So I made a post a while back that I don't think made much sense so I'm gonna try to explain my predicament. I am going to finish high school next year and I have started to question my sexuality. I find that I have a lot of gay thoughts like " he's so hot" more and more all the time. I have a desire to be held by a man and I find the idea of a relationship with a woman strange, but I'm not completely opposed to it. Looking at heterosexual porn is fine to me but gay porn just seems... Weird. Not bad but I find it strange. The fact of the matter is I have an undeniable sexual and romantic attraction to a guy in my class but I can't help but feel like to be gay you have to be very opposed to having heterosexual relationships. I am not at all opposed to having sex with a woman, nor am I opposed to having sex with a man. Though I find my thoughts of sexual interactions mostly homosexual there are a lot of times where I find myself still thinking about women
Hi and welcome. Here are a couple thoughts: First, you're treating sexual orientation as a binary when in fact it's a spectrum. Most gay people aren't 100% on the gay spectrum, they are just at that end of the spectrum. Same is true for straight people. Second, it gets really hard to figure out exactly what's going on early in the process because your unconscious, and the underlying internalized homophobia that pretty much everyone has to some extent both interfere with getting simple, clear answers. Also, it's very common (in part becaose of #2) that as you come to accept yourself as gay (or closer to that end of the spectrum) that your attraction to other same-sex folks increases; this is a byproduct of finally accepting yourself and non longer having to hide. One way that's usually more accurate than others is masturbating without porn, and in one session thinking about guys, and in another thinking about girls. (You can also try just not thinking about anything and letting your mind wander.) Usually after a few sessions trying out the various fantasies, it will become pretty clear where your attractions lie. And since the physical arousal from masturbating and fantasizing without porn is driven by unconscious desires, it's usually a pretty accurate indicator of what's really going on. The rest of it will, I think, become clearer once the first piece is more clear.
