Online - Friendship - Connection

For LGTBQ+ people, finding support, friendship, understanding or solidarity can be difficult when our local communities may not match our identities or beliefs. It is no surprise to find that virtual connections have fulfilled those needs for many. Nicole Lee shares her own experience of discovering comfort can come from alternative sources.

The first time a woman broke my heart, I was 33. At the time, most of my close friends were straight cis women celebrating their wedding anniversaries to straight cis men. They consoled me and channeled memories from their own experiences of heartbreak, but my pain wasn’t present for them. Break-ups were a memory from a previous stage of their lives, far removed from their day-to-day experiences of monogamous marriage and parenthood.

I tried talking to my single straight friends, but dating was something they’d grown to approach with caution after decades of experience. Unlike them, I felt like a teenager who had been broken up with for the first time since I only dated boys in my teens and twenties, before I knew I was gay. Those friends tried to hold space for me but talking with them felt unhelpful.

Finally, I reached out to Chloe: someone I’d met through a mutual Instagram connection who hosted LGBTQ+ friendship matches the year before.

I’ve never met Chloe in real life. She lives in New Zealand, and I live in Ireland. At the time, we were just acquaintances, but she was navigating a recent heartbreak, too, and we immediately understood each other. After exchanging a few messages, I realised she related to what I was experiencing in a way that my in-person friends did not.