So I'm a second year university student, and up until last year, I knew I was straight and only found men attractive. Last year, during the first few weeks of college, I met a woman who is a year older, lesbian, and I felt something different. I was attracted to her. I didn't look at her and think, "Oh, hey, she's a beautiful human, I bet she'd be a great best friend." I looked at her and thought, "Wow, she's beautiful. I wish I could be with her," ...well along those lines. You get the idea. Never before then had I thought that way about another woman, nor did I have sexual attraction to women. Since then, I've been sexually attracted to both men and women. In the last year, it's become more and more commonplace for me to find women sexually attractive and that I've been interested in, most notably being her and my now good friend, whom is straight, as she's stated before. She doesn't know about me, but she said something once about her family thinking she was into women and she adamantly denied it. I find myself wanting to kiss women that I see, get involved with one, and it's very different to me. I just don't know how to feel, like how to process? I don't know, I don't know how to...explore it, how to....I don't know. I'm very confused and there's no support groups within 75 miles of me (I checked), and so I guess my point is, what did others do? Like what do I do?
Hi, I know exactly what you mean when you say you're not sure how to process it. That's perfectly okay, it's completely normal because when you first discover something new about yourself it's a bit overwhelming, like "What do I do with this information?" Everyone reacts and feels differently. When I first discovered my attraction to women it was very scary for me, and it's taken me a long time to feel fully comfortable with it but that's okay, because eventually everyone feels comfortable like you will too. It takes time sometimes, but not forever. The biggest thing that helped me was having a friend who is gay, because she was so open and proud of it that it made me want to feel good too, like if she can do it, I can. It normalises homosexuality, as admittedly before I began questioning I had never considered I was LGBT and had no reason to think about it so it wasn't normalised in my head, so that took time too! But it's all going to be okay, I promise. That's why meeting LGBT people really helped me What I found didn't help with me personally, was over thinking it and worrying myself, so please try not to do that. Once you feel comfortable in yourself you will likely find it easier to let things be. Just let your mind process it and you will be okay If you don't feel like you have any LGBT friends, there certainly will be at your university! Also what helps a lot is being around people that are accepting of LGBT-related issues and you feel you can talk about it openly. I also really liked watching LGBT youtubers and talking about it (when you're ready) helped a little too! Good luck, I hope I helped a little even though I'm a bit younger than you!
I had similar experiences this summer and I did a lot of things to cope with the situation. I'm still not completely comfortable with the thought of being bi/gay. I reached out to a lot of friends, who by and large are extremely supportive. Even some people I would have expected to have a problem with me where very kind. My suggestion is: Talk to one or two close friends who you trust. Compare your own experiences to those of your friends. I was very surprised to find out that most of my friends felt completely different about women then me, which tipped me off to the fact that I might be a lot gayer then I thought. I basically found a very close openly gay friend with whom I talked about all this a lot and I finally decided to just try it. I made out with him and this served as a very moving and important experience. If you are comfortable with it, you could try online dating, I personally don't like intimacy with strangers, but it could be for you?
