To ask how you knew you were gay?

[Darkling1]

In my early teens I would Google “Am I gay?” quizzes.

I’d also get questioned by my friends who I fancied, but I’d just pick some random guy in my class because I didn’t want them to question me further.

What about you?

I kept sleeping with women.

Surely you just know, same way straight people just know.

My gay child (54) usually answers this type of question with "about the same time you decided you weren't gay".

Weirdly, I thought I was gay before I knew I was straight. Even my mother asked me if I was gay when I was about 14. My best friend turned out to be gay though.

I really didn't find men at all attractive. Genuinely grossed me out as a teen.

It’s not always as clear cut as that.

Except it really is

Surely you look at a person and fancy them or not.

I have never fancied a woman, despite being able to acknowledge beauty, cracking personality etc.

i absolutely fancy men.

I feel quite strongly that if I was gay, I would not fancy men, and would quite like to have sex with women?!

I'm straight but find men attractive.

When I see a stunningly beautiful woman, I think I wish I looked like that rather than find myself attracted to her. I don't feel any sexual urge.

You could be straight, gay or bi. Who or what do you find attractive, that's probably the best indicator and go from there.

I'm straight but find men attractive.

@DoYouReally if you're straight of course you fancy men. What do you mean by "but" you find them attractive?

Why are you setting rules for the rest of us? It wasn't clear to me. Sure, I fancied girls in my teens, but I was confident I would grow out of it, as girls were supposed to do. Maybe it would have been easier now, but back then (late 70s) we weren't exactly teeming with positive representations.

Anyway, I started sleeping with girls in my late teens and rarely bothered with boys after that. There wasn't a moment when I thought, "I know!!", more a wry appreciation that though I described myself as someone who was open to anything, in practice I seemed to be making the same choice again and again and again.

And yes, I've been told by 'gold star lesbians' that I am actually bisexual, and really who cares, but after 40+ years I reckon I've earned my badge!

No it isn't. I didn't know I was straight until I was in my early 20s.

It's a typo. Not idea how and became but!

I figured out I wasn't attracted to men years before I recognised that I was attracted to women. In my twenties I was hit by my first full-strength crush on a girl I was friends with; the whole thing ended horribly, but at least I figured out a good few things about myself.

In my early teens I also did a lot of "are you gay?" quizzes, so I'm really surprised I didn't work it out earlier than I did! I just stressed about not liking boys and making up plausible fake crushes to fill out sleepover conversations and games of truth or dare.

Some do, but not everyone. I thought I was gay, and so did my mum, but it turns out I'm straight. My eldest son also thought he might be gay when he was about 13-14, but he's straight. It's very common in early teens when your sexuality is developing to have a bit of confusion before you work out what you really are.

It's a bit more complicated when you're gay because being straight has always been the 'expected norm', so there's quite often a period of denial or struggle to accept who you are. Sad, right?

I'm bi. For a long time I didn't really 'realise' because when I was a teenager I fancied boys, and just assumed that everyone who liked and dated boys also fantasised about their favourite female film & tv characters, just for fun 🙃

When I was at university a female friend of mine kissed me on a night out and I was like 'OH!', and I had this little epiphany that I was just as romantically and sexually interested in women as men.

I think sexuality is very individual. It’s confusing too. I have settled on bi but spent most of the last decade solely with women with a recent relationship with a man. I try not worry too much about labels and if I like someone I just go with it.

It's really not. Not in the society in which we live and even more so lived.

For me first time I kissed a girl. Oh, I thought. That's that then. There was never any question of going back or being bi. Suddenly things made sense. Obviously I'd been in denial and hadn't even allowed myself to think about it but that was the early 90s and it wasn't that easy back then.

I think this can depend on when and where you grew up.
My colleague didn't know gay people existed until he was watching EastEnders aged about 10 and he saw the first male gay kiss on TV. He had very strict parents and it had never come up at school. He was then like ohhhh that makes sense as he had started fancying his classmate and the odd actor!
My aunt grew up in Russia and didn't know lesbians were a thing (she knew about gay men in a very negative way). It was only when she went to the States in the 60s that she was like, not just me then.

I tried to force myself to like men and it didn’t end well. I came out at around 16. My friends were skeptical and questioned “How do you know if you haven’t dated a woman?” I just knew!

I'd now classify myself as asexual, though since heterosexuality was the societal default, I went through a period of questioning if I might be gay. In my experience, sexuality exists on a spectrum. Some people are firmly oriented toward one gender, while others, like myself, occupy a middle space that isn't necessarily bisexuality, but involves questioning.

These questions likely arose from my feminine presentation and from not seeing women like me represented in coming-out narratives while growing up. I wish the process of understanding my sexual identity had been more straightforward rather than the journey of self-discovery it's been.

I hear you and I agree with you.

Back to this thread that I meant to return to earlier.
My first answer was flippant, I realise but it was also the truth.
When I was with men as a teen/young adult I never didnt sleep with women too.
At the time, it was seen (by me and others) as a kinky, fun thing about me, I moved in alternative circles (rock 'moshers') sort of thing shows age
but as I matured and relationships should've become more serious they never did, because I still wanted women and I could never see myself settled with a man-but I thought there was just something quite wrong with me.
It never occurred to me that I was gay until I fell in love with a woman whom I'd been sleeping with, while having a boyfriend. He knew about her, all was fine in that respect but I was literally walking down the street one day, aged 26/7 and I thought 'Ah, fuck. No, I can't be! Not me?! I can't be. I'm 'normal'!! Noooooo....'

Of course the 'I'm normal' thing is the full story. It wasn't ever acceptable int he circles I'd grown up in, it was 'weird' and 'odd' and something to joke about-it wasn't even talked about a lot but the subliminal messages were there, and they did their job.

Being a 'late bloomer' can be dangerous. You are like a teenager again, with all the naivety and vulnerability to relationships that you had back then-but in an adult body without protection from others.

I think about sleeping with men now and the thought makes me sick. I am so much more myself, so much more awake-my personality developed in a very rapid way once I realised-things I'd hidden were at the surface.
I'm in my forties now and still sometimes think 'what he hell happened'!

I knew I was bi as a child as I wanted to watch Jasmine from Aladdin in her red seductress outfit at the end and kept rewinding the VHS over and over. But I also fancied Jafar, and I wanted to watch Jasmine and Jafar get together even though I didn’t even know what that might be. I guess I’ve just always been a bit of slag lol.

I realised when I was about 4. (Didn't have a word for it obvs). I loved my ballet teacher. Told my mum I was going to marry her. Never had a second's doubt about my sexuality since then.