Your dating and love life can feel richer and more meaningful because you don’t take your freedom as a lesbian for granted. But studies, including our own, show that, despite social changes, young LGBQ people continue to experience stressful experiences related to their sexual minority status. Madonna says that when she came out in the '90s, she was so grateful to be able to point to Ellen DeGeneres after she came out and say, "I'm like her. Understandably, many bi/lesbian poly women prefer to date someone who is experienced with poly and experienced with dating women, because there’s a lot less potential angst involved.

People in hierarchical relationships which include, for example, veto power: if you prioritize your boyfriend over me such that you'd break up with me if he asks you to, I find that disrespectful to me. She remembers relaxing in gay bars most of the night, dancing and socializing and even kissing in a corner, while knowing she’d probably be beaten up when she left the bar and walked to her car. Another older lesbian told me passionately, “The young queers these days think our lesbian life in the 60s and 70s was conservative and backward. Another woman I know talked about her decision to go to her first lesbian dance in a rural town in the early 1970s. At the same time, the knowledge that life is short and fleeting, that there are many more years behind than ahead of us, fills many of us with a sense of urgency.Yes, there are plenty of queer women twenty years older than you who will be attracted to you and delighted to date you.

If you spent your teen or early adult years having to hide who you were, that fear and constriction still lives in your body somewhere. There were few differences across racial/ethnic groups, however, Black LGBQ adults reported less happiness, less social well-being, and less life satisfaction than White LGBQ people.

Some older lesbians I work with have been out for decades, and have witnessed incredible changes in the landscape of LGBTQ rights, visibility and acceptance.

Many of us have done a great deal of psychological healing and overcome a lot of trauma, and are better-equipped for love now than we were in the past.Do you want to build or continue a highly-involved type of relationship with your boyfriend, and you want your new relationship with a woman to be warm and loving but relatively flexible?

Whether you’ve been out for a long time or are just coming out now, there are challenges in seeking love at this age.

As others have said more eloquently, it feels a bit like your focus here is trying an experience on for size and/or to paper over some emotional element missing from your current relationship. Her words inspired the name of a new Conscious Girlfriend Academy class: Coming Out and Coming Home. Many old lesbians (some of whom are reclaiming the term, “old,” while others prefer the softer-sounding “older”) know ourselves better than ever before. In another exercise, I invite participants to get in contact with their radiant infant self, still alive inside them, and their wisest, most resourced ancient self.