Any help would be appreciated. This has caused me a lot of mental/emotional distress to the point where it's negatively impacting my academics. I know this is a lot of information but I feel that it's all important to my situation. If you take just a bit of time out of your day to read this it would mean the world to me. I'm a 19 year old female. I'm in my first relationship right now with a guy and we're approaching our 1 year anniversary. We'd been friends for a while before we started dating and one day we had a very deep and emotional conversation for hours. After that we started developing feelings for each other. I was physically/emotionally aroused by him so I asked him out. He was my first kiss and first sexual experience and everything. Our relationship was great but then we both went away to college in different cities this past September. I saw him twice or three times a month. I ended up sinking into depression and loneliness - perhaps partially related to the separation but also just the difficulty of the transition. Occasionally, during the times that I saw him, I found it difficult to get turned on by kissing or touching or whatever. It didn't happen always, just sometimes, and I always assumed it was a function of my depression. Also, when we Skype, I can turn him on in about two seconds by showing some skin, but I just don't get turned on when he flashes his dick. Out of curiosity one day, I googled "causes of low sex drive in women" and one of the reasons I read was "latent lesbianism". This freaked me out. Like, terrified me. I started questioning my sexuality, whether or not I was really in love with him, and I sunk deeper into depression I started analyzing my past experiences. In kindergarten, I went to a co-ed school. I had a huge crush on this boy and I talked about him to my parents all the time. I remember when we all went swimming together, he was wearing a swimsuit top and I tried to get him to take it off. However, in kindergarten I also have memories of playing doctor with female friends and getting them to take their shirts off (nothing below the waist though). After kindergarten, I went to an all girls school. I have memories of paying a girl to lift up her shirt in grade 2, and I also tried to get another girl I knew to take off her shirt (although she had already started developing and I remember being simply curious about what it looked like). I also have memories of imagining some of the girls in my class in their underwear. At a young age I also remember drawing pictures of naked girls in my notebook, but I often drew boys looking at them (???). I also remember reading stories online about girls stripping naked and getting turned on by it. The way I tried to justify this to myself was that I simply had much more exposure to girls. Over the years attending that all girls school, I never developed what I would consider a "crush" on any of them. In grade 5 or 6, I remember there was one girl who I really wanted to be close friends with because I thought she was really cool, and I got jealous of other girls she was good friends with. However, I never thought about her at all in a sexual way. I ended up being good friends with her after a while and that was that. I was happy. No sexual feelings. Up until then, I didn't have any real crushes because I didn't know any guys. I had my first "romantic" experience with a boy in grade 7 at a dance at a boy's school. One of the boys I slow danced with ended up liking me, but I didn't like him back and the idea of dating him kind of scared me. Was it because he was a boy, or because he just didn't appeal to me? I remember liking one of the boys that my friends danced with that night and wanting him to like me, but being sad because he liked my friend. In high school I went to a coed school for the first time. I never really questioned my sexuality the whole time. I had a huge crush on a guy who I was close with in grade 9 and I think he liked me back, but I ended up backing off because the idea of a relationship scared me too much. I had a massive crush on a different guy for the next 3 years. It was kind of obsessive; I thought he was perfect. I ended up telling him I liked him and it turned out he was in a long-distance relationship. (Weirdly, in the middle of those 3 years, I went on a leadership retreat and randomly found myself attracted to one of the girls running the retreat -- it was just for a second and it scared me. I remember questioning my sexuality for a while (not that long) but I quickly forgot about it and went back to identify as unquestionably straight.) When I was getting over the guy who I liked for three years, I also started developing attraction for my current boyfriend. For a while at the beginning of my relationship with my current boyfriend, I was attracted to both guys. After a while, attraction for the other one faded and I only liked my boyfriend. The summer after high school, my boyfriend ended up going away on a 5-week long trip where he had no cellphone or internet access. Basically, I couldn't talk to him for 5 whole weeks AT ALL. During that time (although I'm a bit ashamed), I developed a HUGE crush on one of my summer co-workers after we started getting to know each other...to the point where I was very physiologically aroused when we hugged. I'm pretty sure the guy liked me back and we often spent hours on the phone together after work. When my boyfriend came back after those 5 long weeks and I stopped seeing the other guy after work ended, I felt solely attracted to my boyfriend again. The only real questioning has happened while I've been away at university. I confided in my mom (who is very accepting) and she said that, while it would be okay if I was lesbian, she didn't think I was. An interesting thing to add is that my current roommate, who I was assigned to at the beginning of the school year, is lesbian. I am not attracted to her in any way, shape, or form, although we are friends, and it's possible that this questioning could have arisen from simply being exposed to her and her lesbian friends almost all the time. Obviously I don't mean that I "caught" homosexuality from her; I mean that simply being more exposed to it 24/7 puts it at the front of my mind. While browsing the web, I discovered HOCD and it seems to describe me almost perfectly. However, in my moments of fear I think that I'm just using the HOCD as an excuse and I really am lesbian. This distresses me because I just want to be happy with my current boyfriend, who is beautiful and loving and wonderful, if a bit inexperienced. The idea of being lesbian makes me panic and feel dizzy and want to throw up. I constantly alternate between feeling confident that I'm straight, worrying and believing that I'm lesbian, and contemplating the possibility of both. I just hate this back and forth. I want to be straight and I want to know it. I really have no interest in a sexual/emotional relationship with a woman, although I do find the female body very physically attractive. I don't watch porn, I've never masturbated (this is 100% true - I've tried but I can't figure out how), I only ever fantasize about my boyfriend. However, I almost want to be able to go experiment with a girl just so I can rule out being lesbian. What do you guys think??? Your input and ideas are really important to me.
I'm sorry you're getting so stressed :/ Just try to think about it as little as possible because the more you obsess about it the worse it makes you feel. It sounds to me like you are bisexual. It's possible that you are a lesbian, but that you are suppressing your feelings because it scares you. You are definitely attracted to women from what I read.
