The last time I saw my ex-girlfriend, they told me they didn’t want to speak to me for at least a few months. It was December, and we had met up in a park in the West Village to exchange our things and discuss boundaries moving forward. One day I wanted to be friends again, like we had been before we were lovers, but I knew that wouldn’t be possible for some time.
“What if we see each other in public?” I asked. “Pretend I don’t exist, and I’ll do the same,” they responded.
So that’s what I did a month later, when they appeared at a short film screening in Bushwick where a high school friend of mine was showing work. The event space was maybe the size of my living room and kitchen combined, meaning that my ex-girlfriend was sitting five feet to the left of me in my peripheral vision the whole time. Mostly I was absorbed in the films, but I felt their presence like warmth from a radiator; occasionally I found myself thinking things like, “I’m sure you loved that one,” “What’d you think of that?” “I always wanted to make something like this with you.” For a moment, I might have even been possessed by a delirious hope that they could read my mind, my thoughts floating over to them like the dust particles caught in the glow of the projector. Then the lights came on, and I made myself a ghost until they disappeared into the night.
Allison, one of my best friends, had texted me before the screening, inviting me to come hang at our mutual friend (and my coworker) Mi-Anne’s place. They’d been together all day, and Mi-Anne had promised wine and pizza if I came through. Initially, I hadn’t been sure if I’d make it — it was a Sunday, and it had already been a struggle to force myself out of my apartment into the freezing dark in the first place. But after the surprise run-in, I wanted nothing more than to recuperate in Mi-Anne’s newly minted bachelor pad. So I said my goodbyes and congratulations to my high school friend and called an Uber, sadness and hunger gnawing a pit in my stomach.
Mi-Anne let me into her apartment, and the 2000s pop punk playing from the TV was an instantly soothing balm. I had barely taken off my coat and shoes when she poured me a glass of orange wine, nearly the same shade as the warm light that washed over her living room. Then the pizza arrived, and the three of us sat down at the table and dug into our love lives. Allison’s been hung up on the same guy for ages. Mi-Anne, who’s exploring dating after the recent dissolution of a decade-long relationship, emphatically stated one crucial standard of hers: if her date doesn’t like anime, they probably won’t be compatible.
“I know it’s irrational,” I said, covering my grandma slice in Sriracha, “but I’m afraid of top surgery recovery. I guess I had always envisioned having at least one partner around to take care of me, and now I have none.”
“It’s the way I’m fully going to tell my job that I have to take off work to take care of my partner during top surgery,” Allison responded.
We all laughed as she continued, “Even when I get a boyfriend, he’s going to need to understand, like, you might be my boyfriend, but James is my partner.”
“Yeah, and let me know when the surgery is; I’ll bring snacks,” Mi-Anne offered.
“I think when my roommate moves out, I’ll give you a set of keys to my apartment,” Allison said, undeterred.
For the rest of the evening, we gossiped and listened to more pop-punk and snacked on chocolate and gummy candy until it was midnight and we had to part ways because we all had work in the morning. The night was nothing spectacular, but that very mundanity made it precious to me — I have a limited capacity for being around others for hours on end. But walking home, even in the bitter cold, I felt buoyed by the ease of the hours we’d shared.
Allison and I hung out again on Thursday, attending a friend’s comedy show; the following day, she texted me, “I may actually need to see u tomorrow because ur like my default totem to keep me sane. I need to feel pure.” So she came over and we went grocery shopping and cooked dinner together; then we worked out together and watched a few episodes of The Sopranos before she fell asleep on the couch. She kept joking about how domestic we were, except it wasn’t really a joke. There we were, sharing the intimacies of daily routine without ever once touching. The total impossibility of a romantic relationship between us (she’s cis and straight, I am decidedly not) was not something to be mourned; no, what a relief it was to rest assured that we would never have to worry about our relationship being sullied by something as fickle as romance.
A few months before I broke up with my girlfriend, my boyfriend of six years and I decided, mutually and lovingly, to go our separate ways. “Sometimes, we’ll be sitting on the couch, watching TV,” he told me through tears as we held hands on a park bench, “and I’ll think to myself, ‘This would be really nice if we could just do this as friends.’” I couldn’t agree more, I responded, letting out a breath I didn’t know I was holding.
Our philosophies on love and romance were so aligned — this was always one of my favorite things about him. Both of us rejected the notion that romantic relationships are inherently more valuable than platonic ones; both of us felt as though we’d rather intentionally shift into a friendship than try to force ourselves into a configuration that didn’t work anymore. We’d been together since we were 18, we’d moved through several genders together (as documented elsewhere on this site in my first-ever published writing), we’d held each other through the surreal terror of the early days of the pandemic in New York. Why give up all that history just because we didn’t make it as romantic partners? We agreed we’d live together until January, when our lease was up and he’d move back home to the midwest; until then, we’d treat our romance as one with an expiration date, aiming to check off all the New York bucket list items we always said we’d get around to one day.
As idealistic as this was, things didn’t quite play out that way. Instead, we were abruptly separated ahead of schedule. I hardly knew what to do with myself, let alone anyone else, let alone my girlfriend. But I tried my best to cling to them, and they did the same for me. In the end, neither of us could be what the other needed. They thought we could figure things out while remaining entangled; I knew that I wouldn’t be able to be what they needed until I could be that for myself.
In Larry Mitchell’s The Faggots & Their Friends Between Revolutions, he offers the following as a token of “faggot wisdom:” “Romantic love, the last illusion, keeps us alive until the revolutions come.” Despite my ideological opposition to romantic supremacy, this has been the undercurrent of most, if not all, of my relationships — a pervading sense that doom is imminent, so I may as well throw myself headlong into love. I suspect that this is true for many queer and trans people, especially in the past few years, as I’ve noticed what seems to be a broader interest in marriage, children and/or settling down among people who previously seemed to be incredibly opposed to that. Yes, you could argue that this shift is just me being in my mid-20s, but anecdotally speaking, I’ve noticed it among all age groups, and many other friends and colleagues have made the same observation. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that queers are gravitating toward traditional markers of domesticity and stability as we are facing increasingly terrifying levels of state repression. It’s a tendency that feels distinct from the desire for assimilation; perhaps it’s more akin to a survival instinct.
I do not fault anyone for seeking refuge in romantic partnership; I’ve done that my whole life, and as Hannah Black writes in her essay “The Loves of Others,” “Despite the efforts of radical groups and the bravery of marginalized communities, it mostly remains the case that in turning away from couple-form love, we are turning toward nothing.” (Maybe more than incidentally, I became obsessed with reading and rereading this essay in the months leading up to my breakups.)
But for once, I refuse to let romantic love be the sole force that keeps me alive while the revolution brews. I have accepted that the world will end a million times over, and that as long as I want to live in it, I must find modes of existence that aren’t just living like there’s no tomorrow. I have allowed myself the terrifying but vivifying experience of admitting to others that I am not infallible, that my survival is dependent on those around me, and vice versa. I am even allowing myself to move beyond survival, because my friends and my community show me every day — through acts of care, through acts of protest, through acts of joy in the midst of overwhelming sorrow — that despite everything, this world is worth it.
I am single for basically the first time in my life, and I have been moving through the grief of two breakups at once, one of them being a long-term partnership. I don’t know how I would have survived that grief had it not been for Allison, who dressed up with me and went on a date with me to the Grand Central Oyster Bar on the day that would have been my one-year anniversary with my ex-girlfriend. Charlie, who always texts me at the exact right time that his boyfriend is making dinner and would I like to come over. Maria, my “froomie” (a portmanteau of “friend” and “roomie” that they coined, because they felt that “roommate” was an inadequate description of our relationship) who does laundry with me, goes on midday walks with me, says that we are building a home together. Countless others who let me send them unhinged voice memos, who helped me deep clean my apartment without judgment, who joined me in discussing their romantic woes over Korean barbeque, who screamed alongside me in karaoke rooms again and again and again. Sometimes, I’ll even dare to admit to myself that engaging in these rituals with my friends almost feels a little glamorous. What a powerful force friendship is, that it can alchemize an emotion like heartbreak into something that makes life feel as though it’s tinged with magic.
The day after I broke up with my girlfriend, I hosted what I dubbed “Emotional Support Karaoke” at my apartment. As people started to trickle into my living room, I casually mentioned that I had a top surgery consultation coming up, and before I could even finish my sentence, every person in the room congratulated me and offered me care. “You can even stay with us if you want,” my friend and barber Phoenix said, with nods from his husband Chris.
I had these cheap rose gold Bluetooth karaoke mics, but they were hardly needed. For hours and hours, everyone in the room screamed along to nearly every song, the YouTube karaoke videos playing on my TV barely audible above the din. It was cleansing to be surrounded by my loved ones, singing the songs that we usually listen to alone in the dark, nearly all of us heartbroken for one reason or another. Maria describes that sensation that you get from listening to certain sad songs as a “hollowed out feeling.” But even when someone queued up the devastating breakup anthem “Self Control” by Frank Ocean, I didn’t feel hollowed out. I felt full, knowing that my friends would luxuriate in misery right alongside me for just a few hours.
“You have so many people who love you,” my friend Del texted me the following day. “It was so cool seeing that firsthand last night.” How wonderful, I thought, to have built a life filled with so much platonic love that its presence announces itself.
Of course, sometimes I yearn for the familiar trappings of romantic partnership, though it’s hard to separate my own earnest desire from what society has told me I must desire. But I never have to worry about that uncertainty when it comes to my love for my friends. I also know now that wanting and needing something (or someone) are two very different things. Whenever I find myself in a relationship again, I will take care to mind that difference, and I’ll continue to insist that being a friend is just as important as being a boyfriend. But I’m in no rush to make that happen anytime soon. I might be single for the first time in my life, but I’m far from alone.
This article originally appeared as part of Them’s Valentines Day package, which dove deep into queer sex, love, and relationships. Read more here.
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