Looking for LGBTQIA+ Love - What does it look like for us?

Open Minds Online Group - Mar 23

Where did you get your ideas about love and relationships from and how easy is it for you to break away from these ideas or do something different?

This month our online space was the last place where we took the topic of ‘love and dating’. We spoke about it in London in January and Birmingham in February.

We opened the group conversation with a chat about the ways we have approached relationships in the past and how difficult it can be to find someone who we get on with and who treats us how we would like to be treated. We also talked about how dating on apps has made some things easier and some things much harder, and how we can work out ways to get around app culture.

Meeting someone who you want to be either physically or emotionally intimate with can be a scary thing and we talked about how the process can sometimes leave us vulnerable to some unpleasant encounters with other people. We talked about how it might be easier to try and meet people at events or activities where you’re doing something together. This can allow for a more natural conversation to start up.

We had a good discussion towards the end of the group about how being LGBTQIA+ can allow us to create connections and relationships with other people that are outside of the heterosexual man/woman set up. Open relationships, being with more than 1 person at a time and being fluid about gender roles can be exciting ways to explore our bodies and to develop different ways to be intimate. We talked about how we can agree different kinds of boundaries with our partners where we don’t feel like we need to control how they use their bodies.

Of course, this is just one way of thinking about relationships and intimacy, and it can be the best thing about queer ways of imagining the world - you decide how you want to do things.

In saying this, many of us still feel a lot of pressure about who we can and can’t date and what decisions we can make about who we’re intimate with. Some of these pressures are out of our control, for example experiencing racism on apps, and others are more about how we’ve been raised to see the world. We spent some time talking about how racism within Punjabi and South Asian communities is still common and it’s also tied up with colourism, which is valuing people with lighter skin more than people with darker skin.

So what have we taken away from our 3 sessions on talking about dating? Well one of the big things is that many of us are enjoying dating and sex and that we are also enjoying trying   different ways of being intimate with other people. We also learnt that many of us want to find ‘love’ or a long-term relationship but that it can be a real struggle finding someone who understands us and who will value the things that are important to us.

Racism in the LGBTQIA+ world still exists although in our London group this was felt to be less of a problem. The lack of visibility of LGBTQIA+ people with South Asian heritage who identify as women is still a big problem, especially outside of London. Some of us have been in long-term relationships for many years and this is what suits us. Some of us are not really looking for intimacy or a relationship and are very happy with this too.

We are a diverse group of people, and just as you would expect, our conversations have been pretty diverse too! There’s no one size fits all approach to dating and there are signs that a lot of things are getting easier. We also learned that many of the problems with dating have been around for a long time and if you’re finding it tough, speak to other people in your LGBTQIA+ network or come to one of our groups to talk it out. Hopefully by asking enough people about what worked for them - you’ll find a way forward that works for you!

We are grateful for all the people who took part in the discussion and look forward to seeing some of you at our London group in April. Our next online group will be in June 2023!

With warm wishes,

The Open Minds Project ­

We meet on the last Wednesday of each month and if you want to join us at an Open Minds Meeting, please visit the Events page on our website.