In this week’s Savage Love: Lesborama

I am a 38-year-old lesbian, very femme, very out. I have a co-worker I can’t figure out. We’ve worked together for a year and gotten very close. I never want to put out the wrong signals to co-workers, and I err on the side of keeping a safe but friendly distance. This is different. We are each other’s confidants at work. We stare at each other across the office, we text until late at night, and we go for weekend dog walks. Her texts aren’t overtly flirty, but they are intimate and feel more than friendly. I’ve never had a “straight” girl act like this toward me. Is she into me? Or just needy? Is it all in my head?
Workplace Obsession Roiling Knowing-If-Nervous Gal

Five weeks ago, a letter writer jumped down my throat for giving advice to lesbians despite not being a lesbian myself. Questions from lesbians have been pouring in ever since—lesbians apparently don’t like being told who they may or may not ask for advice. Three weeks ago, I responded to a man whose co-worker asked him if he might want to sleep with the co-worker’s wife—a co-worker who was “not [his] boss”—and people jumped down my throat for entertaining the idea because it is NEVER EVER NEVER EVER okay to sleep with a co-worker and/or a co-worker’s spouse. And now here I am responding to a question from a lesbian who wants to sleep with a co-worker. Farewell to my mentions, as the kids say.

Here we go, WORKING…

Your straight-identified workmate could be straight, or she could be a lesbian (lots of lesbians come out later in life), or she could be bisexual (most bisexual women are closeted, and others are perceived to be straight despite their best efforts to identify as bisexual)—and lots of late-in-lifers and/or closeted folks don’t come out until some hot same-sex prospect works up the nerve to ask them out. If your co-worker isn’t currently under you at work and you’re not an imminent promotion away from becoming her supervisor and your company doesn’t incentivize workplace romances by banning them, ask your co-worker out on a date—an unambiguous ask for a date, not an appointment to meet up at the dog park. And this is important: Before she can respond to your ask, WORKING, invite her to say “no” if the answer is no or “straight” if the identity is straight. Good luck!

Burn it down, CTOACA. Call or email your partner’s old friend and tell him you think he’s a pushy, unpleasant, smelly asshole and that you don’t want to hang out with him—not at his place, not on a trip, and not at your wedding, which he not only won’t be officiating but, if you had your druthers, he wouldn’t be attending. That should do it. You can’t tell your soon-to-be wife who she can’t have as a friend—that’s controlling behavior—but she can’t force you to spend time with someone you loathe.

That nice straight lady from work is making out with you because she likes it (the thirst is real), FRUSTRATED, or she’s making out with you because she wants you in her life and believes—perhaps mistakenly—that this is the only way to hold your interest/fuel your obsession (the thirst is faked). If she likes it, then she’s a lesbian or bisexual but so invested in her heterosexual identity that she can’t “go there.” (Alabama, you said? Maybe she doesn’t feel safe being out in your community.) If she’s making out with you only because she’s lonely and values your friendship and/or enjoys the ego boost of being your obsession, then you don’t want to keep making out with her—for her sake (no one feels good after making out with someone they’d rather not be making out with) and for your own sake (those make-out sessions give you false hope and prevent you from directing your romantic and erotic energies elsewhere).

Emmy Award-winning actress Sarah Paulson is 43 years old and Emmy Award-winning actress Holland Taylor is 75—and Sarah and Holland have been girlfriends for almost three years. Emmy Award-winning talk-show host Ellen DeGeneres is 60 years old and Screen Actors Guild Award-winning actress Portia De Rossi is 45 years old—and Ellen and Portia have been together for 13 years and married for almost 10. There are lots of non-Emmy/SAG Award-winning lesbians out there in relationships with significant age gaps—and at least one lesbian in Alabama who desperately wants to be in one. So don’t let the lack of older women on dating apps prevent you from putting yourself out there on apps and elsewhere, ELDER. As for your rookie status, there are two examples of lesbians pining over rookies in this very column!

And remember: If you put yourself out there, you might be alone a year from now—but if you don’t put yourself out there, you’ll definitely be alone a year from now.