queer advice #77: two different countries

"I deeply loved my husband but I was incredibly unhappy. "

Hello! Welcome back to queer advice, a regular feature where I answer questions from queer people with problems. Today’s question is from someone who recently divorced a man and is now only interested in dating women. She’s in a long-distance, queer relationship with someone in another country and is unsure if they should open things up, apply for a visa, or end things altogether.

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via manicpixiememequeen on IG

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Hi Maddy,

I am a 37 year old, queer cis woman. I have only recently been fully coming into my queerness. Although I have identified as bisexual since my late teens, my experience with queer sex and relationships has been extremely brief and fraught and from a long time ago. I spent a lot of time reckoning with internalized biphobia and dismissing my queerness. And then in my late 20s I got sober and proceeded to find myself in a string of long term relationships with straight cis men.

I married the last one, and we separated at the beginning of last year. The split was really difficult for me, I deeply loved my husband but I was incredibly unhappy. On the other side of this relationship, I’ve been realizing that I don’t have any desire to date men at all anymore, and I am not even sure how much I wanted to date them in the first place. It hasn’t all been bad, there is a reason I married my husband, but ironically it was my desire for him that made me realize what had been lacking in most of my other relationships with cis men. It has felt wonderful to start letting myself live loudly as a queer person, but this has also been coupled with mountains of grief thinking about my big gay life that could have been.

My dilemma now is that I have some really conflicting desires about what I want out of my romantic relationships, insecurities about feeling old and like time is slipping away from me, and a long distance relationship I don’t fully know how to navigate. I started dating someone I had befriended before my marriage was over, that I met through an online community. When the split was finalized they expressed their interest in me and I was elated because I had a crush on them too. We’ve been talking every day since, have visited each other, and we’re both privileged enough to have the flexibility and income to continue to see each other every few months, even though we live in different countries. Our relationship makes me really happy. The emotional intimacy is incredible. We have a ton of fun together. We have similar interests, goals, values and ideas about what a partnership should be like. The relationship hasn’t been without issue, but the way that we have worked through and resolved conflict has only made us feel closer. Even the distance has been okay for now. While I wish they were around more, it’s helped me pump the brakes on diving headlong into something intense again, almost immediately after getting divorced.

That said, there are two conflicting desires I have that I can’t stop thinking about that makes me question my choices. On the one hand I want more than anything to settle into a boring monogamous life and have a family, on the other, I’m in my late 30s and it feels like all of a sudden I don’t understand my sexuality. I both want to go out into the world and be a slut (in a communicative and mutually respectful way) and explore my queerness, on the other I want that one person I can be boring and gross on the couch with and build a home and family together. I both feel like I am too old for the former, and also that delaying a family any longer would make it difficult for me to have a baby (something I really want).

My current partner and I have mismatched libidos, so while there are all the positives I listed above, I still feel like I am missing out on having all the sex I am interested in. Frankly, I think I traumatized myself through some of my previous partnerships and participating in sex I really did not want, and now that I know why, I want more than anything to go out into the world and have all the amazing, emphatically consensual gay sex I can find. I want this sex with with my current partner. I know that libidos can change over time, so while I wouldn’t normally be thinking about my sex life with a partner in such black and white terms, and in a world without borders I see potential for long term happiness with this person, the realities of visas and having established lives in two different countries makes it seem like a pipe dream that we could ever be together long term. We’ve both discussed a willingness to move, but we both recognize that it would take a long time and an immense amount of effort, especially because of the distance, to figure out whether we can integrate our lives, and if that is a choice we’d want to make. While we like to fantasize about the possibilities, we’re firmly grounded in the fact that this might not ever work.

While for now we have been exclusive, we’ve discussed me dating around, while still trying to maintain our romance, but neither of us are particularly inclined towards polyamory. Me dating is something they initially proposed, not something I asked for. I feel selfish for prioritizing sex when everything else is so great. While I am tempted to try dating, I don’t want to do anything to hurt my partner, and I also feel like I would just be too hung up on my far away cutie to really invest myself in it.

I’ve written a lot without asking any questions, so let me try to summarize here:

1. How do I forgive myself for repressing my queerness? I’ve always prided myself on knowing who I am and what I want and I feel destabilized finally recognizing this huge part of me I have hidden from myself for so long. I wouldn’t think about or treat someone experiencing the same things as me this way, but I can’t stop feeling embarrassed for being in my late thirties and feeling like a baby gay just figuring her shit out.

2. I love the person I am dating, they have been so understanding and wonderful towards me. They know how I am feeling about everything I have expressed in this letter and they’re still with me. How do I stop worrying about a timeline and let myself enjoy this, whatever it will be? Do I attempt some casual dating and hope that the strength of our communication is enough to maintain our connection, whether it continues to be romantic or turns into friendship? Do I need to let go completely? I want to stop feeling devastated about the lack of sex, I want to stop worrying about having a family, but it keeps gnawing at me. I deeply appreciate any advice you have to offer.

Yearning, 37

To be quite honest, your relationship with this person sounds TORTUROUS. I would be going absolutely bonkers if I was in love with someone and we were talking about visas and life partnership one day and opening the relationship to enable my slut era the next—or polyamory was maybe on the table, but ultimately we were just discussing possible solutions without agreeing on the actual problem. It’s great to be in the moment and allow things to unfurl on their own timeline, I love yoga class, but you also need to plan your life and know what expectations to have for your partner. Limbo is Hell’s waiting room, as they say.

Like you said, there are many great things about LDRs. Built-in boundaries! Anticipation! Airport McDonalds Travel! And I must say, meeting someone online and dating them even though they live in a DIFFERENT COUNTRY is one of the dykiest things I’ve ever heard. But I wonder if part of why you’re holding onto this relationship even though it’s not meeting your needs and is defined by such obstacles as mismatched sex drives, extreme geographic distance, and Bad Timing™ is that your own queerness has always felt fraught to you, or kinda impossible. Sadly, first queer relationships are not exactly known for working out. There are so many reasons for this--and I invite anyone reading to share their own First Girlfriend and queer relationship sagas in the comments--first of all, it’s very powerful to connect with another person over queer identity and requisite lived experiences for the first time, especially if you’ve always felt alone in your queerness. I think many people in your position feel like “this is my SOULMATE” when really you’re just fucking grateful to be having sex that feels good and not dating straight men anymore. I remember feeling so much anxiety related to scarcity when I was dating my first girlfriend. I was so afraid of losing this person who had acted as my introduction to queer culture, as well as my first significant queer community. It also sounds like you had a really rough time coming out. It’s understandable that you would feel really attached to the person who supported you through that upheaval. All this to say, there are a lot of external forces impacting your perception of this relationship and its significance in your life.

I understand why you and your partner are talking about polyamory, but from everything you’ve written, neither of you actually want to be polyamorous — you want to be either an unattached slut OR in a serious monogamous relationship, and your partner wants to be in a committed relationship without a ton of pressure for physical intimacy. I worry when an open relationship is a concession, or something one partner merely tolerates because the alternative is breaking up. Like you said, it takes a lot of communication and trust to be in an open relationship. It’s a big commitment that will entail more intimacy and processing. If you two are already struggling to define your boundaries and relationship, I don’t think the solution is to toss another layer of complexity into the mix.

This brings me, albeit out of order, to your first question about forgiving yourself. Sexuality, attraction, and desire are very mysterious. Some people step into their queerness as literal children, others come to queerness much later in life through trial and error. Both can be painful, fraught paths. The more you meet and talk to other queer people, the less alone you’ll feel in your late bloomer-ness. Most of all, you have to re-cast your queerness as this thing that you’re getting wrong into a source of joy and connection. Sometimes this transformation happens in the context of sex and romantic relationships, but I think it’s a rookie mistake to actualize your queerness through sex and dating instead of friendships and community. Romantic relationships can be very volatile. Friendships are more stable and will shore up your sense of your own queerness regardless of who you’re fucking (just don’t fall in love with your friends, lol). There are so many queer women who, like you, are dating women after many years of confusing and unfulfilling relationships with men. It’s a thing!! You should see the letters that come into this advice column. And while you’re out there networking andmaking friends, I want you to ask like, any lesbian about their first gay relationship. It’s likely you will get an Oscar-worthy saga of premature U-Hauling, unethical monogamy (not a typo), post-breakup pet custody battles, and yes, meeting someone online who lives in another country.

Alas, the late-30s baby panic is real. When you want something really badly and it’s simply not possible in the present moment, the most powerful thing you can do is start articulating your dreams and looking at how others have done it in similar circumstances. This could look like connecting with queer parents, maybe online or through a queer parenting group in your area. If you do know of any friends-of-friends or distant connections who are queer women with kids, you might send them a really polite message explaining your situation and ask to talk more about their experiences. You’ll see so many configurations for family formations and raising kids, maybe some that you didn’t realize were possible. Also if you want to get pregnant, that’s going to take a lot of intention, money, and specific regional research now that you’re not married to a cis man i.e. Does your state require second parent adoption? Who are the best doctors in your area? What can you expect insurance to cover? Is this sperm legal?? By tapping into community wisdom, you’ll likely find friends and lovers, in addition to moving closer to your dream of having a baby. And obviously freezing your eggs is a deeply personal and wildly expensive decision, but it might ease the anxiety you’re feeling around growing older and buy you a few extra years of free-floating slut activity.

I know I wrote A LOT. You’re going through a big, weird transition right now, but it’s going to be okay! You just came out—now is the time in life to be doing something weird with your hair and trying to figure out what kinds of pants lesbians wear, not wallowing in existential angst or looking for a life partner.