In this spoken monologue, Ruth Schwartz, director of the Conscious Girlfriend Academy, explains what it means to be a highly sensitive person (HSP) and how that trait impacts dating and love for lesbians and queer women. She outlines typical HSP characteristics—heightened empathy, sensory sensitivities, strong need for alone time, intense emotions, and heightened sexual responsiveness—while sharing personal stories of dating both HSP and non‑HSP partners. Schwartz discusses the advantages of high sensitivity (deep empathy, profound intimacy, connection with nature) and the challenges (shame, needing to negotiate sensory needs, feeling like a liability). She frames high sensitivity as both a gift and a super‑power that can be managed with skill. To help others navigate these dynamics, she promotes a masterclass and workshop that teaches how to date and love as a highly sensitive person or how to support a highly sensitive partner.
Chapters
So, are you a highly sensitive person? Have you heard that term? Have you taken the quiz on hs-person.com, or do you just resonate with the idea of being highly sensitive? I'm Ruth Schwartz. I'm the director of the Conscious Girlfriend Academy, helping lesbians and queer women date wisely and love well, and I myself am a pretty I'm a pretty off-the-charts highly sensitive person, and so I have spent many years of my life trying to figure out how to best navigate my high sensitivity in a world that is often not set up for people like us. If you are also a highly sensitive person like me, you might experience things like strong levels of empathy and intuition. So you know what the people around you are feeling, whether you want to or not. You might be very sensitive to lights, like I hate fluorescent lights, to noise, like I have to get away from it, to crowds. You might have a strong need for time alone. You might experience your own emotions very strongly. You might be deeply moved by art and literature and music. You might sometimes be kind of hypersensitive sexually in both good or bad ways. Like, I know for me, if my girlfriend touches me in a way that isn't quite what I want, sometimes it feels like nails on chalkboard. But then if she touches me in ways that are like what I want, it's amazing. And I have had experiences both having partners who were also highly sensitive, which in some ways makes it easier because then we do have a kind of gut-level understanding, although our sensitivities are never going to be exactly the same. And I've also had experience loving and dating people who are not highly sensitive in the ways that I am. And then I find that often A fair amount of shame comes up for me because it's like I'm always having to say, no, I need to leave this crowded place, or this noisy place, or I need to change the lighting, or I need you to touch me in this other way, or I need some time alone now. And it can be really challenging to navigate. On the plus side, I would say that my girlfriends and partners tend to really love my sensitivity when it comes down to my empathy and my understanding and how I can show up for them and how much I love— well, some people love this, some people don't, but the people that I'm best suited with do really love that I can just melt into nature. I can sit in nature for hours and just merge with the trees or merge with the rivers. I can merge that way sexually and emotionally, and it can be really deeply intimate and So there are pros and cons to having high sensitivity, and I like to say it is a gift, it is a superpower, and it can also be really challenging and a liability. So that's why I am offering a class, a master class and workshop about dating and loving as a highly sensitive person, or dating and loving a highly sensitive person, even if you're not one yourself. Because there is so much that we can get more comfortable with, get more skilled at, so that we can really love each other well, which is what Conscious Girlfriend and my life are all about. So if this resonates for you, I would love to see you in the masterclass.
