Question for the women who have "switched teams" after being married to a man

Thanks for reading Snowshoegeek. Sorry you had to go through the same, I wouldn't wish that on anyone. It was much more of a torturous relationship than I described....not only Bc of my confusion about my sexuality but also Bc I truly believe she was (and still is) closeted. And her confusion and fear would consume her at points in our friendship causing her to push me away and make my life literally a living hell. Being connected to her was the best and most heartbreaking experience of my life. But I digress.

It's good to know one is not alone....I cannot believe how many of us on here have struggled with such similar situations.

Very therapeutic

 

Agreed! And thank you for the kind words. I think my experience with my high school love (I consider her my first love) probably affected my willingness to open myself up to women. I know I avoided female friends for a couple of decades after that... and didn't avoid men... so very easy to have an outwardly heterosexual life while never feeling that I was expressing my true self. If there is no woman around I can't be lesbian right? That is what I am now questioning. I seem to have decided I could be lesbian even if I never have another intimate relationship with anyone again. It's about what is inside me. The longer I live alone the easier it is to imagine my true self, to listen for it. I think for me switching teams would probably just look like not having any more clutter of men around. :badgrin:

 

I always knew that I was different, but tried soo hard to be like everyone else. My earliest remembrance is in early grade school, possibly 3rd grade, and having a crush on a girl on the playground. I always had crushes on girls in school, but dated boys because I was 'supposed' to. I told myself that I was bi, did "the right thing" back in the early 90's, married, had babies, raised a family. My sexuality ate at me for decades, then I got cancer 2x within 3 years and as I lay dying, I realized how much of myself I had denied, and how if I lived beyond cancer, I would not allow myself to live with regret ever again! It took about 3.5/4yrs after remission from cancer, but I did it, I came out. It wasn't until I had my first sexual encounter with a woman that I realized that I was NOT bi, I was indeed lesbian. I have never ever felt that kind of carnal attraction, that animal feeling and the experience for me solidified it for me. Now that I look back on my past relationships with men, I know that I was not happy with "them" because I wasn't meant to be with them & wasn't happy with myself. I was definitely born this way lol.

 

This is a great question and I love all the answers! For me, I still don't know what I am, if I just repressed my attraction to women - I also like one other always had to tell myself not to look at women's bodies but never had that problem with men, but I also liked boys and felt romantic towards them...Which just makes everything so dang confusing...

 

What an amazing story of yours! Very touching.

 

I've given up trying to decide if I was "always" one thing or another. For me, that way lies madness. For others, that way lies closure and surety.

 

Now that is a very compelling perspective.

 

Some people want to make retroactive sense of their lives. Some people CAN. For me, worrying about if I was "really" something else earlier in my life stresses me out!

Because then I have to reevaluate my choices and judge them against my current lived experience. And that isn't kind to younger me. Surely younger me would have figured it out, right?! I'd rather just accept that young me did what was best for her at the time.

 

Interesting... Your statement also makes me question using the evidence of my past to prove something about my present. Assumes I don't change. There goes my entire starting point for deciding "what I am." And that might be a good thing to throw out. Letting young me tell me what my life is about now isn't fair to current me either. Pondering...

 

Definitely do what works best for you. A lot of people strongly desire closure and to make sense of their past in light of their present. That's not wrong, at all.

I just couldn't make it work for me. Part of that is the fact that my sexuality does seem to have changed. It seems like other people DID "know" early on in life: you read a lot of statements that are like "I always felt this way but I ignored/pushed it away".

I never felt that way; for me there weren't that many overt signals until about a year ago. Which, in some ways, is more destabilizing than if I'd "always" known.

I guess for me, if I was bisexual before, it was latent or weak (as opposed to now, when I want to sleep with every girl I see just about, and then go home to do the same to my husband wth :icon_redf). So maybe the potential was there, but then something changed in my life to bring it out. But this isn't something I can "know", so I will have to just accept that I can't know it.

 

Hi FoxSong!

Thanks for sharing all of that. It is the first time I have heard someone elses story being similar to mine in that way.