hi, lesbian, early 40s. i’ve recently made friends with a straight, married woman (same age). her husband is great i think. i have a VERY intense crush on her. everything about our friendship feels like a courtship to me, though? like clicking immediately and starting to text all the time, seeing each other several times a week, she asks for my opinion on matters big and small, says she misses me when it’s been 24 hours apart, invites me as her plus one to events. this has been going on for months now and my crush continues to grow and the pace of our friendship hasn’t slowed down. she’s not giving vibes like she’s interested in me sexually, but she definitely is obsessed with me, like for example tracked down the tumblr i had in the early 2010s AGAINST MY WILL and went through the whole thing texting me funny stuff about it for an entire night,….. i don’t have a ton of friends and haven’t made a lot of new friends as an adult, is this how straight women do friendship? maybe i just don’t know how friendships work. she recently invited me on a vacation that would be just the two of us. i don’t know how to proceed because i love her so much as a friend, but she probably??? is incapable of loving me in the same way and there’s no way for this to end well. should i decline the vacation because i’m afraid my feelings will only get stronger if we go? should i tell her my feelings just so it’s out there, or will that ruin it? any thoughts on what to do overall?

Motti: This is truly a situation that so many queer people, especially queer women, know well. The line between female friendship and literal crush/romance can be very blurred. Some of the behavior you describe from her feels like expected female friendship stuff. My girlfriend has a million group chats where they ask opinions about photos to post online, outfits to wear, events to go to, etc. etc. and they’re pretty constant. But it’s purely platonic. What strikes me, though, is her telling you she misses you after 24 hours apart. That feels a little crush-y.

I’ll say something that you and others in your situation likely don’t want to hear: it is fairly common for a straight woman to meet a queer woman or a lesbian, especially later in life while married, and really, really like the attention they get from them. They’re used to a certain level of attention, or lack thereof, from their husband and find the connection exhilarating, even if and especially when they have no intention of acting on it. Even worse is when they know what they’re doing and don’t stop it.

I think you need to ask yourself if this never turns into anything other than a friendship, are you okay with that? Are you playing a long game, whether intentionally or unintentionally, to be with her? I’d say if you are, and you are sticking around because you think there’s hope for the two of you, you may be setting yourself up for heartbreak and a not so healthy end to the friendship. But if you value your friendship more than the feelings you have for her, and would be totally okay with her saying “Sorry I’m not interested, I just see you as a friend,” and remaining friends, then I think that’s fine.

I do personally think it’d be a good idea to tell her how you feel before you go on vacation. I think one of the most frustrating and heartbreaking positions a person could be in is when they’re living a different “reality” than the other person. If you go on vacation thinking there’s a connection between the two of you and she thinks you’re going as friends, you can both end up hurt. You’ll be hurt because you’ll think it was all in your head and you compromised the friendship. She’ll be hurt because someone she thought was a friend had different intentions.

You have to protect your heart, even if it means losing a friend or having an uncomfy but not disastrous conversation.

Kayla: This is one of those (pretty common!) situations where some people would advise you to come clean about your feelings and some would advise you to not. And they’d both be kind of right? Idk, it all comes down to what you can bear the most: the agony of harboring an unspoken crush or the agony of potentially changing or even losing the friendship if you confess your feelings. Because coming clean does run that risk. But it also means you get to be honest and perhaps have a huge weight lifted off of you. It’s hard! There’s no real way for me to determine from what you said if the feelings are genuinely reciprocated. Only she knows that.

The vacation does feel like a potential turning point where the weight of not saying something is greater than the potential damage that could be done by saying something. It’s just such an intimate thing to be together far away from your regular lives. There’s no way for you to determine the outcome of the conversation ahead of time. I know that’s scary. But I also know friends who successfully HAVE navigated these situations, whether that looks like pursuing something beyond friendship or putting the crush out there, not being met with reciprocation, and then still being able to continue the friendship while moving on from the crush feelings. I promise even the latter IS possible!

But will you really be able to enjoy this vacation with her if you feel like you’re hiding something so big? Really sit with these questions and feel out what your heart is saying.

Valerie: In my experience, this is indeed how some straight women do female friendship. I have been the platonic life partner to married women before. (The default plus one if their husband couldn’t make it, doing on “dates” that weren’t dates, etc. Basically dating in every way except the physical. Each time their husbands were perfectly nice, I think they were just lacking the…emotional intimacy they craved in their relationship and I was their outlet for that. Whether that was fair to me or not is a different conversation entirely.) However, if you feel like you have more-than-friend feelings and you know for a fact your friend does not, you need to pump the brakes. Since you’re going to have to pull back at least a little on the friendship either way, it might not hurt to ask her if she is definitely exclusive with her husband and/or if she has any bisexual feelings in her heart. Just go into it knowing there’s a good chance she is not romantically interested in you. And then just let her know that you care about her so much that the lines are getting a little blurry for you and you don’t want to lose the friendship so you have to scale back a little. You can decide what that looks like for you, and what will protect your heart the most. But harboring this crush and feeding it false hope won’t help either of you in the long run. Better to slow things down now than let it spiral out of control until you crash and burn later. 

Summer: Women’s friendships can be very intimate, even pushing the boundaries of conventional friendships. Many of my uni girl friends made out with their friends a bit when drunk and never explored queerness any further than that. All the women I know have at least one close, spill-all friendship with another woman. It sounds like your friendship here has most of the same tones. This might be even more pertinent if she doesn’t have close friendships with women in her life—sometimes, marriage cuts down on opportunities for friendship and she may love you so much as a friend who fits you perfectly.

Valerie is right about making an inquiry into her interests and availability if you want to give yourself new info. I can’t recommend pursuing her because that’d be infidelity and if it goes wrong, you have a very high chance of wrecking a lot of people. I’d also ask you to reflect on what makes her so intensely attractive to you, because that may signal some of the things that are presently missing in your life. The kinds of things you could seek with people who are available and wouldn’t risk a wonderful friendship.

I cheated on my ex and broke her heart, and I’m not asking anybody to feel bad for me about that. I was the bad guy in this story and I’ve spent the last two years actually reckoning with those choices in therapy and in recovery.

I was with her for 6 years, her parents were the parents I never had, her Mom taught me to cook, her Dad picked me up from surgery, I spent every holiday with them, they were my family in every way that mattered.

the breakup was ugly, obviously, and I haven’t spoken to any of them in almost two years. i don’t think her parents don’t know the full story of what i did to cause the breakup. i recently shared a sobriety milestone on instagram and her mom reached out, said she’d been thinking about me, hopes I’m okay, and that if i ever wanna grab coffee, she’d like that, and it would be ok to keep that between us.

i want to say yes so badly I could cry, but also feel like a monster for wanting to say yes. i think my ex would be devastated if she found out. i also am not sure it’s ethical to do it without telling her, but every time i try to type that out to her mom i feel terrible responding to this generous ask with a condition. btw, my ex has moved on and is engaged now. do i owe it to her to say no?

Kayla: So obviously while my own experiences, relationships, and feelings cannot perfectly map onto yours, I’m trying to figure out how I would feel about this situation if it were to go down between my ex and my mother, and where I’ve landed is that I wouldn’t be mad at my ex but WOULD be mad at my mom for not telling me/asking permission. But ultimately…that kind of isn’t my ex’s issue, you know? I think you and your ex’s mother get to be your own people. I also think that your betrayal of your ex makes it so that she would see her mother as betraying her by meeting with you. Or maybe, if enough time has passed, she wouldn’t really care! Maybe other people will disagree, but I don’t think you should feel obligated to tell your ex. I would maybe encourage her mother to ask for the permission from her though, since I really do think the relationship that could be damaged here is between your ex and her mother. One of the worst parts of a bad breakup is losing access to the other person’s family. Even if your betrayal is the reason for the relationship ending, I can empathize with the loss you feel around her family. I do think her mother should ask her for permission to reach out to/meet up with you, but again, kinda not your problem!

Motti: I agree with Kayla that the potential conflict here is between your ex and her mother, not you and anyone else. I also back her suggestion to encourage your ex’s mother to ask for permission before meeting. As you said, it’s unconfirmed whether or not the mom knows about why the relationship ended, and I can’t help but to think if she did know, would she have reached out? If she thought you two just drifted a part or it didn’t work out, I can see why meeting up behind her daughter’s back wouldn’t be the worst thing. But if she were to find out what really happened AFTER going behind her back, potential irreparable damage could be made to her relationship with her daughter. If I were in your shoes, I’d respond something like, “Before we agree to meet up, I want to make sure you know that I’ve hurt your daughter and I suspect she may not be happy about us meeting behind her back. I’d be so upset if I caused any damage to your relationship. If that’s an outcome you’re comfortable with, then I’d love to meet up. If not, I think it’s best we continue our distance out of respect for your daughter.”

That said, I personally know friends who have been cheated on or otherwise “betrayed” whose parents don’t ride hard for them or think it’s all that bad or completely seize communication with the cheater. Everyone has their lines.

I also think you should think about the potential negative outcomes for yourself! I know you said she’s like the mother you never had, but what happens if you have to reveal to her in that coffee meetup that you did indeed break her daughter’s heart? Are you okay with the emotional/mental reaction you might have to disappointing her? Will seeing her do more damage than good to yourself? I know you’re focusing on your ex’s feelings, which is really nice, but want to make sure you’re also thinking of yourself and the not-so-obvious takeaways from this potential meetup.

Valerie: I don’t think you automatically have to say no, but I do agree that you have to ask her mom if your ex would be okay with it. You don’t have to be the one to reach out to your ex, since it’s her mother’s idea in the first place, but I think she would understand (and honestly probably appreciate) that you want to get coffee with her, but only with her daughter’s go-ahead. And then both of you have to respect your ex’s decision on the matter. And if your ex does say no, tell her mother how much she meant to you and that you wish things were different, but that you do want to respect that boundary. If she’s truly a good mother (and it sounds like she is), she will respect that boundary and not take it personally and understand. 

Summer: IMO, going to coffee with her mom without informing her would be the wrong call. I think you should talk to your ex first and offer apologies or reiterate the ones you have provided already. Your ex’s response will tell you what she thinks of you and by extension, what she might think of reconnecting with her family. If things seem positive, I’d ask your ex if it’s okay to see her mom due to her mom’s importance to you. Maybe offer your ex an opportunity to allow it with some preconditions or slight boundaries to give her more comfort?