Hidden lives of female friends - Women confess to secret same-sex affairs

Women leading double lives are coming clean, exposing passionate relationships and forbidden romances with other females.

For Kim*, 36, a devoted wife and high school teacher, the rules of love have never been black and white. Married for more than a decade, she has spent much of her adult life secretly indulging in a side of herself that few know exists--passion for other women.

"It's hard to explain what attracted me to a female, but I just know I wanted to know what it felt like to be with a girl," she told THE WEEKEND STAR.

She admits to being attracted to women since sixth form. University then opened doors she never knew existed.

"Females would approach me, but I like to be in control so I would look them, and believe it or not it worked," Kim said. She said that it's easy to tell when a woman is interested in another female.

"The energy is just there, and you will get the eye contact or flirtatious compliments," she said.

But for Kim, desire isn't just physical--it's emotional.

"I fall for women who are soft, gentle, understanding," she said.

"With them, I can be myself completely -- no masks, no judgment. I'm drawn to girly girls--feminine, polished, smooth. I am not attracted to a girl who wants to be a man so badly. So while she can wear pants, her hair and nails must be done, and she has to be smooth," she said.

Her husband, she admits, has a vague idea that she is cheating with other females, but has no real confirmation.

"He knows that I have been with females before we got together though. But, a man should be able to know when fire is at his tail, enuh," Kim said.

"Once you see a woman get emotionally disconnected and wants to spend more time with her female friends, then trouble deh deh," she said.

Lisa's* story mirrors Kim's in intensity. A mother of four living with her common-law husband, Lisa has shared a passionate, secret relationship with another woman for nearly two years. She doesn't call herself a lesbian, but she and her girlfriend have chosen each other over their male partners.

"I love my man, but I'm not in love," Lisa confessed bluntly. "He doesn't give me butterflies any more, but he is the person I would want to spend my life with. He doesn't entice me sexually any more as our bedroom activities has become predictable," she said.

Her affair, however, is intoxicating.

"This girl keeps me on my toes as she knows exactly what to do and say," Lisa said.

"We are each other's peace, and that is what we don't get from our partners. Women want peace of mind these days and men no longer offer that," she added.

Public health expert and academic researcher Dr Paul Andrew Bourne said that 70 per cent of married women between the ages of 20-49 admitted that they were cheating in research conducted in 2021. However, he noted that the women did not indicate who they were cheating with.

"But it has to do a lot with how the questions were asked. Many of us as researchers are only studying about heterosexual content because many of us don't want to admit what is going on, and the current researchers are not keeping in reality of the people," he said.

Bourne opined that persons are moving away from the old tradition of how a family should be and how people should live.

"We were at a mindset where Christian principles govern things, but nowadays, persons are becoming more liberal," he said. "Let's go back to the 1970s when Jamaican women were having five or seven children on average. Were those women pleased sexually? Probably not. But now a woman ago tell yuh say if yuh nah please her, she gonna tell yuh say summen wrong with yuh or she will stay quiet or take in a girlfriend in the house and the husband will not say or suspect anything because it is a woman," Bourne said.

*Names changed to protect identities