"Dump your husbands and be gay"

Hello! Today's issue is the promised follow-up to Part One of my chat with mothers in queer or pursuing queer relationships after having kids with men. A lot of the people I interviewed mentioned certain books that helped navigate them down life's road so you'll find that below as a bonus if you're a paid subscriber and if you're not one yet I hope you think about becoming one in order to support this work.

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I live on the west side of Chicago with my 4 kids. I suddenly found myself attracted to a woman. I had a pretty consuming crush, and I hadn't experienced that throughout my relationship with my partner. I was dissatisfied in my relationship, and I probably was persuaded by some of the stuff I was reading at the time.

I had a little bit of an identity crisis. I didn't know if it was late-blooming lesbianism or sort of a tragic conflict between my feminism and heterosexuality. I really felt the urge to at least try it. I told my partner. We'd been together for a little over 20 years. We never got married, but we have four kids together, so we were functioning as a married couple.

I told him I found myself suddenly attracted to women and wanted to explore this side. I asked if we could open the relationship. Initially, he was supportive, and he said yes. Then, when I actually started going out, he became angry and jealous.

I didn't want to stop. That was the beginning of our separation, which was really complicated because we have so many children together. We don't have the finances to buy a second place. He eventually moved to our basement unit, and we co-parented together a little over two years ago.

My youngest was two. He's four now. Then I had seven-year-old twins and an eight-year-old.

We didn't talk them through it because, being in such a long relationship, we just didn't know if this was the end.

Initially, my ex ended up getting a puppy. I was adamantly against getting a pet, and I just thought it would be another thing for me to take care of. But he got it anyway. The kids knew I did not want a puppy. We had this ruse where he was in the basement because he had to stay with the puppy. Then, about a year later, we told them what was going on. 

Somewhat recently, we started going to couples therapy because there was so much anger and resentment. It all curdled into terrible acrimony. We're working on communicating better, and we are both committed to co-parenting. Neither of us wants to be away from the kids. he continues to live in the basement with the dog. I live in the upstairs unit with the kids. He's up every night for bedtime to say goodnight.

At first, I got on the apps. It was awkward for me. It was just an explicit confession of intentionality that I wasn't ready to commit to. I've never been that comfortable acknowledging desire.  I did meet somebody after a couple dates where I was like, "What am I doing? I should be home with my kids. Why am I eating dinner with this stranger?" But I met somebody, and it was really great.

As a late-in-life lesbian with four kids who still lives with her co-partner, there are so many red flags there that it was very hard to meet people off of the apps. I went to a couple of speed dating events. But it was, I would say, at first hard to be welcomed into not the queer community, but certainly the lesbian community. I was still participating in patriarchy, having my co-parent be a male and financially contributing to our lifestyle. I never really outright rejected it, and I did feel some resistance because of that. Then, going out there dating, I was afraid of rejection and also afraid of getting addicted to these crumbs of affection. 

There are different apps. I tried mainly HER. Then Feeld. From both, I met people who were in slightly similar situations to me, and I wasn't attracted to them, but we certainly bonded over this unique experience, and we became friends.  I would go to queer events with Old Gold, groups catered toward queers over the age of 40. I got in that circle, and they're just social events. 

I already had some lesbian friends, and they welcomed me into their circle, no judgment, and they're also parents. That was really key. When I was going out, I was not meeting women with children, which was exciting because I explored this whole new identity. My identity is so much about being a mother and my job as a teacher and caring for children that I think a big part of the allure was going out with adults, and they're asking me questions. Nobody has ever asked me a question in 20 years about my life outside of caretaking.

It's very, very hard to commit romantically. When I did, and I was becoming closer to that person, I was like, "I can't give you what you deserve." I wasn't going out that often. It was twice a month. I was shocked that I found somebody who was willing to work with that schedule.

I'm really curious about political lesbianism. Politically, it's been a really rough time to be a woman. I do not identify as a political lesbian, but I would expect a lot of blowback if I said that because you're saying sexual orientation is a conscious, political choice, and I don't believe that it is. But I certainly prefer the company of women. With my friends who have kids similar ages who are going through it, we often discuss this idea of Planet Woman, where we're living on this commune and raising our children together without men.

I'm a staunch feminist. I never thought my partner was an oppressor, but I always carried a significant load of the domestic work, the child caretaking. My first three kids are very close in age. I have twins and then a daughter 15 months older. That was a really rough period, and I felt like I was largely doing it alone. All of that sort of shaped my midlife identity. I have experienced disappointment, fatigue and hopelessness surrounding men.

I would say if you're newly having these realizations, you probably have a lot of doubt, and you should feel that fear and do it anyway. I don't have any regrets about what I did. It's certainly set off a tiny bomb in my life and my family life. I'm glad that I had all of those experiences, even the ones where I was out on a Saturday night and wondering, what am I doing? Why am I here? But it was a really useful exercise, and I was on a journey. I wouldn't have gained the relationships that I gained if I had not sat through those boring, awkward dinners.

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Molly Wizenberg, author of The Fixed Stars

Re: dating queer after being in a straight marriage, I wrote a memoir about it called The Fixed Stars.

I remember the first time I had sex with my first girlfriend, thinking, "WHOA, there are no men here," and being elated. I am now remarried – to my nonbinary AFAB partner and delight every single day in the fact that I now live mostly free of cis men! Being in a relationship without traditional gender roles – where I rarely even *think* about gender – is the best.

I had this crazy experience where I had jury duty, and I developed a really obsessive crush on this female defense attorney. That was June of 2015. I felt completely unmoored. It was unlike any crush I'd ever had on a man. I told my then-husband about it not long after because I felt that I was going through something so big internally that I couldn't continue to exist without telling the person I spent every day with what was going on inside me.

It was a very scary conversation for both of us, and we both cried. I remember him saying, "Do you need to do something about this? Do you need to experiment?" I felt terrified by that idea, so I basically went underground.

That was June of 2015. I think of the months that came after as me trying to cut off the air supply to this crush, this obsession, which had always worked before in crushes on men. But after about seven months, January of 2016, I was just really depressed. What I had ultimately done was bifurcate my internal life. So that spring I revisited things with my husband. That was an even harder conversation. We went back to couples counseling, which we had done various periods before that, and that spring we decided to try opening up our relationship. I reached out to that attorney I had had a crush on, and she became my first girlfriend.

I fell in love with her. My first non-straight relationship was a very restrictive queer relationship in which I was never unaware that I had no idea what I was doing. It was a yucky coming out relationship in which I felt that I was doing queerness wrong, and I felt very straight. I had my first panic attack. I was a mess. Ultimately, over the course of that spring, I just felt that I couldn't stay in the version of my life that I had been living.

I am motivated by feeling that I am being authentic to who I am, and that is something that is calibrated internally. It just felt so clear to me that I just couldn't go backwards. I remember being in bed with her and her saying to me, "Queer people don't just rip each other's clothes off. Sometimes we have sex totally clothed." I just remember thinking, okay, I think you're talking about yourself and that's fine, but I don't want to have sex that way. Why did I shake off one set of rules to be given a whole other one?

My current spouse and I were introduced by a divorced friend. This other woman was like, "Well, what's your type?" I had never felt that I had a type, but I did feel that I had a type. I think I have a type for people who are not men.

My older kid is 13; my ex and I separated a couple of months before he turned four. We did not get into the sexuality part of it when we talked to my kid. For my kid, the salient thing is that his parents got divorced. It was mostly a matter of our family going to live in two different places.

I think in general you don't have to give your toddler a whole new vocabulary, like divorce, separation, et cetera. I think the important salient thing for us was thinking about what our child was going to experience that was going to be different or challenging. That this is not going to be a one-time conversation. This is going to be a slow unfolding as the child comes to understand what this really means in his life.

One thing that's so interesting for me about the relationship I'm in now is I never think about gender. My spouse is non-binary, takes testosterone, and my older kid is trans, but I never think about gender. The things that are difficult for me about my relationship or the things that I love about my relationship mostly boil down to the person I'm with and not their gender. I can't imagine being with a man again, at least for more than just a fling. I think I would forever feel slightly undermined or like I had to defend my experience as a human being. I wouldn't mind fucking a man again.

Anecdotally, I think women who have sex with women have way more orgasms, and I find that just fascinating to talk about. Did you read All Fours? The protagonist refers to her husband's penis as being a whistling tea kettle. At a certain point, it just whistles, and you've got to deal with it. I remember feeling that, and I don't ever want to feel that again

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My husband and I opened our marriage about 4 years ago. We had been together for 19 years and lucky enough to have maintained a strong sexual connection, so opening up was about expansion and joy and a fun way to continue expanding our sexual lives. A huge bonus/motivator was the chance to finally explore my bisexuality - I’ve known I am bisexual for as long as I can remember, but the powerful heteronormative social machine meant that I never veered from heterosexual relationships.

Well, about 6 months ago, I learned that my husband was cheating on me, well outside the bounds of our non-monogamy agreements and communication. The revelation blew up my world, and I am still deciding whether to stay.

The reason this feels relevant to the topic of queer relationships after a hetero marriage is that having female partners who are both friends and sexual partners has been a huge factor in my ability to stay grounded, to feel worthy and wanted, to stay connected to my sexuality, and to hold on to hope for the future. The night I found out, we were with some of our ENM friends and partners. One of the women held me as I cried myself to sleep and laughed with me when I paused long enough to say, Well, at least now I can stick to only dating women.

Queer relationships have brought me comfort and joy and softness and fire. I am so, so grateful.

 I am recently engaged to the woman I started dating at the end of my marriage to my kid’s dad. In my case, my coming out as queer coincided with the end of my marriage. In 2020, I was home holding my new baby, and I looked around and thought, oh god, is this it? I had reached the end of the heterosexual ladder of striving— I owned a home, was married, had a career, and had a baby. I was deeply unhappy. Through introspection and tarot pulls and crying phone calls with friends, I shoved myself out of the closet, then tried to make it work with my husband for another 3 years, including opening up our relationship. 

In retrospect, I realized I had been living through an emotionally abusive marriage. I had been with him since I was 18, and I truly didn’t know any different. Opening up our marriage and starting to be with other people (I dated exclusively not men) showed me what romantic relationships could and should be. I learned that sex wasn’t a chore and that begging for emotional scraps wasn’t love. 

I think if we lived in a time and place where misogyny isn’t what it is and if my emotionally abusive dickhead of an ex-husband wasn’t widely considered a “good” 🤢 “guy” 🤢 that I would be a pansexual diva. As it stands, though, as a demisexual, I need to feel emotional comfort and connection with a potential sexual partner before getting turned on. I do not feel emotional comfort with cis-men, full stop. A + B = now I’m a lesbian. 

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Amy Shearn, author of Animal Instinct:

I was one of those people who feels like everyone is bisexual, which I have come to realize is a very just bisexual way of thinking. It's not actually like that for everyone.

I was just reading some journals of mine from when I was like 20, and I was traveling that summer, and I was like, "I met this girl who I'm fully in love with." I'd had this boyfriend for like six years or something, and I was like, "I've never loved anyone like this girl who I've known for three days." I don't think we ever spoke after those days. But I didn't have a lot of experience dating as a queer person because I also met my now ex-husband in college, so I just hadn't dated that much at all. 

When I was getting divorced, it just felt so clearly like I couldn't do this. I was like, "I probably will never date anyone ever again.That sounds horrible. I just want to be alone forever." It wasn't until I was out of my marriage that I was like, "Wait a minute."

For about four years after my divorce, I had just been dating in a somewhat chaotic bisexual manner. Then, I had just started to think I could have more of an emotional or intellectual connection with someone. I had had a couple of mini relationships with men, and my conclusion was that I remain totally queer. It all feels like a spectrum, and it changes throughout my life and whatever, but I don't think I would ever want to be in a relationship with a man again. Being in a relationship with a woman has been amazing. I'm like, "Oh my God, this is an option? Everyone wants this, obviously," which is pretty gay.

I think for me and for my kids, for a while, it was hypothetical. They were tweens at this point. They were a little bit curious about my dating life, because at this point, they had never met anyone I dated, and I didn't really discuss it with them very much.

I think I just said, "Sometimes I go on dates with men, and sometimes I go on dates with women, and we usually get a drink, and we talk. If there's anything more serious, I'll let you know," basically. They were both like, "Okay." Then, I think this has been my MO as a parent of being like, "I'll give you a little piece of information. Do you have any follow-up questions?" Then, sometimes six months later, they're like, "Hey, so..." It's tricky to figure out that line when you have younger kids between secrecy and privacy.

They truly never had any follow-up questions. But I will caveat that also by saying we live in Brooklyn. They know every person in the world, and they have just very close relationships themselves with queerness.

I do think there's a whole sort of subset of women like me who are like lightly bisexual forever, get out of a marriage with the man and are like, "Great. I'm in my 40s and ready to step into my queer identity." I totally understand how, as someone who's been out and queer their whole life, those people might be like, "No, thanks." Honestly, at this point, I might be like, "That feels like a lot more work than I'm willing to do."

With my last girlfriend, there were many times when she'd say, "It's great to date someone who was married to a man for so long. Your expectations are low sometimes." Sometimes I'd be like, "You remembered my cousin's name?" She was like, "What? Yes. Why would I not?" At a certain point, she was like, "You have to just calm down. I'm just being a human being."

I mean, I think it's problematic when people are like, "I'm sick of men, what else is there?" No woman wants to date someone who's like, "You're my last resort. I guess I could try this." Also, if you're having sex with someone, you should want to have sex with them.

I also think that for a lot of people, there is a lot of internalized homophobia and internalized patriarchy that's in there, being like, "Yeah, of course you would rather spend all your time with a woman, but that's not real.” I feel really lucky to be queer, especially as I'm getting older. I find middle-aged and older women to be so beautiful and sexy, and especially if they're like, "I'm being myself, and aging, and not trying to avoid that." There's more space for different conceptions of beauty and sexiness in a queer world, which is a nice place to be. There's something really beautiful about a relationship where the patriarchy is not part of it at all. There aren't these sort of set roles that we have to either accept or work very hard to repel.

There's something about feeling that you're living authentically that you really can't... It's worth anything,