Gillian Anderson Is Just Like Us: She Had a Secret Queer Relationship in High School

We all have those memories of our awkward teenage years and our first high school queer crush. And by “we all,” I of course include icon Gillian Anderson who had her own tumultuous experience with a sapphic relationship early in her life. While speaking about her childhood with The Times, Anderson spoke about her rebellious, anti-establishment phase after leaving England to live in the United States as a teenager, which included a high school lesbian relationship. “Not only did I not fit in, I didn’t want to fit in,” she told the newspaper. “I was a punk in a conservative town. There wasn’t a single other person who had a nose ring and a mohawk. I was very self-conscious, with low self-esteem.” The X-Files actress and Golden Globe winner shared that one of her first relationships was with an older girl while she was in high school. Though it wasn’t her first time being coupled up, “it felt secretive and illicit and wrong, and we had to hide.”“Later on,” she added, “I had a boyfriend who found out and broke up with me.” Though she had been in a relationship with a woman at an early age, Anderson clarified that she didn’t think she was gay. “I didn’t, because I’d had a couple of boyfriends. But I definitely felt I didn’t have the language for it,” she continued. “Even later on, when I had other relationships [with women], I’m not sure I ever thought of them as being potentially for ever.”Anderson pointed out to the Times that she feels more comfortable with the idea of a queer relationship now, even though she is married to a man. “The person I consider my life partner happens to be male, but I think I would feel the same way if it were a woman,” she said. “I’d feel, ‘This is my life partner.’ When I was younger, there were parts of my brain that thought [women] were temporary.” Anderson has previously spoken about this relationship in a 2012 interview with Them’s sister publication, Out magazine. “If I