Thanks, blur. I agree that I'm better served by only keeping quality friends in my life-- I am definitely working on distancing myself from the kinds of friends you mention above. Luckily, I do have a lot of quality (straight female & gay male) friends in my current city, and a lot of quality lesbian friends from the cities I lived in previously. I don't think lonieness or identity issues are a problem for me, but I do think you are correctly picking up on my frustration with the lesbian community in my current city. I moved from a big, metropolitan city to a small, midwestern town and it's been a bit of a culture shock for me. I think I have lowered my friendship standards a bit in an effort to make friends in the community and, while I do enjoy going out with them to events, they aren't really the greatest people to keep close. Luckily, they're not the people I hang out with regularly; most of my friends are other PhDs, other volunteers in the mentor program I belong to, and other people I met through a young professionals organization. I just happened to have met these other women while trying to become involved in the lesbian community here, and I didn't realize that they had any of these issues until we became much closer-- and then I got sucked into a bit of a "rescuer" role which I recently abdicated. So, like you suggest, if by cutting these friends out of my life, I no longer have very many lesbian friends in my city, then so be it. I'll continue to drag my gay guy best friend with me to events and continue to tell him that he's the hottest femmie in the room Seriously. The sandals on display at the girls' pride dance party were out of control...