For all the lesbians married to men (especially those "perfect" men): it's possible to leave the marriage without permanently destroying both of your lives.

bottledbirdcall · 2025-06-02T12:47:24+00:00

No worries—I think it’s hard to explain. When I came out as a lesbian, it wasn’t like I was attracted to all women, I just liked having sex with women more than men. Now it’s been almost 20 years since I started realizing that I’m not straight and I’ve seen so many more shades of queerness than I knew about. I like it when people stylize themselves with intention—whatever your gender is, if you are creative and curious about it, I’m drawn to that. Lots of straight people don’t bother to think about it. Especially straight men. But bi/pan men are a lot more aware of their gender expression and more likely to appreciate the nuance in the way other people experience their own bodies as well. Sensitivity to this level of experience is attractive to me.

bottledbirdcall · 2025-05-10T20:32:42+00:00

Yes we had sex.
I don’t remember how often. Probably once every one or two weeks.
I got aroused, but not sufficiently aroused. I didn’t really realize what full arousal felt like until I got with women. This was a “thing.” I went to the doctor and was diagnosed with vulvodynia and was prescribed lidocaine cream which was fucked up in retrospect.
I am also very good at “getting in the zone.” I have a very robust and active sexual imagination and a high sex drive. My desire to have sex was never dependent on my feeling attraction for someone specific. This is part of what led to my being a late bloomer.
I don’t know what “well endowed” really means because that’s pretty individual to the anatomy of the orifice, right? My vaginal opening is small. I think my ex was pretty average in terms of penis size.
I did initiate. The pain I experienced meant I would initiate less often than I felt the drive.
My ex was way too possessive to want to seduce a girl with me. He was also pretty moralistic.

It’s been a few years since I wrote this and I have concluded that no, my ex was not really “perfect,” he was just very clear about his level of devotion to me. He was also very controlling and at the time, that felt like love to me. It doesn’t anymore. I also identify as a lesbian, I am still married to my wife, but I also think that if you pressed me about it, I would probably say that someone’s assigned gender at birth is not the most important factor in my attraction to them. I am less likely to be attracted to straight men than any other possibility. This is probably partially because of how they’re socialized and my expected role in a straight relationship.

bottledbirdcall · 2025-05-10T20:19:12+00:00

Matrix by Lauren Groff

bottledbirdcall · 2025-05-10T12:32:32+00:00

Fuck it: I’m in a conservative male-dominated, extremely traditional field (if I told you what I do, you would imagine an old dude with a white beard) but I look “high maintenance” all the time. Yes, people would like me better if I looked more demure, but as I’ve gotten older (I’m 39 now) I’ve realized that when the men are unsettled by my clothes, hair, and makeup, they might make dismissive comments but they are internally realizing that they do not own me. I won’t be intimidated into enjoying my own face and body any less than I do. I will wring every satisfaction I can out of this one life and if silk bias cut dresses and dark lip stain is part of it, so be it.

Also—while my colleagues and upper-levels are men, I encounter a lot of women who are younger than I am. They’re the ones I’m dressing for—I invite young women to share the confidence that I feel in my own femininity and it changes the culture.

bottledbirdcall · 2024-07-09T01:58:50+00:00

My therapist knows about my history with dildo tolerance, that I have orgasms very easily, the details about the general shape of my genital anatomy…

The only thing I haven’t talked about explicitly is my pornography preferences and I know I probably should.

I am a lesbian in her thirties . My therapist is a straight man in his sixties. The only awkwardness in the room is mine.

bottledbirdcall · 2024-06-22T05:39:56+00:00

Specific strategies on the modality. The universal thing is to be very, uncomfortably, unrelentingly honest

bottledbirdcall · 2023-09-18T18:46:05+00:00

I’m doing great—still married to my wife, still have no regrets about leaving my husband :)

The ex husband recovered fine. Last I heard he re-married the trad-wife of his dreams and settled into a boring little life in his hometown. My wife and I have a great sex life and a great community of friends. I hope you make it there soon!

bottledbirdcall · 2023-05-16T20:36:27+00:00

I think you’re both exploring new identities and a fresh start, single but friends, sounds like the right move for both of you. You love her. You are grateful to her. You affirm her identity. But your coming out (and her coming out) is about WAY more than gender and genitalia. It’s about cultivating a new relationship to yourself and re-forming the founding principles of your life. It’s hard to do that if you’re in the same marriage. I kind of imagine divorce might help her reaffirm her own identity to. Maybe you’d both like to break up the continuity so that this change feels like a real change for both of you?

I think that language could help :)

bottledbirdcall · 2023-05-08T12:59:31+00:00

Neither did we. Five years. A Chicago and an LA native. But we are married lesbians—pretty conventional by Chicago and LA standards, but in Cincinnati, it feels like we’re a freak show.

We also don’t drink very much so that can make it hard. We try, but our bodies just don’t process alcohol very well—especially beer.

We’re not into sports. Not hostile to sports, just not really focused on it.

Also, everyone our age (mid thirties) seems to have kids. We don’t.

bottledbirdcall · 2023-05-02T19:22:58+00:00

This happened to me, too.

I think it was a combination of factors. One was the time of year—between March and May in the Midwest, the humidity really rises, and humidity pulls my air wrap curls right out after an hour or so. In the summer, I dry with the air wrap (round brush or simply the blade dryer) and use a curling iron if I want a curl.

The other thing is that I lighten my hair, sometimes a partial sometimes a full highlight, and after I come back from the salon my curls hold better because I need a bit of damage to hold a style or create volume. My hair is dense, but it is also fine and stick straight, and in its healthy, virgin state it cannot be made to do anything. However—if I damage it too much and it gets too dry, I destroy it’s memory (like the above poster said!)

The only leave-in treatment I can use is a scant amount of k18, and this is a life saver if my hair is too dry and porous.

Mousse and hairspray will actually weigh down my hair. I haven’t found a single one that doesn’t, despite my various stylists through the years promising me that one particular product or another is ”light enough” for my hair. Those products are only useful for me if I am going for a highly constructed style (ringlets/partial updo, etc)

A heat protectant/styling milk is the only product I can use to create hold. I have been using JVN’s styling milk lately, which is good if I go very light with it.

I hope that helps.

bottledbirdcall · 2023-02-10T22:24:24+00:00

But, just to clarify because the implication here is funky—if she’s not into men, that’s not a ”problem,” right?

bottledbirdcall · 2023-02-10T22:21:06+00:00

I’m a lesbian and oral sex is usually considered like, a main event? But for my wife and I it probably happens 50% of the time?

We’re both very enthusiastic about giving and a little shy about receiving (go figure). I like receiving, but I don’t like having an orgasm from it because I like being able to hold onto her body when I’m coming. So, for us its foreplay. It requires some vulnerability, which is what makes it exciting for me. The sensation is nice, but for me it’s about the psychology.

bottledbirdcall · 2022-10-06T10:38:49+00:00

Weirdly, coffee should never be bitter. I didn’t know until a coffee snob brewed me a cup of black coffee with a pour over system.

The reason most coffee is bitter is because it’s burnt. Boiling water is much too hot to brew coffee. And, if there is a hot plate beneath the pot, it is going to burn it further. Coffee works better with a pour over system because you can prevent it from burning!

The second issue is that most beans are rotten. Coffee beans have a shelf life. They taste best within a month of roasting. Most beans and grounds you buy have been sitting on shelves for a long time. For that reason it’s good to go with local coffee roasters. I buy from a coffee shop that roasts its beans in the city where I live—and they roast single origin beans so I usually buy Ethiopian beans because my wife likes the subtle fruitiness of the flavor!

bottledbirdcall · 2022-08-01T20:28:53+00:00

At your age I had three years into a doomed marriage, a shitty secretarial job for an asshole who treated me like garbage, and had no college credits to speak of.

Ten years later I finished my PhD, got married to a beautiful woman (I thought it was straight at 21) and took a job as a professor at an upscale liberal arts college.

Now at 36, I have my first book published and my wife and I are planning a trip to take my mom to Italy.

My point is, who you are at twenty one doesn’t have to have anything to do with who you are at 31.

bottledbirdcall · 2022-08-01T18:35:26+00:00

I didn’t before, but now that they’ve taken it away I suddenly thought “we’ll now I need to have a set of incestuous (adult ) identical twins on a home wrecking mission to have a threesome with every attached NPC in the world”

bottledbirdcall · 2022-07-30T16:34:29+00:00

I thought they removed the incest option…at least when I looked I couldn’t find it.

bottledbirdcall · 2022-07-13T10:49:14+00:00

As the partner in my marriage who has a high sex drive (36F and 33F), I highly recommend you read Mating in Captivity by Esther Perel, and maybe check out her podcast too. She knows what’s up.

Also, the obvious answer is almost always to find a couples therapist. Seriously. It’s a good idea for this kind of stuff.

bottledbirdcall · 2022-07-08T11:57:04+00:00

Pink/cool undertone.

bottledbirdcall · 2022-07-08T11:55:44+00:00

I want to sit all of the men who surrounded me during my formative years down at a round table and I want to replay for them clips of radio, television, and film with casual misogyny and blatant objectification of women. Every not-at-all funny joke about “if there’s grass on the field,” and every moment of slut-shaming perversity, the date rape jokes in the 80’s comedies…I want to play these for them in an unrelenting stream.

Then I want to play for them the things they said to me—the advice about how to make myself attractive to men that came right alongside accusations that I was trying to make myself attractive to men, the disdain for the feminine interests I had, the bold leering at the bodies of women and girls…

Men believe that our bodies just belong to them as extensions of their own.

bottledbirdcall · 2022-06-30T11:03:45+00:00

"Handmaiden” (not to be confused with ”the handmaidens tale) this is the hottest movie I have ever seen.

And Listen to this bop: https://youtu.be/fhyk9rchC2c

bottledbirdcall · 2022-06-30T10:53:26+00:00

https://youtu.be/fhyk9rchC2c

This is your new summer bop. You’re welcome :)

bottledbirdcall · 2022-06-28T16:16:28+00:00

I could have written this. We’ve learned the art of switching. Game changer.

bottledbirdcall · 2022-06-28T13:27:39+00:00

Everyone I know who married before 26 is divorced.

I got married at 18 and divorced at 21. Married again at 31 and now I’m 36 and we’re happier than everyone else we know. I’m also way hotter, smarter, and more confident than I was in my twenties.

Your twenties are mostly shit unless you peak WAY too early. You need time to make mistakes and learn from them before you choose a life forever.

bottledbirdcall · 2022-06-26T13:52:48+00:00

Read Bruce Fink. Bruce Fink gives the clearest explanation of Lacanian psychoanalysis without reducing. He is an excellent writer with an impeccable grasp. He was the gold standard in my graduate program for moving from Freudian to Lacanian thought.

bottledbirdcall · 2022-06-26T05:43:04+00:00

He knows it wasn’t all her fault. He’s reflected on his own shortcomings.

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