L.A. Affairs: 23 LGBTQ+ dating stories for Pride Month

Karen and I had just bought a three-bedroom house and gone to our first WeHo “Maybe Baby” meeting — a sperm bank seminar for gay parents — when we broke up.

I have terrible luck with women.

After the dissolution of my 21-year relationship, I found myself in a unique situation.

I’ve always had a thing for people who don’t like me. Men, especially.

I once read that there are about 590,000 gay people in Los Angeles.

When I met A. I wondered if it was too good to be true.

It was a figurative flip of a coin: My friend Rick and I were deciding on where to go for a weekend away.

I broke out in a cold sweat updating my Bumble profile in my new Mid-City apartment.

Instagram was right: Keeping a relationship a secret can sometimes be just what that relationship needs.

Moving to L.A. was a chance to begin dating anew. No one seemed quite right. Well, there was this one woman I liked spending time with, but she’d firmly said she didn’t like to hike, and that’s something I love...

My path seeking love had been long and circuitous and took me through many L.A.-area neighborhoods. I kept looking for “The One” but kept getting stuck with “Not This One.”

A therapist explained that violent traumas can make all your inner emotions flare. All your conflicts, even those years old and long buried. And so I confessed it all. All my struggles. And this time, with the therapist’s help, I recognized that I was a woman.

I am the invisible “B” in LGBTQIA+ — and I deserve to be seen. “Bierasure” is one of the lesser known issues that plague the LGBTQIA+ community. It’s the tendency to ignore and falsify evidence of bisexuality and its existence, and it leads to painful reactions when someone comes out as bisexual.

I told my best friend that I wasn’t sure whether it was a date or just a casual meetup. When Andrew showed up at my house in a T-shirt, shorts and flip-flops, I thought: ‘OK, not a date.’

My boyfriend was sweet. My boyfriend was hysterical. My boyfriend always told me how much he loved me. When we would have sex, my whole body felt worshipped, cared for — nurtured, even.

Navigating gay Los Angeles, I’ve been caught between two seemingly incompatible identities — queer and military. Both are important to me. Embodying both can sometimes feel impossible.

People have tried to define me my entire life. And for a good part of it, I let them. At some point, I had to grow up and be a man, which for me meant standing up for what I believe in, even or especially when it was hard to do so.

I also bought a Gucci shirt to get his attention. Would this turn into a meet-cute?

More than once our kids have asked, ‘Why didn’t you two get divorced?’ As my husband and I approached our 50th anniversary, I thought about the high and lows of our marriage as well as fantasized about other types of togetherness.

Ruben and I spoke by phone daily, and our relationship only deepened. I planned to visit him in Mexico whenever I could, and we’d enjoy whatever time we could spend together. Then came COVID-19.

I met a really handsome guy. Turns out he was looking for a sugar daddy.

I grew up boy-crazy in sleepy, sterile Orange County. Now I’m in my 30s, living in Los Angeles and married to a man, but I’m ready to start dating women.

When I got around to opening the message, mainly to clear the notification from my phone, I was surprised. Then she asked me on a date. I had to say yes.