Is your first lesbian breakup really the worst you’ll ever go through?

Some say that ending a sapphic relationship causes more emotional turmoil than other breakups (Picture: Getty Images)

Sitting in the back of an ambulance Pip Williams desperately tried to wipe away their tears.  

Just moments earlier, they had distractedly stepped out into the road and been hit by a car. However, Pip’s upset wasn’t anything to do with that – they were distraught after just breaking up from their first ever girlfriend.

‘I had cried the whole way there and on the way back. I was incredibly distressed, but more about the breakup than the accident,’ Pip tells Metro.

While breakups never really get easier, your first one is generally the worst, or at least, the most memorable. If you’re lucky, you only have to go through it once… that is, unless you’re a queer woman, apparently.

While you can’t really compare one person’s heartbreak to another’s, TikTok can, and users have decided that one type of breakup may top the charts in terms of emotional devastation: your first sapphic breakup.

In Pip’s post-breakup haze, they were hit by a car (Picture: Pip Williams)

An agonising rite of passage that queer women and non-binary people go through, ‘first lesbian breakups’, has become somewhat legendary on the app, with over 32.6million posts using the tag.

‘Just wanted to let you know your first wlw [women-loving-women] heartbreak isn’t as bad as they tell you it is – it’s worse. It’s way, way worse,’ reads the text on a video of TikTok user Eilah.gb, over a video of them looking through a scrapbook while crying.

‘I actually think I might be having a heart attack,’ it adds.

So far, the post has over 80,000 likes, while another video from TikTok user mia_pimentel, which currently has over 154,000 likes, says: ‘Okay, I lied. Don’t date women because a WLW break-up is THE most painful, soul-destroying thing you’ll ever go through.” 

There’s no doubt that sapphic breakups are a hot topic of TikTok conversation, but are they really that bad? Pip, a 30-year-old vet based in Manchester who identifies as bisexual and non-binary, insists theirs was definitely the worst they’ve been through. 

Pip first realised they were queer at 16, and although they met their first girlfriend at 19, they didn’t come out until two years later, which made for ‘quite a tumultuous time’.

‘I had never dated before, but it was absolutely harrowing for me. I felt like the relationship wasn’t right, but that maybe I’d never meet anyone whom I felt like that about again,’ Pip explains.  

Eventually they decided to end the relationship, and on the way home, blared music in their headphones to drown out their distress. However, distracted by the noise and heavy emotions, Pip accidentally stepped out in front of a car as it was pulling away from a crossing.

Although they were lucky not to break anything, an onlooker called an ambulance and Pip was checked over by paramedics.

Not widely out at the time, Pip lied while telling them what had happened, saying their now-ex was a man. ‘I was too scared to admit I was queer in such a high-stress situation where I felt so vulnerable. Looking back, it was a ridiculous choice to make – but I was 20 and really going through it that day.’

Queer people can often put extra pressure on making relationships work, says relationship therapist Shae Harmon (Picture: Getty Images)

While breakups can feel world-ending for anyone especially if they’re still in their teens or early twenties, first lesbian breakups may come with extra layers of complications, such as not feeling able to talk to your family about what you’re going through if you’re not out. Some say they feel let down by the expectation that dating a woman would be easier or fix all the issues that one may have had in straight relationships. 

After all, many people realise they’re queer because heterosexual dating just feels a bit off. So, if a first queer relationship ends up feeling the same way, it can shake someone’s understanding of their identity. 

‘We can all put a lot of pressure on ourselves to make our first relationships work, and this goes especially for queer people,’ explains qualified Sex and Relationship Therapist Shae Harmon, who focuses on queer relationships.

‘We want to prove – to ourselves, family, friends and people who might be less supportive – that we can be happy and fulfilled in our identities and in our first queer relationships. There’s also the added pressure of feeling “queer enough” – if our first relationship doesn’t work out, we can sometimes question it all.’ 

Shae points out that depictions of lesbian relationships in film and TV are often dramatic and fast-moving (looking at you, The L Word), which can set a standard for people getting into them. ‘The idea that first lesbian breakups are the worst continues this narrative. It’s not bad if first lesbian relationships are fast-moving and intense, or if their breakups are emotional or dramatic; it’s just more nuanced.’   

They add: ‘Rejecting heteronormativity is also not about rejecting the ideas of marriage or children or other structural impositions, but about having a choice as to whether you want to subscribe to these things. Because gender identities and appearances can vary, gender roles are less assumed, and therefore can have less expectations.’

Many forms of media, such as TV shows, often perpetuate the stereotype that lesbian relationships are dramatic and intense (Picture: Getty Images)

Because of this, Shae explains, queer people can sometimes project hope and excitement for a more fulfilling future onto that first relationship, which, when lost, can be a very difficult and all-consuming experience to navigate. 

‘It can feel scary as it is our first loss within the community and feels so significant to the formation of our identity.’

Londoner Honey Wyatt has identified as a queer woman since her mid-teens and admits that her first sapphic breakup was devastating. The 25-year-old started dating her first girlfriend at school. 

Although the relationship was often on and off — which Honey describes as not being good for either of them — the pair ended up seeing each other for about a year before she decided to call it quits due to the turbulence of the relationship. 

‘The emotional fallout was difficult, because we were at the same school,’ she remembers. It didn’t help that because she had ended things, Honey also felt responsible for her ex’s happiness and wellbeing. It caused to her being ‘probably the most stressed I’ve ever been in my life’, where she developed a rash and a ‘nervous twitch’, leading eventually to the school to intervene. 

Honey went through her first lesbian breakup while at school (Picture: Honey Wyatt)

‘I didn’t really know how bad it was at the time, because I hadn’t really seen any examples of what queer relationships should be like at that point in my life. I just thought that that was normal, and that was how all relationships were,’ remembers Honey.

After the breakup, she didn’t date women again for about four years. ‘I started to question whether I was actually queer and only dated men. My standards were really low, and it was easy to go along with what men wanted in relationships,’ she admits.

Honey adds that because there’s no mainstream ‘blueprint’ of how a relationship or breakup should look for two women, as there is for a man and a woman, it felt easier to default back to dating guys.

However, she soon became disenchanted and decided to try celibacy for 18 months. Since then, Honey has only dated women and says that subsequent break-ups have been much easier and less dramatic. ‘I always thought that there had to be this big blow-up argument, or all of these issues to end a relationship,’ she explains. ‘Whereas my last relationships ended because we just didn’t work out.’

Her advice to anyone going through such a dramatic first lesbian break-up? ‘Set those boundaries as early on as you can. As hard as it is, maybe don’t speak and don’t keep following and unfollowing each other on social media.’ 

Honey is also keen to point out that the lack of social scripts around queer break-ups can be a positive thing too, as it means you can make decisions that are right for you both, without social pressure. 

‘Don’t forget the magic of queer relationships and reflect on what you’ve learnt about yourself through this experience. Not all is lost.’

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