Lesbian twin flames. When you meet someone and feel that mystical, mythical, magical connection instantly, a lesbian connection for which you’re willing to move mountains, climb great heights, and sometimes fall… hard.

Personally, when I’ve read about lesbian twin flames, it was always within the first couple of months, when everything felt so magical I could barely believe it…

Or after the end, when my heart had been shattered into a million pieces. Again.

Can you relate?

I think this story is common in the lesbian community, and I’m not just talking about younger lesbians. It happens just as much to older lesbians.

But still, even though you know the ending already, let me tell you the story…

My Last Lesbian Twin Flame Story

The last time this happened to me, I pulled up at our meeting place, she got out of her pickup truck, and — wow. She was radiant. I’d seen pictures of her online, but in person, her smile wowed me even more.

She picked up the picnic bag I’d brought for us, slung it across her butch lesbian shoulder, and down we walked.

Time by the ocean. Lunch in a eucalyptus grove. Deep conversation by a little stream.

What could be more romantic for a lesbian first date?

She listened to me. She seemed genuinely curious about me. And then, as I was talking, she put her hand on my leg — and the entire universe seemed to concentrate right there.

Her hand. My leg.

I’d been answering a question she’d asked, but I was too distracted to continue. Later, we stood up and she gently placed her hands on my shoulders, then turned me around to see the mama duck and five fuzzy ducklings paddling down the stream.

I was a goner. 

Lesbians and queer women often fall even harder than other people, because two women together tend not to resist. Emotional intimacy feels so very good at first, like manna from heaven.

I didn’t fall by myself. She fell hard at first, too. She told me, “We’ve been given a great gift.” She said, “There are pockets of fear, but we’re going to do this, because we’re not idiots.”

When I got scared, I repeated those words in my mind. We’re not idiots. 

And we weren’t. We were both published writers with a lot of years of lesbian love experience. We knew ourselves, or we thought we did. We certainly seemed bent on writing a new lesbian romance story in each other’s arms.

“This is the love of a lifetime,” she told me one day as we lay together on my couch. And I let myself fall even harder, because it felt that way to me, too.

Two months later, she broke up with me suddenly.

She hadn’t decided to, she said, it just happened inside her. She felt “big soul love” for me now, not “girlfriendly” love.

I begged her to go to a lesbian therapist or coach with me. She said No, we couldn’t, because we weren’t a couple now.

I tried for months to change her mind.

If I can give you one piece of advice, now, about lesbian twin flames, it would be this: if you think she’s a “runner” and you’re the “chaser,” just stop. Just stop chasing.

As the old expression says, “If you love someone, set them free. If they come back, they’re yours. If they don’t, they never were.”

Sometimes it’s a cliche because it’s true.

If Lesbian Twin Flames Are Real, Why Doesn’t It Work Out?

So why do these things happen? How can it be that two women can fall in love so deeply, and then either the whole thing falls apart, often in less than a year — or one woman chooses to end it?

I’ve pondered this from every angle. I’ve read about lesbian soulmates and lesbian twin flames. I’ve considered the butch and femme angle (she was definitely a masculine lesbian, or what they call masc these days, and yes, that was part of the draw between us, and also contributed to our trouble understanding each other.

I also delved deep into attachment theory. Honestly, I believe it explains a lot. Often, as two women grow closer, one of them will get scared and start pulling away — which often scares the other, who then starts pushing for more closeness, which then makes her girlfriend pull away even further… have you been there, too?

But to be honest, psychological theories only feel like part of the picture to me. I also believe in soul contracts. I believe it’s possible that her soul and mine agreed before we were born to play something out together.

Then, when we met, I thought our powerful connection meant happily-ever-after.

I was wrong.

And to be honest, I ignored the red flags. I ignored the best lesbian dating advice. I told myself to go slow, and then spent the last hour of our first date making out with her in my car, our heart chakras pressed together. Oh yeah. Those heart chakras get me every time.

And when I finally accepted that she was done, it took me months to find a way to want my life again.

It took almost a year before I could see her as a beautiful person who wasn’t meant for me, and appreciate the amazing woman who showed up in my life actually ready, willing and able to love me.

You’ve heard it before: the one who actually wants you is your real lesbian soulmate. The one who leaves couldn’t possibly be your twin flame. But sometimes the fire rises higher in our hearts when someone is just out of reach.

I see you shaking your head. You don’t want to believe me.

“She’ll come back,” you say. Or, “There could never be another love for me.”

I get it. Believe me, I get it. I wrote a whole book about all this. But still, I’ve had to learn the hard way over and over.

Lesbian relationships can be happy and healthy and long-lasting. We are not doomed to bear shattering lesbian breakup after lesbian break-up, which is a damn good thing, because if we really do have soul contracts — if she really did show up to teach me something — I am determined to learn it.

I know you’ve got to find your own path too, and if your heart is determined to hold on right now, I respect that. But I’m also here to say, whether you like butch or femme — whether you are butch or femme, feminine of center, masc or masculine of center, both or neither or genderqueer, over 50 (she was in her 60s, I was in my 50s when this story took place) or younger, there is more lesbian life for you out there. I honor your love, your big, beautiful, currently broken yet still healable lesbian heart.

I hope you will, too.