Okay so here goes nothing. This is something that has been weighing on my mind now for several years, and that I still haven't been able to resolve. I'm 23 and female. When I was 19, I fell in love with my best friend, who was a girl. We had an extremely close and intense friendship, which is not typical for me, and to be honest maintaining it took about as much time and effort as a relationship. Before this, I had sort of vaguely questioned my sexuality in my early teens (crushes on female celebrities, teachers etc.) but shrugged it off, and had considered myself to be straight. I had had boyfriends before, however I didn't enjoy sexual activity with them. I didn't hate it, just felt nothing at all about it. I was definitely in love with my ex-boyfriend though, just simply didn't feel anything towards having sex with him. I blamed it on stress, taking the pill, maybe I'm just 'bad' at sex, etc. Anyway, after having fallen in love with this friend, I obviously had to reconsider my sexuality. And ever since that time I've basically been in conflict. Since then I've had 'crushes' on both men and women, but I've only experienced sexual attraction to females. However, I've never actually 'done' anything sexual with a woman. So I'm worried it might just be a fantasy, and if it actually came to it, I might not even like it. Even though most of my friends are incredibly accepting towards LGBT people, I've told almost no-one because I'm scared of the finality of telling them, and I'm worried it wouldn't be taken seriously due to my lack of experience with women, much less the fact I don't actually KNOW what label I should put on my sexuality. I accepted a while back to myself that I'm not straight, and consider that to just be a basic fact about me, but the fact that almost no-one else around me knows feels like a huge burden. Add to that the fact I'm pretty feminine looking - absolutely NO-ONE questions me being straight. Even if I try to drop massive hints people don't bat an eyelid. To be honest, I don't know what I hope to achieve from posting this, just this is something I've had bottled up inside me for so long and so if anyone had any advice, similar experiences, etc, that would be really helpful....
Hi Somo, First of all welcome to EC, I haven't been here too long myself but it is a really great place and I've learned a lot. I can definitely relate to this post, especially the sex part. The only thing we can do is try it out. Find a lady and let her know we're just curious. I've also learned about something called sexual fluidity, it happens especially I think in women. Or, growing up with certain expectations on how humans are suppose to work (boys like girls, girls like boys) you come to expect the same things from yourself and I don't know how deeply it can get buried to where you don't even realize it until after puberty, or if that's even possible. but like I said, all we can do is experiment and see where it goes.
Hehe, your post remembers me of my own coming out history, a few months ago. Highly unlikely to be "just a fantasy", judging by your post. You don't need experience with the same-sex to know if you are attracted or not to them. It's about attraction. Do you feel attracted to women? And what about guys? Sexually, romantically? Think about these questions. Experimenting may help, but you don't need to try it out to discover your sexuality. If you think about yourself, you can tell if you are or not attracted to X, Y, Z, etc. You may be gay, or biromantic homosexual (as you didn't enjoy sexual encounters with guys). However, don't worry about labels, they may confuse you instead of helping. Don't pressure yourself, take your time. If you end up discoverind you really aren't straight, and decide to come out, that's perfectly fine, just be yourself. We are here for anything you need. (*hug*)
