In the extensive reading I had done about her in college, I had read many biographies and felt from inferences in her poetry that she had a lover, so I'm not surprised at all.

It's interesting, I was once confined to home for about 6 weeks, it was winter, I had been injured and could not risk going out on the ice. I had a lot of "alone time" as my friends were all working and this was before email was just beginnin and was not in many homes. When the time was finished, I wrote in my journal - "now I understand Emily Dickinson's choices." She was a "sensitive" as they type is called and she did what was right for her.
I was so much closer to the forces of creation during my confinement. It was easier to think, easier to create, easier to write and easier to love all of humanity. To stay out of the "chaos" of every day life is actually a unique blessing.

I imagine in the next few years there will be other voices of men and/or women who made similar choices for their lives. good for them.

Over the course of her life, Emily Dickinson had crushes on several men. If you read her poetry with an eye to when the poems were written, you can tell which man she was referring to in a particular poem.

Her relationship with Judge Lord was as close to a "real" relationship as she ever had. But he was a widower in his 60's, I think, when she, in her 40's, was considering marriage to him. (He died before they could marry.)

Even if they "did it," it's hard to imagine that it was on the living room sofa like a couple of teens.