is it possible to change orientation based on single experience?

Hey,

I have always known I liked women and have never been attracted to men romantically, aesthetically or sexually but suppressed my sexuality for years due to compulsory heterosexuality but for some people sexuality is fluid and labels can change over time.

 

I think wording is important. So no, it’s not possible to change your orientation. Yes, it’s possible to realize and/or understand your orientation more intimately based on a single experience.

 

This is exactly what I meant- thank you for giving a clearer answer.

 

I've always been straight, never had my attractions shifted, but for some, it is plausible.

 

An evolving orientation is possible. It can expand and retract, as Bicchi and others have pointed out. I don't think one can spontaneously change just because someone had a bad experience or suddenly noticed guys like Chris Hemsworth exist. I do think experiences can shift your perspective, and preferences, just like lack of experiences can entrench them. The same is true with most things in life. As someone who has a very open view of romantic and sexual attraction, it's easy to get the impression that "orientation" is more like a preference, like or dislike. Sort of like food and a million other things we decide is okay or not okay for us, but sometimes foods we hate at first are liked as our palette expands, and still others are disliked no matter how often we try to like it.

 

I very early started to repress my homosexual tendencies, it started very young, when i had a crush on a teen-band-singer who looked kind of androgynous, and i was devastated to be told that he was a boy and not a girl as i originally thought. One other time i wanted to play a board game with female relatives, where you had to choose your husband/wife, and while it was the most logical thing for me to take another guy, but the reaction of the girls we were playing with was a very strong and rigid one, making it very clear to me that this is not an acceptable option.

These small examples i can remember were the first clear signs of my homosexuality, but i very early noticed that they are deemed completely unacceptable by my environment, which is why i repressed them.
I went to a mental hospital due to depression as a teenager, decided to fall in love with a girl there (one of her very first sentences to me was 'do you want to be my gay best friend', lol) and did what society expected me to do. We came together and i felt like this love was real, we kissed, i was on top of the world, we had sex, i was on top of the world and i really thought i loved her more than everything else. We had lots of sex, i think in retrospect we both tried to prove each other, ourselves and our families how not gay we were. I think on a platonic level, we loved each other a lot, but we also hated each other. (she's still dating men though)

While i always identified as bisexual after my teenage years, i never ever had the guts to pursue homosexual attractions or desires. I had multiple sudden realizations that i was gay, which often lead to mental breakdowns. I took psychedelics, and i had the very same realization, but as soon as i got off them, i started to fade back into denial.
Subconsciously i deeply hated myself, but i never allowed myself to perceive me as homophobic, because i clearly was not to anyone else but me. I was so in denial, i even denied me having a negative attitude about this part of myself.
After my relationship, i spiraled into drugs, after drugs i spiraled into extremism, and from there i spiraled into a grave psychotic episode that led me into a mental hospital, where i had crushes on other men i have been hospitalized with.
My denial and psychosis went so far, that i even had the delusion of having a wife/girlfriend, a tomboyish woman who behaved very manly, who i had imagined having sex with other guys, because this was the only way a woman could reasonably turn me on.

I spend my whole life in denial about my sexual orientation, i could not completely ignore my feelings, but i kept them locked in a tight place. My mind went to extreme lengths in order to not have me accept that i was gay. So it can clearly be possible for the sexual orientation to turn out to be something completely different than you had thought in the beginning.

I also have to agree, compulsive heterosexuality is a thing, and it deeply affected me too; I still by default try to prove myself that i am straight and every time i see a woman i try to be turned on by her, since i do not imagine her having sex with 'me' or others and let no man inside the mental picture i do rarely succeed in this though.

 

I think it can change. My sexuality is very fluid and has changed a lot over my life. I went from thinking I was absolutely straight as a teen to now where I feel like I’m basically a lesbian. I think plenty of people have a degree of “built-in” potential for flexibility but some people just never notice it. For me I had to actively explore the possibility in my head before I realized. If I hadn’t let myself do that I probably might never have noticed it at all.

 

I believe I always felt gay, even if I didn't want to. Experience confirmed it.

 

My orientation did change, but gradually over a decade. This shouldn't be controversial--peoples' tastes age like wine. You can gravitate to different body parts over time and gain sexual turnons with age and sometimes this can be across genders.

Different people have different levels of pliancy.

Rapid swings happen in self-aware bisexuals who have experiences that activated both sides of their attractions. These are called "bi-cycles". I get them and can go from mostly gay to mostly straight over a week or so. A crush or a manic interest in something hot can trigger it. The other attractions are still in my subconscious but dormant. If I am emotionally attached to someone it locks my attractions to them and turns off the cycle mostly.

 

I'm going to say that Kinsey 0s and Kinsey 6s might not experience a shift. Everyone else probably can shift to one degree or another.

I think that for the others the mere availability of someone they find attractive at a specific point in time can cause it to shift some. But I don't think it would be one specific watershed experience that would cause this shift. One specific experience may awaken things that are already there.