When did you "know" your orientation?

I was 26 or 27 when I came out, because the pressure had built up and I just had to try it out. Shortly thereafter, I had my first kiss, which made me sure. It was completely different than kissing a woman. It was "real". It melted me. And it made a lot of things make sense in retrospect.

If I had grown up in today's environment, or in a different geographical area, or in a more progressive family--so many variables!--I would probably have recognized it sooner. I can trace it back to middle school. The first time I began to internally acknowledge my desires as being gay was my sophomore year in college. But, no matter how progressive and accepting I was of other people, there was still a kind of block in being able to think that I, myself, might actually be gay.

 

I selected 12-13 but I actually started realizing it when I was 11, but didn't really fully understand it until I was at least 12

 

Knew I was at least not straight? Maybe 14. Knew I was really gay? 26. There was a lot of confusion and denial in between.

 

I picked over-18. It was decades after puberty that I went to therapy and figured out the recent shift to fantasy about guys was showing me I am bisexual. Waaaay over 18! I talk about it as if it is a shift in later life. There were dim indications from time to time, since middle school, where I can look back and say... “huh, guess I wasn’t totally straight if my eye wandered like that.” But my orientation was towards females - the ones I crushed on, fantasized about, worked up the courage to ask out, felt deeply aching when I got rejected by girls, felt young-tied and nervous in their presence. So in a way I knew I was straight from the first time I kissed a girl as a kid, or put my arms around another girl at the 8th grade dance and my palms sweated right through her dress, or the girl I knew in High School who made it so I was embarrassed to get out of the pool for the way my body reacted when I saw her poolside. But at this older age I know I’m bisexual, and I’m celebrating that. More honestly, I knew my orientation one way as a kid and young adult (Hetero, with maybe a little extra, since I once privately admitted to my friend that I “liked people”), and then I know my orientation another way as an older adult (Loving my wife but somewhat male crazy now, definitely bisexual). It is good we have Bi Visibility day now!

 

A few years ago, I started doing "Am I gay" quizzes and I read online that is a sign that I wasn't straight.
And I didn't want to have relationships with men and I felt more comfortable with women.

 

I will be officially 49 before long and I still don't know.

 

Well,,, it was sometime in the mid to late 1960s?

 

I think i might have been 14 years old when I had this weird dream about my sister's boyfriend that made me explore that other side of my sexuality. Sometime later (15 yo) I've discovered a web page where some bisexual girl explained the concept and it felt right for me. Sometime later (16 yo) I've sent her an anonymous letter about myself and it was the first time ever I've admitted that I'm bisexual.

A lot of people think that it is harder to be up the Kinsey scale (and in many ways its sure is) but when you are low you have a lot of doubts and reservations: as what to do, what should you do and who you are and it's easy to get back into denial. For me the battle lasted till my late twenties but now I'm more working on self-acceptance. If something persists in you for decades you cannot deny it anymore.

 

13 - when I started feeling hot emotions when a friend took his shirt off

 

All the signs were there - I just chose to avoid them and try to live as a straight girl. Luckily I failed doing it and discovered like girls