When, where and the place you realized that you were you gay/lesbian?!

Very early morning, February 12th of this year, after a sleepless night lying on the couch (de facto separation from the wife) wondering about whether my wife was the wrong woman for me, or whether I was the wrong guy for any woman...

Quite suddenly, an image of myself in a long-term, possibly married, relationship with a guy just crystallized in my mind. The words just spoke themselves on my lips as I stared at the ceiling...I am gay.

About an hour later, I found EC online, signed up and posted my first message...

 

I was browsing a new forum I had found (not LGBT-related) on the 25th of February, and registered. Started posting here and there and found this thread that said "What is your sexual orientation", and for a minute I took a step back and started thinking. For the past 2 years or so, I had been getting seriously aroused by guys I'd see in public areas, I had a crush on a cute guy my age that I saw daily on the city bus (but I wasn't gay!), and I had absolutely no attraction to females whatsoever.

I selected the "Gay" option from the poll, and pressed "Send". I was gay.

 

The boys' locker room, sixth grade. I noticed I was having a grand time watching the shirtless boys around me, and not just in a "admiring their physique" sort of way.

I didn't even know what to call it at the time, because I never had a legitimate boy crush and assumed I was straight for that reason. But the romantic feelings came soon enough, and I was able to make sense of my first primitive attractions.

 

Spring 1991. I was sitting on the benches outside the dorms, and I was about to perform an experiment.

I was 21. I had watched my male friends ogle girls, talk about who they found attractive, date, get into sexual relationships, go steady, break-up. And here I was. Not just a virgin but technically dateless other than a few proscribed get-togethers (I took a female friend to prom, for instance). I just never had a girl "hit me" that way. I had a sex drive, definitely, but all my fantasies were strangely...non-directional. I just "wanted to have sex". The partner always seemed very vague and unimportant.

Then I had a thought. Maybe I'm gay. I sort of laughed at the idea. I mean, I was 21. Wouldn't I KNOW? Wouldn't I have found myself staring at a guy by now? Or dreaming about them? Well, I figured it wouldn't hurt to try out. I decided to go out and actually try to ogle guys, and see what happened.

So I went outside my dorm and sat down on the bench. Luckily, I was going to college in southern California, and it was the early 90s. Which meant it was warm outside, and when guys wore shorts, they ended more or less where the ass did. So I sat there and waited. And eventually a guy jogged by. He was wearing socks, jogging shoes, and a short pair of black jogging shorts. I sort of surreptitiously looked at him as he approached, and then really ogled him after he passed by.

And I sprung major wood. My jeans nearly ripped open. I didn't literally yell "Holy shit, I'm gay!" but I felt like I had. I then went back inside and masturbated while thinking of the jogger. And for the first time, it felt...right. Natural. It made sense. I still wasn't exactly sure what I was doing - did I want to be on top of the jogger, or beside him, or beneath him, and what body part went where? But it still was the most complete solo sexual experience I had had up until that point.

That day was...how to put it? It was like putting that huge piece of the jigsaw puzzle down, and you suddenly can tell what the puzzle is going to be when it's finished. There were still a lot of pieces missing, but finally, the overall shape and picture could be discerned.

Lex

 

I think I've known since I was 10, but the truth of my queerness was shoved in the deepest parts of my mind. Certain instances and emotions kept building up..all of them, of course, hastily repressed. For example, I always became really jealous when my best friend kissed/touched a guy.

So anyway.. with all the tension building, there had to be something that pushed it over the edge. This came in the form of a movie trailer about a relationship between two girls set in Iran. After watching it, I started to feel a really intense longing in my chest, and restlessness - like my skin was crawling. I tried to suppress it, to make it go away, but it just became more and more intense. It actually kept me up at night.

So, finally, I set myself down and said "Okay, you can't ignore this any longer. You need to find out what this is"

Enter Labor Day 2011. My parents and brother were away visiting a college, so I had the house to myself. I went on the computer and.. well, to be honest, looked at some erotic lesbian material. I had the weird experience of being really turned on while finding myself in tears at how beautiful it was. I had my answer. And everything sort of made sense...

Of course, i still went through periods of denial, but that was the big event that set it all into motion.

 

It was early April of 2011. I had thought I was bisexual. I found this site and I was sitting in my room in the middle of the night. I had been miserable. I just broke up with a guy, which wasnt why I was upset. I felt like I had no idea who I was. Reading through posts and all that, thinking over my entire life, I realized I wasnt bisexual. I had always had an attraction to women. Always had crushes on girls when I was in school, I just never understood they were crushes. It almost hit me like a brick. Someone had suggested ibstand in front of a mirror and say "I'm gay" and see how I feel. I did just that, and it felt like a wave rushed over me. Everything made sense. A week or two later I told my best friend. She said she had known, along with several of our friends. I felt so much better. It took two years, but I finally know who I am and what I want. I told my parents two months ago, then my siblings, and then posted it on facebook. A lot od family and friends are on there. I felt so much better. I couldn't be luckier to have the support I have. I'm just happy that I am finally happy with myself. My self esteem has gone way up. I'm happy with who I am. I'm getting more comfortable in my own skin every single day.

 

I think I first started having feelings for guys when I was 12 and I was in complete denial. When I was 14 and a freshman in high school, I played football for a year (until I messed up my knee). It was during summer practices that when we were in the locker room and guys were coming out of the shower. The evidence was kind of hard (no pun intended) to hide. (!)

 

When I was 12 at a party, I made out with some girls from spin the bottle and realised I was quite attracted to them.

 

I remember freaking out a little bit when I was like 12 or so thinking I might be gay so I thought one day (I was a confused little cub) that I would go to school and look at the different girls and try to find which ones I found attractive. By the end of the day I couldn't find a single one attractive in like any way. The next day (this is the weird bit) I decided to wear y fronts to school since a guy in my class had been laughed at for wearing y fronts in PE and y fronts were therefore gay and so if I was gay then I should be the one wearing y fronts.

 

I was never into guys in elementary school. All the other girls had this guy or that guy that they liked and would talk about endlessly. Me - I'd pretend to be the same way, I guess. I'd say "oh, I like so and so" without actually having any feeling other than wanting to fit in. There was even a girl - looking back - that I realize I had a huge crush on, though it manifested to everyone else as a rivalry.

In 7th grade I started watching The X-Files. OMG Scully was so freaking HOT. I started to realize why I was different then. About the same time I really got into Xena and femslash fanfic. Then I met a girl online and we met in person and we made out for awhile before being caught by her little sister. I'd still never even THOUGHT the word lesbian or gay in relation to myself, which is kind of weird, but it was the 90s and I was in a very conservative state. After being caught making out with a girl (even though she never told anyone) I kind of repressed everything that I'd started to feel and began my crusade of making myself "straight" (though again, I never thought of it that way at the time). I would date a guy for a couple months - had sex a couple times just so I wouldn't stand out amongst my peers. After high school I really stopped even thinking about sexuality and went through this almost asexual period.

The time that made me stop and actually say and think the words "I'm gay" was playing a video game and thinking how hot two of the main female characters would be together. It was just so out of the blue in my asexual little world I'd created. I started going back in my memories to the above mentioned times and just kind of sat there for awhile, dumbfounded.

Holy crap, I'm GAY!

 

I was 22 years old and I'm standing on the balcony and drinking beer with a friend and my best friend. My best friend was cutting the hair of our friend and I was just standing there admiring everything about her. (You would think that was when I realized I was gay, but it wasn't.) I noticed she had glitter on her neck, so I asked her why she had glitter on her neck. She tried to deny it at first and then reluctantly tells us that she slept with this girl who had glitter on them last night and she probably didn't wash it all off. I felt so incredibly jealous when she told me. I felt my heart just do this weird jumpy thing and I all I could think about was "why didn't she sleep with me?" I realized how much I wanted to be with her and how much I liked her as a romantic partner And that I never felt that with any guy before.

After that, I went through the whole "I'm not gay... Holy shit I am gay. Maybe I'm bi... yeah, I'm bi. Wait, guys are not that appealing to me. I'm a lesbian..." phase. Looking back, there were signs, but I was just too blind to see them.

 

1987, on vacation in France, i had my first lesbian experiance. My longing for females was clear to me long before. I grew up in a pseudo-liberal home and neved expected my parents to freak out the way they did when i came back with my broken heart from a summer holiday where i was supposed to learn speaking french...

 

10 years old, my grandpa's bathroom, reading the sports illustrated swimsuit issue. I think that's when puberty kicked in for me also.:icon_redf

 

14 years old when I realized I had a crush on a video game character

 

I was in the school cafeteria, the same age as I am now (my birthday had been just recently) and a guy sitting at my table asked me if I was a lesbian, since I had just mentioned having a crush on this girl. I was going to say that I was questioning whether I was bi or lesbian, but then I ended up just saying yeah. Afterwards, I decided what I'd said was really how I felt, and started to think about coming out to a couple more close friends.

 

I was 15, it was the summer after 10th grade. I had had this crush on this girl for the longest time, and she had started going out with my friend by the end of 10th grade. This kinda led me to a bunch of contemplation and introspection and I realized that hey, maybe I'm not straight, that crush clearly meant nothing. And so I accepted I was gay.

 

i had kissed a girl when i was younger it was an innocent first kiss when i was 6. I pushed it to the back of my mind as my family is Baptist and a big part of the church. When i was 23 i was in a bad relationship and finally ended it. I sat my self down and realized that I got no pleasure from being with him. I admitted to my best friend that I might be bi. My grandmother died when i was 25. She was a constant in my life and a big reason i was still in the closet. I started dating a guy that Christmas and it ended quickly. It was my last ditch effort to try and me "normal". I sat down down and figured out that no i didn't want to be with guys that it was always girls. That i really liked being around guys to talk sports, movies, etc. So Christmas 2009 is when i completely knew who i was.

 

I always had always had room mates and never was alone for along period of time. I knew I had been having feeling and fantasied about guys for ever but just chalked it up to normal feelings all guys had. My brother (who I was sharing a apartment with) went on a trip to Europe for a week in 2005 and I had the place and was all by myself for a whole week. At that point I took a hard look at who I was and what I liked. I actually remember going out for a walk and just thinking yep i am gay.

 

The moment that I realised I was interested in men and men only (i.e. gay), was one afternoon in mid to late 2003 when I was helping my mum hang out the washing.
Prior to that I can only say I was a bit confused about who I am and what I wanted out of life.

 

I started wondering when I was 13, but I tried really hard to ignore it. My current TV obsession was the show Bones, and I loved Emily Deschanel, who plays the main character. I had convinced myself that as long as I couldn't picture kissing her, then I was still straight (she was much older than me, so it's not like I would ever really want to kiss her anyway, but I decided that as long as I couldn't imagine it, my "crush" on her didn't count). Basically, one day I went "oh crap, I can picture it" and decided it was about time to stop ignoring the fact that I clearly liked girls much more than a straight girl would.

Figuring out that I only liked girls was a more gradual thing.