Straight Talk: Is my lesbian friend flirting with me?

Q: My lesbian friend is always coming on to me even though she knows I'm straight. I feel like there's a lot of tension and I'm not sure what should I tell her.

A: I'm wondering exactly what you mean by "coming on"? Is she touching you inappropriately? Do her eyes lock on yours? There's plenty of room for miscues and miscommunication in any relationship, and this can be especially so between straights and gays. Sometimes heterosexuals misread acts of friendship or simple neediness as sexual advances when they're not intended that way. Is that possible in this case? Or, is this simply an unrequited crush?

On the other hand, I'm guessing from the fact that you haven't brought this matter up with your friend yet that you're not completely sure how you feel about it. If you were seriously bothered or turned off, wouldn't you have blurted it out by now? I'm not trying to say you're a closeted lesbian. But perhaps you're not sure about your sexuality, which is very common by the way, even if you're in a heterosexual relationship or just identify as straight, and definitely not a problem unless you find it so.

Our culture is so focused on labels - gay, straight, bi (or for that matter Republican, Democrat, Libertarian) that it's easy to forget about the shades of grey inherent in sexual identity. As long ago as the 1940's, sex researcher Alfred Kinsey developed a scale to measure sexual orientation and found that most people weren't completely straight or gay but lay somewhere in the middle along a "continuum" that includes even those who never actually act on their desires. Kinsey wrote: "The world is not to be divided into sheep and goats. It is a fundamental of taxonomy that nature rarely deals with discrete categories."

All of this is to suggest that you might take this chance to give your own sexuality some thought. Your friend may be absolutely in love with you, just trying to show you her platonic adoration, or flirty by nature, and you might not find out which one without asking. But I suggest first being honest with yourself about what you want; even just a little bit of reflection will do you good. And it will definitely make your communication with this friend all that much clearer should you decide to bring this subject up with her.

Steven

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