What Katie did next... When I tell the gay men in my life that I’ve fallen for a woman they seem sceptical
Our columnist Katie Glass finally feels ready to talk about her secret relationship
Ishare most things that are happening in my life in this column, but I didn’t reveal too much about Alex. Partly, I thought it would be easier to make a relationship work if I didn’t keep writing about it. But mostly, I didn’t write about Alex because I wasn’t sure how I felt about coming out to the readers of The Telegraph. Alex, who I chose a deliberately gender-neutral pseudonym for, is a woman.
I didn’t write about Alex because I wasn’t sure what to say. Did the fact I was dating a woman mean that now I would have to call myself a lesbian? Or bisexual? Not labels I feel comfortable with. Ideally I’d just keep calling myself what I have always been: someone who’s kissed a few girls and liked it. Someone who’s been nursing a guilty crush on Clare Balding for years.
Once, having dated a few women off and on, I used to call myself bisexual. But then I got engaged to a heterosexual man and using the label “bisexual” started sounding silly – like I was desperately trying to cling onto my youth or keeping one foot out the door with an eye on escaping. When I was engaged, calling myself bisexual just seemed a reminder of my inability to commit.
But then I left my fiancé and I fell for a woman, and started thinking that perhaps I was a bit bisexual again. Or at least somewhere on the Kinsey scale.
When I tell the gay men in my life that I’ve fallen for a woman they seem sceptical. “You’re not really a lesbian,” Martin says. “You like sleeping with men too much.”
The rest of my friends don’t seem very bothered – they’ve seen me date other women before. As usual they cynically wonder if I’m just doing something so I can write about it. Or perhaps this time I really have found “the One’. For a few weeks that’s what I think.
You may recall that when I first met Alex, I wrote about how I was drawn to someone I’d seen at a party who I felt I already knew. I deliberately didn’t mention that Alex was a woman then. After, it seemed easier not to. We laughed together conspiratorially as she chose a pseudonym for herself that was intentionally unisex. She said that she worried if I wrote about dating a woman it would “affect your career”. I laughed. That seemed an absurd thing to think in 2022. But then I realise I do still know professional women who aren’t open about their same-sex relationships.
There’s a tendency now to feel that the major battles have been won over same-sex relationships. I used to think that. That we are “post-gay”, especially given the vast array of labels people now use to explain who they’re going out with. But believing we’re past caring about sexuality is wishful thinking.
Only last week, a gay couple were refused the chance to view a home a Christian couple were selling. Luke Main, a builder, and his wife, Dr Joanna Brunker, a Cambridge University physicist, quoted a passage from the Bible, explaining they could not sell the house to “two men in a partnership”.
I tell this story to a friend who tells me about a teenage girl they know who has recently come out, causing a huge rift with her mother. I’m shocked by this. But I shouldn’t be. Research shows that young LGBT people are still more likely to find themselves rejected by family than their peers. They make up around 24 per cent of the young homeless population.
I am surprised – and disappointed – in myself when I avoid telling some people Alex is a woman. When people ask me about “your new man, Alex”, I don’t always correct them. Instead I talk about “they” and “us” and “Alex” in text messages, leaving friends wondering why my grammar’s gone to pot. When Alex and I go away on a work trip, I tell my editor (not from this paper) that I am taking a “friend”, then convince the hotel to give us a double bed.
I worry that if people know I’m seeing a woman they’ll have all sorts of assumptions about me – that they’ll say “Ah well, that explains why she left her fiancé and couldn’t make a straight relationship work.” Or note that it is something of a cliché to be a 40-something woman exiting a toxic relationship and rebounding for a girl. Does falling for a woman mean I’ve become a middleaged man hater?
I didn’t write about Alex because I didn’t want to label myself. Although in some ways we ran true to lesbian clichés: we turned up on our first date wearing matching black cord dungarees, which she found mortifying and I thought was hilarious; I like having baths and she wanted to talk about her feelings too much. She reminded me of the things I like about dating women – buying each other smelly candles and poetry books, a softer romance than I’ve had with men.
But also, I was drawn to her despite her gender. She wasn’t girlie. I loved the way she could install a log burner into a caravan and wasn’t afraid to look under the bed for a rat.
I liked how solid she was. For the first time in a year I slept beside her with the lights and radio off. Then it ended. Martin was right. And I didn’t have to write about Alex. But not to acknowledge how I felt about her, when there are still teenagers struggling to come out to their parents, just felt like a cop out.
Believing we’re past caring about sexuality is wishful thinking