The thought that I might be a lesbian first occurred to me at a frozen yogurt shop. I was 26 and on a second date with an English teacher who ran a popular YouTube educational channel. He was tall with dark hair and a warm smile. We shared an enthusiasm for activity-based outings, an interest in caring for kids, and even a Jewish cultural heritage. There was absolutely nothing wrong with him, yet I chose froyo because I knew it wouldn’t take up much time. And just in case he wanted to linger afterward, I scheduled a babysitting job an hour later.
Despite my abstract desire for a partner, I rarely wanted to actually be on the dates I’d agreed to. I didn’t look forward to them or enjoy them, no matter how fun the mini golf course or how delicious the food, and this date was no exception. As we sat outside with our melting froyo, I stared at this cishet man who had done nothing wrong and who perhaps should have been the elusive “Mr. Right” — and I couldn’t wait to spend the rest of my Saturday night watching a five- and 10-year-old instead. Maybe I should have noticed the clues earlier. I was often anxious, sweaty, nauseous, and negative before these dates — which friends and family brushed off for years as nerves or general pickiness — but something felt profoundly odd that I was more enthralled with babysitting. I wondered in that moment whether I didn’t actually like men at all. Then I wondered for longer.
Between the Max comedy Am I OK? and a recent article in the New York Times style section on so-called “late-in-life lesbians,” late bloomers like me are having something of a moment. For the record, I have a complicated relationship with that terminology: I suppose we need some kind of shorthand, but I don’t want to feel “late.” I’d like to think that anyone who comes out is right on time. What is certain is that more people — women, especially — are coming out, with upticks in LGBTQ+ identification happening over time not just for Gen Z, but for Millennials, too. Anecdotally, I’ve found that there seem to be more women over 30 seeking to date women for the first time on the apps than ever before. I wish this moment had happened earlier, but here many of us are, reckoning with all the awkwardness of this “delayed” coming-of-age.
Much like Lucy (Dakota Johnson), the 32-year-old, beanie-clad protagonist of Am I OK? — who Googles “how to know if you’re a lesbian” and takes a quiz that asks, among other only partially ridiculous things, “Do you like tennis? Do you listen to Tegan and Sara? Have you ever owned Pumas?” — I did some Googling of my own in the months that followed my froyo date. Eventually, I came across the so-called “Lesbian Masterdoc,” a popular 30-page online dossier on compulsory heterosexuality. Almost every statement resonated with me: “I do not like the reality of men, only the idea of being with men.” “Being around guys that are interested in me gives me intense anxiety.” “Being utterly fascinated by any lesbians [I] know/see in media and thinking they’re all ultra cool people.” “Being a really intense LGBT+ “ally” and getting weirdly emotional about homophobia but assuming [I’m] just a Really Good Ally and v empathetic.” I could go on.
Why did it take the Masterdoc to spell it out for me, especially when I applied early decision to Smith College, truly the gayest educational institution in the U.S.? At Smith in the 2010s, swimming in an ocean of butch lesbians, I’m not sure it occurred to me that femme-presenting women like me could even be gay. All the openly queer people I knew in school were also very into, well, vaginas; in fact, it seemed like sexual attraction in and of itself was their primary reason for being gay, and that didn’t resonate with me. (I wouldn’t learn about different types of attraction — aesthetic, emotional, intellectual — until I saw a queer therapist in my 30s.) I simply had no idea I could be a lesbian just because I thought women were better, smarter, more beautiful, superior people. How did everyone else figure this out?
After my discomfiting froyo date, I spent a year sitting with the information I found online. I was uncomfortable, like a teenager who didn’t even know herself. I felt humiliated, too. In Am I OK?, Lucy says to her friend Jane (Sonoya Mizuno), “I should have figured this out by now. People figure this out when they’re like nine,” which, silly as it sounds, resonates. The people in my life who questioned compulsory heteronormativity had done it, whether privately or publicly, by the time they’d graduated from college. And in the celebrity culture of 2016, there was no Reneé Rapp announcing her lesbian identity in her mid-20s, Chrishell Stause recognizing her queerness in her 40s, or Niecy Nash-Betts embracing marriage to a woman for the first time in her 50s. There were out queer women of all ages, certainly, but few examples of how to accept and share shifting identities over the course of one’s life. I felt adrift, with no models for how to move forward.
I paced around my apartment for hours talking on the phone with friends who acted as my queer elders — even though they were the same age as me — asking them questions and seeking reassurance. Like Lucy, I worried about judgment and the deep discomfort of feeling different. To me, Lucy’s comical beanie and tucked-in shirts in Am I OK? don’t signal her queerness half as much as how she describes her emotions around facing her identity later in life: “It’s all weird… I’m weird… I hate this.” I felt that way for years. Sometimes I still do.
Putting my queer feelings into practice, instead of agonizing over them in theory, helped me reach a place of self-acceptance. Once I relocated to a new city, I began going out with women. After 10 years of forcing interest and sometimes literally ducking physical advances on dates, it was kind of thrilling to feel comfortable. For the first time, I could imagine being in a relationship — and no, I’m not counting my high school boyfriend of three weeks who broke up with me because I didn’t want to hang out with him — and catch up on lost time. I was surprised by the fact that I welcomed the more dominant role of asking women on dating apps to meet up. I laughed, genuinely, over drinks or dinner or coffee, and delighted in noticing that my partners across the table were pretty. I texted first after dates — something I never did with men.
I remember the absolute joy of sitting on a girl’s bed in that first year of lesbian dating, eating burgers, fries, and milkshakes while watching The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. I had no idea dates could feel so easy. I even worked up the courage to tell my date that she could kiss me — it’s a big step, okay?! — which is mirrored in Lucy’s awkward excitement as she locks lips with another woman, Britt (Kiersey Clemons), for the first time. When Britt pulls away at the end of the kiss, Lucy continues to lean in with a goofy grin on her face — an endearingly relatable moment of cringe comedy.
And yet — somehow in this journey there’s always an “and yet” — I still couldn’t call myself “lesbian” or “gay” or “queer.” For a few years, I stuck with “I date women.” It was a verb, not an identity. Now, after eight years of growth, you can call me “lesbian,” “gay,” or “queer.” I’m proud of myself for getting to this place. I’ve come out publicly, I write about queer culture and compulsory heteronormativity, and I’m even editing an anthology on communal living that will incorporate much of what I’ve learned about chosen family along the way. The community I’ve formed, in real life and online, is supportive and wonderful. My family is accepting, which isn’t the case for many queer people. I feel lucky in that regard and others.
I wish I could tell you, though, that my lesbian dating life is as rosy as Lucy’s ending in Am I OK?, which finds her enjoying date after date with charming, model-esque women before jetting off to London. I wish that spark of hopefulness of sharing fries on my date’s bed hadn’t faded when neither she nor any of the subsequent people I went out with over the years stuck. In reality, the promise I once felt surrounding queer dating has taken a turn, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic began. Online dating etiquette is terrible. People I match with don’t respond, or I don’t respond. People I have a good time with on one or two dates disappear, or I disappear. We’re all busy; we’re all tired. I’m 34 now, and the exciting connections I made with dates earlier in my journey are becoming fewer and farther between. I don’t feel the same heady momentum I once did — and I wish that weren’t the case.
While I hesitate to write here that I’ve mostly given up on the possibility of romantic love and partnership, I think that’s the truth, or at least my truth right now. I’m still floating around on the apps, but I’ve been spending more of my energy nurturing relationships with my community, including family, friends, and neighbors. I’ve asked myself what I want out of a partnership that I might get from a bunch of different people in my life: to be cared for and thought of, to see people I love regularly and with minimal planning, to feel financially secure, and to have hope for a family. Close friendships, familial relationships, and wider community can give me some of these things. Can they give me all of them?
Ultimately, many of us who have to start over in our late 20s or 30s and beyond are never quite okay — not the way Am I OK? hints that Lucy will be as she gains experience and confidence as an out lesbian. I like learning as much as I can about myself, but it’s not easy to reconcile those discoveries with the lives I’ve already lived and the lives I would have hoped to have lived by now. Discoveries don’t always lead to new opportunities for community, either; they can be isolating, especially at first, before they give way to expanded understanding. In real life, perhaps, there is no single endpoint: we’re all just trying to balance what we already know about ourselves with what we have yet to figure out.
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