Kissing Your Best Friend

Down the pub and over a pint a friend was recounting how after a recent drunken night out with her best-mate they’d ended up snogging.  Laughing about it she goes on to tell me, “but we quickly realised that no, there was nothing there.  It’s OK though”, she goes on in response to my worried expression about her friendship, “we’ve just put it in the past and forgotten about it”. 

It’s not an unfamiliar tale and one that most lesbians have experience of, usually from a night out and with varying outcomes and consequences.  

I’ve kissed my best mate. It was during a messy drunken game of ‘Truth or Dare’ with a bunch of girlz that we knew. Nearly everyone had kissed someone during the game and kissing my best mate was the easier option when it came to my turn.  “Urghhhh” my mate squeals as we lock lips. “It’s like kissing my sister!” 

We put it down to an experience we didn’t need to repeat; just like my friend I was now in the pub with had.  I’ve never known anyone to lose their best mate over a drunken kiss unless it was a straight girl or their kiss led to a drunken something else that’s harder to‘forget’. 

It can also lead to a ‘complicated’ relationship. You are such great mates, you have fun times, you share everything, you have a connection, know each other better than anyone else... it seems logical to get it together, you practically are anyway!

But love has a funny way of changing things. Who we are with our mates is not who we are in relationships. Suddenly there are boundaries that were previously not there as certain behaviours that were acceptable as friends are not acceptable as a couple. It now feels like a nagging relationship as you re-adjust to being together in a new way whilst your best friend may seem like someone who has gone from your life.  

Kissing your best-mate may seem like a good idea when intoxicated, but the outcome could well turn out to be your worst hangover.  

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!”

Where and What is the Lesbian Moral Code with Exes?

I recently discovered that two of my exes are sleeping together. I’d sadly had a crystal ball about it from when I first introduced them to each other and they seemed to get along a ‘bit too well’. With an ex that would rather chat with your girlfriend than you, the inevitable was blatantly obvious the moment my relationship ended.

Posting a status update to friends on Facebook about my distress at this news, it became evident that I was not the only one to have experienced this situation of ex-partners getting it on.

Partners to Best Friends: Being Friends with your Ex-girlfriend

In the lesbian community it is expected that you will remain friends with your ex’s regardless of circumstance or torture it might inflict. Choosing to remain friends after a break-up is something that is distinctive and unique to lesbian relationships. 

Whilst therapists would argue that it’s about ‘trying to keep a connection with that person and not being ready to let go’, there’s no denying that it’s ‘problematic’ for everyone if you no longer get along as avoidance is not an option. The lesbian world is a small one, even in the gayest city in the UK where there’s only one lesbian pub to serve us all. 

Dinner Party Anyone?

I decided to throw a dinner party for my closest lesbian mates. It sounds simple enough with what should be the biggest stress for me being an inability to multi-task and burning the food in the process.
 

But with two degree’s of separation causing enough dyke drama in the lesbian community to make EastEnders look tame by comparison; serving up burnt food was going to be the least of my concerns. Holding a dinner party for a group of lesbians is not a task to be underestimated in the skill it requires of the host to make sure all goes smoothly and everyone leaves happy at the end of the night. 

Amber to Green, Friendship to Lovers

I’ve heard the same thing four times this week from four different mates. They were all talking about the individuals they had recently met, and they all finished their sentence with the same (popular!) phrase.

 “... I just don’t need another friend!”

It’s a confusing world when both your friendships and lovers are of the same sex. If the signals are not as clear as red for no and green for go when you meet a girl you fancy, you end up on a perpetual amber light unsure whether it’s safe to make a move. Frustrating when the last thing you want and need is ‘another friend’. 

Smoking Lesbians: Being a Minority in a Minority

When I typed ‘lesbians smoking’ into Google, I was expecting to get a load of websites detailing research and studies undertaken on our health and well-being with a plethora of stats. It’s disturbingly (though may be not surprisingly) lacking. In fact when it comes to lesbian health, we are pretty much ignored with more focus on gay men’s needs whose sexual and social activities are deemed ‘higher-risk’ than our own. 

Instead the first page of search results Google provided (disturbingly but not unsurprisingly) contained eight porn sites. It seems that to many, ‘lesbians and smoking’ is the perfect hot and sexy combination.