All my crushes have been directed towards the opposite gender, until I was 13.... I started flirting with this one girl in my class. There was something different about her. I felt the same I did when flirting with boys. When I realized what was going on, I actually used the term bisexual. I remember coming home after months of feeling awkward, and blurting out to my parents randomly, "I think I'm bi." My mom answered, "oh your confused." Between her and my dad several phrases were uttered, that basically gave me the message this is not normal, I felt deep shame. One term from my mom was "I cannot accept that, what am I supposed to tell people?" All through high school, I dated a bit, same in college but always men. I have always felt a strong sexual/physical attraction towards men, so I know I'm not gay. But I highly doubt I'm straight, every once in awhile sexual dreams with women will pop up and then disappear for weeks. Fast forward, I am 30 and married now to a man, we have a great relationship. And recently, I have been honest, very open with him and although it has been difficult for months, he has been very supportive of the fact I might be bisexual. But I realize quite recently, I am very uncomfortable with it and have a lot of internalized biphobia, right now my goal is self-acceptance which I told him. I promised to be open and honest to him, I love him and I would never want to hurt our relationship. Right now, I'm just figuring out how to be true to myself, know myself better and how to define my sexuality in a way that doesn't kill my marriage. Sorry for the rambling...
Let me make this clear too, he is not one of those guys that are supportive cause he desires a threesome; he wants me to be happy and true to myself.
hey there, thank you for sharing your story. i would highly recommend perhaps watching lgbt media or perhaps exploring your fantasies and seeing what comes up? youre putting in a lot of work clearly and tht takes a lot of bravery. youve already named it so thats a big deal
Great idea, I also just ordered a book off amazon called "Getting Bi: Voices of Bisexuals Around the World."
Everything is so overwhelming yet exciting yet sad all at once. I feel like for the first time in my life I’m being honest with myself. But I don’t know where to go from here.
Well for me being honest with myself was the first and most important step. From there you can look at the world with your true eyes. See it for how it really feels not how it was forced to feel. The rest will fall in place but for now enjoy your true outlook. Sounds like your husband is open minded so if you see a sexy girl call it out he probably will agree or you can debate. It can be fun to share how the world looks through your bi eyes with the one you love. Jami
Being honest with myself was also the first step for me. I'm not fully out yet but my story looks a lot like yours. I'm a man and I always had crushes on girls but my first sex partner was a boy (went on for a year or two). I remember feeling a lot of shame and justified it as a way to practice sex before going with girls - I've only dated women after that. Fast-forward - I'm now 38, I have a kid, I'm separated and I'm gay. I came out to myself recently and just told my ex a week ago (she reacted beautifully). I'm still trying to understand how I never realized I was gay while knowing all along. Lot's of things make more sense now that I know I'm gay though. It took a while before I could let my real desires express themselves. I don't know what triggered everything but I first started to realize that I wasn't really attracted to women. I started experimenting mentally (and with porn) but couldn't "feel" any attraction to men. The idea of being with one was somewhat arousing but it felt distant, unreal and temporary. I tried a lot of things to test my gayness and couldn't have a clear reading on my desires so I took a step back and worked on my acceptance. Instead of putting all my energy into finding out if I was gay or not, I used it to fight the shame and accept that it would be OK for me to be gay. It still wasn't enough but it did open a door. The breakthrough happened when I took a magazine with male and female models and started looking at them. My brain was finding women more attractive but when I started running scenarios on how I would have sex with them, I found out that I had very little imagination with women and a lot of creativity with men. After that, I tried running both scenarios in my head every night for a month and the outcome was always the same: I am attracted to men. My desires are still taking shape as we speak but they are clear and shameless and it feels great.
I really admire your fortitude. It sounds like it took you a long time to undue all the shame society inflicts on us. Good on you for doing what you needed to do.
-> The breakthrough happened when I took a magazine with male and female models and started looking at them. -> My brain was finding women more attractive but when I started running scenarios on how I would have sex with -> them, I found out that I had very little imagination with women and a lot of creativity with men. After that, I tried -> running both scenarios in my head every night for a month and the outcome was always the same: I am attracted to men. This is sheer genius. I really like what you did here. Your brain has been conditioned by the straight world to be attracted to women, but your inner brain found men more attractive. Sounds like you've been subjected to some kind of conversion therapy. and figured it all out.
Oh god, this is so weird! Hahaha. Sorry for the details but I have to share this. I think I did it to myself!!! I remember a phase where I watched a lot of straight softcore porn while focusing laboriously on how beautiful the models were in order to climax. So yeah, I did confuse aesthetic and sexual attraction for a very long time. It seems a bit unreal now that my real desires are so obvious but I had a psychologically abusive childhood so I think my desire for approval was stronger than anything.
