During a recent interview, Missy Higgins reflected on her first relationship with a woman: “Am I gay? What’s happening here?”
Earlier this week, Missy Higgins opened up about experiences she’s had whilst exploring her sexuality, during a sit-down interview on the ABC programme, Take 5 With Zan Rowe. The 39-year-old Melbourne-based artist discussed what it was like to fall in love with a woman for the very first time while touring the US.
“My girlfriend and I…well, she was kind of my tour manager. We weren’t out in those days,” she told Zan Rowe. “It was my first relationship with a woman, and I was unsure if this was me…am I gay? What’s happening here? And she wasn’t really comfortable with letting people know either, so we didn’t even tell the band. This was a special moment, amongst many, that we shared together.”
Speculations about sexual orientation have followed Missy Higgins throughout the majority of her career. Back in 2021, the beloved Aussie songstress discussed the immense pressure she felt to define her sexuality, and the impact this had on her sense of identity. Reflecting on this matter, Zan Rowe asked: “To have so many people speculating around your sexuality, what was that like as you’re trying to figure it out for yourself and experiencing it in real-time?”
Higgins responded, “It just wasn’t something that I was ready to talk about yet because, as I said, it was my first girlfriend and neither of us had come out. We kind of didn’t want it to be anyone else’s business. It was just this beautiful thing between us, and she was really my rock through that time. It was early days of me being famous and experiencing so many new things for the first time, and I was really quite unstable in so many ways, and she was just there for me.”
She added: “After we’d broken up, I remember seeing Sia perform, and just standing there in the audience as she played this song, and having tears streaming down my face because I associate that song with our relationship. It’s incredible how one song can attach itself to a relationship or a moment in time.”
These latest revelations about her sexuality closely follow Higgins’ announcement, made earlier this year, about her split from Dan Lee, her husband of six years, with whom she shares two children. Addressing the separation via Instagram, she posted the following message in June: “6 months ago Dan and I separated. I became a single-parent. Something I never thought would happen and something I’m still trying to grapple with, to be honest.”
View this post on Instagram
Higgins continued, “The shame of a ‘failed marriage’, a ‘broken family’, all the things I swore I would never let happen, happened. I was so determined for this not to be my story. We tried many ways to keep the story alive, keep things together, keep on searching down new avenues of hope, or hope-covered denial as it may have been. But then life happens, doesn’t it. And once again I’m on my knees and utterly humbled by my inability to control it.”
Watch a snippet of Missy Higgins’ interview with Zan Rowe via YouTube below.
