Celebrating queer love with Danielle (She/Her) and Jodie (She/Her), a queer couple who share their incredible lives over on Instagram.
After two years of dating, the couple sat down with Unite to share the ins and outs of their beautiful relationship.
What is love?
Love can be a wonderful thing with the right person.
When you know that someone truly cares about you, supports you, is your best friend as well as a lover.
Knowing that someone has your back. We believe that love comes in many forms, but healthy love is the best form. Open communication and being able to listen and work on your own self-love, so that you can show up for your partner also.
There’s arguably a lack of LGBTQ+ representation when it comes to relationships/love. Has this ever impacted your views around love?
In the past growing up, there wasn’t much representation out there for us.
Whenever we would see the rare tv show with a lesbian couple in it, it would feel scary like, is that normal? Is it normal for me to want that? What would people think of it?
It has gotten so much better over the years and we love seeing so much more LGBTQ+ representation in the media, tv, films ect. It feels so much more ‘normalised’ whereas in the past it may be felt riskier to show LGBTQ+ representation.
One of the reasons we decided to make our joint Instagram account ‘daniandjodie’ was too normalise same sex relationships and to show LGBTQ+ representation. You just never know who you are helping or inspiring to be their true authentic self.
In your opinion, do you believe it’s harder for LGBTQ+ members to find love?
Definitely! It can be quite daunting when you are a single member of the LGBTQ+ community.
For example, you could walk past someone who you find attractive of the same sex and look at them, they may think that you are just staring. Or it’s hard to know what a person’s sexuality is without talking to them.
We feel that it’s a lot easier to find love on maybe a dating website or hanging out in LGBTQ+ areas. Joining any LGBTQ+ friendly clubs and even finding love over social media.
Has your identity ever gotten in the way of finding love?
We feel that, in the past when we were ‘in the closet’ we weren’t our true selves as we feared what people would think of us if we were open about our sexually. However, we were both young when we were in the closet and it hasn’t stopped us both since we came out openly about our sexualities.
What makes your relationship special?
Communication, listening and understanding each other’s needs. We love that we are both really thoughtful people and that we have a lot in common.
We are always laughing and it literally feels like being in a relationship which your best friend. We are both really adventurous and love trying new things and going to new places which always keeps the relationship exciting!
We really enjoy taking photos and videos of all of our adventures so that we can look back on our memories, which is another reason why we decided to make a couple account. We love being in a same-sex relationship as there is a level of understanding of sensitivity and emotions and we know how to share care for each other. Oh, and sharing clothes, that’s a bonus too of being in a same sex relationship.
What do we need to do to improve views around love/relationships when it comes to LGBTQ+ topics?
We think the key is representation to create more open conversations around LGBTQ+ topics. Although this has improved so much, particularly over the past few years, we would love to see more of it.
This is why pride is still so important, not only to celebrate queer love but to keep fighting for the rights of millions of LGBTQ+ people across the world and to remember those who have fought before us.
Thank you Danielle & Jodie for sharing your views! If you’d like to be featured in our queer love series, drop us an email.
