People who have a fantasy role they want me to fill in their life, instead of leaving space for who I am as a person.

Your dating and love life can feel richer and more meaningful because you don’t take your freedom as a lesbian for granted.

Her words inspired the name of a new Conscious Girlfriend Academy class: Coming Out and Coming Home. On the one hand, if you make it to 80, you’ve undoubtedly faced more deaths in people you love, and more changes in your own physical capacity, than most people have faced at 40. As we age, we have more skills with which to navigate our emotional landscapes, and more perspective and wisdom, too.

Many of us have done a great deal of psychological healing and overcome a lot of trauma, and are better-equipped for love now than we were in the past.Nonbinary people reported worse general health, more psychological distress, and less positive well-being compared to women. but as a fellow queer 30something with polyamorous leanings, it can be as painful as it is thrilling and is important to remember that! People in hierarchical relationships which include, for example, veto power: if you prioritize your boyfriend over me such that you'd break up with me if he asks you to, I find that disrespectful to me. Then she told me about how people have thrown things at her — “eggs, coke cans” — just for walking down the street in her butch body. I don't think you mean it this way, but I read it and think "oh, this person would want me to make up for the emotional shortcomings of the man in her life" and that's a dynamic that's a lot less attractive to many queer women in their forties who, frankly, are tired of making up for the emotional shortcomings of many of the straight men in our own lives, and aren't looking to take that work on for someone else.