It Wasn’t Just Two Women Fighting…

I was in a long-distance relationship with a woman I loved.

For the first year, we lived in different states. We talked constantly phone calls, FaceTime, messages but we only saw each other in person every two or three months. We would travel back and forth, spend time together, enjoy each other’s company, and then return home.

During that time, I didn’t see any major red flags.

Looking back, I realize that seeing someone every few months is very different from living with them every day.

After about a year, she moved to my home state, and we got an apartment together. I was excited. We were finally going to have the relationship we had talked about instead of loving each other from a distance.

At first, everything seemed great.

Then I started seeing another side of her.

She could be condescending and unnecessarily cruel. She rarely seemed to have anything positive to say about other people. There was an air of superiority about her, as though she believed she was somehow better than everyone around her.

Then there was the control.

She was extremely insecure about the people in my life. I had a child, and my child’s father was an active and present parent. She knew that before we ever lived together. Still, she didn’t want me talking to him. She didn’t want me mentioning his name. Even necessary conversations involving our child could become a problem.

Little by little, our home became a place of tension instead of peace.

Eventually, one argument escalated into something physical.

We both hurt each other badly.

The police were called, and she was arrested.

Then something happened that I still look back on differently today: she called me from jail and asked me to help her get out.

And I did.

We got back together.

We even went to counseling because we convinced ourselves that maybe we could repair what had happened. Maybe if we talked enough, understood each other enough, or loved each other enough, we could somehow undo the damage.

We couldn’t.

The relationship had become toxic, and counseling wasn’t enough to change that reality. Eventually, it ended, and she returned to her home state.

It took me time to truly get out of that situation emotionally as well as physically. Today, I can sincerely say that I hope she heals.

But I don’t want her back.

I don’t want a friendship.

I don’t want another conversation.

I don’t want any relationship with her at all.

And I am at peace with that.

I’m telling this story because there is something we don’t talk about enough, particularly in LGBTQIA+ communities: domestic and intimate partner violence can happen between two women.

As a Black woman who loves Black women, this is especially important for me to say.

When people see two women become physical with each other, it can be dismissed as, “They’re just fighting.”

But we weren’t simply two women fighting.

We were intimate partners.

We shared a home. We shared a relationship. There was jealousy, control, insecurity, emotional harm, and eventually physical violence.

Gender doesn’t make those dynamics disappear.

Domestic violence is not exclusively something that happens when a man hurts a woman. It can happen in heterosexual relationships. It can happen in gay relationships. It can happen in lesbian relationships. It can happen anywhere intimacy, control, fear, and violence become intertwined.

And when violence happens between two women, we should not minimize it simply because both people are women.

I also won’t rewrite my own history to make myself innocent of everything that happened. That night became physical between both of us. We both caused harm.

But acknowledging my own actions does not mean I have to pretend the relationship was healthy.

It wasn’t.

Leaving was part of accepting that love alone cannot repair a relationship that has become destructive.

I hope she heals.

I hope I continue to heal.

But healing does not require reconciliation.

Sometimes healing means accepting what happened, learning from it, closing the door and refusing to open it again.

Because it wasn’t “just two women fighting.”

It was domestic violence.

And we need to be able to call it what it is.