I think I'm a homosexual, but I don't fit the label?

I am in a similar situation. I am known to ramble so before I do I want to say Many people dont discover that they are homosexual until later in life. Teenagers experiment more freely, but it is not uncommon to be older and make decisions about their sexuality. Unless having a label is important to you, couldnt you say you like who you like?

There is this thing called the Kinsey Scale Kinsey scale - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This shows that there isnt definite boundaries for a label

Welcome to EC by the way.

I am sleepy but I will come back and add to this tomorrow unless other people post things witch make more sense

 

First off, welcome to EC! I hope you enjoy it here and find what you're looking for.

While it is true that a lot of people have a general understanding of their sexuality in their earlier (read - "late 20-somethings and younger"), there are plenty of cases where people don't get a grip on what they like, sexually and romantically, until later in life. There's nothing wrong with figuring it out early in life, and there's nothing wrong with figuring it out late in life. What matters is that you're thinking about it right now. I can't really answer why it took you a while to figure it out, but know that you are not alone. There are several others on this forum and around the world who are just like you in this respect.

I can, however, answer your second question. There absolutely is someone who is romantically interested in women but sexually interested in men, well there's a term for it at least. Homosexual & Heteroromantic. Because you have the sexual tendencies towards guys, that definitely means you are somewhat (and from your post content, I'd say mostly) homosexual. However, loving women for their company, romance, sense of things, etc. and not for the sexual aspects definitely screams heteroromantic (to me at least). It makes things a little more difficult when you're trying to find that special someone, but there's absolutely nothing wrong with it. There are some other forum members who have been here longer than I who should be able to better help on this point as well.

One last thing on this wall of text (I seem to do this with all my Support/Advice posts...). You said that you felt like a failure of evolution. I can understand where you're coming from, but evolution clearly thinks (metaphorically) homosexuals are not failures. If it thought we were, homosexual relationships wouldn't exist in a large number of modern day species of animal other than homo sapiens!

 

Welcome to the forum

Its possible that you may be partly asexual.

Ok. So we've established that you are, at least, partly gay and not straight.

I hate to tell you this but evolution doesnt have any expectations of you at all. It doesnt care about you or what you're like in any way. It doesnt hate you and it doesnt love you. It doesnt give a shit.

It isnt true that everyone realised they were gay at a young age. Some grown adults dont even realise that they are gay when they are engaged in sexual activities with a person from the same gender. It takes quite a while for these people to look back on the situation and say "hey, maybe I was having sex with all those people of the same gender because I'm gay!"
Its amazing what the mind can block out and stop you thinking.

You know, when people first realise they are gay, it may be hard for them to break out of social conventions that they have been brought up with. You've been taught that you must be romantically attracted to women. This is something that you will either gradually drift away from as you grow to accept yourself and others grow to accept you or its just what you're like.

Its fine to be romantically attracted to women but how long have you even been in the right frame of mind to give yourself a chance to be romantically attracted to any guy?

I wouldnt worry about this too much. It seems likely that you will, as you progress, start to see guys in a different way. You're not the only one who feels this way. I, for example, am still more likely to be romantically attracted to girls than to guys.

As for not fitting the homosexual 'label'. You do fit it.

 

I'll just echo what other's have said here. I can empathize with the later-in-life coming out (though, as you note, you're not sure). But there are a lot of reasons (personal, familial, societal) that one might not be able to accept or discover their sexuality until they are older. Also - I think it's somewhat easier for teenagers these days than it was even 15 or 20 years ago. When I was in High School in a very liberal Massachusetts town there were no openly gay kids, there were no LGBT groups, Gay/Straight Alliance or any of that. So, I guess that's a long winded way of saying it's perfectly fine to question your sexuality at any age.

James

EDIT: I can't believe I just said words to the effect of "kids these days..." Ugh! I probably also walked up hill both ways to school in a blizzard with no shoes.

 

I completely relate to this and I am in a similar situation, which is why I think I've been confused for a long time. I've often felt romantically attracted to men but I am kind of disgusted by penises and find women so so much more sexy. when I've been in relationships with men I've lost interest in sex pretty quickly. i've never been in a relationship with a woman though so i still couldn't tell you if its because i am gay.

i think this is why I fall so hard for some butch lesbians... although i find femme women super sexy, the 'hetero' model of male female really appeals to me. I like being the 'woman' so to speak, it sounds super sexist but I like someone to court me and to be the protective provider type. i think this is more rare to find in a woman, especially a straight one. this might explain why it took me longer to realize i might actually be gay. because even though i had crushes on my straight female friends, i couldn't imagine being in a relationship with them romantically. maybe its the same with you?

also, although i had many male gay friends in my high school days, there wasn't a SINGLE out lesbian... even now years later, i have most of my class on facebook and they are all straight. where are all the lesbians at?

 

You don't say how old you are. I didn't conclude that I was gay until I was 35. I'd been married for 9 years and had 2 kids in the mean time. So not everyone gets clarity around this when they are young.

For me, to some extent, sex was sex. Any sex, to start, was arousing. So it wasn't evident to me that I wasn't really attracted to women as much as I was to men. Society had me convinced that I should be attracted to women, so I assumed the extent of my attraction was the extent of everyone's attraction. I was wrong.

Only when I started to contemplate and finally accept that I was gay did I really 'allow' myself to have attractions to men. And when I did, they were MUCH stronger than any attraction I'd had to women.

So don't beat yourself up. And don't rush to label yourself. And welcome to EC. This is the right place to hang out if you're trying to figure this out.

 

First off, hi, welcome to EC It's a great place to help you work things out.
Second, as I see it, it's absolutely fine to not have thought about things, and not to understand. To a certain degree, that's life - certainties are a rarity.

I guess I count as one of those people who knew at a very young age - I came to realise I was gay when I was 17; about two years ago. I took the best part of a year to work out things in my mind like "how do I know this?", "is this just a phase?", and the like. Eventually I felt I understood things enough to talk to a close friend about it, and I told him I was gay. (He's actually the reason I feel like I took a long time to understand myself - he just seemed to realise he was gay one day when he was 14 and told everyone). After that I went through a whole load of coming out - a fair bit is documented on EC. All through this time I was, similarly to yourself, attracted to men, but not the idea of any of the normal parts of a relationship - kissing, teasing, what have you. For me, at least, that was a confidence thing; coming out wrecked what miniscule confidence I had in any sort of romantic/social aspect of life, so all the things to do with a relationship just seemed... alien. Over the last year though my self-confidence has more than returned, and I now see the point in kissing and so on .
From what you say, I wouldn't be surprised if it was the same for you - uncertainty is disconcerting and uncomforting.

As for the heteroromantic thing... my best friend's a girl - we have a very Will and Grace thing going on, it's just occurred to me... It's surprisingly common. But heteroromantic would be stretching it. In your case you've jerked yourself out of what I think of as the Great American Novel mindset; boy meets girl, boy falls in love with girl, boy married girl. You've realised it just doesn't work that way for some people It takes time to adapt to the idea of doing coupley things with another guy, just because TV and films don't bring anyone up to expect things to happen that way. So again, give yourself time to work things out.

As for the realising who you were looking at thing - I don't really see the value, from your point of view, in worrying about why you didn't realise sooner. You just didn't. That's what happened. Looking back on it now, I should have realised I was gay a very long time ago, but I'm not sure I even knew that gay meant something different from what it means in the Flintstones theme-song. No point crying over spilt milk.

Finally, to wrap up this lengthy, wordy, and boring dissertation, I doubt very much evolution's failed you, or you it; even if you were a failure of evolution, what can you do about it? You hardly had any control over it. Just take the cards you've been dealt, and play the game of life.

Hope that helps, though I doubt it tbh. They should stop you posting after midnight on here to prevent half-sleeping essay-length replies

 

hmm i dont know if this helps but when i was younger i kinda never thought about it. i would think everyone was cute girls and guys, but it wasnt a big deal cuz also evryone had "cooties". however, my innocence was broken at a very young age. when i was like 6 i accidentally stumbled upon porn on tv. it was interesting to me and i remember exactly how it was. and i was only interested in looking at the guy. so like you could say almost the only reason i knew for sure i was different was bcuz of that. this is just to give you an idea. oh and btw theres a lot of ppl that dont realize until an older age

 

Like Jim, I'm a late-starter in all this (I was also in my mid-30s) - and I can echo much of what he says - although I never got married and had kids, I did try a "straight" relationship too...

Don't worry about labels, or boxes - you are who you are - with your drives, your attractions and your interests. You don't have to be anything you're not.