The Cost of Being Seen

Visibility is a strange thing when you're LGBTQIA+. You want it. You fight for it. And it still costs something every single time. The pride and the fear show up together. And they don't cancel each other out.

I did the calculation without even realising I was doing it.

It was a good day. Me and my partner had been invited onto an LGBTQ+ podcast as a couple. And somewhere on the walk to the studio, I started telling myself a different story.

This isn't really about me, I thought. He needed to fill a slot. I'm helping out. If it's a disaster, it's fine, it wasn't really mine anyway.

Except that wasn't true. He'd asked us because he genuinely wanted us there. Because our story as a lesbian couple mattered to him. But I'd already rewritten it before I got through the door. Just in case.

By the time I arrived, I was talking too much. Over-explaining.

My partner was already there. She was okay, but I could see something in her too. Not fear. Something quieter. That particular LGBTQIA+ anxiety that doesn't have a name; you're not nervous about the thing itself, you know you can do this, you're nervous about something you've carried for a long time.

Being seen. Really seen. As yourself. With your person. On record.

There's a specific kind of exhaustion that comes with lesbian visibility. The constant low-level calculation of how much of yourself is safe to show. Whether this room, this moment, this person is worth the risk of being fully yourself in. Most of the time you don't even notice you're doing it. It just runs, quietly, in the background of your life.

Before we went on, I pulled her aside. "Just let me tell my part. I'll let you tell yours."

We've been together long enough to know how it goes. One of us starts a story and the other one can't help themselves. A small correction here, a detail added there. Harmless at home. In public, on record, it felt like something we needed to agree on first.

She laughed. I laughed. And we went on and it was brilliant.

But looking back, that conversation was the calculation. It wasn't about the podcast. It was about how much of ourselves we were bringing in. Two women in a lesbian relationship, quietly negotiating how much of themselves was safe to show up as that day.

We didn't call it that. We never do.

Until now.

If any of this landed, downlaod our free LGBTQ+ Safety Toolkit at lovebobu.com. No sign up. No catch. Just something we made because we know what it costs to show up.