It is so hard for me to imagine why a woman who has experienced the wonder of loving and living with lesbians could return to men, that whenever I hear about this happening, it completely freaks me out. That must be how heteros feel when they hear of a woman switching teams and coming over to our side. I guess we are all so passionate about our sexual orientation that at some primal level we cannot understand anyone being different from us.
It’s old news now, but when Anne Heche left Ellen and decided to go back to men, I felt devastated. I was actually angry with this woman I had never met and did not know. The question is why? When I reacted so strongly, I remember puzzling over the strength of my feelings. Funny how you don’t even always understand your own emotions. Considering that fact, how can we expect to understand someone else’s desires and motivations for choosing what they do in life.
I hate to admit this, but it’s late at night and it feels safe to open up since you can’t see me and probably have no idea who I am. I actually dated a woman, who ended up going back to men after we split up. At the time, I felt incredibly embarrassed about it, like it was my fault she defected. I worried that at some level I had not represented our lifestyle well and had caused her defection to the other side. Her leaving, made me doubt myself in that gut-wrenching way that completely devastates you, as I vacillated between crying and sleeping for days.
In some ways I’ve been lucky I guess. I am one of those lesbians who always knew. When I was eleven and one of my girlfriends kissed me at a slumber party, every nerve in my body woke up and screamed HELLO. Funny thing is, I dated boys/men though, trying to fit in, desperately worried about being ostracized by my friends or letting my parents down. So I led a dual life of sorts in high school and college. I dated guys so I could attend the events I felt I should, but I was always in love with my best friend at the time.
Then when I fell in love with my first girlfriend and she fell for me, I swore off boys for a while, until she broke my heart. At the time, when she broke up with me, she explained that it was time we grew up and that we could not keep being together since we needed to get married, to have a family. I could not believe my ears. This girl that had taught me everything I thought I needed to know about sex and love and passion had decided suddenly to give it all up, in the name of having a family. It was as if she turned a switch off and suddenly morphed into this practical heterosexual girl who was doing what she was supposed to do, ignoring all our earlier promises to each other to always love each other and stay together forever. Ain’t young love grand.
After she broke my heart, I gave up on girls and decided they would always hurt me and leave me. That’s when I began drinking a lot, to assist me in forgetting her, and to swallow the fact that I had to “make do” with boys. To say I was depressed, is putting it mildly. Culturally, our world was still invisible. I had no idea there were so many girls like me, so I felt my first love was a fluke and I’d never meet another girl like her, until I joined the Georgia Tech softball team. When in doubt, or if you find yourself in a small, right-wing town for some terrible reason, always find the softball team, and you’re home free.
I guess what we all need to accept is that we’re going to lose a few players to the other team on occasion. Instead of being angry or upset, we need to intellectually accept that she was never really on our team to begin with. Because as angry and upset as many women have made me over the years, I know that I could never give up on them. Now that’s being a true team player. Or maybe the fact is that some of us have no choice in the matter, regardless of what the right-wing rhetoric would have people believe about lesbians and gay men.
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