To ask how you knew you were gay?

How on earth could you know how everyone feels? Stop invalidating someone who's telling you they're confused about their sexuality. Ffs.

Personally I feel there's a bit of a spectrum to most things, and I think I sit pretty far down the end of "little to no sexual attraction to anyone". Not fully asexual, as at times I have felt mildly physically attracted to some men, and have had "crushes" on some very safe men - usually fictional characters. But as a teenager I never particularly thought I was a lesbian, I wasn't sexually attracted to any girls or women, but I just wasn't particularly sexually attracted to any boys or men either. I still say I was straight. I'd probably prefer to be a lesbian if I had a choice, mind!

I was a teenager in the 90s and I didn't really give it that much thought at the time; I would have just assumed I was straight, I think, as that was the norm. If a boy didn't have any particular interest in girls, I think people would have (and still would) speculate about him being gay, but if a girl wasn't that interested in boys they would just assume she was a 'late developer' or something. Then some years went by and I didn't fancy any of the boys who liked me. I remember in my early 20s suggesting to one of them that I thought I might be gay and being met with total disbelief. I think his actual words were 'no you're not'. So for me it was a gradual realisation throughout my 20s and coincided with growing up and becoming generally more confident with other aspects of who I was as a person.

Historically I think it probably didn't help that women were not assumed to enjoy or need sex in the same way that men were. I sometimes think of previous generations of lesbians just getting married to men because that's what you did.

I'm not sure it was at first to be honest. I remember feeling frustrated and embarrassed that I hadn't known earlier. I spent a lot of time reevaluating every relationship and lots of experiences from my past in a new light. I am relieved to know, but I think my emotions were more shock, surprise, confusion...
I mean, on top of it, my life hasn't actually changed, in that I haven't done much about my discovery. I've learned about myself, I tick a different box on forms now, and I've told a few people, but I'm still extremely single and independent.

Let me speak from experience - it really really isn’t.

Tell that to my STBExH. He's come out after nearly 8 years of marriage and 2 kids. My entire life has been turned upside down and I'm just angry at how uncertain things are right now

I had schoolgirl crushes on older women. Around the time that other girls started to like boys, I either thought they were revolting or just felt neutral and that persisted. Kissed boys and felt nothing. If there hadn’t been a lot of compulsory heterosexuality growing up, the penny would have dropped more quickly but fell in love with a woman at 18 in university.

1. i tried dating men and i absolutely hated every second of it
2. i had sex with a man and didnt like it
3. i fantasised about women and was sexually attracted to women
4. i thought i was bi for a while

eventually the penny dropped and i realised i wasnt interested in men at all, it took forever though. i didn't "just know" though even though looking back in hindsight it was utterly obvious.

Name change because this is far TMI, but I wasn't completely sure until the moment I went down on a woman for the first time. Admitted that afterwards to the person I was dating and she laughed for a very long time - she never had any doubts about my sexuality

It's really not. My first kiss was at 12 years old with another girl and I can see as an adult that what they call 'compulsory heterosexuality' set in after that and I never really got to explore that side of me properly - maybe if I had gone to uni things might have been different, but I didn't, I lived in a little village, none of my peers came out until way into adulthood and I just kind of coasted along with men, and backed off of most opportunities to explore women beyond friendships. You're also kind of conditioned in two ways - to believe that all women feel the same way you do about other women and that there's something else undefinable that sets the real gays apart. And to accept half-hearted feelings about men.

It took a long time to unpick that messaging and realise that actually, no, not every other woman feels that way about other women and nor do they all feel that way about men. That's not to diminish my prior experiences with men - I have had some great relationships with some men and genuinely loved and fancied some of them, not least the father of my child who is still the best man I've ever known.

Parts of realising I'm bisexual were really difficult to deal with - we're so used to seeing women romantically and sexually through mens eyes that I felt like an absolute creep whenever I acknowledged to myself that I fancied a woman. Thank god for the internet helping me work through that as an actual thing. But it's really not always simple. It's confusing.

I think baddies as a general rule tend to be sexier, don't they? As a kid in the 80s I absolutely loved Alexis in Dynasty, but found Krystle bland and annoying. Baddies always have more fun!

@AssassinsEyebrowi think it’s his skinniness and also his lust for power.

I surpressed it for so long. I always had crushes on girls but I was too embarrassed to tell anyone. My cousin was gay and my parents used to make so many jokes about it that I grew up thinking gay was such an embarrassing thing to be. Despite my crushes on girls, it never occurred to me I might be gay. I dated boys (whilst lusting after girls, and hooked up with girls on my occasions, usually after a few drinks, and wondered why I dramatically preferred it to being with a boy, but decided that all girls probably felt this way). I eventually had two kids with my ex. After my first kid was born my attraction to women got stronger and hit me like a tonne of bricks. After my second child was born it became undeniable. I left my children's father and am now in a relationship with a woman and feel I'm finally myself as an openly gay woman.

@GnomeDavid is it the eyebrows? The twirly goatee?

Wow, Jafar, really?

The same way I knew I was straight, I assume….

@Darkling1 yes, once I slept with a woman that was it. The confusion was over and I’ve been lesbian ever since. Even though she was in finance & we had little in common it was still better than a man !!

I grew up in rural Wales in the 70s and 80s, I never saw or knew any gay people at all til I went to uni, and even then it was mainly gay men. I didn't have anyone or anything to identify with, never saw gay women on tv, never read about them, so it didn't occur to me to question why I thought boys were a bit icky, and why I assumed we all liked men despite obviously women being nicer looking. I had relationships with men, but always selected ones with either very low sex drives, or who lived 300 miles away. I did the sex stuff but never liked it much, just saw it as something you had to do to get the emotional closeness of a relationship. It was only in my 40s that I suddenly realised that THIS feeling I had towards a woman (a specific woman, which reminded me clearly of previous feelings for other women) was actually attraction, and what I'd felt for men was me trying to force something that didn't exist for me.
For a long time in my 30s I assumed I must be asexual because I decided I didn't want to do stuff with men any more and would rather be completely single and celibate. My eyes were opened in my 40s though and I realised that actually I'm not asexual I was just doing it wrong.

I don't think it even has to be repression. For a lot of people sexuality can be quite fluid in their teens, later firming into one thing or another. I thought I was a lesbian in my teens. I wasn't attracted to men at all. Later in my 20s I thought I was bi and it wasn't until after about 25 I realised I was straight. Now women don't interest me at all sexually.

Except it really isn't, for some people when you put repression and denial and anxiety to conform into the mix.

A friend pointed it out as a possibility when my early teen crushes from tv and movies were all female. Then aged 16 or so when the pretty girl I was sat next in a club stopped stroking my face and started kissing me instead, I realised I rather liked it. Turns out I'm bi.

Im a bi woman so everyones at risk with me lol😆.

That's kind of how I feel! I was attracted to women in my teens, but in a sort of protective, romantic way. I find it easier to express sexuality with men though (simple beings that they are). Since my gay best friend died in 2005 when we were in our 20s, I stopped going on 'the scene' and just decided I was straight.

I've never married, and I know it's just not for me, but i do have children. I sometimes get mistaken for being a lesbian, but I've never gone down that route.