How do you know if you're a lesbian?

[OdeToDiazepam]

I've had 2 children (young) and been single for a while now after a really bad time with my ex.

Is it normal to realise you might be gay later in life? I'm 26. I feel like I have very little interest in men at all. Next to none. And thinking about women more and more and have been looking it up.

Does this mean I might be a lesbian? I've even been trying it out with friends and family kind of joking about it but I'm actually inside wondering if it's true.

If it normal to have children and straight relationships before thinking like this?

Looking back to my teens, I suppose I was attracted to men and women. But I was in my 30s before I experienced the touch of another woman and that took one individual to lead me, quite by surprise in that direction. I was beautifully and deliciously seduced.

Friendships have been fairly fluid since and these days I just identify as “sexual” minus a prefix. Hence my comment about sexuality being fluid which remains my opinion.

Had that one person not been in the right place at the right time I may have got to my 40s without experiencing girly intimacy. I could have lived with that and had a happy, but not quite so happy.

Correction: and had a happy life, but not quite so happy!

ode, there's a stereotype that female sexuality is 'fluid' that feeds into the idea that women don't really know what they want/can be persuaded into doing things they don't want.

On the whole, if a woman has been with a man and then starts a relationship with a woman, she'll be told she must be bi; if a man has a relationship with a woman then with a man, he'll be told he must have been repressing his homosexuality. If you look at something like comments on newspaper articles, they tend to follow this pattern.

Some people do have pretty fluid sexuality. Some people say their sexuality shifted during their lives (eg., after having a baby, interestingly). But, IME, when people say 'oh, women's sexuality is fluid,' that's a very worrying idea, because it is often bound up with telling women they're open to anything.

I used to be an organizer for an LGBT group and there were quite a few women who didn't know they were gay or bisexual until their late 20s, 30s, some in their 40s. This was also true of some men though they were fewer (that may be because women were more comfortable telling me and men more comfortable talking about it with the guy organizers). Many were previously married - some currently married and trying to come to terms that while they loved their husbands, it wasn't in a romantic or sexual way. It is an entirely normal experience that many others share. I usually recommend talking with others and trying to put the expectations and baggage of sexualities as identities aside (there are so many things socially tied into sexuality that have nothing to do with it) and focus as sexuality as a shorthard for a list of traits on who you want to be in a romantic, sexual relationship with and makes all of you click.

I agree that while some people have fluid sexuality, this notion that all women or everyone's sexuality is fluid is harmful. It ignores that more of the reason people find out later is due to socialization on how and with who we should be sexual rather than our in-built sexuality. It's difficult to act on the ways people are shamed and prevented from their own sexuality if we pretend the traits don't firmly exist in many people. Figuring out what traits we have around who we're attracted and fully click with can be difficult, especially with all the baggage around them, that doesn't make them fluid.

I also think the whole the 'we love people not genitalia' simply creates a different sexuality hierarchy where those whose sexuality is not as impacted by their partner's phenotype (which is far more than just our genitals, it's our whole bodies which include our genitals and many other characteristics) are somehow better than who do - straight and gay people. It also plays into the dea that our bodies shouldn't matter when without them, we don't exist, our personalities, our minds, what makes us who we are come from our bodies and our bodies affect how we are socialized and treated which impacts our bodies and through that how we act and who we are. Ignoring the body in relationship in unhealthy and unrealistic, and it causes people a lot of harm to pretend that we're somehow different than other sexual species where phenotype does play a major factor in attraction. Being told we should be attracted and open to that kind of relationship with people we aren't is harmful, whether the message comes from social systems, conservative notions, or progressives ideals.

My comment about genitals is nothing to do with being progressive etc - its true. In the past i've sought out sexual relations with be-penised folks, but after meeting the woman i spoke about, that vanished, her vagina or whatever else she may or may not have had down there was irrelevant. And that surprised me!

Interesting discussion thanks

Glad if it made sense!

Very interesting discussion. I’m married to a man and we have kids. I’ve had crushes on women and have had quite a few sexual dreams about woman but no real encounters. For me I’m attracted to the person it feels rather than the sex.