The short answer
Go to the party. Say hello first, keep it to thirty seconds, then go and find your people. Don’t ask your friends to pick a side, do ask them for a heads-up. Skip the tiny dinners for a while, not the big nights. The lesbian scene is small. Your dignity doesn’t have to be.
Why is it so hard to avoid your ex when you’re a lesbian?
First, babe: you’re not being dramatic. You’re being a lesbian with a social life, which is a slightly different condition.
Here’s the thing nobody tells you when you come out: straight people get to break up and never see each other again. We get to break up and then see each other at the pub quiz. The scene is small, the venues are smaller, and most of us met our friends through someone we once snogged. Your ex isn’t haunting you. She’s just at the same three places everyone is at.
The experts back this up. Xavier Patschke, a therapist at the Gender & Sexuality Therapy Center in New York, told NPR’s Life Kit in 2024 that queer communities are simply smaller, so “you’re going to run into some exes”. The question, he says, isn’t how to avoid it but how to do it well, because you’re almost certainly going to be in community together afterwards.
That’s also why queer people are more likely to stay friendly with an ex in the first place. A 2017 study led by Rebecca Griffith at the University of Kansas, published in Personal Relationships, found that LGBTQ participants were more likely than straight ones to keep a friendship with an ex. Across everyone surveyed, around 60 per cent were still friends with at least one former partner. Griffith’s team found four main reasons people do it: security (not wanting to lose the support and shared history), practicality (shared friends, shared flat, shared dog), civility (being polite) and unresolved romantic feelings. The first three tended to go fine. The last one didn’t.
So you’re not being dramatic. You’re in a structurally awkward situation that most queer women will recognise, and the good news is that it has a playbook. (If you want the longer read on why our breakups look different from everyone else’s, start with do lesbian relationships last?)
Should I go to the party if my ex will be there?
Mostly, yes. Hiding at home gives her the pub, the group chat and the Sunday roast, and you get a Deliveroo and a sad bath. That’s not a boundary, that’s a forfeit.
But there’s a difference between going and going to everything. A quick way to sort it:
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- Big nights, go. Birthdays, house parties, a queer night with 200 people in it. There’s room to orbit each other without colliding, and leaving early doesn’t look like a statement.
- Tiny things, skip for now. A dinner for five. A cinema trip. Anything where you’d be sat next to her for three hours with nowhere to put your face. You’re allowed to say “not this one” without a speech.
- The first time is the worst time. Pick a big, easy event for your first sighting, not a candlelit birthday dinner. Get it over with on your terms.
If you’re not sure whether you’re ready, use Patschke’s test. He suggests noticing what your body does when her name comes up or a text lands: if it’s a spike of anxiety rather than a shrug, that’s a sign you need more space, not more exposure. He also points out that you don’t need a perfect answer yet. In his words, “I don’t know is a perfectly OK boundary”. You can go to this one, see how it feels and decide again next time.
One honest caveat. If the relationship involved anything controlling, frightening or unsafe, this isn’t a party etiquette question and you don’t owe anyone a civil hello. Protect yourself first, tell a friend you trust, and if you need support, Galop runs the LGBT+ domestic abuse helpline.
Your next read: Do lesbian relationships last? The divorce rate, explained
What do I say when I walk in and she’s there?
Say hello first. Not because you’re the bigger person (although you are, obviously) but because it ends the suspense. The longer you both circle the room pretending not to have seen each other, the more it becomes the main event, for you and for every friend watching over the top of their drink.
The thirty-second hello goes like this:
- Walk in, clock her, don’t change course. Say hi to the host, get a drink, then go over. Doing it in the first ten minutes is far easier than doing it at midnight.
- One line, warm, done. “Hey, good to see you. How’ve you been?” Let her answer. Say something true and small back: “Glad to hear it. Right, I’m going to find Priya.” Smile. Leave.
- Don’t review the relationship. Not the breakup, not who’s seeing whom, not her new haircut. If she opens that door, you can say “not tonight, but good to see you” and mean it.
- Then actually go and have a night. Talk to people who aren’t her. Dance. Stop checking where she is. You came to a party, not a surveillance shift.
If you can’t manage the hello yet, a nod and a smile across the room is still a hello. The only option that doesn’t work is spending the whole night in the kitchen talking to someone’s flatmate about sourdough. It fools nobody, including the flatmate.
How do I ask my friends not to pick sides?
By not asking them to. The fastest way to lose a shared friend group is to make people choose, even gently, even by implication. Your friends liked you both before the breakup and they’re allowed to like you both after it.
What you can ask for is information and a bit of grace:
- Ask for a heads-up, not a ban. “I’m fine seeing her, I’d just rather know in advance. Can you tell me if she’s coming?” That’s reasonable. “Can you not invite her?” is a bigger ask than it sounds, and it puts your friend in the middle.
- Call time on any rota. If a friend starts inviting one of you to one thing and the other to the next, she means well, but a one-in-one-out system turns every invite into a decision about you two. Tell her so, kindly: “You don’t need to split us up. Invite who you want. I’ll decide what I come to.”
- Don’t vent to the mutuals. Everything you say about your ex to a shared friend is said to someone who still loves her. Save the full unpacking for your sister, a friend from outside the group or a therapist. Your mutuals get the headline, not the director’s cut.
- Don’t use them as a go-between. No “did she mention me”, no passing on messages. Marisa Franco, a Washington DC psychologist and the author of Platonic, says a friendly-acquaintance level is often the realistic goal when you share a friend group, and that works best when nobody is relaying intel.
And build something that’s yours. Host your own thing: a pub table, a gig, a night at a bar. It won’t have her in it and, more importantly, it won’t be organised around her absence.
What if she’s brought someone new?
It will happen. Someone will walk in holding her hand, or a friend will say “she’s seeing someone” in the voice people use for bad weather. You’re allowed to find this horrible for about ten minutes.
Then the same rules apply, with one extra: be decent to the new girl. She hasn’t done anything to you, she’s probably nervous, and she’ll have heard your name. A “hi, I’m [you], nice to meet you” costs nothing and makes you look like exactly what you are, which is a grown woman with a life. Then go and find Priya again.
If you realise you’re not fine, leave. Properly leave, with a quick goodbye to the host, not a disappearing act that gets its own thread in the group chat. “Early start tomorrow, this was lovely” is a complete sentence. Nobody needs to know you cried on the 55.
And if it keeps hurting more than you expected, take that seriously. Franco notes that research shows “it’s just harder to get over your ex if you stay friends”, so if you’ve been trying to be mates with her as well as sharing a friend group, you might need to dial the friendship back to civil for a bit. Griffith’s study found the same thing from the other direction: friendships kept going out of leftover romantic feeling were the ones that went badly. Being friendly at parties and being friends are two different jobs, and you only have to do the first one.
If the low mood sticks around for weeks rather than days, that’s one for your GP or a therapist, not for us. The Samaritans are on 116 123, free, anytime.
So what should you actually say?
Screenshot this bit.
To the host, before the party:
“Is she coming on Saturday? Totally fine either way, I’d just rather know so I’m not doing maths at the door.”
To your ex, when you walk in:
“Hey, good to see you. How’ve you been?” (Listen. Nod.) “Glad to hear it. Right, I’m off to find Priya. Have a good one.”
If she tries to get into it:
“Not tonight, but it’s good to see you.”
To the friend running the rota:
“I love you for this, but you don’t need to split us up. Invite who you want and I’ll pick what I come to. Just give me a heads-up when she’s there.”
To a mutual who starts gossiping about her:
“Honestly I’m trying to stay out of it. How are you, though?”
When you need to leave:
“Early start tomorrow, this was lovely.” (Then go. The bus is not an emotional event.)
To the new girlfriend:
“Hi, I’m [name], nice to meet you.” That’s it. That’s the whole script.
To yourself, in the loo mirror:
“She’s at the party. She’s not the party.”
Go on. Go to the party. Then report back.
Nonchalant x
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Babs heads up Logistics and Product here at Nonchalant Magazine.
