Always known?

I think it's important to differentiate between "always known" and "always been".

Upon reflection, I've always *been* bisexual, although it felt like these feelings/desires were totally new when they emerged last summer. It's taken a lot of unraveling to accept this part of me. For a while, I thought that since it was "new" I could pack it up and return it to the oblivion of most of my life. But, it wasn't new; it was only repressed. I've been bisexual my entire life. My first desires were complicated, and not something I *could* have understood. My childhood didn't allow for complexities of attraction, or identity, or choice.

 

I'm a woman, and I don't think I've ever really fantasized about anyone, especially in my youth, but I will say that I thought I was straight right up until 21, when another girl kissed me. I told her I was straight, and believed it for another year, up until I was confused and told her so. That was 13 years ago, and I am no closer to an answer. I've racked my brain trying to look at the past for clues, but I have none.

 

Everything you wrote goes double for me. In hindsight, it seems so obvious I was gay but the amount of mental hoops I jumped through so I wouldn't be gay is kind of insane. Repression and wanting to be accepted and "normal" is a powerful thing.

 

I don't think you can cleanly separate sex and companionship like that. Sure they're not the same, but if EC has taught me one thing it's that a marriage doesn't have to sour (like mine has, many reasons) for mismatched sexual compatibilities to make it suddenly very difficult to maintain. I can see that it would be a problem in the reverse, too - sex is good, but he is a bore - but I can't see completely tossing sex out the window for the sake of a relationship, regardless of how great everything else is.

 

Not only did I never think of girls/women when I masturbated as a teen, when I attempted to "go straight" by dating girls, making out with girls and even attempting (unsuccessfully) to have penetrative sex with a girl, the only thing running through my mind was "Oh God, please make this work. Please make me be able to do it."

 

Always known, always suppressed.

I remember when I was in junior high and I found a website with ostensibly true (though probably not) naughty stories on it. They all gave me giggles, but I wasn't especially turned on by any of them. That is, until I got to the story about the lady who got drunk and started going down on her best girlfriend. I think that was the first time I ever experienced an orgasm. I've always enjoyed lingerie catalogs, though I've never had to hide that because I can always just say I'm "shopping".

Even now, on this crazy adventure I'm on, I'm not sure why it took me this long to be ok with myself. Not that it matters - I feel a lot better about me knowing that who I am and what I want is totally cool.

 

I should have known, because my fantasies were never about men sexually. I fantasized about closeness with men, but more eroticism with women. I always focused on women, but I think given my heteronormative upbringing, I never thought about the option. I remember questioning if I could be gay when I was younger, but I scared myself and denied myself from letting it be an option. The signs were all there, and I suppressed them.

 

Yea I was so embarrassed at that step. Not that I realized I liked guys, but because I realized how much I drooled over Jonathan Taylor Thomas... Talk about shame lol

 

Yes another show, my reaction was for the dudes in red shorts lol and now they are making a Baywatch movie..

 

This is so complicated and it's so tough to sort out.

For me, when I was a teen my fantasies were about men and were fairly romantic and chaste. No fantasies about women at all. In my rare peeks at porn, it was the women I looked at but that never clued me in. I chalked it up to me succumbing to the 'male gaze'.

Later on I did fantisize about sex but still m/f. The poor guys didn't get a lot of attention I now realize, but still m/f sex. Meanwhile, k.d. lang made my heart skip a beat. My explanation for that was that of course butch women were gorgeous, but that's because they looked like men.

I shake my head at myself and the hoops I'd jump through.

It took me forty years to make room for women in my fantasy headspace, despite all the outside clues, because I just never seriously entertained the option of being gay/bi and because I had excuses ready to combat that possibility. While some folks may always have known, some of us just have a real talent for burying ourselves under expectations. If you didn't 'always know' or didn't entertain same sex fantasies when you were younger, don't think it invalidates your orientation and/or attractions now. Heteronormativity is powerful and poisonous and can crawl right into our brains to convince us we're someone that we're not.

 

This just confuses me so much... up until last year I fantasised about guys and watched loads of gay male porn to satisfy my horny self and I did have an interest in which guys around me were good looking. I was sure I wasn't at all gay because of this. But I've never fallen for a guy the way I have for girls, I've never had a male celebrity crush like I've had female ones... in fact I've never related to any of my friends male celebrity crushes, and now I have recognised and accepted my attraction to girls I just have no desire to be with a guy. I feel almost like it was more the concept of sex that I was interested in than the actual guys. But I feel like I can't be a lesbian because I shouldn't have been interested in those things ever and I should've known. Like... the only signs I can see of me secretly knowing is that I was afraid that lesbians were gonna turn me gay, or that if I ever looked at a woman in porn I would end up liking it more... which is why I only ever watched gay male porn. Everything else seems to have happened in the past 3 years after like a whole other 3 happy years of gay porn and fantasies about dudes. I feel a bit invalidated by the idea that I should've known and that I've started accepting this idea while I'm at a girls school which is just so awfully cliche and dumb.

So to answer the question, no I didn't always know and I'm constantly hoping that this is not a necessary thing. Good thread idea, dude.

 

I suspected in my 20s that I might be gay but I never admitted it until I was in my late 30s.

Did I always know that I was gay? NO.
Did I always know there was something missing in my life but I didn't/couldn't define it? YES.

Example: I always related to "that one gay girl" in high school (from a distance.) It wasn't sexual, it was an identity that seemed familiar to me. The sexual part I wasn't ready to think about so I figured I wasn't gay. (Then again, I didn't sexualize boys either!) It took me a long time to start embracing MYSELF as gay. I am STILL trying to completely.

 

I always thought girls bodies were way hotter, but thought that's what everyone thought.

Desire to be normal and fit in made me compromise by dating a gay guy in high school. Denial/repression/expectations are powerful, I may never know who or what I am.

 

Did *I* always know? No
But apparently most of my friends did lol.
More often than not when i come out to people now i get dumbfounded looks like 'umm, yeah'

Looking back i can see that there was attraction to girls as early as 10. But it wasn't till i was in college that i ever even entertained the idea of what that meant. My first awareness came much later. After i dated many many guys, never questioning that. And i still married my husband. Loved him. Thought, really, that we'd be married forever. But i always knew something was missing. Took me till i was almost 40 to admit it to myself.

 

I had my first strong clue no later than the time I was nearly 13. Like Weston above, I technically was part of a generation when showering was expected after PE starting in junior high. I avoided the showers, myself, but did have a chance to see other boys nude. I liked seeing them nude, and this contributed to masturbation fantasies.

But...I didn't "know" I was gay. I only knew the word gay--it was an insult boys used. At that point, I'd been given the "when a man and a woman fall in love" talk. The only sex I knew about was between a married couple wanting a baby.

At some point, denial set in. I thought my interest in other guys was due to envying their better looking bodies...

I think I had fantasies involving straight sex when I was a teenager. However, I think my interest was focused on the male.

It is possible that I had feelings even earlier than 13, although it's hard to say.Was I intrigued by the scene in which one of the Hardy Boys strips to his shorts so he can dive into Barmet Bay after a clue because I was gay? Or just because I was on the edge of my seat, wondering how they'd solve this puzzling case?

 

I know the OP was asking for a male perspective, but maybe you can still relate. I had inklings from a young age. I definitely knew I had same sex attraction since I was 9 or so, but I didn't know whether or not I had attraction to the opposite sex for a long time. But I thought this was normal and that I was straight, and that if I didn't acknowledge the attraction to women it would be all fine. I didn't know that meant I wasn't straight. So I knew but I didn't KNOW (understand), for 24 years.

 

Other clues that I recall from when I was about 13 included a general lack of interest in girls. PE was run single sex, and many boys spent a great deal of time doing what they could to see the girls' PE classes. One boy even thought of petitioning for co-ed showers, and I don't think he was doing so to save school resources. And, of course, boys had copies of Playboy. Meanwhile, I had none of this interest in girls.