The Thoughts of a Confused Girl - Perspectives Please?

Hi everyone!

A friend online gave me a link to this website when I told him how confused I am and how I don't feel like there's anyone I can talk to. I've been reading a lot of the posts and a lot of it has been very encouraging. I'd love to hear people's perspectives on all my jumbled, crazy thoughts.

I'm a 19-year-old girl and I've been certain I'm straight for most of my life. I've never been in a relationship, but I've had lots of crushes on guys. When I picture my future, I definitely picture myself married to a guy with lots of kids that I can be a great mom for. I want to have a lasting relationship with a guy, so I've never pursued any short-term dating relationships, and no guy has ever tried to pursue me. Just to make clear, this also means that I don't have any physical experiences with guys at all. Never been kissed. I could see myself dating one of my current guy friends, but he unfortunately thinks of me as a friend and only a friend.

I don't have many close friends. Four years ago, I became really good friends with a girl, we'll call her Rachel. From the very beginning, it was like we'd known each other forever and we became very emotionally close. About a year into our friendship, I began to question whether or not I really thought of her as just a friend. Because even though I'm in general very physically affectionate with my friends (hugging them, resting my head on their shoulder, holding hands, etc.), with her, it felt different. Like, when I hugged her, I didn't want to let go. I started to think about what it would be like to kiss her.

As I mentioned above, I've never been in a relationship, and I don't really want to be until it's the right person (read: guy). However, I'm still a teenager who has hormones, so that's what I first attributed my thoughts to. The simple fact that I need affection and she was the person closest to me, that I could most easily imagine receiving it from. I had never considered whether or not I was gay before, but I started to during this time. I never told Rachel what I was feeling, which turned about to be a good thing, because she (very suddenly and inexplicably) decided not to be my friend anymore a year ago.

I should probably also mention that most of my time spent thinking confusing thoughts in circles was spent when I was alone. Whenever I was with her, I mostly felt like it was a normal friendship like any of my others in the past.

Since she ended our friendship, I didn't really think about girls any more. (I thought about a few guys, though. Didn't act on any of these thoughts.) That is, until about 3 months ago when my friend (let's call her Jackie) returned from a semester abroad and we started catching up. She's not a physically affectionate person at all, but I told her that she was just going to have to deal with hugs while I made up for the months she was gone. We spent a lot of time hanging out in her apartment, talking, watching movies, etc. And we were almost always touching. Mostly, my head was resting on her shoulder, but sometimes she'd lean on me too.

Ever since she came back, we've been spending way more time together than we did before she left. My family (I still live at home) actually started to get jealous of how much time I was spending with Jackie and I started to lie to them about when I was at her apartment. And I was starting to begin to have the same types of very uncertain, very new, very questioning feelings with her that I'd experienced with Rachel. The main difference is that with Rachel, there was no chance at all of anything ever happening with her because not only is she straight as a ruler, she's homophobic. Jackie on the other hand, believes that love is love regardless of gender. I don't know her orientation for sure. She's mentioned guys and their various levels of attractiveness before, but I think it's possible she'd be open to a relationship with a girl. Relationships aren't high on her priority list, though.

I've probably forgotten something that would make my jumbled thoughts make more sense, but that's what I've got right now. Does anyone have any perspective to offer me on my predicament?

Oh wait, here's a few questions:
Is it possible to be straight, but also be attracted to some girls?
Can you be sexually inclined to one gender and romantically inclined to another?
Are people born with a certain sexual orientation or is sexuality fluid?

Also, if I say anything that offends anyone, I promise it is completely unintentional. I'm figuring things out, and if I say something that you find offensive, please explain my error to me. I will apologize and never make the same mistake again. (I've offended someone before with my ignorance, so I feel the need to apologize in advance.)

 

Thanks for the welcome, kiersten! I really appreciate the warm community here.

Is where you fall on the Kinsey scale something you just determine on your own?

 

Thanks so much to everyone and their kind and thoughtful responses. I have read them and pondered them and just never had the decency to respond yet. But I am now!

In the form of an update, my friend Jackie and I are still so close and we both think of each other as our best friends and spend tons of our time together. In terms of our emotional relationship, we could hardly be closer. We trust each other, we care for each other, we tease each other, we irritate each other, we apologize, and we love each other. Ah yes, that L-word. I've realized recently that I really, honestly love her. I don't know how the rest of the world would define our relationship, or if they would call what we have love, but that's what I call it, and I've started saying "I love you" to her.

Complication:
She likes a guy. He's someone we both know, but she's spent more time with. He's nice and funny and quirky and she gets on well with him. About a month ago, she told me she had a crush on him. This is the first time she's ever mentioned a real-life crush to me. And a couple of weeks ago, she stayed over at his apartment and they slept in the same bed, spooning. Platonicly, she says. I believe her that she could view that as platonic, but I doubt that he would view it the same way. But Jackie doesn't like to use words to clarify relationships, so they haven't actually used words to define what they are.

As a side note on Jackie not using words, last week I got really whiny/needy about the fact that she only tells me she loves me if I say it first, and then she wrote me a letter (We write each other often, even though we see each other practically every day. It's cute.) to explain how she thinks that her actions speak louder than her words, and that she thinks saying something too often makes it not mean as much. And in the postscript she said "I love you" and it made my heart so happy.

But back to the dilemma of her liking a guy. I really want her to be happy, and I know that she likes him a lot and that she's happy when she's with him. But I'm also jealous. To me, our relationship is so much better and more important than anything she could have with him. He doesn't know her and understand her like I do. He finds her interesting and "mysterious." Watch me roll my eyes at that last word.

In terms of the physical, how about a list:
*I hug her, and when she knows I need it she hugs me
*We walk arm in arm. Sometimes, we almost hold hands, but it's more like this weird thing where our hands brush and intertwine and separate.
*When we're sitting down I lean against her, or rest my head on her shoulder
*I much prefer to be touching her than not, whether that's placing a hand on her thigh or brushing the side of her arm with the back of my fingers, or wrapping an arm around her waist
*We're more physically affectionate when we're alone
*Sometimes I touch her just to make a point to other people. There was this one guy (not the guy she likes, but another guy) who likes her and when we were all three in the grocery store together, I walked with my arm around her waist. Upon thinking about it, I realized I was just doing that to show him he couldn't.
*We have no personal space bubbles with each other.
*98% of physical contact is instigated by me, but she never stops it, unless we're having a pretend fight (we never have real ones) and she's "taking it away from me" in some kind of game, which always ends with smiles and me telling her "Come back," and then she moves close again. (I'm smiling while I type this. Can you tell how much I like her?)
*My lips have never touched any part of her and vice versa.
*We have never done or discussed or thought about anything sexual.

Okay, so (man, I talk a lot). I don't know how much of our touching is her just tolerating me, or how much she actually enjoys contact with me as much as I enjoy contact with her. I also don't know if she realizes what I'm trying to non-verbally communicate. She doesn't put much stock in words, so I feel like I'm trying to communicate all my deep affection (not attraction) to her though my touch, but I don't know if she understands that she is not like my other friends, that I love her. I also don't know if when I say love, I mean the same thing as everyone else in the world. I don't mean anything physical when I say it. I don't picture the ideal progression of our relationship as having sex. What I mean is that there is no other person in my life I would rather be with than her.

Wow, so many words I have typed. I don't know what I expect people to say in response to this. Just any advice about how to handle this situation?

Also, in terms of my orientation. I still really have no idea. I'm still physically attracted to guys, and I can still picture myself in relationships with them (or even one in particular), but there is no one I am closer to than Jackie, and if we spent the rest of our lives together, I think I would be perfectly happy. Like I mentioned, there's nothing sexual about our relationship and it's not something I want with her. It's weird. Does love always have to have sex associated with it? Can I love her without being sexually attracted to her?

Okay, I'll stop talking now.

 

Obviously, I was just kidding when I said I would stop talking.

Here's some more specific questions besides does love always have to have sex associated with it and can you love someone without being sexually attracted to her:

How much physical affections is "too much" if people are "just friends"?
How can I tell her/show her how much I love her?
Is it wrong of me to want her all to myself when she likes a guy?

Oh, and one piece of information I forgot to mention is that while I have not kissed her, I would like to. I've almost worked up enough courage to try it once, and I'm always looking for that ~perfect moment~ but it's not happened yet.

 

I hope no one thinks I'm annoying or obnoxious when I ask this (although I am both things) but would someone mind responding?

 

Thank you so much for reading that monster of a post and responding!

You're totally right about people having different boundaries, and she is definitely comfortable with my physical affection, although she doesn't initiate it.

I should just tell her, I know I should, but I'm scared to death. I think I would rather say as we are then have anything become awkward. I couldn't bear to lose her. And I feel like she should just know, somehow. She prides herself on her ability to know whatever I'm thinking, so sometimes I wonder how she can possibly not know how much I love her.

What do you think about love and sex? Is sexually desiring someone required for loving them?

 

The thing about Jackie is she's really not physically affectionate. Only with me. She doesn't hug her other friends, but the other night when I was really sad, she gently pulled me over to her and just held me while I cried. That was the night before she slept in the same bed as her crush.

And yeah, what's driving me crazy is that to the outside world, we look exactly like a couple. Even our mutual friend the other day joked that the story we were telling him sounded like a sapphic novel. So if we appear to be a couple, why do I feel the need to define what we are? Can't I just be happy being her friend and loving her like this? Do I really need to have a "define the relationship" conversation?

 

Yeah, no physical experience with either gender. I have definitely desired guys sexually before. A year ago, I really wanted to date one of my guy friends, and then he went and got himself a girlfriend. Le sigh. I think some of my feelings towards guys may be social conditioning, but most of it is not. I have (and continue to be) attracted to many guys.

And it's probable or at least possible that my sexual desires for her could increase if we became more intimate. It would probably be very slow, though.

It's so wonderful talking through this.

 

I will. Thank you so much!

 

Guys, I cannot thank you enough for all of the help and support you've given me. You really helped me think everything through and...I was finally able to tell her!! (!)

I started by just having an IM conversation with her about labels/relationships/love/love+sex, and through that conversation, she said that there was no difference between our love and romantic love. She defined our love as platonic, which wikipedia defines as: "a strong type of love that is non-sexual." I balked at the word platonic, though, because to me that implies just friendship, when I actually feel something more than that for her, but we were both tired and went to sleep.

Next day, we were at an event where her guy crush also was, and I was too clingy and also completely falsely interpreted her actions and thought she was pushing me away when she wasn't. Given our conversation the previous night, I was confused and wrote her a letter (we do that often, even though we see each other all the time) to tell her what I was feeling.

She responded with a letter of her own, in which she revealed so many personal details of her history that I had not known and in doing so told me that she is asexual. And that makes so much sense. She's only told a few people before, and some of them don't understand it, but I totally do. And I feel so incredible grateful for the trust she's placed in me by revealing all of that.

I wrote her back and told her how completely fine I was with her being asexual, and how I love her not in a sexual way, but definitely in a romantic way. I also finally figured out why her guy crush bothers me so much, and told her. It's not because I actually think that his existence will make her love me any less, what I'm worried about is that he will not understand our relationship and will try to change it, belittle it, or make it less than what it is, just because it doesn't have a label.

When I gave her the letter, she read it, then smiled and said thank you, and then we spent a pleasant afternoon together. And I am so happy. I know that nothing and no one can change the love we have, and that the fact that I do not sexually desire her will not be something that causes a problem for us, because it's not something she wants anyway.

And by the way, screw society and their labels! We don't need to fit a box that culture has defined as "friendship" or as "romance" or as "a couple." We can just be us.