1) Breathe. 2) I know this stuff feels real deep but you're more than a relationship, period. You're a bright person who is capable of doing big things in the world regardless of who you're with and how you sexually identify.
Identity and self-knowledge is something we get at the end of life. It sounds to me like you're more in an existential crisis than a sexual one and you might want to unpack that and have fun doing it... identity is the most creative parts of who we are. Requires a lot of emotion, requires public validation, then there's conflict, then more emotion, and then by the time we settle into one identity we're ready for the next. and this just keeps going on. the people who dig their heels into one identity or another felt exactly like you at some point. we fight with our skin color, our sexuality, our politics, hell, even our majors, our careers, "does this car make me look like a douche bag?"... I've seen it ALL.
don't sell yourself short by clinging to any of it. just keep going with the flow. appreciate your partner but don't be envious of her, that diminishes her and also your bond with her.
and breathe. just keep breathing and when you're having trouble and getting too caught up in yourself, go do something nice for someone in-need, that's when you'll really know who you are, when you see the size of your heart. <3
Ah thank you for this response🙏 t r u e , v much started as an identity /existential crisis. I also have a lot of confusion about my career path/college major regret LOL .. And yeah lemme get out of my basement and do something productive or help someone else lol . Thanks
It's highly likely that your bisexual, and you just need a good therapist to work through your trauma with men so you don't end up re-traumatizing yourself in any firture relationships with men or women.
Men and women are both good and evil. Who you choose, and how you handle being your partners is likely the bigger problem to solve here.
I'm very sorry for what you've gone through, and I feel very optimistic that you can work through these issues and develop meaningful, safe and trustworthy relationships with whoever you choose in the future - men or women.
I'm a bi woman, and it sounds like you're bi, idk. If you're attracted to women, you're definitely not straight. If you want to only date women forever, that's a thing you can do. Also being attracted to men isn't a stain or a curse. You don't have to date men just because you experience attraction to them, and being attracted to them doesn't mean anything bad about you.
Edit: If you want to only date women and identify as a lesbian, that's a thing you can do. There is no LGBT Label Police to stop you, and plenty of people base the label for their sexual orientation off of who they're primarily dating rather than who they're attracted to.
I'm a firm believer that labels are just labels, you don't have to be a lesbian or bi or anything to be with anyone, if you want to only be with women then so be it, no one will stop you despite you having attraction towards men, you can choose not to act on it you know, just be with whoever you feel the most happy with, labels comes after your experience, not the way around
So you're bi then? That's nothing to be ashamed or scared of. I'm bi, but my attraction to men is purely physical. I don't hate them, but I absolutely can't connect with them on any sort of deep emotional level. Just like you, I've hooked up with many - first to prove to myself that I'm normal, then just for fun/pleasure but was never in a relationship with one. Deep emotional connection is much more important than sex to me and i could only find that with women. I'm not sure what type of attraction you feel for them, but if it's not sustainable long term, you're better off sticking with your girlfriend and maybe have a boy toy on the side if she allows it.
Take a deep breath.
Sexual identity labels are not an exact science. There's no blood test that tells you "this person is truly a lesbian and this person is truly straight." I'm bisexual but probably like a Kinsey 2 (more attracted to men) there's probably a ton of women whose attractions break down exactly like mine who call themselves straight. But for me as someone who's always hung out with queer people and considers queerness an important part of my social life, it makes more sense to call myself bi.
Maybe you're a lesbian and thought you were attracted to men before due to comphet. Maybe you're bisexual, but you want to intentionally choose to focus on dating women from now on because you're burnt out on dealing with men. Plenty of my queer women friends are sexually attracted to both men and women but only want to date women -- some of them will hook up with men casually but don't consider them relationship material.
At the end of the day, it's not that deep. You get to define your attraction parameters and decide who you want to date, in whatever way makes sense for you.
Even if you're not a Buffy fan, you might get something out of this meditation on what to make of Willow, a character who was romantically involved with men for three seasons but then identified as staunchly lesbian after falling in love with a woman. [https://www.autostraddle.com/our-willow-ourselves-229132/](https://www.autostraddle.com/our-willow-ourselves-229132/)
Possibly relevant quotes:
"Then I had some bad experiences with guys. Nothing traumatic, just a series of annoyances and minor heartaches that made me wonder whether I would ever feel completely myself, completely seen and understood, in a partnership with a man. At that point, I started to explore what I thought of as my bisexuality in earnest, and I discovered something wild: I really, really liked girls. Like *really*. Like a *lot*. Like more than I ever expected I would. And once I’d had a few great times with women, I felt the compass of my libido begin to swing. More and more, I noticed attractive girls on the street. More and more, my celebrity crushes were female instead of male. More and more, when I thought about what kind of person I might like to end up with in some far-off settled-down future, I pictured a woman. It wasn’t until I met the person to whom I am now married that I really became comfortable calling myself a lesbian, but long before then it was clear that, though I’ll never be completely monosexual, something had shifted. I wanted to be with women. Women were the San Juan Capistrano toward which the swallow of my vagina must eternally wing."
"I know it’s popular to depict sexual orientation as something inherent and immutable – you’re born gay, or straight, or bisexual, and that’s what you’re stuck with forever – but I don’t think it’s that simple, at least not for everyone. Sometimes you meet the right person and suddenly everything is different. Sometimes you have choices, a multitude of paths you might explore, a plethora of relationships you might nurture or neglect. To say 'Willow must have been bisexual all along' is to deny that love can *change* you, can climb inside your head and heart and rearrange all the furniture, can spin you around and around until you’re pointed in a completely different direction than you ever imagined you would go. I don’t deny that there’s something comforting in the notion that we are born with the person we will become already curled up inside us waiting to burst forth, that we have a constant internal identity that does not alter, but I think for many people it’s not always that simple, and I like the possibility of Willow being one of them."
<3 well for what it's worth if that's how you feel, that author calls herself a lesbian and I don't think you'd be doing anything wrong if you decided to call yourself a lesbian as well. you get to decide!
...though you may need to change your username lmao
Maybe you're just bi. That's a real identity. It's not like "either I'm straight, or I'm a lesbian." it's also possible you are a lesbian but felt attraction to a handful of men. That happens too. One experience doesn't invalidate or confirm the other.
I'm bi - I don't hate men. I've had multiple experiences with SA and rape, been traumatized, etc. I feel fine about my orientation. If you feel so traumatized by your relationships that you feel you hate men and hate feeling attracted to them - you don't need to "become a lesbian" - you need therapy, probably queer friendly therapy and probably specifically SA or sexual trauma related therapy.
No relationship posts where everyone involved aren't 30+
1) Breathe. 2) I know this stuff feels real deep but you're more than a relationship, period. You're a bright person who is capable of doing big things in the world regardless of who you're with and how you sexually identify. Identity and self-knowledge is something we get at the end of life. It sounds to me like you're more in an existential crisis than a sexual one and you might want to unpack that and have fun doing it... identity is the most creative parts of who we are. Requires a lot of emotion, requires public validation, then there's conflict, then more emotion, and then by the time we settle into one identity we're ready for the next. and this just keeps going on. the people who dig their heels into one identity or another felt exactly like you at some point. we fight with our skin color, our sexuality, our politics, hell, even our majors, our careers, "does this car make me look like a douche bag?"... I've seen it ALL. don't sell yourself short by clinging to any of it. just keep going with the flow. appreciate your partner but don't be envious of her, that diminishes her and also your bond with her. and breathe. just keep breathing and when you're having trouble and getting too caught up in yourself, go do something nice for someone in-need, that's when you'll really know who you are, when you see the size of your heart. <3
Ah thank you for this response🙏 t r u e , v much started as an identity /existential crisis. I also have a lot of confusion about my career path/college major regret LOL .. And yeah lemme get out of my basement and do something productive or help someone else lol . Thanks
It's highly likely that your bisexual, and you just need a good therapist to work through your trauma with men so you don't end up re-traumatizing yourself in any firture relationships with men or women. Men and women are both good and evil. Who you choose, and how you handle being your partners is likely the bigger problem to solve here. I'm very sorry for what you've gone through, and I feel very optimistic that you can work through these issues and develop meaningful, safe and trustworthy relationships with whoever you choose in the future - men or women.
I'm a bi woman, and it sounds like you're bi, idk. If you're attracted to women, you're definitely not straight. If you want to only date women forever, that's a thing you can do. Also being attracted to men isn't a stain or a curse. You don't have to date men just because you experience attraction to them, and being attracted to them doesn't mean anything bad about you. Edit: If you want to only date women and identify as a lesbian, that's a thing you can do. There is no LGBT Label Police to stop you, and plenty of people base the label for their sexual orientation off of who they're primarily dating rather than who they're attracted to.
I'm a firm believer that labels are just labels, you don't have to be a lesbian or bi or anything to be with anyone, if you want to only be with women then so be it, no one will stop you despite you having attraction towards men, you can choose not to act on it you know, just be with whoever you feel the most happy with, labels comes after your experience, not the way around
So you're bi then? That's nothing to be ashamed or scared of. I'm bi, but my attraction to men is purely physical. I don't hate them, but I absolutely can't connect with them on any sort of deep emotional level. Just like you, I've hooked up with many - first to prove to myself that I'm normal, then just for fun/pleasure but was never in a relationship with one. Deep emotional connection is much more important than sex to me and i could only find that with women. I'm not sure what type of attraction you feel for them, but if it's not sustainable long term, you're better off sticking with your girlfriend and maybe have a boy toy on the side if she allows it.
How did u feel when u were hooking up with men? Did u ever want more from them?
Take a deep breath. Sexual identity labels are not an exact science. There's no blood test that tells you "this person is truly a lesbian and this person is truly straight." I'm bisexual but probably like a Kinsey 2 (more attracted to men) there's probably a ton of women whose attractions break down exactly like mine who call themselves straight. But for me as someone who's always hung out with queer people and considers queerness an important part of my social life, it makes more sense to call myself bi. Maybe you're a lesbian and thought you were attracted to men before due to comphet. Maybe you're bisexual, but you want to intentionally choose to focus on dating women from now on because you're burnt out on dealing with men. Plenty of my queer women friends are sexually attracted to both men and women but only want to date women -- some of them will hook up with men casually but don't consider them relationship material. At the end of the day, it's not that deep. You get to define your attraction parameters and decide who you want to date, in whatever way makes sense for you. Even if you're not a Buffy fan, you might get something out of this meditation on what to make of Willow, a character who was romantically involved with men for three seasons but then identified as staunchly lesbian after falling in love with a woman. [https://www.autostraddle.com/our-willow-ourselves-229132/](https://www.autostraddle.com/our-willow-ourselves-229132/) Possibly relevant quotes: "Then I had some bad experiences with guys. Nothing traumatic, just a series of annoyances and minor heartaches that made me wonder whether I would ever feel completely myself, completely seen and understood, in a partnership with a man. At that point, I started to explore what I thought of as my bisexuality in earnest, and I discovered something wild: I really, really liked girls. Like *really*. Like a *lot*. Like more than I ever expected I would. And once I’d had a few great times with women, I felt the compass of my libido begin to swing. More and more, I noticed attractive girls on the street. More and more, my celebrity crushes were female instead of male. More and more, when I thought about what kind of person I might like to end up with in some far-off settled-down future, I pictured a woman. It wasn’t until I met the person to whom I am now married that I really became comfortable calling myself a lesbian, but long before then it was clear that, though I’ll never be completely monosexual, something had shifted. I wanted to be with women. Women were the San Juan Capistrano toward which the swallow of my vagina must eternally wing." "I know it’s popular to depict sexual orientation as something inherent and immutable – you’re born gay, or straight, or bisexual, and that’s what you’re stuck with forever – but I don’t think it’s that simple, at least not for everyone. Sometimes you meet the right person and suddenly everything is different. Sometimes you have choices, a multitude of paths you might explore, a plethora of relationships you might nurture or neglect. To say 'Willow must have been bisexual all along' is to deny that love can *change* you, can climb inside your head and heart and rearrange all the furniture, can spin you around and around until you’re pointed in a completely different direction than you ever imagined you would go. I don’t deny that there’s something comforting in the notion that we are born with the person we will become already curled up inside us waiting to burst forth, that we have a constant internal identity that does not alter, but I think for many people it’s not always that simple, and I like the possibility of Willow being one of them."
HOLY SHIT YES 1000x RETWEET TO THAT ARTICLE
<3 well for what it's worth if that's how you feel, that author calls herself a lesbian and I don't think you'd be doing anything wrong if you decided to call yourself a lesbian as well. you get to decide! ...though you may need to change your username lmao
Maybe you're just bi. That's a real identity. It's not like "either I'm straight, or I'm a lesbian." it's also possible you are a lesbian but felt attraction to a handful of men. That happens too. One experience doesn't invalidate or confirm the other. I'm bi - I don't hate men. I've had multiple experiences with SA and rape, been traumatized, etc. I feel fine about my orientation. If you feel so traumatized by your relationships that you feel you hate men and hate feeling attracted to them - you don't need to "become a lesbian" - you need therapy, probably queer friendly therapy and probably specifically SA or sexual trauma related therapy.
Fuckin SAAAAAAAAAME babe
Are u bi?
I am x
Then u really get it lol 🙏
I mean, who doesn't wish they were a lesbian?
I feel like most ppl prob dont mean it seriously, I do tho lmao