Have you always been accepting of your Sexuality?

I would obviously assume many here had a time in your life when you were not totally accepting of your sexuality. What are some of the things you've gone through (or are currently going through)? If there was a time where you denied yourself, at what age did this start? What did you do? What did you believe? And if you have always been accepting of your sexuality, what was that like?

I know, those are a lot of questions. In short, I want to hear your story.

For me, I was raised Christian. With that one little line, you could probably guess what i've been through, what I believed. I denied myself nearly my whole life up to now.

Anyway, I hope this isn't TOO deep for some here. I'm just very curious.

 

I was raised Jehovah's Witness. I used to go to peoples doors, go to meetings, ect. I stopped being a witness when i realized my sexuality was my choice, not whoever told me. so, about a week ago. I simply denied myself since the age of twelve, when disphoria hit me harder than it ever did before. i am now 17. I just simple made myself believe i was straight with no problems, and due to that i have been clinically depressed the past 5 years.

 

Nah, I've always been fine with who I am. Probably because I don't give a toss about what other people think most of the time...

 

I'm so sorry to hear that. I hope you're heading for the light at the end of that tunnel. I didn't accept my sexuality until around three years ago. I was 26 years old at the time. So, I guess you could say I was a late bloomer.

---------- Post added 31st Oct 2015 at 04:01 PM ----------

That's a good attitude to have. At the age of 14 too? When I was 14, while I was definitely always a critical thinker, intellectually independent and all that, I still wouldn't be able to say the same as you. That takes guts.

 

Certainly not. I used to think I was damaged and backwards and just downright terrible.

And then I came to the stunning conclusion that thinking such things was entirely my choice. So I decided to just forget about it.

 

never had problems with accepting myself

i was a huge supporter of gay rights long before i ever thought it would affect me

 

If there was a time where you denied yourself, at what age did this start?

eleven years old. I denied it for a while but I start to question things at either when I was 12 nearly 13 or 13 years old. I think it would have been closer to 13 years old, my memory is a little fuzzy since there was a lot going on back then. Finally accepted and realised what my orientation was at 14 years old, and I still have days where I hate myself for it. However most of the time I accept it because I know I can't change.

What did you do?

I turned to self harm at one point. I mostly just made up excuses for myself why I was having these feelings and I tried to get into random relationships with guys to try and give myself peace of mind. I would imagine an image of a guy inside my head and say "good" and then I'd imagine a picture of a woman and say "bad" to myself. Then I would dig my nails into the palm of my hands until it made a mark, sometimes to the point where it would cut into my skin. I hoped if I did it enough times I'd associate the idea of being with a woman with pain and I'd stop having these feelings. But unfortunately it doesn't work that way, and all it left me with was marks and bruises as the self harming got worse. I started to hit myself and it would leave bruises all down my arms, and I would bang my head against the wall. I would use this technique for other things, like when I made trivial mistakes and sometimes if I just wanted to remind myself to do something/to remember that I had turned the light off in the other room I would dig my nails into my palms.

I also denied my sexuality whenever I got asked, and I used to get asked quite a few times. Guess my closet wasn't exactly the most opaque out there.

What did you believe?

I guess I believed that if I tried hard enough I could "fix" myself. That I was somehow broken. I used to go to a small right-wing Christian primary school, and I was raised to be a Christian despite my parents being Atheists. It was supposed to be a good school, that's why they sent me to it. Turned out it was a terrible,terrible school. I was always conflicted as to what to believe, I had my parents tell me about Atheism but at the same time I had my school tell me about Christianity. It was confusing for me.

When I reached year 9 in high school and I was about twelve years old I became an atheist. I used to be a Christian since that was all I'd ever known really, and when I got to high school we got to learn about all the different belief systems and scientific theories, which prompted me to look into it and form my own opinion for once. I remember the first time I learnt about atheism, there was this guy in our class who was an atheist. The teachers were really condescending about it and almost treated it like it was some kind of disease. I remember being completely baffled at such a concept, but I always had some questions about religion that I had been to afraid to ask.

When I started at high school, I was more used to the idea of atheism since it was fairly common. I was actually quite surprised at how accepting high school was, it was just so much more diverse than primary. And I was less scared of letting myself ask questions about these things, rather than just blindly believe something for the sake of it. So I looked into it and I found the argument for atheism to be more convincing then the others. Particularly when I looked into Darkmatter2525's videos and did some research into it. I just don't find the idea of a God or Gods for that matter to be very believable,plausible or realistic. But hey that's just my opinion, I don't want to get into a religious debate about this.

But anyways, I found that after I became an atheist it was easier to let my self acknowledge my feelings and not just immediately deny them. Now I know you can be religious and accepting of your sexuality, and I'm not saying you can't. I'm just saying that's how it was for me. But the fact I became an atheist wasn't really about the fact I'm gay. I'm an atheist because that's just what I believe.

I actually started to question my sexuality about a month after I became an atheist for unrelated reasons.


And if you have always been accepting of your sexuality, what was that like?

N/A

 

When I was very young (about 6), I was watching the first X-Men movie. I discovered that I was quite obsessed with cyclops. My dad noticed this, and asked me why I liked him so much. I replied with, "I think he's so handsome." Immediately I was hit for what I said and called a faggot and was told to never say such a thing again. Ever since then, I knew I was different from other guys. I just didn't like girls in the way I should have, and it really hurt me in the inside.

I was a very feminine child, and my dad would get angry at that fact. I would flick my wrists and squeal "eww" whenever something grossed me out. I was made fun of in grade school quite a lot. Most days he would hit me and call me a faggot for seemingly no reason. He would tell me that he would "chop my dick off" if I ever turned out to be gay.

The abuse got worse after my baby sister died. It devastated my family, especially my dad who really wanted a little girl. My dad was a young parent (he was 21 when I was born), and he was dealing with lack of sleep and taking care of four children. The stress just got to him sometimes. My mom was working two jobs and was hardly there for us when we were younger, so it was mostly my dad taking care of me and my two brothers.

So... I hid my homosexuality for a very long time. I was miserable and cried to myself a lot. I made sure to not let me dad see because I was the oldest and he didn't want me to show any signs of weakness. I was the "man of the house" when he wasn't there and I should "act like it".

I was planning on just being celibate, honestly. During my high school years, I had gained a lot of weight. I didn't take care of myself, wore the same ugly clothes, was rude and sarcastic. I wanted to be repulsive. I wanted no one to love me. That's why to this day, I'm struggling with feeling attractive. I was so used to feeling ugly that it's hard for me to see things otherwise.

I have gotten a LOT better, though. My ego has improved. I've lost a lot of weight since then. I'm taking care of myself and wearing clothes that fit me, and I just feel like a completely different (and better) person. I came out to a close friend in 2014. When I did, it was like a weight was lifted off from my shoulders. It was a great feeling.

Did it take me a while to accept my sexuality? Definitely. I am 100% okay with myself and for the first time in a long time, I'm allowing myself to love another man unconditionally. For the first time in along time, I'm happy.

Unfortunately, my parents don't know that I am gay. I'm preparing myself for the chance that I'll be kicked out of my house, so I'm trying to stay quiet until I save up enough money. I will always love my parents, even if they decide to not love me anymore, and it hurts now to think about losing them. The most painful thing is knowing that I'm going to have to leave my two little brothers behind, but I have to think about me and my happiness for once.

... sorry, lol. I went on a little vent there.

 

I simply believed everyone is bisexual

 

No I was not accepting of my sexuality as a teenager, but the reason I didn't accept it at 15, was because that one specific guy crushed my heart between his fingers. I got hurt and if it had been different, maybe I would've been able to accept that I had feelings for the same sex. I hid my real feelings away and pretended to be interested in girls, but even at the time I didn't understand what I was feeling, I thought that guys felt that way all the time towards other guys.

 

It took quite a while to accept that I'm bisexual- I'll do my best to answer your questions.

I went through a lot of different things; at first, at around 13/14 maybe, when I initially started liking a girl and "realized" (but it didn't quite register) that I was attracted to girls, it was a lot of denial and excuses. I told myself it was just an exception and I'll never like another girl again, and I'm just straight. Somehow I did see myself dating and being with girls and guys from very early on, but I never registered that it meant I'm bisexual. I just always chalked it up to being a straight person with a few exceptions, and that it didn't matter. Everything I felt for girls, while I could see and feel them, I only brushed them off. It's like I knew I liked girls, but I didn't really know that I liked them.

Fast forward a few years. My feelings for this girl were still on and off, and I began to look into some LGBT+ stuff. My attraction to girls grew stronger (or I simply stopped denying them and making excuses for them), and suddenly they were very, very prominent, enough so that it sort of blocked out everything else. I was very anxious at the time because a lot of things didn't make sense to me, and I was still partially invalidating how I felt. I then thought I was gay for a bit, although I still had some attraction/focus on men, and it was clear that I wasn't not-attracted to them at all. But I had qualms about being bisexual- for a long time it seemed easier and simpler to either be straight or be gay. As I knew that there was no way I could be straight, I tried very hard to just be gay and ignore everything else. I jumped between bisexual/gay for quite some time, but I just couldn't accept that I also liked guys no matter what. It caused me a lot of anxiety as I tried to push an important part of my identity away from me. Even when I fully accepted and was confident in my attraction towards women, and that was solid, I still didn't want to acknowledge that they weren't the only people I was attracted to.

Eventually, after quite some time (a year or two, possibly more), of internal conflict and being really upset about a lot of things, I finally- after watching a TV show no less- realized that yes. I am attracted to men, but that doesn't invalidate my attraction to women and other genders either. I relaxed, let my attractions happen as they do naturally, and accepted that I'm bisexual after quite a few years of struggle on the sexuality front. I'm much happier now that I've embraced it, rather than the time I spent fighting it wishing I was something else.

 

Yup. I used to convince myself that everyone felt the same as I did and what I was feeling for boys was not sexual attraction. I thought that I would start liking girls once I got older. I would always get real huffy when people brought up homosexuality and go on long incoherent rants about how people are not born gay. Buy the time I was like 12 or so I decided to stop making myself feel like garbage and accepted that I was gay. I still feel uncomfortable with it, but at the same time I wouldn't want to be any other way, and I'm sure I will feel better when the day comes that I'm forced to tell my parents.

 

at first, no I didn't accept my sexuality, I didn't even wanna accept that I was in the wrong body, I was always doing what other people expected of me instead of doing what I wanted and I hate myself for it. now it took me long enough but I'm finally doing what I want to do

 

Accepting my gender was far more a struggle than accepting my sexuality. With my family (Christian) it's not even remotely okay to be gay or any LGBT+ group, essentially the whole "it's-a-sinful-chosen-lifestyle-and-if-you-are-then-you-go-to-hell" mentality - though of course the going to hell part was always implied.

But the fact was that I couldn't ignore it, despite how utterly traumatizing my gender struggle was and the raw homo/transphobia which had been imprinted into me. In the end I just had to face it logically. If point A is true then point B cannot be true. You are this, and females are not, therefore you cannot be female. And so on... If I allowed myself to believe for a second that, aside from all preconceived notions, that this could be okay and acceptable, it felt so right and complete. Like the light switch finally flicked on.

Sexuality was plain and simple, but that too I wrestled with (admitting). Deep down I think I always knew. I mean, at age twelve - before I even really knew what sex was beyond very crude understandings - I literally had the thought "I'm a gay guy trapped in a girl's body." spring into my head out of nowhere. Many years later that same statement I finally came to accept.

So no, I have not always been accepting of my gender and sexuality. In fact only very recently have I come that far. For so long I hated myself intensely and was repulsed by myself for this, until one day I decided to stop - and for the first time - love and accept me as who I am, not who I'm "supposed to be."

 

As I've said on similar topics with this question...

Accepting my sexuality was pretty easy. I thought it was awesome to be potentially attracted to anybody, of any gender.

And being totally honest, I don't know what my answer would be if I were gay. I enjoy the wide spectrum I have, and to limit that may present a problem.

 

Sexuality? Yes. Gender identity? Nope.

 

Once I came to terms with the fact that I was trans, realizing and accepting that I was gay wasn't really all that difficult. I've been raised in a relatively non-religious, open-minded household, so I didn't have many issues. My dad's kinda ehhh about it though. He's better than he used to be.

 

I honestly cannot remember a time when I was not entirely ok with my sexuality. Realizing I was bisexual was a light bulb moment of *aha!!* I think both men and women are hot...I could conceivably fall in love with or marry either (I was 16 and wasn't thinking about the legal issues there).

 

Yes.

 

I can't recall a time when I wasn't accepting of my sexuality, but it took me a while to figure out exactly that was.

Like most people, I defaulted to straight, even though I never really thought about my orientation. I really have one of my friends to thank for where I am. After I told him about my last relationship (with a girl), he asked me if I was bi, and I just decided to roll with it.

Within that label, I've had to deal with fluctuating preferences and wondering whether I was really bi or just gay and in denial. Some days, I feel more attracted to females, others, to males.

I've decided on bi - I think that fits best for me. But to conclude, I haven't had a problem with who I am, but I've had some trouble finding who that is.