The short answer
Yes, it’s a lesbian thing. Queer women stay friends with their exes more than anyone else, and most of the time it’s exactly what it looks like: a friendship. But your feelings count too. The question isn’t whether she’s friends with her ex, it’s how that friendship behaves. Here’s how to tell the difference, and what to say to her without sounding like you’re issuing a ban.
Why do lesbians stay friends with their exes?
Babe, you have found yourself in one of the oldest sapphic traditions there is. The ex who’s still at every birthday. The ex who has a key “for the cat”. The ex who is now, somehow, your girlfriend’s closest friend and the person who texts her first when something good happens. The L Word opened with a literal chart of it.
There are two reasons it happens, and neither of them is “she’s not over her”.
The first is maths. The scene is small, so most of us met our friends through someone we once dated, and cutting an ex off can mean cutting off half a friendship group. If you want the longer version of that problem, read my ex is in my friend group – what do I do?.
The second is older than any of us. Back in 1991, the anthropologist Kath Weston spent years interviewing lesbians and gay men in San Francisco for her book Families We Choose, and found that queer people, often cut off from the families they were born into, were building their own out of lovers, ex-lovers and friends. The ex who becomes family isn’t a quirk. It’s how the community has looked after itself for decades.
The research since backs her up. A 2017 study in the journal Personal Relationships, led by Rebecca Griffith at the University of Kansas, found that LGBTQ+ participants were more likely than straight ones to be friends with an ex, and that sexual orientation was one of the things that predicted staying friends at all. The reasons they gave leaned on not wanting to lose an ex’s support, advice and shared history. When your support network is smaller, you don’t throw bits of it away because you stopped sleeping together.
So you’re not dating someone who is being weird. You’re dating someone who is being a lesbian, and her ex is probably part of her chosen family. The question is what sort of friendship it is, and the same study has an answer for that too.
Is it normal to be friends with your ex?
Yes, and not just for us. Across both of Griffith’s surveys, a majority of people said they’d stayed friends with at least one ex: 59 per cent in the first study and 65 per cent in the second, according to a 2021 Psychology Today summary of the research. Staying friends with an ex is, in other words, the norm rather than the exception.
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What matters is why. Griffith’s team found four main reasons people stay friends with an ex:
- Security. Not wanting to lose their support, advice, trust or shared history.
- Practical. Shared friends, a shared flat, a shared dog, the aforementioned cat.
- Civility. Being polite, not wanting to hurt them, avoiding a scene.
- Unresolved romantic feelings. Still into them, and hoping.
The first three tended to go fine. Friendships kept for practical or civility reasons were the most positive, though they often faded. Security friendships were positive too, and these are the ones queer people lean on most. The fourth reason is the only one the researchers linked to negative outcomes, including making it harder to find a new partner.
So the friendship itself isn’t the problem. A friendship built on unfinished business might be. And you’re allowed to want to know which one you’re looking at, because the sting you’re feeling is also normal. Dr Becky Spelman, an HCPC-registered counselling psychologist with over 20 years’ experience and the founder of London’s Private Therapy Clinic, says this question comes up constantly in her therapy room, and that there’s no simple yes or no. In her words, “being jealous is quite a normal, natural, healthy human emotion”. The trick is working out whether yours is telling you something, or just talking.
Is it a friendship, or is something still going on?
Here’s your scorecard. Be honest, and score the friendship, not your worst 2am theory about it.
Signs it’s a friendship
- You’ve met the ex, or you’ve been invited to. Spelman’s view is that a partner who refuses to let you meet their ex is the suspicious part, not the ex.
- The contact is open. Her phone isn’t face down, the ex is in the group chat, and plans with her get mentioned before they happen.
- The ex knows about you, and is normal about you. Awkward is fine. Frosty is information.
- Your girlfriend still comes to you first. When something goes wrong at work, you get the call, not the ex.
- The friendship looks like her other friendships. Same frequency, same tone, same amount of eye contact.
Signs there’s lingering energy
- Secrecy. Texts you’re not allowed to see, meet-ups you hear about afterwards, a name that gets changed in her phone.
- Flirty or intimate texting. “Baby”, late-night check-ins, reminiscing about the relationship rather than the present.
- Prioritising the ex. Plans with you get moved for her. Your girlfriend feels guilty if she doesn’t reply to her within the hour. Spelman flags daily, lengthy contact with no practical reason behind it as a red flag.
- The ex is where the emotional support goes. Your girlfriend tells her about your relationship problems before she tells you.
- Nobody ever says the breakup out loud. If it still feels like a pause rather than an ending, it might be.
Three or more from the second list and you have something worth raising. One from the second list and five from the first? That’s a friendship, and the sting is yours to sit with rather than hers to fix. Both are allowed. Both are better talked about than stewed over.
Your next read: My ex is in my friend group – what do I do? The lesbian survival plan, or if you want the data on why our relationships look different from everyone else’s, do lesbian relationships last?
How do you bring it up without sounding controlling?
The controlling version of this conversation starts with her behaviour and ends with a rule. The useful version starts with your feeling and ends with a question. Keep it on that side of the line and you can say almost anything.
Lead with the feeling, not the charge sheet. “I feel a bit wobbly about how close you two are” lands. “You text her more than me” starts a court case.
Ask, don’t accuse. Spelman suggests opening it up with something like asking what comes up for your girlfriend when she thinks about her ex. If the answer is “nothing, we’re basically siblings now”, that’s the reassurance you were after. If the answer is a long pause, that’s worth knowing too. Either way you asked a question, not laid a trap.
Don’t ask for a ban. Spelman is clear that you don’t need to aggressively place a no-contact rule on your relationship. Demanding she cut off a friend is the one move that turns you into the villain of the story, even when your instinct was right. Ask for what you actually want, which is usually honesty and feeling like the priority.
Ask to meet her. This is the single most useful thing you can do. Spelman recommends it, and in our experience nothing deflates an imaginary ex like a real one eating chips across the table from you. Watch how your girlfriend is around her. Warm and relaxed is good. Neutral is good. Performing for her is not.
Agree what reassurance looks like. A heads-up before they meet. Not being the last to know. Being included sometimes, not every time. Small, specific and easy for her to actually do.
Do not read her phone. Spelman describes a client who did exactly that. She found no cheating, just a lot of over-reliance on the ex, and then couldn’t say what she’d found without admitting how. Everything you learn that way costs you the right to be angry about it. Ask instead.
What if she won’t hear it, or it really is a red flag?
First, give it one conversation to go badly. People get defensive about their friends, and a prickly first reaction doesn’t mean she doesn’t care. Try again in daylight.
If it keeps going badly, that’s the answer you were looking for. A girlfriend who won’t discuss it, won’t let you meet the ex, and keeps rearranging your plans around her is telling you where you stand, and it isn’t first. That’s not you being controlling. That’s you noticing. You don’t have to leave over it, but you do get to decide what you’ll put up with, and Spelman’s advice for anyone stuck here is a few sessions with a couples therapist rather than another year of the same argument.
It’s also worth asking the harder question: is this about her ex, or about you? If every partner’s friendships have felt like a threat, if you’re scrolling the ex’s Instagram at lunch, if the jealousy arrived before any evidence did, then the work is yours and a therapist can help with it. That’s not a failing. It’s just a different problem from the one you thought you had, and a more fixable one.
And one thing we won’t joke about. If your girlfriend uses her ex to make you feel small, punishes you for asking questions, or you feel frightened rather than jealous, that’s not a friendship problem. Galop runs the LGBT+ domestic abuse helpline and will talk it through with you, no label required.
So what should you actually say?
Steal whichever one fits. Say it sober, in person, not mid-argument and not at 1am.
The opener
“can I tell you something that’s been on my mind? It’s not a drama, I just don’t want to sit on it. I’ve been feeling a bit unsure about how close you and [ex] are. O kmow she’s important to you. Can we talk about it?”
The question, not the trap
“What’s it like for you, being firends with her now? Does it ever feel like more thank a firendship, or is that long gone?”
The one that stops you sounding controlling
“I’m not asking you to stop seing her. I’d never ask that. I’m asking to feel like I’m the one you come to first, and to not be the last to know when you two have plans.”
The meet-the-ex ask
“You’re really important to me and I want to know the peaople in your life. Could we all do a drink sometime? I think I’ll feel a lot better once she’s a person and not a name on your phone.”
If it’s gone badly once
“I dont think that went how either of us wanted. I’m not accusing you of anything. Can we try again tonight, with less wine?”
If it keeps going badly
“I’ve raised this a few times now and I keep feeling brushed off. I need us to find a way to talk about it, and if we can do that on our own I’d like us to try it with someone who can help.”
She might surprise you. Most exes-as-friends are exactly that, and most girlfriends, asked kindly, will tell you so and mean it. The ones who won’t have told you something too.
Go on. Ask her. Then report back.
Nonchalant x
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Babs heads up Logistics and Product here at Nonchalant Magazine.
