What was your 'Aha' moment?

I have a similar experience. I always assumed that being gay or bi meant I had to be feminine, so I repressed it. Not long ago I was on a sex forums site, and interactions with others there sort of flipped the switch. I’m the same guy I was before, I just accept that I like men and women. It’s a very freeing feeling

 

Not quite sure I’ve had that aha moment yet as at times I still feel I need more proof but I did watch that show and felt the connection between those two characters and don’t think I’ve ever felt that for a hetero couple and have seen plenty of that in movies etc over the years. I too never really had the opportunity or the option really to explore another life and just kept telling myself I haven’t met the right guy yet and any feelings I had for girls was I wanted to be friends, in my head it couldn’t be anything else. I still don’t know any gay people in real life which is another reason I think that it was never an option as how can you know you want something until you see it and you don’t see gay women in movies etc.

 

I was six years old. Maybe 5 and a half even. I was with some of my maternal cousins and their friends from school and stuff. We were watching WWF at that time, which is now called WWE wrestling on TV. I got so turned on by those giant hulking men in their singlets, and shorts and body slamming each other with ladders, tables and shit. John Cena, Randy Orton, Kurt Angle, The Undertaker. I was so captivated by that shit and so happy. Even though now I don't really keep up with that mess.

I remember I went home and I was in bed, and I just knew at that point I liked guys and it wasn't natural or normal. Ugh.

 

As a bi guy, I guess in my early teens through my early 20s I found an attraction to penis. I don’t know another way to say it, it wasn’t really that I checked out guys, because i still really appreciated a fine girls tight buns. As life went on I went on a rollercoaster of wanting to be with a guy and then ping-ponging back to wanting to prove to myself I was straight so I’d have to have sex with a bunch girls.

Flash forward into my 40s my frustration with this reached a pinnacle. I started deep diving on the internet on bisexuality. I met (virtually - through numerous emails) a man named Fritz Klein and he opened my eyes to the fact that there was a scale of bisexuality. I started to really exam my desires, attractions and after years of soul searching I’m a solid 2 on the bisexuality scale. I can’t remember if it was the many bisexuality tests on the internet or the books/websites that I read that were my “aha” moment. But The moment for me was self acceptance of my sexuality and the corresponding peace that came along with that.

The decades of confusion, depression, suicidal thoughts all fell by the wayside. I started seeking out trusted friends to share with and finally came out to my wife as bi in a therapy session. Before you think wow how progressive (lol)... I believe my intention was to tip the scales and have my wife say “that’s it, I want a divorce.” Of course that didn’t happen and now she is jealous of both men and women. Yay me. (Long story as to why we’re still together and not relevant to this topic, but it has to do with her health and being unable to work.)

Thanks for letting me share, but for me it was a long road to self acceptance and discovery.
Cheers!

 

I have taken many of those same tests and I think I’m a 2 as well. I can also relate to your penis attraction

 

im bi but still; it was about a year after i split from my ex wife. i'd had a self talk about the fact that being with her was really all i knew relationship wise, and that was not good because of the abuse. i told myself and knew that i had to be accepting of anything and willing to push boundaries (to a point). a while later, after i internalized that philosophy, i was at the mall of all places, a younger lady about 30 came out of a store and started walking ahead of me and i was thinking the thoughts men think about a beautiful woman, after a bit she met up with a man, also very good looking and they walked together and i realized that i was thinking the same kind of thoughts about him..... hang on.... i need t process this...

so i went to the food court, bear with me, and got an extra large coffee from the Tim Horton's outlet, how Canadian... anyway, i sat down and started to block out the sounds, the people etc. till i could look inwards, meditation, and i let myself look at memories and feelings i've been suppressing for decades. all the blocks, and the deflections, the rationales i looked at every thing my mind could see, some was a shock as i never realized and others were comforting, after about 45 minutes to an hour, the coffee was ice cold and i opened my eyes looked around, a few people staring at the guy 'sleeping while sitting up straight' and smiled, that inner voice we have said 'you're bisexual' and it felt Right. i through the coffee in the trash, and left. i drove home, about an hour on the highway, smiling and feeling more content than i had in a very long time.

well that's my story, my Aha moment.

 

Wow. You guys are so much more eloquent expressing yourself than I am. Beautiful

 

My aha moment was crystal-clear, and I feel lucky for that. I was 13, in the school cafeteria at lunch. I never really heard about anything gay/lesbian and didn't even know something like that existed. One of my friends was explaining what it meant and seriously, I think I left my body for a moment. The realization that it probably described me was a soft 'oh!' But changed my self-image from then on.

 

Isn’t it how amazing how just saying to yourself I’m gay, or I’m bisexual can sometimes bring such a peaceful calm feeling

 

Yes, inner peace is a big part of embracing sexuality. I always find myself wondering about the spiritual aspect...why are we like this, for what purpose, is it residual? Though knowing I could never have peace trying to be something I'm not. My heart goes out to everyone struggling...

 

i should add, my gender Aha moment when i cemented things for me came in my gender therapists office.

my gender counselor asked; "if you had a magic wand and could change anything about your body? what would you do? bearing in mind that when you're done you're done and you cant go back and change it again." i though for just a few seconds and it was "hair on my head, none on my body. lose a bunch of weight, fem my face, boobs/hips/bum, and a vagina a real vagina" she just smiled at me and said "no cis male would ever wish to make his body a woman's, much less the very feminine woman you describe" we just sat there for a few minutes while that sunk in and i knew it was Right.

 

I was watching a program called Sugar Rush so quite similar.

 

Mine is kind of embarrassing, but I was playing Borderlands and could not stop thinking about Athena and her relationship with Janey. I kept trying to rationalize everything in my mind and tell myself that it is just a game- not real- therefore these feelings I had were just something the game developers had tried to program into me.

The denial only worked for so long. Truly I had been in denial for 31 years and just needed that final push to really allow myself to start examining who I am and what I want in life.

 

I woke up to the craziest sex dream I had ever about a lesbian I was eyeing the night before while working at a wedding. I woke up insanely aroused and sort of in panick. I just said wide-eyed to myself, “sh*t, I’m gay!”. The whole next day I was in disbelief of what I had discovered. I had thought that it was likely I was more attracted to women than men before this, but that was my ah ha moment. For months after even still today I have been spiraling in justifications, doubt, confusion if I actually am but I always come back to yes, yes I am gay.

 

My 'a-ha' moment was watching an awards ceremony with my parents and Gillian Anderson was presenting one. She spoke with an English accent and me, being a huge X-Files geek, knew why because I kept up to date with all the cast and writers and I was the go-to person for spooky info.

But for some reason I was coy when my parents asked why she sounded English, and I thought to myself 'I can't tell them or else they'll think I fancy her', then my heart was racing and my face went scarlet. Afterwards I couldn't understand why I reacted like that, and t was then it hit me in the face and I thought 'f*****k I actually do fancy her', then I spent a good while suddenly remembering and understanding things from my past and had a long period of self-reflection (approx 2 years) while I came to terms with it.

 

My very first post here at EC happened a mere hour after my 'AHA! Moment":

I was lying on the couch in the living room (already technically "separated" from the ex-wife), looking at the ceiling at 2 in the morning, just laying there quiet with a thousand thoughts coursing through my brain; thoughts about what to do next, what the rest of my life will be about, etc., when a vision appeared of myself greeting an imaginary boyfriend, holding his hand, feeling the joy that came from seeing him and the freedom to finally be myself...I finally said it: "I'm gay", and with that, I felt it like a punch in the abdomen, a mixture of excitement, anxiety and hope.

Since that night, I have literally seen the entire world differently, everything that I believed about myself completely crystallized into a hard-as-steel singularity, it explained pretty much everything about my past desires, it changed the way I saw the world, it was liberation, freedom, the whole weight-off-my shoulders thing...that first day was as if I had new eyes, I cannot describe it better than that.

 

Wow. What a thread, and bunch of amazingly eloquent people.

How comforting to read these stories

 

I was watching The L Word. And I had been having sex dreams that only included women. I could never see her face. But they were great dreams. People throughout school would assume that I was gay. Little did I know that I was. Go figure.

 

I agree. I can relate to so many of them. When I look back now I realize there were so many signs that I was bi throughout my life but I ignored them all