Confused, bisexual.

I'm 24 & truly lost and confused,
I feel like a child, unable to detach from my parental structure. I've been in a crazy kind of love with my girlfriend for the past couple of years. My flow of my attraction goes as follows: my mind trigger's my heart which trigger's physical attraction. I've never thought this to be problematic until recently because my whole life I thought I understood love to be something one experienced in the mind and I never felt like it was beneficial to judge based on physicality first.

Sometimes I think about my past and how on one hand I always wanted to have a lifelong girlfriend companion (wife+kids+life=happy) and on the hand I always wanted a best guy friend. Throughout high school I was always compelled to find a best guy friend and at 18, I finally found a best guy friend. I would've never considered it love beyond brotherly but I don't feel like I've connected with any woman as deeply and since moving on with my life, I've starting to have doubts that I am capable of it even though I deeply want it. With my best guy friend, I never paid any attention to physical attraction until we started seeing less of each other. When we visited each other from time to time I started to wonder wether or not I found him physically attractive. I do. That made and continues to make me nervous.

I am not comfortable being solely gay but I am learning to accept myself as a bisexual and maybe my romantic choices have been misunderstood my entire lifetime thus far. I do not feel like I've chosen to be in relationships with women that I am drawn to physically as a primary attraction indicator, I've always chosen to be in relationships where my mind was attracted first. I always expected everything to follow. Now I don't know if I'm crazy or not because I continually prove myself right and wrong on a regular basis.

My sexuality is complex, more complex than I give it credit sometimes. I've been physically attracted to unavailable women who I wanted to have relationships with but felt sexually inferior and emotionally unequipped. I've been sexually compelled by women that I feel physically less-attracted at first but find attraction in my mental connections to them. When I was 20, I believe that I began experiencing more noticable physical attraction to men and between 22 and 24 I started to see it myself as being more sexually compelled while afraid of losing my embedded dream of being in an emotionally charged romantic relationship with a woman.

I've been in a romantic relationship with my girlfriend for over a year and a half and I find mental and physical stimulation to be mutually inclusive. When I'm feeling disconnected mentally, I do not desire to be with her physically the same as when we are connecting and communicating. This dynamic has me worrying more about my sexuality when I'm not connected and less when I'm connected with her. She's aware of my troubles regarding my own sexuality but I don't know that I could ever explain to her the complexity of it and how complex my relationship to her is in my mind and as things continue to become more serious, I worry that the framework in which I see her will be the demise to our relationship. Throughout our relationship I've experienced fearless mental and physical attraction as well as fearful mental and physical repulsion, the two feelings always run in parallel, never one without the other.

I am seeing a councillor but I'm scared of being completely unsure of who I am and leading a romantic line of thought for my entire life up until a couple years ago that is being challenged entirely.

 

I guess I am confused because I'm in a relationship with a woman whom I love and appreciate and am challenged with my level of attraction when we aren't connected which seems to happen every couple of months (generally when my anxiety and her period hit at the same time). When we are completely connected I'm 100% certain and forget about my worries, we have amazing fun, amazing sex, laughs and emotional bonding. I feel like my indecisiveness grabs ahold of my fears, perpetuates my disconnection, rattles my relationship and sexuality confidence.

When we are disconnected I have a habit of obsessing about feeling somewhat gay. After breaking down last summer and almost broke up with my girlfriend. During the course of this mental breakdown I imagined myself as 100% gay, my mind became very reluctant to let go of women sexually and I realized that I feel like a kinsey 4 which is why I kept giving my relationship the opportunity to grow.

I don't want to lose the possibility of being with a woman. Has anyone felt similarly and ended up with the woman of their dreams? I feel like the biggest challenge in my current relationship is being younger than my girlfriend. She is expressing the desire to settle down and I am still very young and uncertain of who I am still.

Part of the confusion of who I am lies with how my attractions differ between women & men. On first glance I feel my attraction to women is very selective physically and I sometimes feel sad for not finding all beautiful women physically attractive. Sometimes I wonder what kind of asshole I am for only being attracted only to a select few women (specifically confident/naturally/girl next door beautiful ones). More broadly I feel mentally attracted to women, I don't care what they look like but I seem to bond with them really easily since I was a kid until sexuality became relevant and then I didn't know where to start except to watch porn, lots of it. With men, only recently I've even considered being attracted but on first glance I feel my attraction is not entirely physically selective, I become sexually nervous around most men including ones I don't find physically attractive.

I guess the question I have to ask myself is wether or not I'm willing to cultivate a serious relationship with my girlfriend in which we are both mentally and physically connected since I need both with women and accept that I will be attracted to men. I'm just afraid of my dreams of bisexuality being an impossibility and afraid of being nervous, unsure and unrelatable for the rest of my life.