Closet affairs
1968
Bridget talked about life in the swinging sixties, where
anything goes. She had a number of closet affairs with women, including another
nurse while she was working at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham. After
a particularly painful break up, with a partner who left her for a man, she felt
she needed to socialise with and have the support of other lesbians. “I was
quite desperate really, and particularly embittered. I didn’t know where to go,
my life was more and more committed to a lesbian lifestyle. The one thing you
couldn’t do then was grieve, because there was no-one to talk to. I just wanted
to meet other lesbians not for a relationship, but to talk.”
Contributed by: Barbara Carter, 53, Bridget Malin, 62