I’ve spent a significant portion of my adult life trying not to think about my ex-girlfriends. Not because the relationships were bad — most of them were genuinely good, actually, in the way that things can be genuinely good and also genuinely not right for you. But because there’s a particular tension in being a woman who has been in serious relationships with women after a long stretch of dating men, and that tension is: how do you talk about this? What do you call it? Where do you fit, and does fitting even matter?
I’ve been out of a serious relationship with a woman for two years now and back in the landscape of dating men, which has been its own education. Here are the seven things I actually learned — not the things I expected to learn, but the things that surprised me, that shifted something, that I still think about.
1. I Understood My Own Attachment Style Far Better
There’s something about dating someone whose emotional patterns are different enough from the heterosexual dynamics you grew up watching that it strips away a lot of the scripts. With my female partners, I couldn’t default to “well, this is just how men are” or “this is just what women do.” I had to actually look at what was happening between two specific people and try to understand it. In doing so, I came to understand my own anxious attachment style — my tendency to pursue when someone withdrew, to catastrophise small acts of distance — in ways that years of dating men hadn’t made visible to me.
2. Communication Standards Went Way Up
The relationships I had with women were, without exception, characterised by a level of explicit, direct, ongoing communication that I had never experienced with male partners. Not because men can’t communicate — they can — but because the relationships required it. There were no pre-existing scripts about who was supposed to initiate what or manage which emotional domain. Everything had to be figured out, negotiated, and named. It was sometimes exhausting. It was also deeply clarifying and deeply connecting. And it has permanently raised my standard for what communication in a relationship can look like.
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3. I Realised How Much I’d Been Performing
Dating men as a woman involves a set of performances that are so deeply socialised most of us don’t even notice them. The careful calibration of how opinionated to be, how assertive to be, how much space to take up. The monitoring of how you’re being perceived. With my female partners, particularly the ones I was closest to, I experienced a different kind of intimacy — one where I felt less observed and more known. I don’t think this is universal; I know women who feel as scrutinised by female partners as by male ones. But for me it was a revelation about how much energy I’d been quietly spending on self-presentation, and how little I’d been spending on just being.
4. The Concept of “Roles” Became Much More Interesting
In same-sex relationships, the question of who does what — in the domestic sphere, in the sexual sphere, in the emotional sphere — is genuinely open in a way that it isn’t, structurally, in heterosexual relationships. Working out how two people actually want to inhabit these roles, based on personality and preference rather than gender expectation, was illuminating. I discovered, for instance, that I am more naturally a “planner” than I’d ever been allowed to be in heterosexual dynamics, where that role had often defaulted to my male partners without discussion. I’ve carried this knowledge into every relationship since.
5. Heartbreak Hit Differently — and Taught Me Differently
The end of my most significant relationship with a woman was, objectively, one of the hardest experiences of my adult life — more so than most of the heterosexual breakups I’d been through. I think partly this was because the relationship was more deeply emotionally intimate than most of what had come before. And partly, if I’m honest, it was because there was an additional layer of grief: grief for the relationship, and also a kind of grief for the version of myself that had existed within it. The understanding I had to rebuild — about who I was, what I wanted, what kind of love I was capable of and deserved — required going back to the beginning in a way that was hard and ultimately necessary. Understanding why going back to a past relationship hurts you was part of that reckoning.
6. My Friendship With Women Deepened
This one surprised me most. Being in romantic relationships with women changed, permanently, how I related to women in friendship. I think because it required me to take women’s inner lives seriously as independent of any dynamic involving men — as complete and rich and primary in their own right. My friendships with women since have been more direct, more honest, and more genuinely mutual than they were before. I’m also, I hope, a more generous friend — more capable of seeing what someone is actually carrying rather than just what they’re presenting. For anyone thinking about the friendships that sustain them, this piece on the five types of friends every woman needs resonated with me deeply after these experiences.
7. I Became Much Less Certain About Categories
I came out of these relationships less interested in labels than I went in. Not because labels are meaningless — they matter to many people in profound ways — but because the categories of sexuality I understood before felt less useful than a more honest question: what kind of relationship am I in, what do I actually want from it, and is this person someone I can build something real with?
The fluidity of human desire and connection, which I understood intellectually before I had lived it, is something I understand in my body now. And I’ve become kinder, I hope, to other people navigating the same territory — to the complexity of attraction that doesn’t resolve neatly into a single category. The identity work that comes with this territory connects to broader questions about knowing and valuing your own authentic self — which is, ultimately, the most important relationship any of us has. And the lessons about showing up genuinely and vulnerably carry into every relationship, romantic or otherwise — as explored in this piece on vulnerability and authenticity.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is it normal to date both men and women without having a fixed label?
Completely. Research by psychologist Dr. Lisa Diamond at the University of Utah, published in her landmark study “Sexual Fluidity,” found that many people — particularly women — experience sexual attraction that changes over time and doesn’t fit neatly into fixed categories. This doesn’t mean that fixed identities aren’t real or valid; they are, for many people. But for others, fluid or unlabelled attraction is an accurate description of their experience rather than a sign of confusion. You don’t owe anyone a fixed identity in order for your experience to be legitimate.
Do relationships between women have different dynamics than heterosexual ones?
Research suggests some consistent differences, on average — female-female relationships tend to show higher levels of emotional intimacy, more explicit communication about needs, and different patterns of conflict and connection than male-female or male-male relationships. However, the range of variation within these categories is enormous, and individual personality and attachment style tends to be a stronger predictor of relationship quality than gender configuration. The best available evidence suggests that healthy relationships look remarkably similar across sexual orientations: they involve mutual respect, responsive communication, shared values, and the capacity to repair.
How do I navigate coming back to dating men after serious relationships with women?
With honesty, first of all — including with yourself about what you’ve learned and what you’re looking for. The communication standards and self-awareness you’ve developed don’t have to be left behind; they’re yours, and they’re applicable to any relationship. What often requires adjustment is the re-encounter with the gender scripts that heterosexual relationships carry — the moments where you notice the defaults and decide whether to accept them or renegotiate them. Having experienced something different gives you valuable reference points for what’s possible.
Sources & further reading: Psychology Today: Healing From Trauma | APA: Resilience and Recovery | Mental Health Foundation: Healthy Relationships.
Rubie Le’Faine is the founder of Rubie Rubie and a writer specialising in emotional well-being, self-identity, and the psychology of modern relationships. She holds a Level 3 Certificate in Counselling Skills and has spent over eight years studying attachment theory, cognitive behavioural principles, and human development — first through formal study, then through lived experience that no course can replicate. After navigating a significant relationship breakdown, an identity rebuild, and the complex terrain of rediscovering herself in her 30s, Rubie began writing to make sense of what she had learned and to offer honest, human guidance to others going through the same. She founded Rubie Rubie in 2022 as a space for women seeking real answers, not platitudes. Based in Surrey, UK, her writing is grounded in research, shaped by experience, and centred entirely on the reader’s genuine wellbeing.
