The phrase “Chosen Family” has popped up a few times on this podcast already. For those of you who aren’t too familiar with this idea, don’t worry, it’s not complicated. Chosen family is the family that you choose. For queer people, chosen family is rooted in the experience of frequently needing to build long-term support networks that aren’t based in biological closeness. This sense of familial closeness in the LGBTQ communities arises from a shared experience of finding an understanding and acceptance in relative strangers that was lacking in our biological families. But sometimes…bio family can be chosen family too.

Making friends as an adult is notoriously difficult. Work and commitments to romantic partners and family tend to push making new friends down our list of priorities. On top of that, meeting new people is hard. Making a lasting connection is even harder. New relationships, including friendships, take work. You have to log hours together. You have to make getting to know that person a priority. And you have to have something in common that draws you together. Today, we have two stories of friends finding each other in adulthood.

School is a time of searching, of growth. It's a time when a lot of people, young people in particular, are figuring out who they are. Every young person feels alone sometimes, but for queers this feeling is underscored by the undeniable fact that you exist as a minority, often an invisible minority. And yet, and this truly amazing, even closeted queers, even queers who might not yet know that they are queer, have a tendency to find each other. We've got two stories for you today about queers meeting queers in the classroom. These are stories of queers finding each other against all odds and growing up together.

In this episode, we meet our hosts (Weston, Nikki, Justin, and Seth) and talk about queerness before diving into three relationship stories. This time, Weston & Seth, Nikki, and Justin each thell their own relationship stories. For all you discourse nerds, or if you want to learn more about queerness, our round table discussion starts at 00:04:08. For those of you who want to jump to the juicy relationship bits, start listening at 00:15:44. We hear about Justin discovering a new friend and a new community, Nikki’s journey to self-acceptance, and the story of how Weston and Seth navigated transforming a hookup into a platonic friendship.