A Gay Woman's Relationship Advice For Straight Women

How to Find Balance in Your Relationship

• Don't ask too many questions. I know, you want to be asked about stuff! Men don't! They want to be left to their own thoughts!
• Don't take it all so personally, he's probably not even thinking about you.
• His silence is reparative; don't project just because your silence is punitive. He's not thinking about you -- or if he is, he doesn't want to talk about it because his bad feelings will evaporate if you don't try to dig into his brain. So just avoid it and lie low.
• Compliment him, or better yet, blow him.
• Don't pout when he doesn't want to French kiss you. That's for birthdays and anniversaries, or when you're both a little drunk and can pretend to be kissing somebody else.
• If he's at home, don't bug him about work, don't nag him about stuff he hasn't accomplished, don't compare him; just accept him as less complicated.
• And stop processing and taking personally what he doesn't say.

Ahh, all so true. My friends nod when hearing this type of spot-on advice. "Ah, God, you're so right about me. That is what I do. Sometimes, I make it so much worse. I'll apply this ointment to my own inflamed personality immediately." But they don't, because they can't. And that creates a balance in male-female relationships. He resents you for feeling so much, but he loves you because you feel so much, which, in turn, forces him to feel. Even if that feeling is "annoyed."

All of my extremely good advice is totally lost on me, though. When I am in a daze of hurt feelings or hormonal blasts, I can't think straight. I can't be reasoned with, even if I'm the one who ordinarily provides the reasoning. I make the same mistakes that I just warned my friends against making. And even worse, in a relationship of two women, we don't trade sex for the emotional "out" of a confrontation. I hear this from my straight friends all the time; sex becomes a form of currency. "I'm scared for my husband to see the credit card bill! I spent way too much money on a purse. I'm going to have to blow him to get out of trouble."

Wait, what? Is this normal for you people? Or, "I accidentally left the house this morning with my boyfriend's car keys in my purse, so I'm going to have to fuck him tonight." Huh? Two women in a relationship together simply don't engage in this type of sexual barter. Though I most certainly respect it and decidedly long for it, it just doesn't exist as an option. I wish to God it did. It would be so much simpler to just fuck away the bad feelings, versus having to endure a bleary-eyed marathon.

Her: "When you left the house with my car keys in your messenger bag, it felt like you didn't see me. Like I'm invisible. And then I had to spend my day correcting your mistake by Ubering to your office to get my own keys. That's because you think you've got more going on work-wise than I do, which makes me feel less-than..." Oh my God, if only there was a secret oral sex exit out of this level of hellish emotional brick breaking. But it isn't the way women are constituted.

The Truth from an Inside Trader/Traitor
Okay, a little background about me. Who knows if I was born gay? If I was, it was obscured by the pinkity-pink of the dresses I was shoved into without a care as to my opinion. As I grew up, I kind of followed what my peers were doing, and that included exploring my sexuality with the opposite sex. Heterosexual seduction was like a very easy game; one, it seemed, boys would let you win.

As my sexuality evolved into wanting women, sexual conquest was less triumphant. Even as a female, the quest for girls was always more complicated, the thirst never as easily satisfied. Simply, women are more emotionally complicated than men. Even if you know the inner workings of a girl because you are a girl, there are no gimmes. Not unless you are the fictional Friday Night Lights character, Tim Riggins. If you are Tim Riggins, you may stop reading and continue fucking.

For this reason, my straight lady friends love to pepper me with "Is it true that..." types of questions. Like I'm the answer key, the Teacher's Edition, to what men think and feel. Like I'm willing to be an inside trader. And the truth is, I am. Sure, I like girls, but I am one first, so my allegiance is with us. I do know stuff about guys that women may want to know, because I walk fairly invisibly behind the "enemy" lines. And I am happy to share this stuff with you. Guys tell me things I really don't want to know. Didn't ask to know. Can't shake off, once I do know.

But women also ask me things they wouldn't, and couldn't, ask a man. They conjecture to me as if I'm a guy with a higher capacity for comprehension. They muse, "If you're attracted to women, do you spend a lot of time touching your own breasts?" "If you're into girls, why aren't you into me? Are you into me?" "Guys make a lot of jokes about how women smell and taste; are those rumors true? Are we gross?" All those terrible jokes men cling to because guys want to receive and not give oral sex. Those innuendos have had women throughout the ages wondering about the aromatic nature of our own genitals.

Answers: I lost interest in my own boobs a long time ago. You always want what you don't have. No, I am not attracted to most heterosexual women, because being with a woman who has never been with a woman is a little like teaching someone how to ice skate. Skating only gets fun after you're done with the lengthy initial insecurities and instruction process. You want to skate with someone who has let go and found her own balance and style. And, as for the mythology of the scent of a woman: well, if for some reason it's strong, there's generally something going on down there. In their pristine state, vaginas are delightful.

This has been excerpted from Ali Adler's How to F*ck a Woman.

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