“Sisyphean” is the word Carolyn uses to describe her and Eve’s mission in “Smell Ya Later,” the fifth episode of the second season of Killing Eve. Carolyn says the word won her a spelling bee as a child, and of course references the Greek myth of Sisyphus, who was eternally doomed by Zeus to push a boulder up a hill. As a lesbian fan of the show, I’m similarly damned to obsess over Killing Eve’s queer leads, Villanelle (Jodie Comer) and Eve (Sandra Oh), who may never actually get together — and I can’t help but identify with Sisyphus’ plight. So far, season two of Killing Eve feels like a never-ending uphill battle with gay sexual tension, and there’s no release in sight. I can’t tell if I’m ok with that or not.

In the last couple years, I’ve felt a shift in the film and TV landscape; things are moving swiftly in the right direction, toward more diverse representations of LGBTQ+ people on-screen. But with all the amazing lesbian content I’ve consumed in the past year or so — Killing Eve, The Favourite, Disobedience, Taylor Swift’s new single (joking) — I still can’t erase the decades of harmful tropes or utter lack of representation that I grew up with. In a way, I feel scarred by it all, traumatized by the harmful portrayals of queer women that negatively affected my psyche throughout my adolescence and young adulthood. And one issue I’ve found myself internally battling is the idea of “queerbaiting.”

In essence, queerbaiting is when a film or TV show appropriates queer culture for selfish ends, baiting viewers with false hints of same-sex relationships or depicting stereotypical, shallow queer characters. TV shows like Supernatural and Rizzoli & Isles have been accused of this practice, hinting at a same-sex relationships between their lead characters that were enough to string us along but remained purposefully vague. To be clear, I don’t believe that Killing Eve is queerbaiting its audience. Villanelle is a visibly queer character who is open about the fact that she desires Eve and past female lovers. Eve, too, has admitted that she’s into Villanelle; when her coworker Hugo (Edward Bluemel) asked if she likes watching Villanelle or being watched by her, she said “Both.” Still, nothing sexual (or I should say physical) has actually transpired between the two women. And yet, I’ve somehow remained totally sated by the show.

Villanelle and Eve aren’t in love, or at least not in our traditional definition of the word. They’re locked in a Sisyphean battle with toxicity, obsession, and violent tension. And I…love it?

I think some queer women have an almost masochistic need for sexual tension; we thrive off of it, and we love to pine and yearn and lust. I often joke that “glances” qualify as a love language of queer women, but I’m somewhat serious. Before a queer person is out, and before being out was at all accepted, one stealthy glance was all we had to communicate sexual desire to another person. And as far as I’m concerned, a series of gay glances is essentially “a relationship.” So much of real queer women’s love lives, my own included, have been defined by will-they-won’t-they’s, chasing women we weren’t sure were queer or not, and taking those small moments — glances, clandestine hand-holds, unspoken tensions — for actual affection. Because to us, those slivers of attention have made us feel wanted or loved, even if it’s not in the healthiest way. So a part of me strongly identifies with Villanelle and Eve’s inability to pull the trigger on an actual, physical relationship, and a large part of me really enjoys watching them stew and simmer in it all. It’s infuriating, it’s uncomfortable, it’s excruciating, and it’s highly lesbian.