'The L Word's' Shane & Carmen Taught Me Everything I Know About Relationships

Like lots of other queer ladies, my introduction to my sexuality was pretty heavily based in The L Word. The show aired from 2004-2009, but I first watched it years later when the girl I was hooking up with asked if I'd ever seen it. Things didn't work out with her, but things did work out for my favorite threesome: me, Shane, and Carmen.

Sort of.

I don't even need to tell you that Shane, the sort of androgynous, super beautiful, and super sexual player of The L Word has captured the hearts of literally thousands of LGBT women since the show's inception (and the rise of Netflix), but while Shane plunged my baby queer soul into curiosity and lust in a way that no one before her ever had, it was Carmen (her sometimes lover) who I most strongly identified with — and who taught me about what it means to give all of yourself in the name of love.

From the beginning, Carmen knows what Shane is about. She doesn't want anything serious. She doesn't do relationships (especially not monogamous ones). She doesn't want to follow the rules. Shane's family issues are the ever-present excuse for the times when she just sort of sucks. She's a great friend, but not the best person to date in any real way.

But Shane's got that something that makes you crave her. So, of course, you date her anyway.

And lordy, did Carmen ever try. She tried when Shane was a huge flake. She tried when Shane kept telling her to date someone else. She even tried when Shane cheated on her. Over and over again she called Shane out on her crappy, sometimes manipulative behavior. She was devoted in a way that can be viewed as naive, but can also just be seen as honest. Carmen wanted things with Shane to be real, because she believed they could have something epic.

In a world where being real and authentic is often seen as pathetic and desperate, there is something nearly revolutionary about Carmen. There’s almost something magical about Carmen’s openness and her devotion not only to Shane, but to herself.

I get it.

It’s not a rare thing to find someone (or a few someones, if you’re lucky) who makes you feel everything at once. Who makes all of the clichés in the world make sense, who makes you disgusted with your own cheesiness, who makes you feel the warm, gooiness of new, fresh, blossoming love. But it is a rare thing to express that feeling of connectedness, and it is a rare thing to feel empowered by it instead of embarrassed or ashamed.

I love Carmen because I’ve been there.

When I was in college, I dated this girl who gave me all of the icky magic feelings. She said she was a Shane. I laughed it off. But I knew it was true. We did the magic thing, too, that thing that we all act like is so uncommon and so hard to find but is often just a natural byproduct of laying around in a bed all day and night talking about things you don’t talk about with people you don’t love. You ask the relationship questions that feel so big and important but that really aren’t the things you need to know about a person to know if you can actually love them. You ask if they had a dog, or a hamster, and what they were like in third grade instead of if they’d ever cheat on you, if they’d lie or manipulate you, if they’d hurt you out of spite, or resentment.

We didn’t fizzle out. We exploded. It took me ages to get over it. I couldn’t figure out when it was time to step away and be done with it. I couldn’t find our end.

But Carmen did. She went as far as she could, and she pushed her relationship with Shane as far as it could possibly go. She got the wedding dress and the rose petals and the absolute heartbreak of being left at the alter. I got a few shitty text messages and drunk calls in the middle of the night.

We take what we can get.

But whether we end up standing alone in the aisle or standing alone at a bar and waiting for our phone to light up, we end up standing alone. Until the next one comes, and we give them all we have all over again.

And eventually, hopefully, we find someone who won't take advantage of what we have to give. Or we learn to be whole by ourselves.