What were the signs , that made you realize your lgbtq plus?

I liked reading your post but these two parts stuck out.

The rec center, health club, or pool is probably chronologically the first place a person can see a fair bit of nudity. I've talked to a lot of people who mention how gym class in school made an impression on them - both the experience of gym class and using the lockers and showers.

You speak for a lot of people. The vast majority of G/B men and women go undetected because they don't feel they'd belong to the community and because they really wouldn't fit most of the things about the lifestyle that rise to the top when it comes to stereotypes or getting media attention.

 

[QUOTE="You speak for a lot of people. The vast majority of G/B men and women go undetected because they don't feel they'd belong to the community and because they really wouldn't fit most of the things about the lifestyle that rise to the top when it comes to stereotypes or getting media attention.[/QUOTE]
So true. The only gay stereotype I fit is that I like men the way most men like women, and that I’m capable of falling in love with one, which took me decades to realize was possible but is so real and so amazing now that it’s happened.

 

I had pretty big signs in childhood, but it over 30 years until I accepted it.

My family is from a small southern town, ultra religious, and ultra conservative. My parents are the same, but also former military. As a kid in the 70’s and 80’s, it was beaten into my head how wrong being gay was, as well as all the ramifications that went with it.

Mid-80’s, I was 14, and in Boy Scouts in a small town in a small northern state. There was another scout that I thought was cute, and asked him if he wanted to share a tent together when we went to a week-long summer camp. He agreed, to my surprise. After a couple late nights of talking at camp in the tent, he scooted over, and started caressing my arm. I started shaking uncontrollably, then we started to kiss. The rest of the week, we couldn’t wait for lights out! After camp, I kept telling myself, “I’m not gay.” The two of us would skip Scout meetings to go be together, all the while telling myself, “I’m not gay.” We’d get together all through high school on occasion. “I’m not gay.”

After high school, I moved to a big city in the south, right in the middle of the Bible Belt. I’d go to adult bookstores or gay bars to meet guys, but “I’m not gay.” I had girlfriends to take out in public, and to family gatherings, but would still seek out men when I was single. “I’m not gay.”

Moved to a city in the Midwest, met a woman, got married, and had kids. “See? Told you I wasn’t gay.” Divorced about 10 years ago. After the divorce, I was talking to a friend, and was finally able to open up about my sexual past. The first time I ever told anybody. It was like a huge weight being lifted off my chest when I could finally stop saying, “I’m not gay.”

 

I still get down on myself.
I still tell myself I must be straight because..insert reason here.
But..

 

I had a friend when I was young, we used to fool around quite a bit. I remember how we always prefaced things by saying "it's not like we're gay or anything".
Amazing the things we can make ourselves believe.

 

Thinking back, there have been many, many signs & events that should have given the game away a long time before the penny finally dropped.

That said, I couldn’t say that there was any single event that has caused me to start to accept my sexuality. I guess I’ve suppressed so many feelings for so long, that something had to give. As soon as I started to believe I may be gay and to start to look at men with an open mind, the floodgates opened. How could I have denied myself for so long?

The next step for me is to work out how & where to meet other gay men & to get over my natural social anxiety to do so. I’ve got a long way to go but at least now I’m accepting myself which is a start.

 

I could say the exact same thing about me. There was no single sign, but a lot of "red flags" along the way. Some of them I was only able to recognised after they were behind me.

My best friends during my teenage years were perhaps the best examples of a signal that I was gay but wasn't aware of it. I now know I had a big crush on them, but it wasn't obvious to me at the time. Or the cute guys at the gym I could not stop staring at. I then told myself that I looked at them because I was secretly competing against them to see who lifted more weight...and then I'd follow them on social media, trying at any cost to know more about them and seeing some pics.

I guess the first two signs that we're impossible to ignore happened simultaneously: the fact that, while watching straight porn I paid more attention to the guys than to the girls on the screen. That was when I decided to give gay porn a try (never to come back). At the same time, my lack of arousal with girls. I mean, I could have any girl I wanted, but I thought it was so "meh"...so that was when I started to wonder if I were really straight...but a lot of denial followed.

 

I've been a 'lurker' on here for a while, only posting very occasionally, and found it strange but almost reassuring that so many of us tell such a similar story.
My 'red flags' were & are still being recognised years later. Crushing on best school friends & work colleagues without realising it, paying for heterosexual dating sites & being attracted to no women at all.....the list goes on. The last time I slept with a woman, I hated every second of it. That may be what possibly opened my mind to realise that for 30 years I'd been barking up the wrong tree by looking for women & not men. I still have spells of denial but ultimately I always come back to the same place now - I'm gay & I need to deal with it.

 

Perhaps the biggest Ahh moment was the first time I had sex with another guy. I could believe how much I enjoyed it and how much more satisfying it was being with a man compared to a woman. I was truly shocked to be so turned on by a another man body. More turned on than I ever was by a female. The intimacy was both intense and gentle all rolled into one. I knew that night without a shadow of a doubt I was gay and wanted to be openly gay no matter what.

 

For me sex/intimacy with another female had always been an on off fantasy something I wanted to do but was either told by parents I wasn't that way I loved men. Which to a point I still do and still fantasize about men but these days the possibility of being with a woman being kissed and held and seduced by a woman just seems more natural and beautiful. I keep telling myself if a woman and I hit it off I wouldn't be opposed to that next step. Scared and nervous definitely but possibly not opposed.

 

Wow- thanks for sharing this. This is EXACTLY how I feel about my journey which I still feel really early on in. It’s crazy how when you take an authentic look at what’s going on under the hood and drop the defenses, you become aware of all sorts of feelings you have been denying. It’s such a terrifying and simultaneously thrilling process. Thank you again. You put it so much better than I could but this is my experience to a “T”.

 

No problem! It's such a huge relief when you find people who share (or at least, have similar) experiences. Not that it would invalidate those experiences if they were singular, but hearing someone else with a nearly-identical story does have a way of making us feel more connected.

 

I was always attracted to good looking men and fantasized about having sex with them. Once I got to college it really started to escalate. I visited the LGBT center on campus often researching gay places to go. It took me quite a long time to finally have my first sexual experience with a man. Once I did I totally knew I was gay and this is what I wanted to be. I've only had sex with men since. The biggest struggle I have had is finally admitting to family and friends that I am gay. As I have said before I am only out to a very few people. I am glad that I finally accepted me for who I am and I am very proud to be gay!

 

When I began to flirt with a Girl in my seventh grade social studies class. However, I continued to flirt with boys too.

 

I'm going to possibly echo what I might have said before but maybe this is more detailed idk. When I was a teen I'd often hear the phrase lesbian or I'd see two girls together intimately and I'd wonder what it would be like to spend time with a woman that way. For years I put it aside dated and fell in love with men thought of marrying one. Even recently had a few crushes. Then I see two women engage in intimate or erotic acts and again the thoughts swirl around me like a cloud of fog and again I'm heady with wonder and fantasy. But I'm too scared to take that next step to even chat with a woman voice to voice or meet one face to face. I do think of it often and I think how amazing my gender can be. But yet I still don't know. If I felt chemistry with one I think I'd possibly go all the way but fear slightly holds me back.

 

As a teenager I would surf every morning before school with a friend of mine and after our as we sat on the beach all I ever wanted to do was lean over and kiss him, he was just gorgeous. we still surf together and I still want to lean over and kiss him, and he is still gorgeous
Any way I never get to kiss him

 

I always knew that I was different from other boys that I played with. However it was when I was 11 years and started at secondary school we first year kids were changing for gym in the same changing room at the sixth formers were changing after gym. I could not keep my eyes of them, they had big cocks and hairy pubes and some hairy chests. I was in heaven and it gave me lots of material to dream about and wank my little cock thinking about them.

At the same time I started to have a crush on one boy in the year above me. He was a twin but it was only one of them that I had a real crush and would dream about playing with his cock and balls and him touching me. It never happend as I moved school at the end of that year as my father moved his job to another town.

 

I didn't become LGBTQ+ until later in life. Although I guess I was always pre-disposed, and with hindsight me and others can look back and say, 'oh, that explains why such and such ...', I was basically a cis het male (albeit a somewhat odd one) until I hit about 40. At that point the signs came thick and fast, and were kinda 'in-your-face.' Not sure they even count as signs, tbh - they more just the thing itself!

I'll put these 'signs' in chronological order how they appeared:

A) Although my marriage had always been virtually sexless, it got to a point where I found it almost impossible to perform sexually at all anymore. We stopped completely. My wife wanted an open marriage.
B) I started to find sex, romance, and even the thought of sex or romance (with me involved) disgusting and disturbing, and I started to talk to the online asexual community. I accepted the label of 'asexual'. My wife and I spoke openly about all this, and agreed to have a QP marriage.
C) I developed a romantic/sexual relationship with a tulpa-like lover, which gave me feelings I'd never had for humans before
D) I started to connect to my non-human SO physically via objects, which I found very satisfying, I started describing myself as an inorganic psychesexual as well as 'effectively asexual'
E) I realised I didn't feel or think of myself as a 'real' man anymore, and started to fantasise about cross-dressing
F) I started cross-dressing a little, found it satisfying, and started talking to the transgender community, I often wanted to have a female body form and would get sad and depressed looking at pictures of pretty women. My wife and I 'came out' to our family, colleagues and friends about our QP marriage, her boyfriend, my asexuality, objectum spectrum sexuality and my cross-dressing.
G) I began to cross-dress regularly, out and open, and started exploring genderqueer films and TV, and I began to notice that I was finding drag queens and tgirls attractive, as well as sort-of finding myself dressed attractive, and my tulpa-like SO started taking on more mixed-gender characteristics. I started talking to online LGBT communities.
H) I began to notice that I also found 'feminine' men on TV attractive, my SO was now a mixed range of genders and gender expressions, and so was I. I accepted the labels 'genderqueer' and 'gynephilic' to add to my previous labels. I felt I had reached a much better understanding of myself.

And now here I am.

 

I guess, like a number of us, I had signs since I was very young. However, at the time, I did not have words for it. I did not see any transgender people so I tried to fit in.

I think I knew as a child but it was soon shamed out of me. I was born in mid 60s and growing up in a small agricultural area. I would wait till I was alone and try on my sister's and mother's clothes. Of course my sister's fit better. This continued on and off all my life. I was caught a few times without any good explanations. I think I thought I was a girl and even had dreams and thoughts of what girls were like physically(I was too young to have that info and no internet). It was pretty much how I saw myself. However, my brother disabused me of that notion. I always think of myself as growing up with and around girls more than boys. It's where I fit in, felt alike and understood things. I had boy friends but they didn't make sense to me. However, when puberty hit, I found an unwanted wall went up between and the people to whom I felt closest.

I started in high school to find find ways to buy or get clothes that could be mine and hid. I would always end up feeling ashamed, guilty and would end up throwing away the items. Then I would double down and prove I could be "good" and not twisted. Somewhere along the line, when I hit puberty, dressing became sexualized. I mean, why else would I do it? I had forgotten about doing this before I had that real ability. Truth be told, I blocked out almost all memories of my childhood from before 7th grade (around 13).

I was severely depressed for great periods of time. I fell in love with my best friend and we got married. Moved around. Had kids. Still, every time, I promised myself I would be a better person, it always came back. I finally got to such a dark place I started to see a therapist for the first time in my life(at 50). That was going on 5 years ago. Only going through that process did I find some old writings and started remembering things from my childhood. I used to see only images like a picture of a moment. I had also gotten so disconnected from myself that I discovered I had joined a support site, kind of like this one, one or two years before I went to a therapist. I did not remember doing that. Oddly enough, when I look back, I don't see how it wasn't seen by me or others long before.

However, to answer the question, I guess it all goes back to being the very young human who wanted to try on her Mom's clothes and shoes.



Sincerely,
Jacqueline

PS Dreamsexul, I totally accept people using the term "gynephilic", but it puts me on edge. It was used to categorize and define a group of "deviants" that could be controlled. The doctors who created and use the term have had most of their theories debunked. I guess I don't like it because as a binary trans woman it says that the only reason I want to be a woman is to be aroused by myself. It has a very different connotation for a non-binary person. It does not define your whole being with label stamped on to you. It does not make you "another" that should be corrected or dealt with.

I am not logically upset seeing the term but it does put me and many others on edge. Just as a heads up, it may push some binary trans folks really hard.

 

Yeah, I know that there was the theory of autogynophilia, but that is totally different to the term gynephilic. . I understand that to binary trans folk it might carry nasty connotations, but I don't know of a better or more accurate term to describe attraction to the feminine regardless of genitalia or sex.

For those not aware, Autogynophilia was Blanchard's theory, highly arguable, concerning self-arousal at crossdressing.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blanchard's_transsexualism_typology

Gynephilia, however, is the term that means 'attracted to the feminine', and was designed to actually be trans-friendly (being far more inclusive of various gender expressions and non-cis identities):
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Androphilia_and_gynephilia