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when and how did you know you were gay or lesbian?

Discussion in 'Coming Out Advice' started by atomic dorito, Jun 7, 2016.

  1. atomic dorito

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    did you feel this way all your life? how much did you question it? did you try to change? how old were you? how did you find out? merely looking for answers in this awkward teenage life...:newcolor::newcolor::newcolor::newcolor::newcolor::newcolor:
     
  2. ConverseCody

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    I guess I knew I was different to other boys for a long time but my first crush on a guy was when I was 10 years old and then everything sort of made sense
     
  3. malachite

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    I've always loved horror movies and, as you know, they tend to have sex scene in them. I found myself look at the boys with no shirts and getting aroused instead of the girls. In fact the tent scene from Jason Goes to Hell was the moment I was like.....yup I'm gay.
     
  4. EstoraIsSoQueer

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    I always kind of knew I was different but I really started questioning when I was 11, when I started to crush on girls and boys. I went into denial and conversations would go like this:
    friends:"omg he is so hot!"
    me: ...
    friends:"I need to date him! do you think he is hot?"
    me: "uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh"
    friends: "what?"
    Me: "YEAH YEAH SURE SO HOT LIKE SUPER DUPER HOT MMM"

    Then I just kinda' accepted it!
     
  5. confusedbubble

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    I was cuddling watching a film with a "female" friend and suddenly felt the urge to kiss her.... it kind of hit me like a ton of bricks but it was an awakening experience. We'd been cuddling and chilling for weeks beforehand but that night no particular film but I felt the sudden urge like a wave of gayness and happiness came over me and I had to do it.
    We'd been friends for years beforehand and had cuddled for ages (as friends) we both considered ourselves straight until I kissed her then my whole world crumbled into what I am today
     
    #5 confusedbubble, Jun 8, 2016
    Last edited: Jun 8, 2016
  6. Nicaklaus

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    I had feelings for other boys ever since I was in 6th grade. It just took me a year or two to acknowledge those feelings and figure out they were real, and not just some phase.
     
  7. YuriBunny

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    Well, all I'm ever really sure of is, I didn't ever not feel gay. I figured I was probably straight at one point, but not because I felt that way. Just because the people I knew were straight and I didn't know anything else yet. Once I heard that 'gay' was a thing, I instantly thought, "Hm, well I might like to date a girl." Then I thought I was bisexual for a while before identifying as a lesbian.

    I started questioning was I was ten years old and it continued until about a month after I turned fourteen. When I was 10-12 I didn't spend all my time contemplating it, and was content with identifying as bisexual, but when I was thirteen I started to have more obvious feelings towards girls and it made me wonder more. So, I wouldn't say I really questioned a lot for a long period of time. I certainly wasn't hopelessly lost.

    Not exactly. I tried to 'act straight' by telling people that I had crushes on boys, but I wasn't really trying to change myself. I just wanted to relate to other girls in that way, because they were all obsessing over boys and I didn't know what to say. That was while I still thought I was bi, so it's not like I was acting against that anyway.

    10 when I learned what 'gay' meant and thought I wouldn't mind dating a girl, 11 when I identified as bisexual and read yuri stories, 12 when I became kinda girlcrazy and watched lots of yuri anime, 13 when I realized I had romantic feelings for a girl at school, and 14 when I was sure I was a lesbian and began coming out of the closet.

    It was a combination of many things that had been building up. What I really had to realize was that I wasn't attracted to guys, as I had quickly realized and accepted my interest in girls early on. I finally realized that my feelings towards guys were not actually towards them; it was just that I wanted to be in love and there was once a time that I thought that could only happen with a boy. In other words, I realized that I was not interested in boys themselves; I was interested in the idea of being attracted to someone, and I was attracted to girls themselves in a way that was much more intense than my feelings towards males. I came to the conclusion that I never really felt attracted to boys, only to girls, and decided to tell my friends that I was a lesbian.
     
  8. taken

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    I wasn't really interested in anyone till high school age probably. In high school, I was attracted to guys, but I felt like I was different because I wasn't interested in the sexual things with them. I always noticed attractive guys and girls even before I became interested in dating. I always seemed to suppress/ignore my attraction to girls because I was raised in a very religious household. I continued dating guys for years but that spark was always missing. I tried to be "normal" by going out with guys and doing the things my friends were doing, but of course it didn't work. So finally at 23 years old, I accepted that I was lesbian and things were never going to work with guys. It was a roller coaster ride for me, but I have found that now I've accepted myself, I've been a much happier person.
     
  9. SecretLilCj21

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    I pretty much felt it my entire life, I had kissed girls many times when I was younger lol.
    I questioned it... a lot ig. I went through a year and a half process to truly understand myself.
    I didn't ever try to change. This is me.
    I would probably like 11-12 when I truly discovered it.
    I just knew. I knew I wanted to kiss girls- actually, you know it was probably the time I was pretty young, maybe 10 or 11 when I met a fifteen year old girl online. (I know, i know, what 11 year old meets people online?) but we talked a lot and I had a huge crush on her, she was a lesbian and I remember asking why and she explained in every little detail about a girls lips and skin, and I 100% agreed.
     
    #9 SecretLilCj21, Jun 9, 2016
    Last edited: Jun 9, 2016
  10. awildscrewup

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    There were hints.. I think a part of me as a child felt it but didn't know the words.. When I heard Catholicism forbids it I was like, 'no way am I gay!' But suspicions still crept in. I think I had a couple moments were I felt a bolt of 'hell yeah I like girls.' First one was where I was playing a MMORPG, and I suddenly got a crush on an NPC. So very sad, but I was like "wow this is more natural than any 'crushes' I've ever had on guys!" Later a girl at my work who I think has a crush on me decided to drape herself around me very closely, and I was like "okokokok this is some gay shit I'm feeling I think I want to take this girl home"
     
  11. PinkButch

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    To be honest, it just felt 'natural' to me. I was always confused seeing straight couples on TV, and not seeing any lesbian couples anywhere. I was indifferent to boys my whole life, but girls were always more captivating. I never understood the other girls in my class. "Why do you like some snotty boy?" I would ask.
    I think my first crush was when I was 10. She was a really pretty girl in my class, and I was one of her closest friends. I thought about hugging her a lot. I always made sure to tell her how pretty she looked.
    But I was Christian, and I told myself that if I turned out to be lesbian, I would kill myself. This was an oath I made when I was 8. This crush of mine sent me into a deep depression that would last for years.
    Finally learned to accept it in the middle of last year. I feel so much happier knowing who I am, and I hope to come out soon.
     
  12. MissCurious

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    I don't know if I'm bi or not. How do I know? Since I turned 18, I am so curious to kiss a girl or to become involved with one, but I have always been with guys or dated them. So I know 100% I'm into guys, but how will I know if I'm into girls?
     
  13. atomic dorito

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    you could always find a close consenting lesbian friend
     
  14. Vasriia

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    OMG. I think you have just broken my brain here. I think this is exactly what I have been doing all my life. When I was growing up, though, there was no yuri, no Ellen, no The L Word, it just wasn't a thing. So until now, I really never internalized the idea that it was an option, even after it started to penetrate the wider culture.

    I remember being about 8 and watching the evening news with my mother, and I don't remember the context, but the newscaster mentioned the word "lesbian". This must have been around 1990? Anyway, I asked "Mom, what's a lesbian?" And she replied, quick as a wink, "A person from Lebannon, dear."

    So yeah, without a contrast, how could I have known that what I was feeling was just a desire to be in love, in the only way society said was possible?

    THANK YOU!
     
  15. YuriBunny

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    You're welcome! ^.^ I'm glad I could be of help. (*hug*)
     
  16. Vasriia

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    With the magic of hindsight, I will attempt this.

    1: I want to say I did not feel this way all my life, but looking back with new glasses, I guess I have, and should have put the pieces together sooner.

    I always appreciated looking at beautiful women; I equated it to my appreciation of fine art. Duh.

    I sometimes see a woman who I think is intensely beautiful, and have always felt like my breath had been taken away and a little pang in my chest; I just assumed that was what jealousy felt like. Duh.

    I wanted to join the high school wrestling team, but didn't come back after the tryouts because I felt "uncomfortable". Duh.

    I could go on, but I guess the point is made.

    2: I've been questioning the ever-living fuck out of it, and am just now (as of half an hour ago) at the point where I can say "I'm a lesbian", but not without the words "oh, god" in front of them, and not without a note of terrified desparation in it.

    3: Haven't gotten that far yet. Give me a minute.

    4: 34

    5: I got drunk, and ended up making out with my best friend from work. It was phenominal, until my BF's kid came downstairs and caught us and recorded about 30 seconds of it on her iphone, then trotted off with gleeful malice to wake daddy. :bang:
     
  17. mvp 447

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    Pretty sure I knew I was bi around age 13, and spent a whole effing lot of time fighting it.
     
  18. debutantsappho

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    I definitely didn't feel this way all my life. Or at least I wasn't actively aware of it until I was much older. I realized I wasn't straight when I was 21. I had never dated a guy and just out of nowhere the thought occurred to me that I might not be straight. I immediately went out, got blackout drunk and made out with a (male) stranger at a club trying to convince myself that it wasn't true. How I think I finally decided for sure that I'm gay was hearing that someone else I strongly identified with came out. I had read someone's memoirs where they described being single in their 20s and how when a nice, cute, available guy they were on a date with tried to kiss them their immediate reaction was repulsion. They literally jumped up their stoop to avoid being intimate with this person. Having done this on a date myself and hearing that someone else who identified as straight had the same reaction/experience made me think for a little bit that I might not actually be gay. Hearing that this person came out and has a girlfriend now has finally made me really come to terms with my own feelings.

    Looking back on it though I definitely had crushes on girls starting at 11/12. Also, I distinctly remember being 6 or 7 and hearing my mom say something insulting about two girls in my class who were friends. She said they were too close with each other and that it was weird, but I remember thinking that I was just as close and affectionate with my friends and realizing that liking your female friends that much might not be OK. Also, even though I'm pretty feminine, people have been calling me a lesbian since I was 4 so I guess everyone else knew before I did. Haha.
     
    #18 debutantsappho, Jun 23, 2016
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  19. AmyBee

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    Some of my earliest memories are role playing women characters from cartoons and comic books both by myself and also with other girls in my neighborhood. My parents would kind of go along with it when I'd refuse to answer to my male name and instead insist they call me by the name of whatever character I was living as at the moment. And whenever there was an episode or incident in a TV show or book or any kind of media where a male character turned female, I was entranced. Also I was constantly playing imaginary games where I'd be changed into a girl and then have adventures as a girl. I remember seeing some Disney movie about this guy crashed on an island and the main female character in that was supposed to be Polynesian or something. Anyway, I ran around in a big beach towel made into a sarong for the longest time after that, and also did that when I read Pippi Longstocking in the South Seas.

    By the time I hit school adults had already caused me to feel shame about all that and to start keeping it a secret. But it still went on. By then I knew I was supposed to be a girl, but it wasn't until I was a little older and reading newspaper tabloids in line at the supermarket I started figuring out I was trans. There was this one story about a mom in the Netherlands who supposedly had her twin sons made into girls surgically. "They're much cuter this way!" she said. Well, the story was complete fiction and supposed to outrage you as a good American with the decadent ways of those liberal Europeans but all I could think was, "God, I wish my mom were more like her." Never mind this person never existed except in the imagination of a trollish tabloid writer.

    But I rejected it. No, that couldn't be me. I might be cutting t-shirts into bikinis in private and wearing my hair in pigtails when no one was looking and stuffing socks down my shirt and shaving my legs but of course I wasn't like those people on TV who went to Europe and got chopped. No way. I was liking girls!

    I think I really came to the realization that I was a trans woman around the time I hit puberty and my sex fantasies all began to involve woman on woman. That didn't seem to be right considering what equipment I had. Which I started resenting. And my body did some weirdness around then, too.

    But I'd always been called "different" by my mom. I wasn't heavily bullied by anyone because I had a really bad temper and also I kept everything super secret but it would slip out from time to time. Someone in the supermarket would gender me as female, or someone on the playground would call me a sissy or something and we'd fight.

    I didn't really fully "come out" to myself and start moving to transition until after my first relationship failed. And even SHE gendered me as female a lot. Then I was like, "Okay, this is me, it has been all along. I need to learn to love myself and start enjoying it or I'll be a miserable angry person the rest of my life." Immediately my outlook on EVERYTHING changed.

    Anyway, in all that I first started understanding I could be trans and a lesbian probably right around the time I found out I could be sexual at all.
     
    #19 AmyBee, Jun 23, 2016
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  20. killswitch0029

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    I'd say it was somewhere in my early teens. At first I was pretty oblivious about being into guys thinking it was just puberty or something hormonal-related and really didn't pay any mind to it but once I hit my late teens and realized my lack of attraction to girls I kind of pieced together what everything meant.