When did you realise you were a lesbian?

StrictlyDykley · 2020-07-25T17:26:37+00:00

Have you slept with a woman? Since you have basis for comparison now, try that. I hear sex with dudes is pretty disappointing for most women. Lol

But to answer your question, I knew at puberty because I didn’t get crushes on boys despite having loads of guy friends who I got along with well. I would fixate on girls, but also feel quite different from them. I knew there was something there. I thought I just wanted to be “good friends” with them but my body started responding ways that were alarming and not in-line with my concept of friendship.

Edit: sex with a girl confirmed it for me.

hufflepuff-poet · 2020-07-25T18:40:20+00:00

I was just thinking about this today! My coming out journey was a pretty long and difficult road, but I'm just now starting to embrace the ups and downs of it all and be at peace with my path.

I realized I liked girls when I was 15 and I came out briefly to my family and friends but my family didn't take it well at all and I was already struggling at school with being bullied and feeling out of place and I hadn't met any girls that I had feelings for at the time (looking back I definitely had a huge crush on my best friend freshman year til like junior year..) so it just seemed like being out wasn't worth it so I went back in the closet. I then spent the better part of the next decade hating myself and punishing myself for my sexuality and repressing my feelings for other women til my early 20s. One day I just got tired of hating myself so I started saying I was "not straight" and stopped entertaining guy's in my dating life. I started going to my local Pride parade and volunteering every year, first under the guise, I just wanna help and then to it's nice to be around other "queer" people (at the time that was as comfortable as I was in admitting my sexuality) then I started using tinder and I set it to men and women but would always swipe no on guys, then I set it to just women and I met a non-binary woman (🙄 I cringe at some of the dumb stuff I said to validate her gender feels lol she was one of those extra tumblry "folxs") and we became really good friends but I never told her I had feelings for her.

Then I transferred to university and was "out" to all my friends as being exclusively same-sex attracted but I was uncomfortable using the word lesbian for myself until I met this woman at my job my senior year.

She was an out and proud lesbian and the first lesbian I had ever met that I related to and we became real good friends and I fell for her. Hard. I would wake up and she would send me good morning snaps and I'd lay there and think about how much I wanted to kiss her and be able to wake up with her and I had never really let myself feel that or see myself being with a woman sexually, especially a lesbian woman despite knowing I was attracted to women.

But when I thought about her and I, I had never felt more right. She would call herself a lesbian and dyke and teasingly call us the "dyknamic duo" and the more time I spent with her, the more I started to like the word lesbian and using it for myself, and I started saying I was a lesbian. I told her how I felt about her and she didn't feel the same and we're not friends anymore sadly but I'll always be glad for the role she played in helping me embrace my lesbianism and she's still someone I admire alot. So yeah, now I'm 26 and a proud out lesbian, came out to both of my parents within the last year and started dating women openly and it's been awesome. Now I'm just trying to find a girlfriend to pour all these years of repressed lady love into!

It really does get better. To all you baby lesbians and late bloomers, we all take our own path to loving women and only women and embracing that part of ourselves, good luck to all my sisters!

Edit: I am so sorry for this novel!!

Fuckyoucensorship · 2020-07-25T20:42:28+00:00

It went like this.

I was raised christian, and raised staunchly no sex before marriage. Never had a sex ed course until senior year. That type.

So naturally I took a pledge for purity. In fact I went one step further and promised to keep my first kiss for the alter. All the adults were in awe. Said I was holy, how my husband was lucky. I even saw how much the other girls were struggling with it and I thought, WOW thank god I dodged that temptation bullet.

Then one day, when I was fantasizing about some girl I was interested in, it clicked.

yousaythosethings · 2020-07-25T20:07:00+00:00

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Jaded · 2020-07-25T23:54:57+00:00

It seems like you already know for a fact that you're attracted to women, so I'm going to focus instead on the other factor that makes a woman a lesbian-- zero attraction to men.

One night stands are a pretty terrible way to judge if you enjoy sex with men or not. I've never been with one, but the understanding I have from straight and bisexual women is that short-term sex with male partners is almost always awful. Enjoyable sex seems to mostly proceed fron long-term partners.

Were you genuinely attracted to these men? Regardless of whether the sex itself sucked or not, did foreplay with them excite you? Did you initially look forward to sex? Or did you instead feel pressured to give in to their advances, or were you feeling low self esteem and needed to feel desired or wanted? Did you agree to sex because you're "supposed to?" Alternatively were you under the influence of drugs or alcohol and therefore unable to consent, in which case what happened was not sex but rape.

These are just some guiding introspective questions to think on while you figure things out. And remember it's possible (and okay!) to be a bisexual woman who is primarily attracted to women, or even a febfem (female-exclusive bisexual female) that consciously chooses to not date men whether for personal or feminist reasons.

As an aside, I've always known I'm a lesbian but the male body and physiology doesn't inherently bother me at all (though for some lesbians it does). Though I'm anti hardcore porn now, I used to occasionally use porn especially during puberty. Before I discovered there was lesbian porn I was stuck watching heterosexual porn and would focus exclusively on the woman. Whenever the video ever went to the guy I would lose interest, and I hated when videos cut to guys performing oral on women because that meant I was forced to look at some male's face and I would instantly lose any arousal I had and feel disgusted by it.

Heterosexual kissing scenes and sex scenes in movies and television don't bother me at all unless the romance is shoddy or the scene serves no point to the narrative. Interestingly though, simple nonsexual scenes where a topless guy wraps his arms around a woman and holds her close completely grosses me out, which admittedly seems kind of weird since I'm fine with the other stuff. I guess it seems more intimate and "real" so my reaction is real.

Kimaris · 2020-07-25T22:07:41+00:00

Around 4. I didn't know the word since I was a kid, but that's when I started getting crushes on girls. I would always try to impress them with silly stuff. I only found out later that I'm what they call a lesbian and that lesbians often get hurt and disowned because of it. I was a happy kid till I found that out. It took me a while to be ok with it (though I still was very out, outside the house). I'm afraid I can't relate to the sleeping with guys part but I know that some lesbians takes a while to figure things out though. For me I've been this way since I could remember. 100% homo and I'm glad.

SailorMoon2020 · 2020-07-25T20:37:44+00:00

Op, I feel ya.

I lost my virginity at 21 to a man. I was in denial about my sexuality. Although I didn't realize it until I got older(high school senior year), the girls I had positive happy feelings for in elementary school or in my CCD class was because I actually liked them, and even would flirt with them.

I didn't want to accept myself though due to my faith in religion. I didn't want to accept myself because of the negative stigma lesbians had that didn't seem to go beyond Jerry Springer.

Once I began to have relationships including sex with males, I felt nothing...with men, it was nothing, no emotion, no love, no arousal, no desire, no want. I would feel empty with men, lonely, and wrong.

Men offered security though because of societal expectations so I pushed through with men, but still, I'd felt empty, lonely, lost, unaroused, no desire, no wanting.

Finally, I said, " I'm gay"...still young, I formed relationships with females and these women had me yearning, longing, wanting, desiring them even more. I didn't feel empty, lost, nor lonely with women. I was happy and felt complete.

Op, if what I said describes your situation above then you could be in denial and gay, a lezzie.

piylot · 2020-07-25T19:14:08+00:00

I could type a lot about the little moments I had hints I was attracted to women and not men, and the reasons I dismissed them, the short of it was I first realised I was attracted to girls when I was 10, but was about 18-19 when I started to take those feelings seriously. 18 when I first used the word gay/lesbian, but largely as an easy way to not have to entertain guys who chatted me up at nightclubs, it was probably in the next year - two years that it hit me that this was really how I'd live the rest of my life, after assuming I'd eventually marry a man from a young age, it always seemed like that's what everyone did. I've never had a relationship or sex with a man, so I didn't have your dilemma of questioning if I was into those experiences or not. I actually used to doubt myself more, for the fact I've heard so many straight/bi women describing how they weren't initially attracted to their bf but grew to be over time.

The main thing I think is useful to consider is that you don't have to be able to prove you're 100% gay, or 100% incapable of having strong enough feelings for a man for you to choose to exclusively date women, whether that's permanently or just for the time being. Everyone is just pursuing people who catch their interest and seeing if it works out.

a_crow · 2020-07-26T00:10:15+00:00

Furthest memory is in 2nd grade. Had a huge crush on this girl. Always wanted to have her attention. Gave her a piggy back once, I was so happy lol.

Came out at 23 after knowing my whole life. Built up the courage and finally did it. Def had to do it on my own terms. Once it happened, the mental strain was over.

Dykexmachina · 2020-07-25T20:58:31+00:00

Realized I liked girls when I was about 5, hated myself and denied/ignored it, tried as hard as I could to be with a man instead, couldn't do it, didn't come out til I was 23. I'm 30 now.

writerlylesbian · 2020-07-25T22:01:05+00:00

As a teenager. This was the 90s, so I was super into shows like Xena, Star Trek Voyager etc. and had a lot of crushes on the female characters that I didn't exactly recognise/admit to being crushes at the time. When Xena starting going all-in on the lesbian subtext between Xena and Gabrielle, I absolutely LOVED it, but had to pretend I didn't, lol, since I was in a fairly small homophobic town. I'd be all, oh yeah, that's so gross, how could they do that? And then be glued to the screen every Saturday with just this...Intense longing to have that kind of relationship with another woman.

About aged 16 I completely fell in love with one of my female friends and was just crazy sexually attracted to her. I'd never felt anything for guys (and if anything found them fairly off-putting physically) so it was pretty undeniable to me at that point what was happening. For whatever reason, I accepted it pretty easily (I think because I was never very invested on fitting in) and sort-of ended up getting together with this girl for a while, but it all ended tragically of course.

Got kind-of outed in school but didn't get much bullying because I stood up for myself a lot and that scared them off for the most part, didn't come out to my parents because my home situation wasn't great, finished school and got the hell out and then came out properly in the big, wide world. There was an actual functional LGB movement in those days, so that was nice.

blackrainbow · 2020-07-25T20:17:28+00:00

When I was 4 I kissed one of my girl friends on the lips. Unfortunately, my parents found out. They scolded me so hard that I felt ashamed FOR YEARS when I thought about it. :( So, after that, I tried to bury deep down my feelings for other girls. I thought that something was wrong with me because I've always had strange tastes with guys and I didn't like anyone enough.

I realized and acknowledged it when I kissed another girl, but this time at 14. I had like an instant epiphany ahahah! Anyway, accepting myself completely took a long time though...

yousaythosethings · 2020-07-25T23:06:41+00:00

You said you're 21, so you're still very young. I think it may be easier to focus on raw sexual attraction first. It took me a lifetime to realize that I could be in a romantic relationship with a woman. I had basically no examples in my life, so it's not even something I considered even though I knew I found women so attractive. So, without further ado, here are a few questions for you:

When you think of the hottest person in high school, who comes to mind? When you think of the hottest celebrity, who comes to mind? When you walk down the street and are out and about, do you pay special attention to women? Or to both men and women? Do you wonder what guys are thinking, or just women? Do male and/or female bodies arouse you? When you think of THE most attractive body, what comes to mind? What sex is that person? What body parts do you think of? When you think of someone with an attractive voice, who comes to mind? Do you feel a special warmth when you interact with women but not men? When your female friends show you pictures of guys they're interested in or try to talk up how attractive they are, what are your thoughts? Do you constantly wonder what all of your female friends see in the guys they date even even when there are no obvious red flags? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

For me, especially post-puberty I was always drawn to girls/women. I was interested in them in ways I wasn't in boys/men. Others in this thread mention having a "fixation" and I definitely experienced that. I would feel so much warmth and excitement towards women, always taking careful notice of the women around me including small and very specific details of their appearance. When I go outside, my eyes are always drawn to the women around me. I was attracted to and always thinking about female bodies in ways that I was never with men. Every time one of my (female) friends would show me a picture of a guy they were interested in, all I could think was "that's a guy." I was interested in female celebrities only. To the extent I am ever interested in being around a guy, it's purely based on sense of humor, intellect, having good conversation, etc. My attraction to being partnered with a man was limited to security, companionship, respect, and admiration, and not sexual attraction.

midnight305 · 2020-07-26T12:42:40+00:00

2010 or even eailer than that , but because being gay Is such a "sin". I tried to convince myself I was straight so dated guys . After high school I was raped a few times. Tried to convince myself that i didnt like it because of endometriosis.

But then i realized i dont like guys private parts , I hated sex with them , it did nothing for me.

This was around the time I started saying I was bi..around 2005.

Then after i broke up with my bf in 2010 after i realized he was bad for me and kept disappearing 3 months at a time . I realized I'm just a lesbian.

So here i am still looking for a gf for over 10 years now.

Thing is I was mostly raised by a mostly guy family so I guess I just dont know how to talk to girls. shrugs

2020-07-26T13:47:39+00:00

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