I think we need to be careful and not be unintentionally callous in how we judge the pathways to which different women arrive at the realization that they’re lesbians and how they handle that journey. Full disclosure: I’m a late bloomer lesbian and I interacted with a lot of women there who I could relate to. But I wasn’t really deeply ingrained in the community since a lot of it I didn’t find relatable or relevant.

For me, realizing I was a lesbian resulted in me quickly taking action because I was in a position to do so. I have a high paying job and so did my ex-husband so there were no concerns about leaving each other in a precarious financial position. We had no kids and owned no property together. So I could leave pretty quickly and amicably, although it’s hard to cause that pain to someone I care about and respect so much, and leave the only family I had had for a decade, which was his family. I also knew if I didn’t take action immediately, I’d just end up doing it later on and causing more problems.

In contrast, there are a lot of women there who pretty much realized they are gay as supported by descriptions of their lives and experiences but feel stuck because they are stay-at-home moms or otherwise are trying to figure out how to navigate their situations to cause the least amount of trouble for their children. Some women there are trying to have their cake and eat it too for various reasons, including selfish ones. I know it sounds ludicrous, but when I came out to my husband, he wanted to know if there was some kind of arrangement we could have where we had a platonic marriage and then side partners. While something like that may sound tempting to some, I knew it wouldn’t work out and would be deeply unsatisfying to both of us, and that we had to rip off the bandaid despite being great companions for each other non-sexually. I also didn’t just wake up and realize I was attracted to women. I knew I had at least some attraction to women for half my life but I didn’t know what it meant. I’ve posted about the details of my history here. So a lot of the community is dealing with these aforementioned issues and I can’t relate to that so I don’t have much use for the sub.

All of that being said, I would not be surprised if the vast majority of late bloomer lesbians there (not the bisexual women who have a different journey entirely) have some history of abuse (but not necessarily from men) or repressive religious backgrounds. I only had one male partner sexually and romantically and he was not abusive but a great guy really. I did, however, come from an abusive family that gaslighted me, clouded my self-discovery, constantly subordinated my needs, which caused me to prioritize safety and stability over personal fulfillment and constantly gaslight myself about my own feelings. This abuse was mainly from a woman, my mom, and enabled by the rest of my family. I lacked female role models entirely. I spent a lot of years in social isolation between middle school and high school that emotionally stunted me.

I just wanted to add this context because I see some lesbians dismissing late bloomer lesbians summarily and yea there are a lot of confused women and bisexual women there and women who just know they’re not interested in men, but there are legitimate late bloomer lesbians who are struggling and we didn’t just “decide to be gay” as some kind of solution to a problem.