How do you know that you're not faking it?
So background, I'm a cis man in my early 20s. Could use some advice from bi people that took awhile to figure it out.
For most of my life, I assumed I had to be straight because I did not obviously feel a distinct attraction to men, or at least I didn't identify it as such. I've never been in a romantic relationship but I've only been sexual with women.
Then, through talking about some of my thoughts with other queer people, I started to make a few discoveries.
I learned something. It seems like that you cannot fully realize the same gender attraction (or any type of attraction, really) until you are accepting and okay with that idea for yourself.
I figured that since I was not homophobic and I had been accepting of other LGBT people, that I should not have a problem accepting that my own queerness.
Wrong. When I first started seriously questioning a few months ago, my immediate reaction was denial. "There's no way I can possibly be anything but straight.". I realized that I had major hang ups with seeing myself as gay. I realized that I actually have a lot of internalized homophobia.
Even now, I can tell that my subconscious wiring still wants to dismiss guys doing things together as gross, but I am opening up more to it.
Lately I've been finding myself being curious about cuddling and kissing guys, like I keep imagining the feeling of a strong burly man cuddling me in bed. My roommate said that sounds like the most gay thing ever, and I can't blame him for saying that lol.
I find myself juxtaposing the difference between a strong burly man and the softer, more squishy body of a woman.
I'm also finding myself curious about sex with a guy and a girl at the same time. It doesn't give me a raging boner to think about, but then again, thinking of sex with a woman doesn't always do that for me either?
Same goes for porn, I would say that I have never found gay porn I liked, but I remember when I first started watching straight porn, I was/am not into 95% of that either. I realize that porn is actually a really bad way of determining your sexuality.
How do you know that you're not faking it? Sometimes I can't help but wonder, if I'm just wanting to be bi so I can be "special" or some dumb shit like that. It's weird because when I feel like I'm straight, I want to be bi, but when I feel like I'm bi, I want to be straight. Does anybody relate to that? It's almost as if I'm just never content with my sexuality.
I know labels don't really matter but I just want to know if I'm straight or not. I do plan on experimenting at some point but I'm terrified of trying it and then turning out to be straight. I don't feel ready to have full on sex with a guy, but at the same time, I've been told this happens in stages.
I know this is a common experience in bisexuality, so I think it's more likely that I'm not faking it. However I feel like the sexual thoughts about men have gotten stronger, and it's becoming harder and harder for me to rationalize it as "faking it". But still, is faking it even a remote possibility?
Posted Dec 29, 2022, 3:06 AM UTC · edited
Cis F here, realized I was "probably a little bit bi" a few years ago (so in my very late 20's). This was during quarantine, and I've been in a long term relationship so it was kind of like... anticlimactic enough that, even though I accepted it, I didn't really bother saying anything to anyone, or really to think about it very much. A couple years later, at the age of 30, I met a new person IRL and immediately had a crush on her-- but for the first time, I recognized that it was a crush. That's when I was 100% sure that I was bi.
I definitely resonate with what you said about not feeling the attraction fully until you've accepted the idea that you can have same-sex attraction. Like, the whole reason I didn't realize it before is because I just didn't know how to interpret the feelings of same-sex attraction (even though, in retrospect, they were so obviously crushes lol).
It's easy to have those doubts of "maybe I'm just gay" or "maybe I'm just straight", but for me, I just have a couple specific memories that I pull up in my mind, that allow me to go down the checklist of "yep attracted to men" and "yep also attracted to women".
Thanks for sharing your experience. In hindsight I think I experienced something similar, I remember around age 12 or 13 I "admired" certain boys in my class at school, but since being gay was like social death in middle school I suppressed all of those thoughts.
I definitely was exposed to a lot of homophobia among peer groups even though I'm not from a conservative homophobic place in the South. Heck, I even went to private school. Like, using "gay" as an insult was the norm. However, there was a gay guy who came out in high school and he was actually quite popular.
I digress. I basically just assumed I was straight because I focused on the opposite sex attraction. So you were able to feel 100% confident that you were bi without actually having any sexual experience? I get that that's possible for some people, but I feel like I'm too neurotic and confused to figure it out without actually enjoying doing stuff with a man.
But now I've been fantasizing about cuddling with a strong buff guy. So I'm really having a hard time believing I'm straight lmao. I guess I feel like because I'm not ready to have anal sex, I can't be bi. For the record I have an aversion to anal sex in general, even with women.
I feel the denial, it's still so strong, I can tell that I don't want to accept it even though I've consciously admitted that it's okay, but I suppose this is a process that takes time.
Thanks for your advice, I appreciate it, I will try to find a memory I can latch onto that makes me feel more confident.
Still can't help but wonder if I'm "faking" it to be special or some shit like that. Although I feel like I would not be questioning the authenticity of the thoughts if that were the case. I feel like it would be much more apparent if I was truly faking it.
My advice: for now, focus on accepting the fact that you MIGHT be bi. This might get around the concern about whether you're faking it-- like based off what you said, you are 100% NOT faking that you might be bi. The truth is that only time will tell either way. For me, this was an important step in feeling confident about my identity, because it gave me wiggle room to just wait and see if it felt right. And after a while, it became really clear that it was the right label for me. (I'm also a very anxious/neurotic person so I feel you lol).
I think it's also possible to be uncertain about your own sexuality without it being caused solely by internalized homophobia. If you've thought one thing about yourself for 20+ years, it kinda makes sense that it would be hard to accept that it wasn't true without some more "evidence". For example, I'm not attracted to every single person I meet, but once I opened my mind to the possibility, I noticed that in real life (as opposed to movies/porn) I was attracted to a mix of both women and men-- that was the kind of "evidence" I needed to feel confident. And it just takes time to build up that kind of "data".
The thing to keeping mind about sexual experiences is that they're not all gonna be good, and no single experience is gonna change your identity. There's no need to rush into things physically since it won't necessarily make things clear either way, and actually rushing is probably gonna make the experience unpleasant anyway. Like you would never push a teen into a sexual experience they weren't ready for, so give yourself the same kind time/space to work up to it. Anal is a huge step, and it's notoriously bad if you're not excited about it (on the receiving end at least). Just take things a step at a time. If your potential partner demands something of you before you're ready, they probably aren't gonna be a good sexual partner anyway.