt exhausted and exposed after my admission and really affected by the wine. I was wishing it were a weekend evening instead. We had created intimacy through our conversation and I wanted more. I wanted to kiss her, touch her. Instead, we parted close to midnight. She looked as though she was leaning in for a kiss. I felt overwhelmed by everything and I gave her my cheek. We texted each other when we got home that evening and the following day. I bit the bullet and told her I’d enjoyed our evening and did she want to catch up again on the weekend. She replied suggesting we do something on Sunday evening. Something inside my chest fluttered. I smiled the whole rest of the day. Tonight I am meeting Jennifer. She is a few years younger than me, an academic, works in publishing and appears to be very sweet. She is femme and very beautiful. I’m not usually attracted to femme women but I’m keeping an open mind. More to come.

On being kind to myself

I wrote in my last blog entry about how I had succumbed to Adelaide again just a couple of weeks after we had broken up. If you haven’t read my last post, Adelaide had messaged me in a real state. She had received terrible news and was inconsolable. She needed a friend, someone who would hold her, kiss her brow and tell her it would all be Ok. I stupidly thought I could be that person for her. You know when you have a terrible secret and you want desperately to share it with someone, so they can hold some of the burden and you’ll carry less of it? That’s the best way I can describe what happened with Adelaide and me that evening. A transaction of sorts. She gave me some of her misery and I gave her a small amount of comfort. I didn’t realise how poorly I’d feel in the following few days. Adelaide had shared some pretty awful things with me and I couldn’t help but take on her burden as my own. I felt deflated the next day. Adelaide, on the other hand was happy and smiling when I left. An evening of sex and snuggling had obviously served her well. This is the thing; you don’t play with someone’s emotions. I told Adelaide when I broke up with her that I’d fallen in love with her and was really saddened about our breaking up. Adelaide would have known that less than two weeks later, these emotions would still be hot and the burn of breaking up would still be raw, and yet she still called on me. She made me feel wanted and needed. But just for the one night. Adelaide messaged me a few times in the following days, but made excuses to not see me to catch up again that week. I felt used, betrayed. I felt like I’d let myself down. All my life, I’ve found it hard to stand up for myself and walk away when someone doesn’t give me the treatment or respect I deserve. Adelaide had made a big effort with me and with our relationship initially, but then the efforts stopped. She acted like she couldn’t be f*cked with me, and she lied to me also. She lied about being on Tinder and other dating apps while we were exclusively dating. A friend of mine posted on facebook the following ‘what action could you take to better respect yourself?’ This really resonated with me. I thought about the imbalance in my relationship with Adelaide. I realised that in treating my loved ones the way I do and in offering the level of love that I offer to others, I am in fact treating myself poorly and not loving myself. I told myself I deserve better and I broke up with Adelaide. I was really sad as could be expected, but I also felt empowered. I felt like I’d reinstated my self-worth. Then I went and undid my good deeds to myself by crawling back to Adelaide when she beckoned. I allowed myself to wallow in self-pity for a few days. The week following my encounter with Adelaide was bad. I had to make the heart-breaking decision to have my 17 year old dog put down after she had a suspected stroke. I spent the last night with Miffy, hugging her and reassuring her and helping her get out of her basket to wee. The following day, I made the trip to the vet and put Miffy out of her misery. I cried so much, my eyelids swelled up and I could hardly see through them. I messaged Adelaide on Friday night to tell her I’d be having Miffy put to sleep. As a fellow dog-lover, I thought she would be sympathetic. She messaged me back with kind words but she didn’t offer any more support. The following day she was going to a music festival that ran all weekend and she obviously had her mind on that. After the deed was done, I messaged her again. I was distraught. I wanted kind words, but more than that, I wanted hugs, touch. I wanted just a small amount of what I had offered her just the previous weekend. I didn’t hear back from Adelaide until she was home from the festival. She wrote that she’d meant to message me but she was so hungover and that the festival was ‘SO MUCH FUN!’ Read: lots of drugs and sex with strangers. Once again, Adelaide had left me feeling deflated. I messaged her telling her that we had been foolish to think that a friendship would work so soon after we broke up, I told her I was hopeful of a friendship of sorts after I spent the night with her, comforting her but what I’d seen was her withdrawing from me again and that I can’t manage that again. She replied saying something to the effect that she can’t give me what I want and that I should do what I need to do. So I unfriended her on Facebook. I can’t go back in time and not date Adelaide. I can’t go back in time and not go crawling back to her that evening… But I do feel like I made it up to myself to a certain degree by telling her I don’t want her in my life any longer. I make this promise to myself, and you, reader are my witness: I will never again settle for someone who treats me poorly, who makes me feel unwanted, undeserving. I will no longer date girls who are bad for me.

On being my own worst enemy

There’s something comforting about sex with an old lover. Even more so when it’s sex with a recent lover.

In my most recent blog, I wrote about the month or so long relationship I had with Adelaide and how, despite the dreadful instability of the relationship, I found it almost impossible to walk away.

It may be a cliché to say this but there was something so very intoxicating about Adelaide. She had such a large personality and the most intense yellow golden eyes that I’d find myself staring into. She reminded me of a small, nocturnal animal. Not quite tame, one that might bite if you got too close.

I found myself recklessly falling for Adelaide. It didn’t help that sex with her was better than I had every experienced before in my life. Sex with Adelaide was a mind, body and soul experience. I couldn’t get enough of Adelaide. I was addicted to her.

I managed to break it off with Adelaide three weeks ago. I didn’t need to draw up a pros and cons list. I knew it was the right thing to do. Adelaide had come out of a three yearlong relationship at the end of last year and wasn’t ready to be committing herself to someone again. We gave it a good shot, but I couldn’t deal with the roller coaster of emotions and the uncertainty. There were days when Adelaide would be feeling really positive about the relationship, and she’d be happy and bouncy and life would feel so sweet. Then there were the days when she was feeling trapped, caged like the wild animal she is and she would be so emotionally and physically distant from me and the space inside my ribcage would ache with despair. We humans need to feel loved, wanted, needed.

I didn’t cry when I broke up with Adelaide. I delivered the speech that I had rehearsed inside my mind, I listened to the words I knew I’d hear from her, then I got into my car and sobbed. I knew I wouldn’t make it home in the state I was in, so I drove to my sister’s house, ten minutes away and I cried more there, relaying the conversation to my ever sympathetic sister.

Adelaide messaged me that evening and apologised for hurting me, for being so broken. She’d said she hoped we could remain friends, that she hoped she’d hear from me again soon. I wanted to remain close to Adelaide in whatever way possible but I knew I needed to distance myself from her first, to heal.

I didn’t text her. I refrained from looking at her instagram or facebook accounts. I did positive things for myself to help with the healing process. I was given an old cruiser bicycle a while back that needed some love, so I took it to the bike store and had it serviced and refurbished. I started riding. I rode my bicycle to work. I picked up extra hours at work. I contacted friends I’d lost contact with when I moved interstate a few years back. I started eating better and I cut back on cigarettes. I congratulated myself on how good I was feeling just two weeks after I’d broken up with Adelaide. I felt positive, I felt resilient.

Then I woke up on Saturday morning to a facebook message from Adelaide. She’d just received some terrible news. Her messages were frantic and all over the place. She was distraught. She said she knew she shouldn’t be contacting me, that I was free to ignore her messages but that she hadn’t known who else to contact.

I messaged her back immediately, offering kind words and support and letting her know she wasn’t alone. I had to work that day. I told her I finished at 6pm and I could come over to her place so she wouldn’t have to suffer alone. I felt wilfully reckless in suggesting this to her, but I knew if were her I wouldn’t want to feel alone. Adelaide messaged back saying something to the effect that I’m too good to her. I quickly messaged her stating that I didn’t want her to think that I was running back to her; that that’s not what this was about; that is was a sincere offer of friendship in a difficult time. Honestly, it felt good to be wanted, needed.

Then I messaged my good friend Amy.

‘You are too kind, Gina.’ She said. ‘Your offering her support doesn’t surprise me, but it’s not the right thing to do to yourself. She’ll sweep you up into it all over again and you don’t need that. You need to look after yourself.’

I promised Amy I wouldn’t go to Adelaide’s that evening. We both knew I was lying.

Adelaide was a terrible sight. She hadn’t slept at all the previous night and her eyelids were puffy from crying all day. She also hadn’t eaten. We lay down on her bed and I folded her into my arms. I’d worn the perfume I wore the whole time we were dating and she buried her face into my chest like a timid animal. She confessed that she had been drinking too much and ‘slutting around’ in the short time we’d been apart. I felt that familiar ache in my chest cavity. I was sad for her and her self-destructive ways and I was sad for myself. I couldn’t help but feel betrayed. Still, I comforted her and told her it would all be Ok.

A head massage to relieve her headache turned into a body massage, which inevitably led to undressing and hungrily kissing each other. I stopped Adelaide to ask her if this is what she wanted to do. I didn’t want for her to wake up the next day feeling like I was yet another mistake she’d made.

Adelaide responded, ‘It’s just sex, it doesn’t mean anything.’

I wish I could convince myself the same.

We had the intense, satisfying sex I had missed and for a short while, I felt good and connected to Adelaide again. We had sex again the next morning, and I left a smiling, happy Adelaide. I guess I had accomplished what I went to Adelaide’s to do; comfort her and make her feel happy again. But at what cost?

On the way home, I received a text from Adelaide: ‘Thank you for being so good to me.’

I wanted to reply something light so she wouldn’t guess that I was hopeful of a reconciliation of sorts. ‘Thank you for being so good to my pussy.’ I replied.

Adelaide texted me a few more times in the following days. I suggested to her that I could visit her again on Wednesday- I was having dinner at my sister’s so I’d be in the area. Adelaide said she would like that, and I spent the whole of Wednesday looking forward to seeing her again, to being in her bed.

On Wednesday evening, Adelaide messaged that she wasn’t feeling too well, that she felt like she was coming down with something and that she felt it best to have an early night.

I was gutted. I knew I’d lost Adelaide’s respect. Why would you respect a former lover who jumped when you clicked your fingers, who made herself so readily available to you? You wouldn’t.

Adelaide messaged me the following morning saying she was feeling so much better and was looking forward to the music festival she’s attending on the weekend where there will no doubt be more mistakes made. More regrets.

When I broke up with Adelaide, she had said she was planning on calling me in a day or so to break it off with me. How could you feel so removed from someone that you felt it Ok to break up with them over the phone, yet connected enough to call them when your life was falling apart and seek comfort from them?

Endlessly kind to others but neglectful when it comes to my own self preservation, I am my own worst enemy.

On being with someone who doesn’t want to be with you

WARNING: NSFW. GRAPHIC SEXUAL LANGUAGE. NAMES HAVE BEEN CHANGED TO PROTECT IDENTITY. I met Adelaide in early January. We’d both swiped left on Tinder and after discovering our mutual love of dogs, camping and card games, we decided to meet up. I challenged her to a game on Uno and a drink and she eagerly accepted my challenge. We met a couple of days later in a small bar in the city. I was running late and was very flustered when I arrived. I seated myself in front of her, apologising profusely for my lateness. Adelaide was beautiful. Really beautiful. She had short, side-shaved ginger hair and eyes also the colour of ginger. She was boi-ish and wore men’s and boys’ clothes but there was something incredibly feminine about her facial features. Adelaide was shorter than me, which I hadn’t expected. Being only 163cm tall, I’ve always been the shortest of my friends and I hadn’t dated a woman shorter than me. Despite her shortness, Adelaide had a very strong presence and I was truly captivated by her. We talked, and laughed and drank. We drank an awful lot. Adelaide mentioned early on in the evening that she had had a look at my instagram page (I’d put my instagram details on my Tinder page) and that she’d recognised a girl who’d featured in my pictures a month or so ago as the girl her ex was currently dating. So, our exes were dating. Vic and I had broken up at the start of December after 3 or 4 months and Adelaide and her ex Ashley had broken up at the end of October after 3 years together. This may have been a deal-breaker for straight people, but the lesbian dating pool isn’t as large as the breeder dating pool, even in the sprawling metropolis that is Sydney. I got over my initial horror and we drank more. We got chatting with the Irish couple sitting next to us and decided to play charades together. I’ve never laughed so much in my life. Adelaide was hilarious and full of life and so beautiful. At around 1am, we were kicked out of the bar as it was closing. We snuck our drinks out and sat by the harbour. ‘I guess you’re probably not over your ex, seeing as you only broke up recently?’ I asked. Adelaide agreed that she wasn’t and that she’d joined Tinder because her friends were all telling her to move on and she thought she should put herself out there. She said she hadn’t expected to have such a great time with me. I told Adelaide I was completely over Vic either. Adelaide suggested that what we probably both needed was a good shagging, so we caught a taxi back to her place. I hadn’t done any lady-maintenance and was slightly self-conscious about it, this dissipated pretty fast when Adelaide and I disrobed and started kissing. Touching Adelaide felt amazing. Her skin was soft. Her breasts were soft and round and she smelled and tasted delicious.  I can’t usually reach orgasm with someone new, but I had no problem with Adelaide. We both reached climax several times before falling into a sated, sweaty heap. When I left the next morning, I kissed Adelaide goodbye and wished her well with moving on from her ex. I certainly didn’t think I’d see her again. Adelaide texted me a couple of times during the day saying how much she’d enjoyed the evening with me. She suggested we get together again the following evening, but I dug my heels in and told her I’d already made plans. A couple of days later, after more flirty texts, I caved. I went over to hers and we had another night of ridiculously good sex. Adelaide and I responded so well to each other’s bodies. We had similar kissing styles and we enjoyed the same things sexually, we both preferred tribbing to scissoring and were generally really compatible sexually. More than anything, I was insanely sexually attracted to her and her to me. Adelaide and I had sex with the lights on and would maintain eye contact while we orgasmed (often climaxing together). I found the eye contact a little much at the start but I grew to crave it and it certainly made our sex more intimate and intense. The next weekend, Adelaide was housesitting and it was the Australia Day public holiday weekend. I spent most of that weekend with her. Adelaide and I listened to music, ate delicious food and had plenty of sex. During the weekend, Adelaide told me she was getting all she needed sexually and emotionally by hanging out with me, that she was thinking about deleting Tinder. She told me she only ever went on Tinder to look at my profile. I told her I was feeling the same. All I could think about was Adelaide. I didn’t want to get involved with Adelaide seeing she wasn’t over her ex. My friends warned me that it would end in tears. I unconvincingly told them I was keeping my distance from her. The fantastic sex made it hard to keep my feelings for Adelaide in check and I couldn’t stop thinking about her. I would actually jump from my chair in excitement whenever I received a text from her. I was kidding myself that I’d be able to maintain a casual relationship with her. I deleted my Tinder account. A few days later, Adelaide asked me why she could no longer see me on Tinder, had I blocked her? I reminded her of the conversation we’d had where she said she was going to delete her Tinder account. She looked surprised but said she would delete hers too in that case. It must have been the following weekend that I was at her place. She’d invited me over to her BBQ and games night with her housemates and a few friends. I don’t eat meat, and Adelaide had gone to the effort of providing me with a yummy vegerian option. We played Cards Against Humanity which was so much fun. Adelaide sat next to me and put her hand on me knee. She kissed me in front of her friends. Suddenly I realised we were breaching the line between friends with benefits and something more complicated. That night, Adelaide asked me what the hell we were doing. ‘It was just supposed to be sex, that’s all. But we’re getting involved on an emotional level too and you know it’. I didn’t know what to say, I didn’t want to admit that I was developing feelings for her, that I loved being enclosed in her arms, I loved her raw feistiness, her sense of humour, I was beginning to enjoy the intimacy of our sex and the way it made me feel connected to her more than anything else. Then she told me she was falling for me. It felt so good to hear these words, but I couldn’t say them back to her. I had only known her for a couple of weeks and although it had been very intense, I couldn’t help but feel scared by this admission. I felt like I was being pulled into something very destructive that could only end in heartbreak and I no longer had control of my emotions. A few days later when I saw Adelaide, I told her that I felt the same way, that I was falling for her too. When I said the words, I felt like I was betraying my sense of self-preservation. I had put it all out on the line and I was so vulnerable now to being hurt. Adelaide and I talked about how we could make it work. We decided we’d date exclusively but soon after, she mentioned to me that she was still using a couple of dating apps ‘just to make friends’, including Tinder. I started to lose faith in Adelaide. I told her I felt like a fucking idiot because I had deleted my Tinder account in response to her saying she was going to delete it. I didn’t trust her. I told her this. Adelaide responded by deleting the dating apps. She told me she had inadvertently hurt me whilst she was trying to protect herself. She said she didn’t want to lose me and that she wanted to find a way to make us work. Adelaide made a big effort for a short while. We both seemed unable to avoid wanting to put a label on what we had and it was putting immense pressure on our relationship. After a few days, Adelaide told me she wasn’t ready for a relationship. She said she thought her ex had been the love of her life at the time and that they would be together forever but that the realisation that this was not the case changed how she felt about relationships and about love. I think she really struggled with the fact that Ashley managed to couple-up a few mere weeks after breaking up with Adelaide while Adelaide was still nursing a broken heart. I was lying in Adelaide’s bed when I told her I thought it was best to both walk away from what we had. I couldn’t help breaking into sobs as I said this. Adelaide said she didn’t want to lose me and folded me in her arms. I felt so safe in her arms and I succumbed and agreed to give it another shot. The next evening, I was lying on my bed, thinking about the advice my sister and my friends had given me. Adelaide was just out of a there year relationship, she wasn’t ready for anything. She wouldn’t wake up one morning and suddenly decide she was ready. Then she called me. My initial thought was that she was calling to end it but her voice sounded light and cheery. ‘I’m ready to make this into a proper relationship. I really want to give this a go. I want to be with you.’ She said. I was ecstatic, but I only told a couple of friends. I knew in my heart that Adelaide could change her mind at any given time. The passed three weeks had been a roller coaster of emotion and I didn’t feel secure. Surely enough, over the next week, Adelaide started to withdraw from me. I no longer received the good morning and good night messages she would religiously send me at the beginning. I also received fewer texts during the day and they no longer finished with several emojis and multiple kisses. Adelaide was losing interest and it was nothing short of devastating to me. The sex was different too. It was less intimate and more robotic. We were going through the motions, but I no longer felt connected to her in the same way. Adelaide felt like a stranger. One morning, I woke up early, reached over and found that Adelaide had already risen. I found her outside, soaking up the sun and sucking down on a cigarette, hot tea in hand. She didn’t look happy or relaxed. I tolerated the distance for a couple of days and then I called her and told her I was coming over to hers to talk through some stuff. Adelaide looked miserable when I arrived. She didn’t greet me with a hug, she didn’t even get up from her study chair. I went and sat on the veranda and waited for her to join me. A few minutes later, she came out and told me she knew it was going to be a bad day when she woke up this morning. I fought back the momentary guilt I felt at possibly making her day worse. ‘I know you’re struggling with feelings of not being ready to be in a relationship. I can deal with that. I can do exclusive dating, I can do taking it slowly, but what I cannot and will not do is put up with all of this up and down crap all the uncertainty and now the distance and withdrawal. We need to break up’. I’d put it out there and was surprised at how well I’d managed to say it and without crying or allowing her to be the decision maker, the one who said the words of finality; ‘It’s over’. Adelaide agreed that she had been feeling distant and that, although there were times of feeling like it was the right thing to be in a relationship with me, there were also the feelings of regret and panic. I told Adelaide I deserved to be with someone who was as excited about being with me as I was about being with them. She agreed and said that had I not visited her this evening to talk, she would have ‘called me in a day or two’. During our talk, Adelaide mentioned that she had no recollection of telling me she was going to go off Tinder. She said that it could have happened but that she was so drunk and couldn’t recall it. She said she was having doubts as to whether or not the conversation actually happened because she knew at the time that she wanted to keep her options open. That was the decider for me. Was Adelaide that far removed from the relationship that she could break up with me over the phone and after telling me she loved me? Could she really believe I would make up a conversation like that? Or was she just a total bitch and I refused to see it? I left her place that evening with a thought in mind. I might visit my friend in Melbourne. I’ll send Adelaide a post card from my destination. ‘Wish you were here’. On the back, with a thick black marker I’ll write ‘…NOT!’

On bi-curious women

WARNING: The following contains offensive language. TRIGGER WARNING: Suicide is mentioned in this post. I’ve done quite a lot of internet dating since coming-out. In fact, the three women I’ve dated, I met on Tinder. Can we all have a moment of appreciation for Tinder, please? This brilliant match-making app has been hooking lesbians up since 2012!… As well as hetero people, but from what I can gather, Tinder is a real pain in the arse for straight women… Anyway, back on topic! When I first went on Tinder, I was surprised, overwhelmed and incredibly excited by the sheer volume of women popping up on my screen for me to swipe whichever way. I couldn’t believe there were that many gay women on Tinder in my area, let alone gay women in my city! Then it dawned on me; many of the women Tinder was presenting to me were not in fact gay, nor bi. They were straight and looking for a dude. Intros such as ‘Looking for a man with serious beard-game’ gave it away. This is the thing, Tinder wants you to believe there are millions of datable people waiting to meet you, so it won’t just show you like-minded rug-munchers, it’ll show you hetero men and straight women too. None-the-less, I found myself matching with straight women. My guess is that, sick of looking to date men on Tinder, these girls, on seeing other women flash up on their screen thought ‘why not?’ After all, we are often braver when dating online than in a bar/ club situation. I found myself asking women about their sexual orientation within minutes of chatting. Subtle, eh? I found this was a necessary step in order to separate the legit homos from the aspiring-when-drunk homos. On asking the necessary questions, I found a lot of women say that they were seeking a man, that they hadn’t considered dating a woman but that they had had so many bad experiences with men in the online dating world and were keen to ‘give it a shot’ with a woman. One woman said that she was over men after having broken up with her ex boyfriend, so she was going to try to be a lesbian. Here’s the thing, disliking men does not a lesbian make. I tried telling her that perhaps she should just enjoy being single for a while, and she responded with ‘im drujk. I think it would feel great to kis you’. I unmatched her immediately. Weeks in, I was frustrated at constantly being matched with women who were vague in regards of their sexual orientation. Many women claimed they were bi-curious, that they’d always thought about having sex with a woman and would like to try it. Oh lucky me! Because every lesbian really just wants to be a straight girl’s experiment! (This is me being sarcastic). I debriefed to my sister. She told me off for being closed-minded and attempted to remind me that I was, once upon a time bi-curious too. See, this is the thing; I was never bi-curious. I knew in my heart of hearts that I was a lesbian but it was something I chose to never confront until I endured 2012. This was the most difficult year of my life where I decided that if it didn’t end in me ending my life, that I would actually try and make something of my life. So, at the close of 2012, I came out. Initially as bi, but then after having people respond in such a positive way, I thought ‘what the hey’ and I came out completely as a full-fledged lesbian. I came out before I had had sex with a woman. This threw a lot of people. I was asked how I could possibly know I was gay considering I hadn’t even tried it. I guess it’s the same with straight people, right? A straight woman doesn’t have to have sex with a man to know she’s straight. She doesn’t have to have sex with another woman to know that she is in fact, straight. That’s how it was with me. I knew. I knew from an early age that I fancied women. I had crushes on women. I fantasised about all of the sexual things I wanted to do and I dreamed about having a girlfriend and all the things I would do to spoil her and make her feel special. The first time I had sex with a woman, it just further reinforced what I already knew. This is why I was less than patient with women claiming to be bi-curious. I guess I expected them to be able to work it out without having to experiment. Is that so unfair? I decided I had to be brutal in order to weed the bi-curious girls out of my little garden of potential datable lesbians. I started asking matches why they thought they were bi-curious. They would all state that they had been fantasising about lesbian sex. ‘What happens in these fantasy scenarios?’ I’d ask. Believe me when I tell you, I heard the most vanilla scenarios from these women, and all scenarios had one thing in common; they entailed a lesbian (usually lipstick or femme type) performing various sex acts on them. So I asked this; ‘How do you feel about going down on a woman?; What are you thoughts on eating pussy?; Does the thought of the taste of her cunt on your lips turn you on?’ In every instance but one, my questions were met with shock, disgust. Clearly, the said fantasising didn’t involve getting to work on the desired lesbian subject. With this realisation, I would wish them well on their journey and suggest to them that perhaps, they could experiment with other bi-curious women and leave us poor lesbians out of it. So, fellow lesbians, queers, bisexual women, I urge you to follow suit. It’s the easiest way to decipher if she is in fact interested in women. No one gets hurt, no one has to suffer rejection and you may just have saved her $$$ in therapy money.

On coming out.

So I’ve been thinking about writing a blog on my adventures as a recently – out lesbian for some time now. I’m recently single, have a bit of spare time for said blogging… and I’m not planning a trip to Russia any time soon so I figured the time for penning my lesbian antics is now!

I’m 32. I came out just over a year ago after a rather hellish year which saw me quit a very stressful job in domestic violence,  move back to my home state and endure a very painful, messy breakup with my then fiance.

Yes, I was late to the party with coming out. I honestly think that my coming-out experience was pretty good -especially compared to some of the stories I hear.

Don’t get me wrong;  it was certainly very frustrating and emotional at times. My mother who prides herself on being very liberal and open-minded told me I ‘couldn’t just choose to be a lesbian’ and suggested that I had become a lesbian because of the breakdown of my engagement and my recent breaking it off with a man I’d been casually dating.

My father and his girlfriend were kind and supportive, if not somewhat confused.  My sister and her husband were amazing as I expected. Most of my friends took a little more persuading. I guess they couldn’t fathom how a woman who had dated men her whole adult life could suddenly switch. My best friend, Lauren was, and continues to be hugely supportive and enthusiastic and generally a breath of fresh air.

What I wasn’t expecting was judgement from other gay women. Soon after coming out, I decided I needed to surround myself with other gay women. I wanted to date women, but more than anything,  I wanted lesbian friends. I wanted to surround myself in everything it meant to be gay. I wanted to celebrate being gay.

I met a couple of women through dating sites and one woman in particular, Kaley showed interest in taking me under her wing. We went out for drinks, we attended an anti – Abbott protest and she introduced me to a once – monthly lesbian dance party. But she made me feel as though everything she did for me was a favour. She called me ‘straighty’. She said she would regard me as a straight girl til I was actively gay for a period of time. She joked that I had to fulfill a quota of female sexual partners before she regarded me as gay. She quizzed me on the lesbian sex that I had had and laughed at my inexperience. She scoffed about me not owning a strap – on and claimed ‘all good lesbians have at least one strap-on’. Jasmine was the first girl I dated. She used to joke at the start that I was just a bi girl posing as a lesbian and that she’d lose me to a man when I got sick of her. After a while,  the joking progressed to accusations. Jas was always very aware of the fact that I was late to discovering my sexuality and was hell bent on the idea that I would go back to men. Jasmine knew I was attracted to butch or boish women and used to insinuate that I’m straight because I’m attracted to a more masculine look than a feminine one. This is an argument that many men have posed to me and which is deeply upsetting. I used to despair when Jas used this against me. The way in which Kaley and Jasmine responded to my being gay was devastating. Here I was, laying everything on the line in coming out and there were those two women -who were at the time fundamental in my life- attempting to take it from me or asking me to prove it to them. It took me a while to realise this; I am gay. That is the truth. I denied myself this truth for many years before I came out. No one can deny me this truth.

Oh and I still don’t possess a strap-on, but that hasn’t stopped me from being a damn genuine lesbian!