How do I get over feeling like an idiot for coming out to myself so late?

(Sorry everyone for the massive size of this, my first post, but I think I had to get i all down for my own benefit, as this is the first time I've put my journey into words like this. I hope it will still be a quick and coherent read.)

First of all, major kudos to everyone who is coming out in an environment that is much, much tougher than mine. Reading people's stories here, in other places online, watching coming out stories on YouTube etc has really made me appreciate what the stakes are for a lot of people all over the world.

My situation is entirely different. I live in Stockholm, Sweden, easily one of the most gay friendly places in the world. I don't come from a religious background and my parents, while still of a different generation, are very open-minded about most things. Swedish society is extremely secular, and even many people who identify as Christian take a very liberal stance on social issues. My best friend is a self-described Christian and she has three out-of-wedlock in vitro babies with her fiance whom I really don't know when she plans to marry. Loads of people at work are out and proud. I'm sure you get my drift. This is what makes me feel like such an idiot for taking soooo long to come to terms with the fact that I am much more attracted to women than men.

If you'll bear with me, I'll back up a bit. When I was maybe five (and I don't know if this is significant, but I feel it might be), I got a little worried when my mom and I looked through my baby album and she showed me the little announcement they took out in the paper when I was born. It said "Welcome, XXX" (are we allowed to use our real first names or not?), rather than "Welcome, our daughter XXX." Unlike, all of my female friends, I didn't have an 'a' anywhere in my name, and was concerned that people might not know I was a girl. To be clear, my name is not uncommon, and widely known to be a girl's name, but I was working with the limited exposure to the world I had at the time. This somewhat irrational vague concern that people might perceive me as something less than 100% girl stayed with me. And I call it irrational, because I don't have particularly masculine features, was never really a tomboy (unless you include an early infatuation with superhero comics and sci-fi movies), and loved dresses (still do!). But I was still convinced that if I did things like cut my hair short, I would come across as too masculine, as if there was something others could see in me that didn't signal 100% little girl, even if that was something as simple as a 100% little girl who just maybe had an affection for others like herself.

I have a distinct memory from school from the time I was about eleven (for some reason I can't remember who was in the room with me, just that we were sitting in a circle), where I experienced something that signaled a very distinct "Oh, shit" reaction. Although I can't remember who, I must have had a physical reaction to another girl that set off a bunch of alarms. At the time, I did, along with all the other girls, have something of a pseudo-crush on a boy in class, in retrospect mostly because I had somehow picked up that he was the "it" guy that all the girls wanted to be with. But my feelings lay closer to simple admiration; I coveted his status in some way, and everything about him just screamed "cool." Through the years, I would have a handful of such "crushes" on boys that would be based on something as simple as 1) he liked me, 2) he was popular and I should want to be with him, and even 3) we shared the same interests.

I had my first boyfriend at age seventeen. He fell in love with me, I had loads of fun hanging out with him and his friends, and I honestly don't regret the experience. But, I did go into some kind of hypersexual robot mode where I was playing the girlfriend, more or less. I didn't mind the sex, but it wasn't all that great. I did enjoy being wanted though, and I think that is a pretty universal human need. However, I have never kissed a guy and liked it. I just never got the appeal of kisses, but figured this was just a normal preference.

Meanwhile, however (and I don't quite remember the timing of it), I had two crushes on girls in high school. One was the close friend I usually hung out with. It was pretty mild, a sort of "itch" in me that I could somewhat easily push down and ignore. But I also had a year-long major crush on another girl in my class, that really worried me, and was much more difficult to ignore. I found myself having to manage it, actively make sure to act normal around her, and in spite of all my efforts, even her boyfriend made a comment to me one time that set my cheeks on fire: "Stop looking at her."

My teens were pretty angsty (which I think is true for most people, regardless of what they have going on in their lives), and for a long while I was something of a hypochondriac. I would be convinced that I had cancer, and it took the best of my rational mind to snap myself out of it. However, as these homoerotic tendencies kept getting more obvious, I would shift from being convinced I had cancer, to being convinced I was a lesbian (and then back again). It's actually pretty hilarious when I think back on it. I would literally think to myself "Okay, so maybe I don't have cancer, but what does it matter? I'm a lesbian!" I even came home from school crying one time, announcing to my family that I thought I was a lesbian and go straight to my room. Oh yes, I have "come out" to my family several times, but perhaps more to seek their reassurance that I wasn't (although I've never feared that they wouldn't accept me if I was). And to be clear, my intentions are not to diminish the absolutely devastating effects of cancer, I'm just rehashing the irrational thoughts of a teenage girl.

But somehow, the dots didn't quite connect. I think the wonderful John Corvino has described this phenomenon as double bookkeeping, or something along those lines. On the one hand, I have always acknowledged that I am sometimes attracted to other women, even casually dropping into conversations with close friends (and even family) "Oh, I'm a bit bicurious," or "I have a bisexual streak." Sweden is pretty open like that. But, I was adamant that I wouldn't act on these feelings. When a close co-worker of mine asked whether I'd like to go to a "girl's party" with her (she's openly bisexual), I would answer: "No, I can't. I'm afraid I'd like it too much." How insane is that?! :bang:

So, at the age of 36, I find myself with a long track record of Internet dating (which I was never heavily invested in, I was really just going through the motions), a whopping three male sexual partners (one of them a one-night stand), and a gradual sense of defeat. I desperately want a family some day, going so far as to have my eggs frozen two years ago, but it was becoming more and more clear to me that I wanted to want to be with a man and have a family with him, but that simply wasn't happening. After two years of therapy, where I, until recently, made sure to mention absolutely nothing about this lest my therapist jump on it and make me face the consequences, I finally came to the conclusion that I might be ready to have a child without a man. Once I finally abandoned the image of the traditional family, it became relatively easy to mentally take the next step, and realize that while I do and have felt some attraction for men (I would happily sleep with Michael Fassbender, any day of the week), it took a whole lot more for a guy to trigger those feelings. At this point, I consider myself to be a 90-10 kind of mostly lesbian bisexual (and sadly, it was this remaining ten percent that always kept my hope alive that I might one day meet Mr Right, as long as I stuck to the straight path, so to speak).

So, I spent the last month of 2013, dealing with the full consequences of having connected the dots, finally. My mom and I went on a trip together where I was grumpy the whole time due to some depression, and I finally had to tell her that I had decided to start dating women. Her reaction was kind of funny, in that she brushed it off with a "so what, lot's of people are gay, what's that to mope about?" Then we went shopping, end of story. I am now out to my whole (very small) family, as well as a handful of friends. Everyone has been 100% supportive, even though I suspect my mom still thinks this is something I may have latched onto in order to explain away my commitment phobia. Either way, she honestly doesn't care one way or another.

My dad was super cool. Maybe even a little too cool. I know this is an unusual "problem" to have, but my parents are so okay about it that I'm not really feeling that they understand how incredibly difficult this has been for me. And this kind of brings me back to what I really want to hear your take on: Why has it been this hard for someone in my situation, with a supportive environment and a very live and let live philosophy that seems to apply to everyone but me? I feel like such a complete idiot for having wasted the last fifteen years of my life. It's been a time during which I've gradually started to feel more and more odd, thinking that I was incapable of a relationship. In this sense, coming out to myself, now that I feel like I've mostly made it through the mental process, has been the hardest things of all.

Now, I'm actually happier than I've been in years, I feel more assertive in other areas of my life, and I even feel more beautiful physically. But I'm still in the very beginning stages of this new life. I just recently started an online dating account for seeking out other women, and I feel more than ready to get started. For the first time, I can imagine myself being in a relationship, for real. All I had to do was mentally switch the genders of my potential partner.

Although I've never even kissed a woman at this point, I'm confident that this is the natural next step for me. At the same time, there's a bit of shame. Was I secretly, on some level, a homophobe this whole time, or was it more a case of internalized misogyny, where I perceived being with a woman as something that would give me lower status? I don't know. I would love to hear from anyone who has struggled as long as I have with coming out to oneself.

Thank you for listening!

 

Thank you so much to all who have responded! While lurking, I discovered that this seems like a very supportive forum, and I was right! You're words are very comforting.

As far as being hard on myself, that's a tendency I have generally, and I am working on it. On the up side, I really do feel a level of comfort in my own body that I hadn't felt in ages, so there's that!