Hi everyone, I’m new to EC and relatively new to the LGBT community in general. I’m 22, female, and realized I’m pansexual about a year and a half ago. I grew up in a really conservative, heteronormative household and thought I was straight for most of my life. I just started dating a girl for the first a couple months ago and I love everything about our relationship, and it’s been really validating for me to kind of confirm that my sexuality is what I think it is. Recently I’ve started feeling what I can best describe as imposter syndrome. I don’t know if it’s because she’s my first girlfriend, but I’ve started having this weird feeling that I’m a straight girl trying to act queer. I’m definitely more femme and I feel like I come off as looking really straight, which has made me feel really insecure about how I dress and just my overall appearance. Me and my girlfriend hung out with another lesbian couple yesterday and I felt like I didn’t know how to act, and I’m not sure why. I feel like all of it relates back to this imposter thing. Has anyone else experienced this before?
Hey and welcome! I get that. Do you think it’s related to you being pansexual as opposed to gay? Sometimes there can be a feeling of not quite fitting in to either the gay or straight world...
This seems to be really common actually. When I first joined this site last year as a 22 year old, I assumed I belonged on the later in life forum because I didn’t know that people could go so many years of their life without realizing their sexuality. The standard narrative is a person realizes they’re gay in their early teens, desperately tries to repress it, tries to be straight while being fully aware of their same sex desires, comes out either in high school, or when they move away. Most LGBT coming of age stories center around the process of accepting it and coming out to others, but in order to achieve this, they have to know that they’re LGBT, but the truth is that even getting to that point of knowing can be a long and complicated process in itself. I think that’s one reason why it’s so common to feel fake or in your case, not actually pansexual, because there aren’t many mainstream stories about discovering your sexuality beyond your teenage years, which is ridiculous, since most people don’t really know who they are or what they want as a teenager. And when you combine that with heteronormativity, feeling fake from time to time is inevitable. I think when there’s such a defined mental image of what a “real” LBP woman is, what her story is, how she navigates her sexuality, and how she presents herself, it’s easy to tell ourselves that we couldn’t possibly be like her because we’re too old to be figuring it out, or present too femininely, or some other reason. Just know that lots of people have similar experiences, and that nearly everyone who grows up in a heteronormative household, especially a conservative one, goes through the first part of their life assuming they’re straight before realizing they’re not, and the fact that you’re even allowing yourself to become more acquainted with this part of who you are is something to be proud of.
That’s definitely a valid point! I’m not sure to what extent that might be related. My girlfriend (which isn’t a 100% accurate label, she identifies as non-binary but uses feminine pronouns for the most part) is also bisexual/pansexual and I have a lot of close friends who are as well. I feel like I know more people who are bi/pan than gay. I have felt that kind of “not straight enough to be straight, not gay enough to be gay” kind of feeling from time to time, and I feel like if I was only attracted to women I wouldn’t necessarily be having this issue either. I hadn’t really considered that since I’ve felt relatively secure in defining myself, but that definitely could be a contributor.
This is so so helpful! I figured there must be other people who have gone through this in a similar way. I just feel like most people around me knew they had same-sex attraction when they were young. You make a really good point about the common narrative of realizing sexuality. Do you think there’s a solution for those of us who don’t fall into that? Is it one of those cases where it just takes time?
Welcome to EC. I’m facing this issue at the moment, I think. I’m 31 and in an eight year relationship with a man - my only ever relationship. My therapist was asking me questions about how identified and whether I had any experience with women, and I struggled to have much confidence in my answers. I do feel like a bit of a fraud, to be honest. I’m going to keep working on it with my therapist, but I imagine it’s something that will resolve itself with time as being pansexual becomes your normal. Given you thought you were straight for so long, it’s going to take some time to adjust. Perhaps take more steps to involved in the LGBT community? Surrounding yourself with similar people might help you feel less of an imposter and more like you belong.
I mean, yeah I think it’s something that just takes time. Having signs of liking girls while growing up isn’t a requirement to be valid in your identity now. It seems like we place so much emphasis on having “signs” because we want to know that coming into our sexuality is inevitable and the best thing we can do for ourselves, but given how murky sexuality can be, it doesn’t always work that way. I think that really speaks to the power of internalized homophobia because it’s not something we want to accept as it is, we need a reason to accept it. It seems that we need to know that we were definitely born that way and that coming out is impossible to avoid before we feel like we get to start accepting ourselves. On a different note, it may be that the more you become comfortable with yourself, the more you’ll realize that there were little signs when you were growing up. Reading into others coming out stories can be helpful with this! There may be gay things from your past that you don’t even realize were gay. Either way, just because you haven’t “always known” or have actively repressed your feelings for years doesn’t mean you don’t get to like girls now. So don’t worry about it too much and just work on feeling more confident in who you are right now.
You’re completely right, and I have started noticing little things from when I was younger, I guess they just don’t feel as obvious. I think another thing that might be getting me hung up on this is that I realized my sexuality but always kind of thought it wouldn’t be relevant. I was in a long-term relationship with a guy at the time that I figured all this out in the beginning, and even after we broke up I always sort of felt like liking girls would be something that was a part of me, but I never really picturing myself actually ending up being with a woman in real life (as opposed to just thinking about it in my head). I’m not sure why I felt that way, maybe it was just a confidence thing of thinking all queer women were somehow better than me? Thank you everyone for your responses so far, it’s really comforting to know I’m not the only one dealing with this!
THIS a 100x. This is honestly the best piece of advice I think you can give someone. This stuff is NOT simple at all and this is a really good point about “there having” to be a “reason” for why someone is gay, when in actuality, there doesn’t need to be one and it’s not the same for every person.
Yes definitely! My story is different from yours: I'm male, and definitely later in life (60). I've lived a mostly heteronormative life. But at this stage in my life, maybe because my kids are mostly grown, I'm looking for more truth and meaning. There was a gay part of me just aching to be expressed. Last summer I came out to my wife as something other than totally straight. Now that I'm more out in the open, it's like my gay part doesn't have to scream quite so loudly to be heard. Sometimes it feels like I was just making the whole thing up for some drama in my life. Two weeks ago I went to an event sponsored by our LGBTQ resource Center, and I found myself coming off as totally gay and getting ready to leave my wife and family. That's just not me. Yes I felt like an imposter.
I can understand that feeling too. One thing I noticed when I got into the LGBT community like, on my campus, is that the community is really clique-y. So I didn’t really feel quite as included when I’ve gone to their events, but I’ve had quite a few friends who are bi/pan. I feel like I want to seem like I know myself and am confident in myself around people who have been in the community longer, so maybe that has something to do with it too? Figuring all of this out has been a really long process, and I’m realizing that I don’t quite know as much as I thought.
