Katie Heaney used to take multiple-choice quizzes to determine whether she was gay or straight. Turns out, she had the answers all along.
In her 2018 Modern Love essay “Am I Gay or Straight? Maybe This Fun Quiz Will Tell Me,” the writer Katie Heaney describes how her love of multiple-choice quizzes, which had provided a “lifelong source of support and comfort,” hindered her ability to trust herself — even when it came to her sexuality.
After she came out at 28, she had this piece of advice: Don’t look outward for personal answers.
The Modern Love editor Daniel Jones and I recently caught up with four writers whose essays inspired episodes in the new season of the “Modern Love” television series on Amazon Prime Video. Below is my conversation with Ms. Heaney, whose episode stars LuLu Wilson and Grace Edwards. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
You can also read my interview with Amanda Gefter (“The Night Girl Finds a Day Boy”), and Daniel Jones’s interviews with Mary Elizabeth Williams (“A Second Embrace, With Hearts and Eyes Open”) and Andrew Rannells (“During a Night of Casual Sex, Urgent Messages Go Unanswered”).
Miya Lee: How did your interest in personality quizzes begin?
Katie Heaney: I always loved quizzes in the back of magazines. Growing up in Saint Paul, Minnesota, I used to read CosmoGirl and Teen Vogue. Then I got more into internet quizzes and predictions. I actually worked at BuzzFeed writing quizzes at the height of the quiz boom.
Were you searching for something with those predictive quizzes, or was it just for fun?
It was fun, but I was absolutely searching for guidance and clear cut answers. I wanted someone to essentially tell me that I would be OK, that I would acquire all the things I needed to have a happy life.
As I got older and felt my experiences diverging from those of my friends, I looked to external sources to reassure me that I was still “normal” and that there was still a path forward for me.
When did you feel that your experiences were diverging from your friends’?
I felt it especially once I got to college. With every passing year, the fact that I had not dated anyone seemed to become more a marker of difference. I didn’t feel like an outcast by any stretch.
But seeing myself as this undateable, sort of sexless person, even if that wasn’t outwardly visible to people, weighed on me. I felt like I had everything else figured out: I was good at school, easily made friends, that sort of thing. But dating was one area where I felt completely lost.
When did you turn to quizzes to learn about your sexuality?
I was 20, which isn’t that young. A lot of people with coming out stories trace their questioning back to, like, 6 years old. I was 28 when I came out.
Were you looking for a particular answer about your sexuality?
I wasn’t looking for an answer as in the actual truth. I was looking for an answer as confirmation of what I wanted to believe that day. And usually what I wanted to believe was that I was straight, or that I was not sufficiently gay for it to really manifest in any meaningful way in my life.
Obviously, now there is a lot more awareness about bisexuality and sexual fluidity. But in the early aughts, that sort of literacy was not there, especially not on whatever crappy quizzes I was finding. There were also times when I would take quizzes and want to be told that I was gay, but then I just didn’t really believe it because the criteria they considered in order to make that assessment felt so fake.
Did you feel like you could talk to your friends about your sexuality?
A little bit. I talked a lot to my best friend at the time, Rylee. I remember sending her Facebook messages when I was 20, you know, about Shane from “The L Word” and Tegan and Sara. I’d write, “I’m pretty sure I’m gay now,” but it was always self-deprecating and presented half as a joke. She didn’t reject it or shut it down.
I also didn’t have any gay friends. Again, this is something that is probably a lot different now, depending on where you are in the country or in the world, but in the early to mid-aughts, I think it was not uncommon. So my conversations with straight women about these feelings, I imagine, were very different than they might have been if I had talked to anyone who was queer.
What led to the moment when, at 28, you told your friends that you might not be straight?
I had a wonderful therapist who helped me click things into place. I moved to New York City when I was 26 and had dated a couple of guys pretty unsuccessfully.
When I started talking to my therapist about my romantic life, she said, “It’s significant that you pretty much only want to spend time with other women. It’s significant that the thought of going on a date with a man only makes you feel dread, whereas the idea of going on a date with a woman makes you curious.” She made it seem really simple. I needed that. I wish I had that 10 years earlier.
Can you tell me about your first date with a woman?
I went on OkCupid and I put myself down as bisexual. I saw Lydia’s profile within the first couple of days, and I messaged her and we scheduled a date. I was extremely nervous, but it worked out well.
You started seeing each other after that?
Yeah, we’re actually married now.
Oh, wow! Congratulations.
Thank you. We got married in 2019 before the pandemic. We had been together for about four years at that point.
Amazing. And just to go back a little — what was it like when you were first dating Lydia?
Once I met her, I realized this is as simple as: “Do I want to keep hanging out with her or not?” And I did. And then, of course, finally meeting other queer women, and seeing the vast spectrum of what being queer could look like, showed me that I was perfectly capable of being gay even having had this adolescence that was boy-crazy in one way or another.
You wrote two memoirs, one before you came out and one after. Can you tell me about them?
I started the first memoir when I was in grad school. At that time, I had been looking for reassurance that it was OK to be my age and not have had a boyfriend. So I wrote a kind of catalog, a chronological look at all my crushes and how each of them went wrong. I tried to make fun of myself, show myself some kindness and also show some kindness to people who were in my same position.
How old were you when that was published?
I was 26. So it wasn’t long until I started thinking more deeply about my sexuality and had a crisis on two fronts: There was obviously the private realization that I was wrong about who I thought I was, which is big enough, but then there was also the public part of it.
After the first memoir, there was a sizable readership of young women who were looking to me for their own reassurance. By coming out, I felt like I was going to throw a wrench in this person that I developed for them. I came out on Tumblr and was very nervous, but everyone was really supportive.
What did you write about in your second memoir?
My experience coming out and dating a woman for the first time, and how the entire first memoir could be a pretty good indicator that I was gay. It was like a long postscript to the first memoir, the updated information, as best I could relate it.
You worked at BuzzFeed from 2013 to 2017 as an editor and, briefly, as a quiz writer. How did that job affect your perspective about personality quizzes and predictions?
Well, it convinced me that no one knows anything. A lot of my quizzes were pretty silly. I like paranormal stuff, so I did a bunch like, “What type of ghost will you be?” But as far as the more traditional romantic predictions, I realized, “Oh, wait, there are no qualifications that the writers of the quizzes in the magazines I read growing up had that I don’t have now.”
Katie Heaney, a writer in Brooklyn, is the author of memoirs “Never Have I Ever” and “Would You Rather?” Her young-adult novel, “The Year I Stopped Trying” will be published in November, 2021. Miya Lee is an editor of Modern Love and a host of the Modern Love podcast.
Modern Love can be reached at modernlove@nytimes.com.
To find previous Modern Love essays, Tiny Love Stories and podcast episodes, visit our archive.
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