Losing Friendships When THEY Gain Lovers

We were like the three musketeers with a quest that involved misadventure and women, just like in the story. Together we too had duelled, had love interests and affairs, consoled and had to rescue each other from many a messy situation.

We pub crawled, partied, clubbed and discoed together nearly every week, Thurs-gay night, Friday night and often Saturday night too. We made the effort to go to any sporadic women-only events that were on, even if they weren’t to our own taste. 

At times we’d be in side-splitting laughter as we commiserated, more often than not on another diabolical night out, whilst at other times we went home feeling more depressed and frustrated than when the evening began, at a loss to why it felt like we were the only ones out plus a handful of the same few familiar faces propping up the same bars. 

“Susan, promise me that when I get in a relationship, tell me if I turn into one of those lesbians that disappear, forget they have friends, never go out and are inseparable from their partner in the cave. I never want to be like that!”

A year on, and we’re all now in relationships, except I’m the only one calling, asking if they want to go out, catch up, have a laugh just like old times. We’ve not been out together since, I never hear from them and we're definately no longer the three musketeers. 

As I wrote in ‘Relationship on the First Date,’ relationships are not something you feel like celebrating in the lesbian world. When your mates hook up you lose friends to not see them again for potentially years. The good times you shared are over and consigned to the past.

Good times consigned

Of course compromises have to be made when you or your friends enter relationships. There's no longer enough hours and days in the week to accommodate work, girlfriend and socialising with you every weekend like before. But why is it that lesbians enter relationships and friends are dropped altogether? 

In some ways this is where as women loving women our relationships are potentially unhealthy. In straight relationships having a lad’s night out to watch the footie or a ladies night out to catch up on gossip is considered the prerogative of the individual in the relationship.  It would be viewed as unreasonable, manipulative and controlling to not be allowed this ‘individual’ time out.  Yet as a lesbian, requesting a night out alone could well lead to a full blown row with your partner and friends questioning the state of your relationship. I've had friends give up the things they love to do because 'the girlfriend doesn't like it, doesn't enjoy it, is not really into it'; leaving the girlfriend at home occasionally to enjoy the things you like as an individual is not an option.

Whilst I’m no relationship expert, there are two things I adamantly refuse to let happen in them because I think it’s unhealthy.  The first is ‘lesbian bed death’ where you’ve become so much like best friends you are no longer or rarely sexually intimate and the second is ‘lesbian merging’, where you (and others) no longer recognise that you are two individuals in a relationship together and as such never do anything without each other. 

I know that the next time I will hear from my fellow musketeers it won't be through a phone call inviting me out, but through a pretty envelope delivered by the postman containing an invitation inside; ‘We cordially invite you to the civil partnership of....