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[–]weirdlyhaunted 9 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 0 fun10 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I grew up in an extremely dysfunctional family where the baseline was feeling bad about yourself and being anxious about literally everything. So when boys started showing interest around puberty, I mistook that feeling in the pit of my stomach (which was dread and bad anxiety) for butterflies and went with it. Oh, I suppose I should mention that my dysfunctional family got extra fun when my dad converted to very conservative christianity when I was still a little kid, so I spent my formative years learning that gay people had something wrong with them and I so desperately wanted to feel like I was normal and not in a fucked up emotionally abusive home that I never even considered whether I might be a lesbian until many, many years later, after I got into therapy and on antidepressants. The "female sexuality is fluid" bullshit did some damage, too. Any attraction I did allow myself to feel for women was rationalized away as "well, they're objectively attractive, all straight women think so, too." I'm better now and I've cut off the toxic family members. But I still have so much baggage to work on that I'm terrified of starting anything with any woman, because I don't want to fuck up someone else's life.