The emphasis on dual sexual attraction & expectation for biromanticism left me in denial

I just kind of had the epiphany today that the main reason I was in denial about my sexuality for so long despite coming from a pretty tolerant and accepting, progressive social environment and having mostly queer friends growing up was both my own assumption and conditioning sexuality must be rooted in sexual attraction above all else and the fact I had (unconsciously) inherently associated sexuality with a sexual component that drives everything else.

For context, I am a bisexual woman attracted to men and women as well as the kind of person who is primarily invested in individuals and only experience attraction very strongly if I can imagine an individual or a situation as opposed to any specific feature or assortment of parts. There was a stage in my youth when I thought I was actually asexual for that reason but realized gradually I am just a very head-y person and my lust comes from a higher part of my body by extension. The desire is there though. I desire specific men and women and sometimes just the concept or embodiment of masculinity/femininity itself... but here's where I differ from a lot of people I know - the way I'm attracted to men is entirely different from the way I'm attracted to women. I know as many bisexual people who are attracted to specific feminine/masculine characteristics in women and men such as preferring 'feminine women and masculine men' as I know bi's who like androgynous people of all genders with no specific requirement for a gender normative expression in any person they're interested in. Just as I know many bisexuals who's attraction to men and women oscillate in the "bi-cycle" to nearly the same extent of people I know who experience their attraction practically 50-50. But with me it's something else entirely: I have a much stronger romantic investment in women than men and it informs my sexual attraction subsequently and a much more automatic sexual interest in men that will simply build the more I find them interesting or appealing intellectually.

For me, it's like men have a naturally stronger sexual aura I respond to that's akin to an energy I instinctually can't ignore even if I consciously choose to ignore or reject them based on behavior and only express true (personal/direct) interest if they really prove themselves to me in a personality sense, whereas with women it's always her manner above her sexual expression or body/appearance I will notice and potentially fall for in the initial stage of interest. Everything physical about her is completely secondary. This is also why I seem more capable of finding a hugely diverse & variety of women attractive compared to men who often fall in a few set archetypes most appealing to me. It's like I have a more strict sexuality regarding men and part of why is that's it's marginally based more in physical and aesthetic feelings compared to women. And if it sounds strange to not recognize that as bisexuality all along, I have an explanation for that I didn't before: my own homoromanticism seemed innately platonic and insignificant to me. I simply didn't understand it to be homoromanticism at all.

In attempt to describe it: It'd often be the kind of scenario where I'd come to know all these different girls as either friends or friendly to me and consider them 'muses' (as opposed to 'crushes') and fantasize and daydream about getting lost with them and achieving a heightened psychological/emotional intimacy than we had already established because I could never get close enough to them (the way a partner would) in actual life and such was now required of us while deserted on X island together or wherever else remote my mind went and we'd either secretly get married and utter vows no one else witnessed or else just recognize ourselves as a pairing of partners/soulmates and spend our time sharing things we didn't with others and gazing into each other's eyes and massaging each other's wrists and engulfing one another's hands with a pointed tightness in our grip that wordlessly spoke 'it's you and me/us against the world' - while not understanding any of this to be 'crushing' or engaging in romanticism at all. Not even when it'd escalate to writing poetry or making playlists with them in mind and just deciding my whole day was made when they'd finally turn to me and smile because I had managed to make them laugh or do something endearing in their eyes. I didn't see any of this as sapphic in the slightest because all of the queer female friends I knew as well as the queer women I followed as influencers online always specifically emphasized the sexualized appeal of women and were often fans of yuri/erotic wlw content or belonged to fandoms built around some kind of 'girl kissing' while I almost exclusively found myself interested in m/m content as an adolescent to an extent I somewhat struggle to explain to this day because I really don't believe I fetishized queer men at any phase in my life or ever found two women or a man and a woman together less situationally appealing or attractive but nonetheless... I simply didn't possess this additional sexually compelled layer to my attraction to women because I associated female love in my life with both friendship and musing with the latter being wrongly classified as platonic, while in reality being romantic but not (specifically) based in sexual desire. Sexual desire would always be a byproduct of my love for these girls (and later women as I got older) as opposed to the primary drive.

To further contextualize, I've never held any kind of disgust or strictly platonic neutrality towards the female body and f/f sex - it's never been that the female form or f/f sexual acts lack appeal to me but like there's something a bit more emotional and sacred in my interest in women and this is the same reason I find it easier to trust and share with female muses I haven't dated than even the men I've dated long-term. At this point I can say, from the beginning, it has ultimately been gendered/situational romantic attraction vs gendered/situational sexual attraction my bisexuality is rooted in and while romantic and sexual attraction are not at conflict with each other within the concept of sexuality - I found the fact these are two different experiences both falling under the umbrella of sexual identity & attraction quite under emphasized within the sexuality discourse and dialogue at the time I grew up (2010s adolescence) and often when it would get touched on it'd be regarding a man realizing he loved another man fully, and framed as obvious queerness from that lens but not in the opposite gendered context. I guess because female friendships are already perceived as so socially and emotionally intimate as a baseline, especially when women are close friends and it's harder to gauge what is and isn't boundary crossing closeness within a female relationship.

All the same... just a realization I had now. It's been a day of enlightening sexuality introspection.

And with my experience now stated, I'm interested in knowing if others can relate to it. I personally struggle to find people who do - wrongly labeling this either internalized biphobia, internalized lesphobia, bisexuality with a female-lean, bisexuality with a male-lean, or heterosexuality with fluid aspects/open-mindedness with much of that camp believing I just highly prioritize friendship above sexual experience. None of these people being able to really, truly grasp what my sexuality is based in and how authentic it is when I describe it this way aka how it exists in it's totality. I feel there must be similar people out there due to statistical inevitability, however. (It's worth discussing if you are similar due to how rare we are in the community and how isolating our sense of love is comparatively).

I'm glad I understand myself at this stage in my life but I'd be comforted in discovering there are others like me as well. It'd also be helpful to know if there's a more specific name for this within the bi classification spectrum so I could communicate it more easily. It isn't very easy to explain quickly.