My phone thinks my boyfriend is my ‘best friend’. It’s not alone

Being in a same-sex relationship can make you weirdly invisible. Queer identity shouldn’t be treated as abnormal

My boyfriend and I invented a game on our recent trip to Italy. We called it “invisible gays”, which might have been an attempt at some kind of word play around “gays” and “gaze” – but I was on holiday and feeling lazy, so I didn’t push it.

The game began when one night he took me out to a little trattoria to celebrate my birthday. It was a warm night, and fairy lights were entangled in the fragrant blooming flowers over our heads, and we drank good wine and ate bowls of perfect pasta, and there was candlelight, and it was so romantic I wouldn’t have blinked if two dogs had started smooching over a strand of spaghetti. Che bello!

We were one of four tables, all couples of various ages looking at each other with disgusting wet amorous eyes. During the evening a man selling roses approached the other tables. One young guy even bought one, presenting the blossom with a flourish to his girlfriend, earning applause from other patrons and a round of toothy photos. Caught up in the moment, my partner pulled out his wallet to buy a rose for me too, despite my wildly insincere protestations – but the rose man didn’t even clock us as a couple and wandered off into the night.

I briefly wondered if it was because my outfit wasn’t chic enough for Rome. Then I realised we were the only couple who weren’t the societal default setting of a man and a woman, having instead made the dire mistake of being two beautiful men dining together. I wonder if he thought we were some kind of complicated interracial brothers?

This continued all around Italy, with more than seven episodes of being passed over at romantic tourist traps marked on our scorecard. When I organised a fancy dinner for my boyfriend’s birthday weeks later, one of the servers said I was a “good friend” for doing so.

I’m used to the way that being in a same-sex couple can make you hyper visible or put a homophobic spotlight on you, so that it feels like every time you kiss in public it’s like Frodo putting on the One Ring, drawing the attention of the Dark Lord and his screeching Nazgûl. I’m used to muttered comments from people you walk by on the streets when you’re holding hands, or of making out with a tall guy outside a bar after our first date only for a car full of men to stop and yell slurs at us. I’m used to holding the hand of a boyfriend as we were chased down the backstreets of Newtown late at night by three silent men.

I’ve also dated enough women to know that there’s a contrast – no woman I’ve ever dated has flinched away from a kiss on the cheek and whispered: “Maybe not in public.” I’ve had men I’ve dated comment on how “openly affectionate” I am, because I haven’t had to learn to self-censor my public love languages. Women I date usually just comment on how clean my legs are and how many Gilmore Girls references I make.

Obviously being hyper visible and therefore at risk of overt and violent homophobia is worse than not being able to buy an overpriced street flower. Over the past year in Australia, hate crimes against gay and bisexual men have been making headlines. As someone who has suffered a hate crime or two, I can confirm that dealing with this should be the authorities’ priority instead of cracking down on the rose men of Rome.

But with the 10-year anniversary of the marriage equality win coming up next year, it’s worth looking at all the ways being in a same-sex relationship can still make you weirdly invisible. It’s another argument for why Mardi Gras, pride flags and Idahobit days in schools are still so necessary – because, when love between queer people goes unseen, it makes it seem as though it isn’t “normal”. And when queer identity is treated as abnormal, it fertilises the ground necessary to justify violence against queer people.

We all know the little “collections” of photos and videos our smartphones occasionally create. This can be anything from “Your trip in Italy 2026” to “Furry pals throughout the years”. It’s been a source of constant amusement to me that it sorts all the photos of my boyfriend and me into a collection called “best friends”. These are photos of two men kissing and, without oversharing, sometimes photos of two men doing things even more intimate than kissing (kayaking).

It shows you that homosexual invisibility is so hardwired into aspects of society that a phone short-circuits and decides that two men in love are just good bros. I’ve never had any of the women I’ve dated put into a folder called “best friends”. In fact, none of the women who are my actual best friends have made it into those folders either. My dog does get filed there, which, when its alongside my boyfriend, feels a little like one of those slippery slope arguments made by the Australian Christian Lobby during the plebiscite.

It seems as though we have a Goldilocks problem with queer relationship visibility: there’s too much visibility or there’s not enough. Make up your mind!

Not only do I simply want to express my love for my boyfriend publicly and without risk of violence, and for it to be recognised for what it is; I also don’t want my sexuality to be the only thing that people notice me for. I want to be noticed for my abnormally good looks and sex appeal.