When I was 12, I secretly thought I might fancy girls and it petrified me. There was a rumour about someone in our class who got drunk and tried to kiss another girl. Everyone laughed in derision and horror.
I definitely didn’t want to be gay; I wanted, desperately, a boyfriend, and then I wanted a husband and children. Being gay was not for me. But, over the years, I often had a best friend and sometimes my love for her, while never sexual, felt… romantic. I fell slightly in love, made her the centre of my world.
I only ever admitted my suspected attraction to women to one person: my husband. I told him after the first night we slept together. We never really discussed it after that but – and I now find this odd – during the last year of our marriage he started looking at me with a sigh and a laugh, saying, ‘My gay wife.’
I don’t recall anything that prompted that comment: perhaps it was simply that I didn’t want to have sex with him. Perhaps it was a recognition that there was something missing in my life. Perhaps he sensed it might be a woman.
Now here I was in Marrakech, living alone for the first time in 25 years. I had walked out on my marriage, determined to ‘rewild’ myself – to rediscover the fun, fearless girl I had been before the pressures of midlife dragged me down.
Once a best-selling novelist with ten million books in circulation, my lucrative career had taken a dive. The ‘perfect’ family life I splashed all over Instagram was a sham.
I had struggled to create a blended family with my four children from my first marriage and my husband’s two. The strain of being the family’s sole breadwinner and the emotional stress of holding the family together had taken its toll.
Being gay was not for me, writes Jane Green. But, over the years, I often had a best friend and sometimes my love for her, while never sexual, felt… romantic
Jane looks back on her freedom in Marrakech, where she lived alone for the first time in 25 years
In Marrakech I have rented a riad – a trad-itional Moroccan house with colourful furnishings and high, carved plaster ceilings – to try to revive my creativity and write again. The intention is to use it for a year but even as I wheel my suitcase through the dusty, cobbled streets I know in my heart I am not going back.
The house is at the end of a winding alley where little shops sell oil, wafer biscuits of every flavour, nuts, seeds and spices. I love how open-hearted Moroccans are, how curious. Once they realise I am here to stay I am greeted with smiles and waves. Young boys, out playing football, run over and hug me hello.
After a low period, those small, human encounters shift something in me, bring me back to life. The sun is shining, the sky is blue. I am no longer spending days on end in bed, with depression. At the same time, I feel slightly manic, as if I am sliding on shifting sands. I am desperate for friends, for a life. I say yes to every invitation. I sparkle and dance and chat, and all of it is a little frenzied.
A local couple will later – with brutal honesty – tell me how awful I was during this period. The woman says: ‘You struck me as a social whore. I just thought, this woman is only interested in parties and socialising.’
Her husband adds: ‘You just talked about yourself all night. You didn’t shut up. No one else could get a word in and I thought, who is this awful woman and what is she doing in my house?’
What I am not doing in those early months is quietly examining my emotional patterns. I am running from them. After a month, I speak to my husband on Zoom. It is heartbreaking. I can see his fear and grief and though I suppress my tears while we talk, when we say goodbye I break into sobs.
I can’t shake the idea that part of why I never wanted to have sex with him, part of what felt so wrong in everything in my marriage, was because I might be gay.
I remember a writers’ conference just as my marriage was ending. I met a woman there, almost 6ft tall, and had felt an instant buzz throughout my body. We spent the next few days curled up on various sofas, drinking tequila, talking about books we loved, with what felt like an unspoken chemistry lingering between us.
At a group dinner I looked up to see her across the table, chin in hand, gazing at me with a smile. On the last night, I hugged her goodbye. I knew if she followed me, pushed me into my room and kissed me, I would be done for.
I am on the dating apps, lonely, and up for an adventure. On Hinge, there are no pictures of me with a dog. Or a cat.
Instead, I list things I love. Crisp white sheets. Anita Pallenberg. Gratitude. Classic cars. Early Rolling Stones. Tequila on the rocks. Fiction. Cats. Harry Styles… At first I admit my age and don’t get a single like. I delete my profile and set up another – identical but for the fact that I say I am five years younger, 51.
I wake up the next morning to 15 men in my inbox, one of whom immediately catches my eye.
Hugo, a posh landscape gardener, is 46, with crinkly, smiley eyes and a perfect body, the kind I have not seen, outside of a TV screen, in years. We have a few video chats. I feel a jolt in my loins and then he sends a text. ‘I’ve been wanting to visit Lisbon for a while. Perhaps we could meet there?’
Without too much thought, without understanding the dangers of flying off to meet a stranger you know nothing about, I say yes.
A girlfriend takes a photo of me in a swimming pool. I have lost weight – the divorce diet will do that for you – and I look good, even to my own hyper-critical eyes.
I send the picture expecting some kind of response, but there is none. I do not then know that this is the first red flag.
When he does respond, intermittently, it is with one-liners, apologising for being busy. This feeling of a man slipping away is familiar.
It’s as if I am in my 20s, with all the insecurities of that time rearing their heads. A wiser me, the me of today, would say I had no business getting on the apps precisely because of this reason.
I don’t yet know myself, have not yet learned to value myself enough, don’t know this kind of behaviour – called ‘breadcrumbing’ – is always the sign of someone who is emotionally unavailable.
A girlfriend takes a photo of me in a swimming pool. I have lost weight – the divorce diet will do that for you – and I look good, even to my own hyper-critical eyes
I only ever admitted my suspected attraction to women to one person: my husband. I told him after the first night we slept together
I have no idea about any of it, caught up in the excitement of flying to Lisbon to meet a handsome, sexy man, a man I desire. We book separate hotels and meet at a bar. I am in a pretty, printed dress. Hugo has bright blue eyes that disappear when he smiles.
He is supremely confident, a man entirely comfortable with his masculinity.
We have a gin and tonic, then another. He has made the effort to find a famously good restaurant, small and intimate, lit by candles. Wine comes. Food. More wine. The chemistry is palpable. We move closer, a hand on his arm, a hand on mine. Laughing. Flirting. God, I had forgotten how good this feels. ‘I have always thought I have Asperger’s,’ he muses, at one point. ‘No, you don’t,’ I say with authority, even though I have no idea whether he has it or not. He seems engaged and connected.
We leave the restaurant and walk through the dark streets of Lisbon back to my hotel, and kiss. I know I am supposed to send him home but this is so delicious. I am 56 years old and am finally feeling desire again, and… to hell with it. I lead him upstairs.
Hugo is a physical, adept, generous lover. His eyes are glazed with lust, although afterwards, days afterwards, I realise that perhaps they are not glazed with lust; that rather, he is completely dissociated.
He is strong and dominant. He tosses me around like a rag doll and I discover my libido is very much alive, and healthy.
We go to sleep, exhausted, and I sleep all night, something else of a rarity.
In the morning, I wake first and move over to him, planting a gentle kiss on his shoulder.
He opens his eyes. ‘Morning!’ he barks, as if greeting me at a hunt meet, before flinging back the duvet and heading to the minibar where he pulls out a Toblerone and brings it back to the bed.
He keeps chatting, talking to me as if I’m a mate, no hint of the intimacy, the experience we shared last night. ‘Do you know the Toblerone trick?’ he says cheerfully, showing me that snapping together the top of the triangles separates them cleanly and instantly. He hands me Toblerone, which I don’t particularly want first thing in the morning, but I take it and eat it, as he walks around the bedroom, chattering.
We go out to explore Lisbon, neither of us touching, no hint of us being anything other than friends, leaving me bewildered.
He is a thrill-seeker and tells me all about the times he has cheated death in crazy, dangerous stunts.
It occurs to me that he is a child in an adult’s body, excitable, solipsistic, entirely lost in his mind, no interest in mine, and I know, to the marrow of my bones, that he has no interest in me other than as a sex toy.
There are two days to go, but I don’t have the confidence to leave. I do what I have always done. I endure.
At dinner on the last night, the waitress slaps the bill on the table, rudely. ‘What do you think her problem is?’ he asks. I shrug. ‘I think it’s the age difference,’ he says, with the self-satisfied smile of someone who has just realised exactly how to hurt. ‘I’ve experienced this before with older women.’
You bastard, I think. There is only ten years between us, not enough of a gap for anyone to comment on, to even notice. In that moment, I hate him.
I realise that I have completely lost myself these last four days. It feels as though a trapdoor has been opened and I have tumbled down into the insecurities of my youth. I feel fat, stupid and old. The real me, the successful author, the wise advice columnist for dailymail.com, the sophisticated smart woman I thought I was, has been utterly squashed.
It is a huge relief to reach the airport the next morning. I have learned valuable lessons. I send Hugo a text thanking him for looking after me so well and wishing him a safe flight home. And then I block him.
It is remarkable being around women, the vast majority of whom are lesbians. I feel completely relaxed… but lonely
After a few months – when I am getting ready to dip a toe back into dating waters – I spot a festival for ‘Sappho women’ on the island of Lesbos, Greece. Bingo. I phone the organisers and ask if I can teach a couple of writing workshops. Hours later, my ticket is booked.
It is remarkable being around women, the vast majority of whom are lesbians. I feel completely relaxed… but lonely. The women all seem to know each other.
Occasionally I manage to engage someone in small talk but I can feel them itching to get back to their friends.
I know I don’t fit in. Their uniform is denim shorts, T-shirts and Birkenstocks; mine has come straight from Marrakech: chiffon kaftans and piles of necklaces, rings on every finger.
By the morning of day three, I am beginning to think I have made a terrible mistake. Perhaps I am not as gay as I thought.
The next day, I see a woman sitting at the end of a long table at lunch. Tall, strong, golden-skinned, with short blonde hair, she is laughing with a group of friends.
She is beautiful but with a masculine bent and I cannot stop looking at her, willing her to notice me. Perhaps I am a little more gay than I thought.
Next day, I am dancing to music in the bar and, suddenly, the tall woman is directly in front of me. We catch eyes. Yes! I think. Contact! I learn she is from just outside Amsterdam, is here with her ex-girlfriend who wants to reconcile. They are leaving tomorrow. She is single. I am struck by the overwhelming urge to kiss her. Out of nowhere, it seems, she says she could kiss me right now. It’s on.
But the ex-girlfriend is around… damn. The one woman there who is interesting to me is leaving tomorrow, taking all hope with her.
Before she leaves, we sit quietly talking. She assures me things are over with the ex. And then I do kiss her. She leaves with plans for me to fly to Amsterdam and I cannot stop thinking about her.
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I was quietly dying inside with a collapsing marriage and career: Best-selling novelist JANE GREEN
I must confess, though, that before the end of the week, I fall into the arms of a beautiful woman who is wildly sensual, gorgeous in every way.
It is my first experience with a woman and I am fascinated. She comes back to my hotel, turns off all the lights but the bedside lamp, and unwinds the red scarf around her neck, wrapping it around the lamp, casting it in a warm Arabian Nights glow.
She puts on some music and starts to dance for me. She is beautiful and we fall into bed and it is playful and fun, the perfect first time with a woman. It is everything, and more, that I have always hoped, wondered, it would be.
I am struck by the softness. I feel completely different. Unashamed. Experimental. I am not worrying about being too big, too flabby, too old as I often am with men. With her I feel beautiful. I feel right.
Still. She is gone by midnight. We see each other in passing, and I am grateful for such a lovely first experience, but my heart is not in it. I am struck by the thought that I am the one who is emotionally detached, who has unwittingly cracked a heart. I can feel her interest, far stronger than mine, which only serves to push me further away.
This is how men feel, I think. This is what I have done so many times, fallen too hard, too fast; pushed them away.
Two days later she sends me a voicenote, upset. She does not do one-night stands, she says, which makes me feel awful. I did, after all, bring her back to my hotel room on the day we met.
I have been in her shoes many times and now I am seeing it from the other side. I hate that I have unwittingly mistreated someone who expected more, even as I realise I cannot give her anything more.
Two weeks later, back in Marrakech, I pack for four days and take off for Amsterdam.
The Dutch woman is beautiful inside and out and intimacy with her is freeing and natural. But as lovely as she is, being with this woman is not right.
Speaking Dutch, she is funny and chatty and everyone responds to her. But her English is not good enough for me to access that side of her. With me there is an intensity, a stilted quality to our conversation. Without a mental connection, I know there isn’t a future.
She too, falls hard, and fast. And, like the woman in Greece, I find myself retreating. It is too much too soon. Ah, I think. We women. I know this behaviour, and now, for the first time, I understand how it pushes people away.
By the time I leave, there is not so much left to say, but I have learned that I love women. I loved sleeping with both these women but I also love men. I am possibly… probably… not the lesbian I was convinced I was.
‘Why can’t you be just Janey?’ asks a friend when I get back to Marrakech. ‘You love who you love, be they male or female.’
Fluid, I think. Just Janey. This feels, finally, entirely right.
Adapted from Rewilding: Freedom, Friendship And Finding Our Way Home, by Jane Green, to be published on June 4 by HarperCollins, £16.99. © Jane Green 2026. To order a copy for £15.29 (offer valid to 06/06/26; UK P&P free on orders over £25) go to www.mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937.
