Originally drafted on October 10-12, 2025 and June 3, 2026.
Revised on August 25, 2026-September 4, 2026.

Throughout my divorce, I erred on the side of being an open book, perhaps to a fault in some cases. Just like new parents get asked way too soon when they’re having a second child and new entrepreneurs get asked way too soon when they’re planning to expand their company, newly separated people get asked way too soon when they’re going to start dating again. And so when I was asked this in the early days of my divorce (and a lot of times even when I wasn’t) I stated clearly and emphatically that while I was in no position to date anytime soon, once I did start dating, I was planning to date women.

Once I allowed myself to consider that dating women was an almost certainty for my hot divorcee future, it also triggered a lot of really deep and often intensely uncomfortable introspection. The question I’ve kept circling back around to over and over is why, despite having grown up in a liberal family with a mom who had gay and lesbian friends, with my own intensely ally personality, with many queer friends as a teenager, and even if asked about my sexuality (which rarely happened) would have answered I was “mostly straight” or “reluctantly straight” .... Why did I never explore my sexuality?

Enter “compulsory heterosexuality,” one of the most frequently used phrases you’ll see among later in life (aka late bloomer) lesbian online spaces and the lodestar rearview mirror that has helped decades of late in life queer women unpack the detours we experienced along the way. The term originates from an article written by Adrienne Rich in 1980 titled Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence. Rich’s essay is very academic, and not necessarily an easy read if you aren’t used to the voice and structure of academic criticism. But if you’re up to the task, the essay is well worth the read, even (and maybe especially) if you’re not queer. Rich’s conceptualization of compulsory heterosexuality frames the way in which patriarchal culture works overtime to make heterosexuality seem natural or the default for women, and pathologizes lesbianism. The socialization and subsequent enforcement of compulsory heterosexuality is carried out through everything from violence against women, extraction of their labor, the romanticization of marriage and being chosen by a man, and even the destruction of archival records that provide evidence of women loving, and being attracted to, other women.

I’d been deep into r/latebloomerlesbians and other similar spaces for a few months by the time I sat down to read Rich’s original essay. Going back to the source material is always a good reminder for how much online discourse can water down important theoretical concepts (see 80% of most discussions about emotional labor), but it’s also interesting how much Adrienne Rich’s essay reflects the fact that when it was written, the economic calculus for women staying in marriage was a much different picture than it is today. When the essay was written in 1980, women had only been able to get credit from financial institutions for just under a decade and women weren’t nearly as represented in the full-time workforce as they are today.

In online discourse, compulsory heterosexuality (or comphet) often gets watered down to the most individualized experiences of it. Over and over, late bloomers try to parse out how much of their supposed former straightness was because they liked male attention or confused it for their own desire. Sometimes women will acknowledge the cultural safety of heterosexuality, especially women who grew up in homophobic households, cultures, or religions. But with the rare exceptions of jokes about queer women choosing men as a recession indicator, I don’t often see women under the age of 50 on Al Gore’s internet unpacking the material and financial security of exiting heterosexuality, perhaps because on many economic measures (though not all!!!) women have closed the gap with men. Even though aspects of Rich’s essay might seem dated or not resonate with many late bloomers, her observations about the ways in which compulsory heterosexuality is bound up with a collective sense of material security and safety hit home for me in a way that a lot of chronically online explorations of comphet don’t always resonate (for example, I don’t really mourn feeling like “dating men was easy” because men rarely expressed attraction or desire for me).

Around late bloomer lesbian online spaces, many of the women posting for the first time are working through a reckoning that is playing out while they’re still married or partnered with a man. They might have a catalyst (a woman they have an affair with or a crush they feel compelled to act on) or they might realize that the “something missing” from their marriage to a man is that they actually don’t want men. Many of the posts are about women processing their gay awakening and figuring out how to have the courage to go through with blowing up their marriage or breaking up with their boyfriend. The stories of women whose male partners left them for reasons other than their own revelations about their sexuality are few and far between.

And so, at least very early on, reading the stories of other late bloomers briefly compounded my sense of deep shame and isolation that I didn’t really begin exploring my sexuality until my unexpected divorce. Not only did I feel like a total loser because my seemingly perfect on paper husband left me out of nowhere (can you hear the comphet dripping through that sentiment?), but reading the stories of other women working up the courage to leave their husbands made me feel like a real coward for never having the stones to look at my own sexuality with clear eyes and for burying it simply as a wistful fantasy for another lifetime I’d probably never get to experience.

Whenever I’ve talked about what I’m unpacking to anyone who will listen, most people sort of shrug it off. Not in a rude or dismissive way, but in a “sexuality is weird, bodies are weird, people repress all sorts of things about their lives to get through their day to day, you’re no different.” I think others find it a bit curious that I have such a fixation with how I couldn’t have seen what now feels so obvious. Some people have even asked, “does it really matter why you buried it in the past?” since it’s widely accepted by many queers that queer timelines look really different from the life milestones of straight people. But I’m fixated on this for a couple reasons: first because I keep wondering, gee if I could have totally missed this aspect of my life, what else am I missing? Second, because I see how even though compulsory heterosexuality clearly hurts queer women the most, it also does quite a bit of damage to straight women too (that’s a whole other essay or three for later).

In the months since I started drafting this essay, I’ve given myself a lot of grace for understanding why and how deeply my repression ran. I’ve come to realize that even with a supportive family, you can’t discount the influence of larger culture and social settings. There is still a part of my brain that worries about getting hate crimed anytime I’m near the part of Cincinnati where I went to elementary school and junior high. I grew up in an intensely homophobic environment where teachers and friends alike said and did cruel things I still remember 30 years later. Consuming queer history, prioritizing queer friends, and dating other women who also have previous extensive relationships with men also helped me chill out a little bit and realize how many sapphics navigate these waters, especially for anyone born prior to the 1990s.

When I say compulsory heterosexuality is a hell of a drug, I mean that without a hint of irony. I sometimes joke about divesting from heterosexuality, because it was abundantly clear to me how much living a formerly straight life accrued material benefits to me, such as homeownership (which I almost certainly could not have afforded on my own). But there is also a detox process too, in which the further I travel away from my formerly straight life, the more I feel like every day I am learning new things about myself and how I want to show up in the world. Sometimes it is hard and lonely, but at least it is honest and authentic.

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