What made you realize you were lgbt+

When I was 14 or 15 I heard some rumors about one of my teachers being gay. Then I was like "why is she allowed to live with a woman and I am not? I want that too..."

(I live in a quite heteronormative area, of course I knew what being gay was but it always seemed very very far away from me. So when I heard about someone I knew in person I realized that it's actually possible to be gay. Took me longer to finally accept it.)

 

When I had my first crush on a girl.

 

Well I've always found the idea of lesbianism attractive (basically since I found out what it was) but for a long time I just thought I was a guy with a lesbian fetish. Eventually I started to suspect that something was up, but I still tried to push it away or suppress it.

Then I read a graphic novel called "Blue Is The Warmest Color" (there is a movie based on it, but from what I've heard it's not a faithful adaptation of the book) which is a lesbian love story about a young woman living in a pretty homophobic environment, who falls for a out-and-proud lesbian. The main character spends most of the first half of the book struggling to come to terms with what she is feeling (as she has always been told that same sex attraction is wrong), and it was this part of the story that inspired me to start seriously questioning my gender identity. About a month latter I made an account on this site, and well the rest of the story is spread across these forums.

 

Probably art and the fact that I found no sexual attraction in girls. I think I always knew, I just didn't understand what it was. I loved the anatomy of guys and I found it really attractive sexually, so... yeah I guess thats how.

 

I started fantasising about kissing guys, particularly a guy who sat next to me in my algebra class. It continued until I finally accepted my attraction to both binary and non-binary genders.

And then that brought my desire to present as a really feminine girl up to the surface. One kinda led into the other in a way tbqh

 

After my best friends boyfriend broke up with her, she came out as bisexual. A few days later she admitted she had a crush on me. It made me really happy even though at the time, i thought i was straight. A few months later i relized that i liked her too and we dated for 9 months

 

A Long time ago in a Galaxy Far Far Away...
As I've read different peoples stories about realizing "Who" they are and most at a relatively young age, I thought I'd throw my two cents worth in coming from a different time than most...

I'm in my 50's so I grew up in the 60's and 70's.. No Internet, No such thing as "LBGT" and the most cutting thing someone could call you was being Gay, a Fag or a Communist. So awareness and resources to even know what was out there, let alone know that there were others like you really just didn't exist. So for many people my age you just had to figure everything out on your own, often the hard way compared to today (not to belittle anyone's struggles or experiences.. I'm just painting a picture of how it was).

I Identify as Genderfluid and Bi and need to express both sides of Gender Spectrum and I am also an Empath, which I feel has a lot to do with why I have this duality and fluidity because I really do live in a different world than most.

My first recollections of being "different" go back about as far as my first recollections of being outside of the home alone. It's funny because like many I recall different iconic moments that never made sense until I became aware much later on in my late 30's and even 40's. Probably the first inkling was about Kindergarten when I was at my baby sitters house and her son and I were playing in the basement and found his much older Sister's old clothes- We dressed up and then got caught by his Sister.. I remembered that moment because I had feelings I didn't understand.
Then later on I remember my Sister and I dressing up in my Mom's clothes again... feelings I didn't understand. At school I can remember never being able to understand how Kids could be as Cruel as they were to other Kids with the Teasing and Bullying.. I remember thinking "How can you do that? Can't you See what you are Doing to Them?" (little did I know that No... they couldn't)... And I remember in early High School having a friend ask me "Why do you carry your books like a Girl?".. and I looked down and I was carrying them on my hips, not in my hand arm extended like most boys (needless to say I stopped and never did that again!)... Then when I first saw a picture of a Transsexual I was mesmerized but never new why...

... Fast forward many years, with me cross dressing every so often among other things and of course that being a "Shameful Secret" etc. when in my late 30's along came the internet (at dial-up speeds). And it was there that I really started to understand who I am.. The epiphany came when I took a frivolous test that was supposed to guess your gender based on basic questions and it said I was a Female... At the bottom was a point diagram showing the result of those who took the test with male on one side and female on the other and as expected most results were clustered around the ends like the infinity symbol... LOL and there I was in what was a sparsely populated area about 2/3 to 3/4 of the way to the Female side... So when I looked at that it Clicked.. and many of the things about myself that didn't make sense started coming into focus.

Several years later when I met my last Wife (now separated), she helped to clear up another big piece of the puzzle and I figured out that I am also an Empath.. Which sounds odd as several people have since asked me "How could you Not Know?", when the truth is that we all live our lives assuming that everyone else has the same senses that we do when that's not necessarily true. I feel others emotions to a much greater degree than most and assumed that this was normal, so it just made things very strange and hard to understand having to watch (and feeling) the things people often hide or do to one another... To look at it another way if I say something is "Green" and you agree all that means is that we have agreed on a common name for what each of us perceive from that frequency of light... It doesn't mean that we are seeing and perceiving the same thing at all.

 

I didn't start off liking girls I just didn't like guys in that way. Then a retreat group came to my school and I had a giant crush on one of them. They were only there for a day. But I realised my admiration for other girls wasn't really admiration and was actually other crushes. They were just smaller crushes it took the huge one to make me realise. I always knew I was different I just didn't know what the difference was.

 

i knew i wasn't straight in 6th grade because i had crushes on girls and guys but i realized i liked girls and girls only when i would make out with my ex boyfriend with my eyes open and when i would check out girls at swim and track meets. it hit me that i was trans when i was so jealous of boys and i just wanted to be one of them so badly. i also had (and still have) an undying urge to cut all of my hair off and completely present as male. i dress pretty androgynously in winter and fall but it's hard to in spring and summer especially because i'm a lifeguard

 

As a little boy I crushed on other boys. My first big crush was on Lucas (Jonathan Brandis) in SeaQuest. I was five... maybe six years old. He was so cute.

 

Last year, on a school camping trip. It was our last day and me and my friend( we'll call him D)had finished the activity early, I believe we were beaver watching not that that's important. Anyway, I should mention that D is bi and came out the previous night after a break up.
We sat with our things because we were leaving soon and he was showing me his drawings and explaining his thoughts about gravity in drawings. I flipped through pages but went a little too far and read a bit of his journal about his break up. I closed the book and we continued talking. But as usual, I was distracted and kept thinking of his boyfriend. I soon realized I probably wasn't straight. Looking back further, I should have caught on sooner, as most people say. That was also probably the most boring story yet

 

I first realized when I caught myself thinking of one of my friends. Then it confirmed it when I was playing a video game, and the main female character..... *sigh* ya.

 

I didn't realize until my thirties that I only liked girls. Looking back at my childhood the signs were all there. I use to love looking at my dad's magazines and would always steal one or two and keep in my drawer. My girlfriends and I would play games as kids with each other. I always was very aware of making sure when other girls changed that I didn't stare or even look at them, even though I wanted to. The thought of dating a guy scared the crap out of me in high school. Fast forward to present day, I developed a crush on a girl I work with. She reminds me of a red headed version of Ruby Rose. I finally allowed myself to have the feelings I wanted to have and not hide them away.

 

Those main female characters will always get ya

 

I didn't realize I liked guys until this year. Before highschool I didn't even know gay people were real. Like, I thought it was just a rumor that existed purely so that people could bully people. My aunt always said the word gay was a "bad word" worse than other types of cursing honestly in her opinion... She put anyone who said it with their nose to the wall for 5 minutes. So that essentially made me very confused. And then I went to highschool and started looking at Netflix and YouTube and gay marriage became a thing on the radio. And I was like... wait... Gay people are real... And I didn't make the connection of me being gay because I had a crush on a girl before highschool, so clearly I wasn't gay. I still didn't even know bisexuality existed... though I considered in my head that it was probably actually more morally correct to love everyone regardless of their gender. Then um, I basically learned that it was considered a relatively normal thing that year. And um, I still didn't even really consider guys. There was a sophmore girl a kind of liked during my freshmen year and she said she was pansexual while we were talking, just as friends in one class but I never really considered her in a sexual way. Before summer of my freshmen year I got kind of depressed and lost all motivation in life. Summer came and went and when I got back I kind slowly just started having more impactful crushes on guys I knew. Finally just accepted that I really liked them and it felt like a giant smack in the face.

 

I've already answered the trans narrative elsewhere.

As for being bisexual, I'd be totally cool with having either a girlfriend or boyfriend. Once I verbalized this it was sort of an obvious epiphany.

Though I am still somewhat questioning whether I'm actually bisexual or just gay. I have very narrow attractions but when someone fits, they fit. I am good with the idea of dating either men or women though. But time will tell on the physical side of things.

 

A girl in 7th grade..I'm mostly over her now, it's been nearly 5 years lol. We didn't even date or anything. We were just friends. I'm still sorta friends with her. Just an occasional hi how ya doing type thing. Im waiting for someone else to come along and set fireworks off in me like she did lol. Suppose I'll be waiting a while.

 

Well, as far as my sexual orientation goes - I'm pansexual. I guess I always knew, but I just thought it was normal to be kind of attracted to every gender. I guess I really noticed when I got into reading comics and graphic novels, and I really liked Catwoman - at first I thought it was just because she was really cool (because she is pretty cool), but then I later realised it was because I also found her attractive. Same story with Kim Possible, actually. But I'm also attracted to men (I used to have a huge crush on Tom Hiddleston, as well as Lee Pace), and I'm attracted to non-binary people too.

I actually remember talking to my mum about marriage when I was a kid, and she casually commented "women can't marry other women"; and I remember being really confused by that, and I was just like "???? Why???"

I'm agender. I realised that much later than when I realised that I'm pan (I only really realised a few years ago - maybe 3 or 4 years ago). I didn't really know that being trans was a thing until I was around 14 or 15, and then I started to look into it more, and I realised that some of the stuff that trans people were saying online and in documentaries really added up with how I was feeling, but I didn't feel it to the same level as they did. I definitely didn't (and still don't) want to get medication or surgery. So, I just looked around online for a bit, and then I saw someone on Tumblr talking about non-binary genders, and the term agender was brought up, and it just clicked. I've also become quite interested in drag kings recently, and it kind of seems like something that I might look into doing in the future (I probably won't make a proper career out of it or anything, but I could imagine doing a few performances sometime in the future).


Oh, and I was also dating a girl back in October, so there is also that, haha (my parents don't know about her though... I'm not out to them yet, and probably won't be out to them at any point in the near future, because they're both pretty homophobic)

 

I didn't really think of it until I began developing romantic feelings for another guy -- actually, I didn't fully realize that I wasn't straight until after I had had sex with him. I was 16 then; I had been experimenting with other guys for years by then, but didn't think of myself as gay or bi until then. Yeah, sounds stupid, I know...

 

I didn't start to question myself until I was 17. I somehow happened to come across this singer-songwriter online name Dani Shay, who was the most gorgeous, soft butch lesbian. I started watching all her videos and developed this fixation on her that I eventually realized was a full-on crush. It seems insignificant, but finding out about her and WLW in general was an eye-opening experience for me. I grew up in a very heteronormative, religious environment, and I knew no gay people. I didn't even realize that liking girls was a legitimate option, and I didn't consider the possibility that I might be a lesbian (despite the fact that I also had never thought about guys sexually at all). I thought that I probably only liked Dani because she looked boyish, and that in general, I was still interested in guys. Then freshman year of college came along and I fell hard for my female best friend, and continued to develop crushes on other girls, and from then on I knew it wasn't just a fluke.