How did you discover you were homo/bisexual?

MezozoicGay · 2020-07-21T13:19:56+00:00

I don't remember how old I was, but our class had more boys than girls, so some pairings were boy with boy sometimes. And I was paired always with girls in dances and other stuff, however, once I was assigned with boy, and when I was holding his hand and dancing with him...oh my, that was something different. I felt myself so lost, so weird, so good. USSR was very homophobic, so I was not sure what it was, but I found myself so much more ingaged when around boys and when looking on boys, that I knew something is different with me. At first I thougt somethign is wrong, but illegal radiostation "Voice of America" once spoke about gay men and that it is normal, that was when I realised I am gay.

ABlueSkilttle · 2020-07-21T09:51:28+00:00

I always ended up more affectionate and attracted to other boys near as I can remember. Of course, this became explicit with puberty, where I had to figure out on my own why I wasn't attracted to girls. Initially I figured I was bisexual, but this turned out to not be true either. Sort of like you, I realized in hindsight my feelings for other boys in childhood weren't "normal", and I eventually had to learn to accept it. If I wasn't raised in a religious nutjob household I probably would've figured it out sooner, and without the unfortunate sexual confusion as I kept feeling I was "supposed to" be attracted to women.

Unlike you, however, I had a deep hatred for my "family" as I realized how awful they were as people. I didn't have any sadness or feelings beyond simply knowing I could not let them find out. So I largely grew up keeping to myself until I moved out. I've had a few relationships since then, of course, in the ensuing decades. I'm entirely comfortable with it. The only period of discomfort I had was as a teenager where I was rather sensitive to other people adopting my family's own ridiculous religious views.

midnight305 · 2020-07-21T11:06:02+00:00

After being raped and subconsciously forced to date men because of my family values I discovered I was a lesbian because i never liked male parts.

It's also kept me from getting a partner because so far the only lesbians I've meet online has been gold stars and they dony want a tainted woman sadly.

oofreesouloo · 2020-07-21T12:14:46+00:00

I can relate to you on many levels. The only thing is that I'm lesbian, not bi. For me, it was at 13/14 (in the transition), whne puberty hit for me. I was in vacations and OUT OF NOWHERE I started thinking "is it possible that I'm a girl and date other girls?", started searching on the net, and watched my first lesbian web serie "Anyone But Me" (it's still one of my favorites till these days!). It started out as a "curiosity", but I started getting TOO curious and I found women so sexy, so much sexier than men... And it would be so cool to have a gf... I've realised also at the same time, what I felt for my best friend wasn't friendship but love (she was also coincidently at vacations in the same place as me and we met). At first, I was excited because I've never been a homophobic person and never had any problem with "different people". But then, after coming out to my mom and not going well, to my friends and not going well, bad rumors about me, etc etc I started to feel lots of shame. And just like you, I had NO one at the time. I felt totally alone and an alien lmao. But now I'm here and things have gotten much better and I now love myself 😊

censorshipment · 2020-07-21T09:30:48+00:00

I was 4/5 and started wanting to hug and hold hands with and kiss every girl I knew.

florasis · 2020-07-21T14:14:36+00:00

Always been natural. Can remember a strong emotional attraction for a girl when I was in kindergarten. Then a crush in elementary school. Then, finally, I realized I was in love with a girl at 14. It has always been very natural. I didn't know about the existence of homosexuality, and couldn't understand my feelings, but my nature was always toward girls.

indeepshadows · 2020-07-21T14:46:07+00:00

[deleted]

haveanicedaytoo · 2020-07-21T15:43:53+00:00

(This is actually a long and depressing story that involves a severely homophobic mom/family and the mom has Narcissistic Personality Disorder, but I'm just going to do a highly cherry-picked positive version of it because I cannot deal with this shit right now and don't want to spread negativity.)

So I was a very stupid little kid, and I thought EVERYONE was just like me. Everyone liked both boys and girls, but that boys and girls married each other because that's the only way God/The Stork will assign you a baby, because a baby needs a mommy and daddy. (I had been told that God/The Stork will only bring babies to married people. Unmarried women with babies were explained away with 'oh, her husband is away,' or 'she has a secret husband' or 'he died' or whatever. Plenty of lies in my childhood....) I was absolutely confused and bewildered when my cousins/relatives kept telling me that no, I can't like/marry a girl/woman because girls can't like other girls. I kept saying BUT I DO! Like, the reality was SO REAL to me that it was like trying to convince me that snow isn't cold and water isn't wet. I know what I like and I like both boys and girls.

I eventually learned to just keep quiet about it. But I would just be quiet about liking both girls and boys, like... If I couldn't be outwardly bisexual, it felt more right to be outwardly asexual and not express my attraction to others at all.

For a long time I thought I was a special unique unicorn and I was the only person in the world who liked both. When I learned what the words gay/lesbian meant, I thought to myself 'So I'm a half lesbian!'

When I finally learned the word bisexual in middle school, I can't even describe the feeling to you. Like this... "So there's more of me???" feeling. Like this feeling of finally not being alone. But also.... I felt really embarrassed saying the word bisexual out loud, or even in my own head because it had the word SEX in it. Like... Gays ans Lesbians get a normal word, why me, a 12 year old, has to describe herself in terms of SEX!!! Ewww!!!! LOL

randomlesbian · 2020-07-21T15:01:57+00:00

I grew up thinking that every girl gets crushes on other girls, so I never really tought much about it until i was 14 .There was a guy that almost every girl had a crush on,and were always talking about how "hot" he is ,to me he looked like every other guy: plain. I was thinking,why do I have to date men? Can't I just live with my female best friend for the rest of my life? After some time passed , I asked myself , if I had to choose between kissing a girl or kissing a guy,I would obviously choose the girl,because girls are prettier. If every girl feels this way,why do they still choose to date guys? Am I normal? That's how I discovered I liked girls, but I didn't want to call myself a lesbian because I tought they only do it for the attention of men, and I didn't want that. So instead , if someone asked me , I told them I was "bisexual,but I only date girls"(weird, I know, I was very stupid at that time). Later I learnt that lesbians irl are not like in porn, and they don't do it to get attention, so I started calling myself that. It wasn't just a single moment , it was more of a long process of accepting myself.

LasagnaRossa · 2020-07-21T13:29:18+00:00

I've always known I felt the same feelings for boys and girls when I was a teen, but the internalized homophobia was so strong that I denied the homosexual attraction. At first I thought I was a straight girl who was able to get crushes on girls too. I even though that everybody deep enough felt the same as me, so I wasn't the exception, I was the rule.

I also had a phase where I thought I was asexual. The line of thought was: "well, I feel the same for both genders and I definitely am not attracted to girls, so I must be asexual".

When I got a boyfriend, he noticed I wasn't behaving like a straight person and told me.

Now I happily embrace it, but accepting myself has been quite a journey.

VioletRemi · 2020-07-21T17:44:51+00:00

I was always looking at women, since kindergarden. I was even flirting with girls, never looking at boys. What is homosexuality was unknown here, and I never knew that woman can be with woman. However, society was forcing me into marriage, so I ended up married for 3 years right before I hit 18. In marriage I always was finding it to be unpleasant (and husband was very good person, maybe he is the best man I know), it always felt wrong, like something is off, and sex was always boring no matter how much he tried. I thought I was asexual or frigid. However, after divorce, when I was a student and was living in dormitory in 2-women room, we had only one big 2-place bed. And I felt myself hot when was sleeping in one bed with her - such never happened with ex-husband. And sniffing her amazing scent made me desire her, and then one night we kissed, and it felt right (and later we tried sex together and it felt even more right). That was when I was around 20-21 years old or so.

markiemarcus · 2020-07-21T15:35:32+00:00

I was probably about 10 and watched a transcendently awful action movie called "Double Impact" with Van Damme, who spends most of the movie in spandex or short shorts and on some level thought, "Yup!".

Edit: Ah, tell a lie, it was before that. I was obsessed with Michael Biehn; he was a fox back in the day. So probably about 7 or 8.

The actual realisation came a little later; my window of knowingly being in the closet was relatively short from about 15 to 17. That was a weird time, I had a lot on my plate so I consciously put it on the back burner. I then developed a romantic attraction to a guy I met at a party, purely over a discussion about movies and music. To this day I have no idea if he was actually gay. That continued for about a year, but alas, he moved country and that was that. My first proper boyfriend after that was really amazing and I was out by that point (18). My folks took that pretty well, though interestingly, my mum less so. It came from a good place though; she was worried I was going to get beat up by bigots.

The first half of my 20s were a write-off, so I never really did "scene" things, whatever that means. I actually felt really alienated when I tried, so I eventually stopped trying and was happier for it. I think I'd been through so much at that point that I just found it numbing. There were also crazy things happening in my career and I was extremely driven back then. It wasn't until I was 26 that I was active again. It's not that I didn't want to, it was a reflex after the first relationship ended like it did.

chazzstrong · 2020-07-21T18:56:33+00:00

First grade, there was a girl in the class next to mine. She was the first crush I ever had, short little pixie cut, big blue eyes...little me was smitten. Then I saw her go into the boys bathroom. Mind you, this was back in late 80s, so the bathroom craze had not happened. And yeah, turns out 'she' was a boy...and I still thought he was cute. This confused me, I knew what 'gay' was, I had a gay uncle, but it still felt like I was wrong.

So fast-forward a few years to repressed teenage me, now with new step-father action figure with phrases such as 'like a fag' and 'fucking queer'. Didn't help me push down the uncomfortable issue I didn't want to address. It was also around this time that the internet became a thing ( yeah, I'm old ), and I found myself on a message board for music where someone had an avatar of this GORGEOUS asian girl. I kept finding myself staring at the picture, until I finally asked who she was. And, naturally, the response was 'He's a singer named Gackt'. To be fair, Gackt's whole spiel involved dressing like a woman most of the time with his band Malice Mizer, so it wasn't totally out-of-nowhere, but this inevitably led me to looking him up and sure enough: I still thought he was hot. But now I was older, I didn't have the luxury of just forgetting it because my body was doing THINGS...so I had to start asking questions. The answer was fairly easy for me, and I always feel like I'm cheating that it WAS so easy compared to the stories I've read, but I like girls and boys, I'm attracted to features on both, and while my preference is androgynous men or women I definitely have no problems getting aroused at, say, this because holy goddamn, who wouldn't? So I realized pretty quick that I was bisexual, and honestly that was that.

Fortunately for me, I suppose, I was a total shut-in and didn't have many friends due to anxiety issues, so I never really had to do a 'coming out' thing. I'm not effeminate, I don't wear rainbows ( except for a really comfy pair of socks ), and I don't go around starting up conversations that have to do with who gets me off. I'm fairly sure a few friends know, and others for-sure don't, but it's not a big deal to me. I don't need to be 'out', because my sexuality isn't really anybody's business. If they ask, I answer honestly, and sometime's it surprises my circle ( like for real, mom? The posters on my wall were sporty spice and an effeminate asian man, is it REALLY that much of a shocker? ), but for the most part it's just...me. I don't define myself by things like sexuality or political beliefs, those are only part of who I am, so the closer someone gets to me the more they learn about me, and I feel like that's how it's supposed to be. No judgement, no pre-set prejudices, just...me.

xandit · 2020-07-21T14:07:15+00:00

I can remember a crush at at least 9 thought I didn't have a label for it until later...I was always a mattter of being drawn to certain classmates. Then puberty happened and my body said "look this is how its gonna be from now on..."

Lapis_Lazuli · 2020-07-21T19:35:13+00:00

My earliest memory of being attracted to women was when I was seven or eight, when I began to have fantasies about asking my teacher (a very pretty young woman) to marry me. I say "fantasies," but I should clarify that they were totally non-sexual; "day dreams" might be a better term. I was confused and embarrassed by these thoughts. I was a sheltered kid. My classmates would snicker at the word "gay," and I had absolutely no idea what they thought was funny, because I didn't know that being gay was even a thing.

A few years later, as I headed into puberty, I started having sexual thoughts about attractive female classmates and female celebrities and I developed a (retrospectively highly embarrassing) painful crush on a friend of mine. At this point, I was aware of homosexuality, and I started to suspect that maybe the word applied to me, although it took me several more years to really come to terms with that. I dated a couple of boys in high school, hated every second of it, and fortunately never went past second base. Despite suffering through some more embarrassing crushes, I didn't actually find a girlfriend until the summer after high school.

OPPRESSED_REPTILIAN · 2020-07-21T17:34:39+00:00

I was about 11 too, though it's hard to pinpoint exactly. I developed an unhealthy, very sexual obsession with one of my male friends.

Later I realized I wasn't attracted to women and didn't really care about having a girlfriend. However, I had no interest in guys, either. Since a teenager I keep looking at pictures of guys (naked or otherwise) out of fear to check whether or not I'm gay but I never get turned on by it. I've never been sexually interested in any guy (or anyone period) since that first one a long time ago. So I guess it's more like a really obscure fetish, and a disordered sexuality most likely from having a ton of mental health issues.

To be clear I've never experienced the PG-13 cutesy gay crush. I probably never will.

MarkJefferson · 2020-07-21T18:33:32+00:00

I was pretty attracted early on to males my age and older- in their teens, in tv and movies. But I never thought about it too deeply because I just assumed it was a little like that with everyone(lol- no), and I liked females a lot too, so I must've been completely straight and not at all gay(or so my primitive logic went).

Even afterwards when I crushed on a boy in high school I countered it by thinking to myself, "I've had more crushes on girls, so there." I felt I had to do that back then because otherwise my sexuality wouldn't make any damn sense, and I wouldn't be able to respond when others asked about it(an inability to answer with certainty and confidence, to me would've been worse than giving a simple yes or no to the question, "Are you gay/straight?"). I grew up in a rather liberal city so homophobia was a lot less of a concern, so I wouldn't be as afraid of eventually being gay. Which was a good thing, as I had precious few friends back then and none who were good/close.

So I just defined straight as allowing for an attraction to guys sometimes and left it at that. I never was satisfied with that answer, though. And I was low-level confused until I was 19, when I was browsing the webpage of a dude who made and shared computer games as a hobby and described himself as Bisexual. Before that, I may have heard the term but never took it seriously and rejected it off-hand(cause bis are just confused/greedy and don't even exist, yo). However, I was in much more introspective period in my life so I started asking myself if I was actually bi perhaps, and the answer came back pretty damn quick; Of course you are, blockhead!

All my confusion dissolved after that. All the pieces suddenly fit. I don't know why it took me such a long time to come to that realization, but better late than never, I guess.

"Confused" Bisexuals are a thing; It's just not what everyone thinks it is.

Vulvamort · 2020-07-21T19:45:45+00:00

I knew I liked boys, but at 12 I started to feel "weird" about one of my close female friends. I wanted to hold her hand, play in/smell her hair, kiss her. I found myself really seeking her approval because I really wanted her to like me. I remember telling myself "she's your friend, she already likes you" to which I thought, "yeah but not like THAT" and that's when it hit me.

I had a passing experience in high school with a different friend but I kind of suppressed it for the most part. My family was intensely homophobic at the time and I'd resigned myself to taking my bisexuality to the grave.

In college though I couldn't ignore it anymore. There was this friend I kind of always lowkey had a crush on. We kissed once, and for weeks after that I was clamoring for an excuse to do it again. We cyber sexted once. She came over a few months after that and we were so close to having sex but I didn't want to ruin our friendship.

My family, mom in particular is 100% supportive now.

Even with all of that I'm primarily attracted to men. I don't typically crush on female celebrities or female fictional characters for example. So I often feel "too straight" for most LGB spaces, yet "too gay" for my straight friends. But every so often I'll meet a girl who turns my whole world upside down.

nbailey73 · 2020-07-21T19:46:22+00:00

When I was like 3 or 4, I kept catching myself looking at the male models on the packages of underwear at the clothing stores. Every time. And I didn’t know why. Eventually later on I caught myself “appreciating” the bodies of guys at the water park when I was like 10 or 11... And then around the time I turned 13 I realized I wasn’t just appreciating them... I was checking them out.

BrNated · 2020-07-21T20:50:41+00:00

I began to realize I was attracted to guys just as highschool began. In retrospect, I can clearly remember having crushes on guys since middle school but I didn't make sense of it until my freshman year.

Even after realizing I was attracted to guys, I didn't immediately think of myself as gay. I thought I had a "crush" on my best friend at the time who was girl and was the only person I could feel like I could talk about very personal things such as sexuality to (despite never having sexual feelings towards her; I didn't really understand the difference between having strong friendly feelings and actual romantic and/or sexual feelings at the time).

I also thought that I wasn't gay because the thought of anal didn't appeal to me nor was I really effeminate (a reason why I have a strong distaste for stereotypes that I find harmful to this day). Yes, this may sound a bit ridiculous but that's exactly the sort of logic my teenager self used back in the day (seriously, I used to think I was a biromantic asexual because I didn't like the thought of anal sex).

Eventually I got my shit together junior year and now feel that I have properly pinpointed my sexuality as just simply 'gay.' Only ever had one person for support; plenty of crushes but never told any.

xAcidRainx · 2020-07-21T22:36:24+00:00

I've always liked females (obviously), looking back on behaviors I had as a child, like having intense feelings for certain girls I knew, of course at the time I never even considered it to be a "crush", which only confused the hell out of me.

But it wasn't until I was 12 (I'm almost 18 now) that I became aware of it, it was like a light that flickered on one day.

Now because of my religious upbringing when I lived with my mothers family, I was taught being gay was wrong, so naturally I was ashamed and afraid.

So for a while I tried playing it off as if I was bi or pansexual/comp het shit (despite this, I never once doubted my attraction to females) and the only ones who knew were my online friends, who weren't fooled by that idea, and I was asked about it a few times.

The first person who found out IRL was unfortunately, my mother. I told her out of anger during a counselling session, her reaction was to cry, say how it's a sin etc (she told me I was going to hell for it one time as well). So I was discouraged from telling anyone else for a while, but eventually I told my dad, sister, grandma (dads mom), they are fine with it and told me to consider the source as my mom is a bitch to begin with.

Mid 2016 is when I stopped the pussy-footing around and took on the "lesbian label", because at that point I knew for A FACT that I don't like guys. And I couldn't be happier now.

Sorry for the wall of text lol.

Lycaerix · 2020-07-22T01:10:43+00:00

Simply always knew I liked guys and had no interest in girls. I think I was 10 when I realised that I find guys attractive, but it wasn't before I was 14 that I acknowledged that I was gay.

I have no emotional, romantic, physical or whatever attraction to women whatsoever.

I had a 'girlfriend' for two years when I was twelve. Never so much as kissed--we were just good friends at the time. Even the concept of being 'girlfriend' and 'boyfriend' stemmed from the fact that we enjoyed spending time together and that's what other kids at the time called us and what we figured we were.

I was always attracted to males, turned on by males and my first ever crush was a new guy in my class when I was 10. The first 'porn' I ever gravitated towards was male--I never even had an interest in women's bodies.

Some people are straight, some people are gay, and some people fall somewhere in-between. I'm gay :p

The whole saga with the trans activism and various viewpoints regarding being with trans people has caused me to realise how many people really fall in that grey area yet appropriate sexual orientation identities that don't belong to them.

I wonder if it's because they find it easier to find partners when they call themselves 'gay' or 'straight' than when they call themselves bi or pan? I have to admit that I have no interest in being with someone who's not gay.

FrenchiePup · 2020-07-21T19:27:28+00:00

I always felt somewhat bi but over time discovered I was really into men more than women, until the point where I realized I had little to no attraction to women.

Not that I have never had sex with a woman, but men are just more fun and more into "Let's do it now!!!" than women.

Bahgawd · 2020-07-22T00:53:51+00:00

I was dating a guy in my junior year of high school when I ended up getting kissed by my (female) best friend as a dare at a party. I honestly had never felt like that in my life. I felt so, awake? I mean I had always noticed girls before but I thought everyone liked girls like that. They were so pretty, funny, and exciting to be around. Turns out I was bi as hell.

Edit: When I finally came out everyone except my mother was super supportive.

hyunnahh · 2020-07-22T07:03:56+00:00

Thought I was just a straight ally when I first found out about the different sexualities, until I met a few friends that weren't quite straight and started questioning myself. Went from straight to bisexual to asexual before finally realizing I'm a lesbian. It was during the "asexual-demisexual" phase that I realized I wasn't actually sex repulsed, I was just penis repulsed.

CleverNickName · 2020-07-22T11:44:13+00:00

I was 18 or so and started hanging out with a bunch of Star Wars nerds I'd met on the internet, which was a huge breath of fresh air from my schoolmates who were all soccer-loving hiphop-listening bland conforming dudes. I got along really well with one of the nerds. In retrospect, I had super obviously fallen madly in love with him, but I wasn't even really aware of it.

Or in denial I suppose, as one night he outright asked me "Are you gay?". To which I obviously responded "No! I just never had a friend like you" (I'd be super embarassed if this wasn't so long ago). It took me another year to google a gay forum and ask the guys there if I'm gay.

Even then, I went around for years saying I was bisexual, which I'm not. Between how aggressively "normal" straight was in my world, my pseudo-religious father, and my own fear of my own self (which is still a thing, just differently), I held on to that for way too long.

wafflegaff · 2020-07-29T07:54:57+00:00

When I realized as a teenager that I was attracted to a few famous women I didn't know. Decided to wait and see if that translated to real life as well and it did eventually. I was lucky my family was not homophobic, so coming out was anticlimactic.

I was not entirely conscious of having crushes on women from a very young age, however. One of my teachers was a super hottie and very kind, and I was probably six or seven years old. So the discovery came much later than the fact.

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