Hello, this is my first post and I would really appreciate anyone's help and opinions. I'm 17 years old, female, and this past year I've been really questioning my sexuality. I've thought that I was straight for my entire life, but now I'm not so sure. Not knowing who I am is very hard for me and it's become a huge cause of more stress and anxiety in my life that I really don't need. I think that I have admitted to myself that I am attracted to women, but I don't know if I'm not attracted to men. I can have celebrity crushes on men and see a hot guy and think they are attractive and fawn over them like any other girl, but does that make me straight? Can a lesbian be attracted to men, but only want a relationship with a woman? I don't really have any interest in sex with a guy, but I haven't ruled out a straight relationship completely. However, I don't know if that's just because I am denying that I am gay and am so used to the idea of have a husband some day. Here's where my biggest problem is: I can't differentiate whether I am having crushes on girls or something else. I think that I have a crush on my friend (female) but maybe it's just admiration or wanting to be closer to her as a friend? I love being around her and want to cuddle with her and sometimes I think about what it would be like to be in a relationship with her, but I push the idea out most of the time. I've told this friend pretty much everything about me and we are really close friends, and I've told her about my questioning. I see girls and think they are attractive and have fantasies about them, but I can't tell if I'm just thinking like that because I'm questioning and want to pick something already. I guess my question is how do you figure out who you really want to be with? I know it comes naturally to some people but this is new to me and I'm very confused. Do I just want to be gay because I'm bad with guys? I'm so confused. Any help is welcome, thank you. :bang: Side note: I've had anxiety and depression for a long time, and this confusion has been making things a lot more difficult for me. I just want to know who I am.
Take a deep breath, it's okay. You don't have to choose one. Not now, not ever. There are millions of different options aside from straight/lesbian, I fully encourage you to look around at some of those! But really, even if eventually you do decide to label yourself as straight or gay, there's nothing wrong with having exceptions, and even further, it's totally ok to be sexually and romantically attracted to girls, and only romantically attracted to guys. There's no one way to experience love and attraction, don't worry so much about figuring everything out right now. Set small goals for slowly figuring yourself out and you'll learn more and more who you are.
Hello redvelvet96, welcome to EC. Coming here is a good first step to accepting yourself and working out your sexuality. I hope the people on this forum are able to help you. As ghostling said, if you can fawn over men like any other girl, and you are attracted to girls and fantasise about them too, you don't have to choose! You have both options (and more) and you get to keep them! That's what being bisexual is. However, I see perhaps the cause for confusion here is having stronger feelings for girls and also the conflict with having always seen yourself as straight. I have had a similar experience. Throughout my early teens I had certain little female crushes on celebrities, classmates etc that I never saw as anything more than admiration or just healthy appreciation of beauty. However, I did have a love of boys but less fawning and more... being a perv in my case haha. Appreciation of beauty is there, something sexual is there. I took this to mean I was totally straight and I definitely shied away from anything else since I was bullied a little at school and saw lesbian as quite an insult. I wanted to prove people wrong. Anyway, at about 15 my attraction to girls was getting stronger and I developed a proper (still unacknowledged) crush on a friend and became quite curious about lesbian stuff around me. At 16 I moved to a girls school which is one of the chilliest places ever (the girls just aren't afraid to be themselves), I lost my fear of not fitting in, and became friends with a lesbian. It really opened me up and I started binging on all the lesbian TV shows, celebrity couples, music videos etc that I'd been curious about. I still just thought this was a fun game. At 17 I realised that I had developed a BIG crush on my friend... and I really had to face up to it. I came to EC and gave myself the label bisexual after a couple of months. However, I continued to crush on girls, fantasise about girls and I really felt an intensity of feelings that I'd never felt before. This sometimes makes me think I'm a lesbian... because although I can basically react to guys I really want to pursue THIS feeling... This is why I have got rid of my label on EC. Have you heard of the Kinsey Scale? It rates a person from 0 = heterosexual to 6 = homosexual. I think for people in our position, we may be floating around the 4 and 5 area. And so it is very difficult to find a static label to define us. Sometimes we may feel more 4ish and so we might go for bisexual, but sometimes, it feels like we have a pull more towards the label lesbian because of a strong preference for women. Remember, you choose the label, and you define your interpretation of the label, so whatever you choose is totally up to you - it cannot be decided outside of your own personal decision. I'm giving it a bit of time... As long as you accept your feelings fully, you do not need to give yourself a word until you have enough experience to make a confident decision if you don't want to. In terms of having a different sort of feeling towards girls. I understand that. It does feel different to me. And I prefer it haha. One idea that's helped me is: So, I've accepted that there's an attraction to girls. I feel it strongly, I think about it a lot, and I LIKE it. If I like it, if its exciting, if I'm crushing, if I'm aroused, these are all good things, and they are all real feelings - what else am I looking for in love? The answer to love is not truth it is just a combination of feelings that pull you, truth does not come into it. Life is however you perceive it and your sexuality is only the sum of your emotions. It will never be tangible and there will never be provable truth. So simply accept and enjoy it. The last point I'm going to address is "Do I just want to be gay because I'm bad with guys?". Yes, I have also had no prospects with guys. But guess what, I learnt that crushing on straight girls or even GAY girls who don't like you/have someone they like/are taken, isn't any easier. In fact, I've found it much more upsetting. Hasn't stopped me from loving girls, though. If you're feeling less towards guys, it's probably because you have a preference for girls, otherwise you wouldn't be that easily deterred. But don't let this push you towards being gay (rather than bi - I don't think your straight at all), if you're still attracted to guys, because you think it will be easier. Neither side is easy. I hope I addressed most of your concerns there. Please feel free to challenge, elaborate on or ask me about anything I wrote. And I hope the people on this forum are able to help you further.
Thank you very much for your reply, this was very helpful! I think I just need to come to terms with the idea not being 100% straight. Do you have any tips on how to not feel the need to put a label on yourself, if that makes sense? I want to allow myself to get over the confusion, but not have to choose something just yet. I will be going to college soon, so I think that might help me to find myself a little more. Getting out of high school and meeting new people that might be going through similar things and feeling more able to express myself without feeling like I will be judged will help me a lot. Also, addressing what you said about liking guys because I think it will be easier. I think you are definitely right about that. I feel like I want myself to like guys because that's what I'm "supposed" to do and there are more straight guys than lesbians. But thinking about it, there's probably a lot more girls out there like me than I think, I just haven't been out in the world yet and, like I said, maybe going to college will help me see things more clearly. I think the "L" word is a little frightening for me, and I'm scared for my future if it's not exactly how I've always been told it should be. Especially coming from a conservative religious family and conservative small town. I guess I'll do some more research and my experiences will guide me in the future.
That's okay, I'm glad to help. My tips for not feeling the need to label myself? Well... I sort of do, I'm just holding out, believing that University will help me get answers as you were saying. But I am temporarily deciding that no amount of dwelling on my sexuality will produce a definite label for me... or if it does, its not worth the stress. The first step really is as you're saying, accepting that you are not straight. At that point you can be open, you can acknowledge the labels that are available to you and you can allow yourself to experience a little rather than worry. Of course I still wonder, but I'm not stressing about it. I try to remember that I do have other things that are of higher priority in life - a small word to describe one part of me is rather superfluous. This is how I try to look at it. But yeah, I still want a label eventually. Acceptance I went about achieving by watching a lot of TV and youtube and reading stuff and listening to music related to lesbians. And a bit of imagination. However, I do not come from a hugely conservative family (although my mum doesn't really approve entirely of lgbt) so I suppose this will be harder for you. Plus the religion, the small town. I recently started going to a really chill girls school in the gayest city in the UK and I see the much more liberal atmosphere of this setting compared to my last school as a big catalyst to my acceptance of my sexuality. Though I also see coming to EC as a big part of it so hopefully this will help you. Also as you said, you are going to college and getting out into the world and you'll see the other girls like you... meeting some queer girls at this new school was a really important step for me too... I had some weird scary image of lesbians in my mind before... I'm sure all this will help. The word, yeah I practice saying "I'm a lesbian" or other such things in the dark sometimes to see how it feels. In the dark like a scared little mouse haha. Anyway, I hope you work it out, dude. Good luck.
I hope we can both find some answers here :] I'd be glad to chat with someone who's going through similar problems.
Absolutely, I'm on here all time (more than likely searching the forums for anything I can find that might help me haha), and I'm always willing to talk ^.^
Hmmm were in the same situation, I could of written this myself word for word. It's hard to let go of who you thought you were, but society has conditioned our minds to believe and act a way in which we might not be comfortable with. It's okay and it's a long and slow process, as I'm still going through it myself. My anxiety does affect me a lot, and I often worry about how others perceive me because I'm extremely insecure and this part of me makes me feel more depressed more often then not. You will realise all through time and experience. However, if these feelings for this friends are so strong they out weigh any feeling you've ever had for a man possibly you are coming to realise you are gay... Message me if you wanna speak, we sound really similar and I'd love to talk
