Rosie Wilby shares how understanding and compassion should be at the heart of our breakups
BY ROSIE WILBY, IMAGES PROVIDED
This Lesbian Visibility Week, let’s learn a lesson from older lesbians: take the time to see and hear one another.
“If older lesbians ruled the world, there’d be no war.” A few years ago, I made this bold claim on Radio 4 Woman’s Hour. Although it was said slightly in jest, I stand by it. I was talking about the lesbian women a couple of decades or so older than me who I met in bars, book groups and choirs when I first arrived in 1990s London as a young woman.
I quickly learned that these women had a code: Treat other women well. See one another, hear one another. Even when that means there’s a difficult conversation to be had. (And, it’s important to add that in the circles I moved in, this always included trans women.)
As I’ve explored in my comedy shows and books, these inspiring women pioneered the principles of conscious uncoupling long before Gwyneth Paltrow. They found ways to communicate, build barriers, heal wounds and find empathy even in the toughest times. Acrimonious separations came with so much risk attached, the risk of eroding an entire landscape of friendship. So, in smaller, marginalised networks you simply had to sort your shit out.
Because of the normalisation of this practice, I’ve rarely met a lesbian who hasn’t been willing to do the emotional work of navigating towards mutual respect and healing. And perhaps I’ve so romanticised this lesbian legacy that I became complacent about the active work required to keep on passing the code on to other women.
Almost a decade ago, I fleetingly dated a bi woman, who seemed funny, charming, sexy and all the fabulous things. We had two uneventful, but sweetly romantic, meetings. Long conversations in late September sunshine. That kind of thing. All very innocent. But oh so cute. Reader, I had my metaphorical U-haul all lined up. And I was stunned and heartbroken when ties were swiftly cut. In a strange way, it felt worse than a breakup of a longer term relationship. Because we didn’t even get to see that potential fulfilled. Our connection was a shiny present left under a Christmas tree and never unwrapped.
Never mind, I thought. The code will come into play. And we will be lifelong friends. Because that’s what happens. In my world, that was what had always happened. If a romantic relationship fizzled out, you switched your attention to discussing what type of relationship was positively possible. And then celebrating that. Rather than focussing on what wasn’t.
But what I hadn’t fully understood back then was that she came from a culture of dating men. It was like dating in a foreign language. She had been trained in being guarded, in being mindful of the ways the less lovely of men can sometimes be – threatening, entitled, violent even. I wish I’d known that. And, years later, I wished I’d had the courage to try to see her experience and therefore better communicate mine. So I decided to write a respectful, amiable and clear message explaining why I’d felt so erased, why it had been so very triggering to be shut down like that, why being made to question whether my feelings of attraction had been welcome had felt uncomfortably close to the shame I’d grown up with in the 1980s when utterly hateful homophobia was rife. I even ran the entire message past my therapist, who thought it was absolutely fair to advocate for myself in this way.
A polite reply came. She was busy and would get to my message when she could. I always hoped that a conversation would follow. But it never did.
And that’s when I started writing my new novel, all about the difficult conversations I wish we’d been able to have. In it, my two characters eventually grow, heal and find a way towards a peaceful friendship and allyship. My lesbian protagonist turns to all her wonderful bi friends to happily discover that the code of treating fellow women well has most certainly spread around other sections of our queer community. She doesn’t always do and say the right thing. But she gets there in the end. And that’s why I believe that these difficult conversations are essential in enriching our lives. Let’s not stop having them. Thank you, older lesbians.
Rosie Wilby is a comedian, author, podcaster and former Radio DIVA presenter. Look out for her novel Conversations We Should’ve Had in 2026 and, in the meantime, check out her book and podcast The Breakup Monologues. The latter has a live recording coming up this Thursday in London. You can get tickets here.
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