How did you know?

[kgirl1992]

How did you first realise you where gay/bi/whatever?  

[jesusthezombie]

i did a lot of self reflections about myself for a long time and realized i had been lying to myself and others about my sexuallity for a long time, i used to say i was straight and deny every thought that popped into my head that would say otherwise or prove otherwise, i even have been having gay and bi sexual dreams for the longest time that would even really turn me on but told myself it must just be something else that made me have those types of dreams, i even watched yaoi and shonen-ai and tried convincing myself i was totally straight and that i only liked them because "they had good storylines" which they do but that isnt the point, lately i have been actually noticing i am more drawn to men in most ways then i am to women too  

[kikioblack]

That's a bit of a long story, so here it goes.

It all started my 8th grade year, I started reading a lot of yoai fanfiction. What this has to do with anything, well, that's my foot in the door, even tho i'm female.

Moving on, my freashman year I noticed that I was looking more and more at females with a 'ooo, that's not bad looking'. I mentally smacked myself and decided I wouldn't conciter myself bi or gay untill I started going out with a girl.Well 2 years went by and I started having weird kinky dreams then asked out my girlfriend about 3 months later.

There was a lot of denying involved for about 3 years but now I'm settled with it and am fine.  

[Bridget Paloumar]

Hm, where to begin...?

I would have to say it started for me about my 7th or 8th grade year, although I never really "fell" so to speak for any females at that point. I just started noticeing, as Kikio said, "my freashman year I noticed that I was looking more and more at females with a 'ooo, that's not bad looking'." It was also late my freshman year that I realised I had a major time crush on my best friend, but, well, I didn't realise she wasn't straight, so I kept my trap shut, figuring I would rather stay in teh shadow, on the outside looking in, and watch her with someone else rather than lose her entirely if she rejected me. (Before that I had just gotten out of a highly abusive relationship with my ex-boyfriend.)

Then, Kikio and I were at a secluded park area (no, this is not going where you probably think it is) about two, three weeks before we actually got together, and we just started messing around. We'd ridden our bikes about 5 miles or so to get to the park, and it was starting to get really cold, but we were both tired from the long ride uphill to get there so neither of us really wanted to move.

I can't really remember whether it was Kikio who started this or me, but one of us flopped down next to the other on the sand next to the river, half on the other person to stay warm. Then one of us, I think if was me, ended up face down on the sand under the other one, and my arm was going numb, so I tried to wiggle out from under her...

Actually, come to thnk of it, it started long before that, while we were watching a movie, but that's pretty irrelevant to this...

Anyway, my arm was going numb so I tried to wiggle / squirm out from underneath her, which really didn't work so well. All that really happened was I felt like one of those sea turtles you see leaving a beach after laying eggs; putting out lots of energy and not really getting very far very fast. So then I said something about being a turltle to Kikio, who started laughing and I thnk it was then that it hit me full-force that I was a minimum of bi...which I recently realised I'm actually lesbian, and I'm perfectly fine with it, althought, to be honest, I FLIPPED when I first realised it.

Then a few weeks later, she beat around the bush for an eon and then finally got around to asking me out (which I'm still eternally grateful for her doing), which I really flipped over. Strangely enough, as much as I really wanted to be with her, I was scared, becuase I live in an extremely anti-gay house & a community that is only slightly less so. Without her by my side every step of the way, I never would have made it through the first few months, especially as more and more kids in our high school found out.

As the others have all said so far, there was a TON of self-denial involved, even as my girlfriend was asking me to give her a chance. Theres times whern I would still like to deny it, but I won't. Kikio means far too much to me to ever do that to her. But it was a long, hard process that I'm thankful I will never have to go through again. It hurt me a lot emotionally in many different ways, but it was worth it, and I would (reluctantly) do it all over again if I had to. I'm happier now, 9 months later, than I have ever been before in my life.  

[Seraphim of Forgiveness]

it started at 7th or 8th grade when i first noticed something....dont ask lol, (guy thing) and i kept denying it, i kept telling myself that its only a phase and in the 9th grade everything remained neutral, 10th grade i found my first lover and then i truly knew i was gay.  

[kgirl1992]

I think I'm bi but I'm 16 and only started fealing this way last summer about one girl  

[kikioblack]

It takes time. You don't wake up one day and think, 'this is the day to be bi' or whatever. In most contiries you're an adult at 17, age doesn't matter in what gender you like. NO matter how much your mind says no. There's no excape.  

[Hells Satanic Fire]

I have to agree with Kikioblack here:

Quote:

It takes time. You don't wake up one day and think, 'this is the day to be bi' or whatever...age doesn't matter in what gender you like. NO matter how much your mind says no. There's no excape.

That's the way things were with me, anyway. It was more of a gradual thing and then one day I was horrified to realize that not only (a) did I like other girls but (b) I had a huge crush on my best friend, who was and is also another female. But I would think that everyone is different...  

[margo232]

well i was 13 or so when i started to be interested in the other sex i sad to my self its sick i don't like males ( i was not homophobic ) and then i got even more interested in males i sad ok maybe i like that sex now but it just the phase. im 15 now i m interested only in males and i don't lie to myself i sad that to my mom she sad she dose not mind it. but she was a little sad coz she wanted grandchildren but i got brother so he will deal whit that.
then i sad that to my fathers girlfriend she sad she was "suspicious" she cough me in well i rather don't want to speak about it. and i told that to my friend best friend who is homophobic and fascist. his reaction freaked me out in a good way. so my point is we are what we are when we stop to lie to ur self  

[Tired Ninja]

around half-way through freshman year, i just kept realizing that ive always been really comfortable around guys. I had thoughts walking through the hallways about other guys- just things like what it would be like to get to know them really well, to just be really good friends with another guy. I made friends with this girl named tina, (who was really into yaoi fanfiction/art) and after a while she would show me her drawings. on the INSIDE i thought that they were really pretty incredible and beautiful...but on the OUTSIDE ofcourse i had to deny it by saying "eww thats really gross." I knew that after a while i couldnt lie to myself anymore, and so thats when i realized that i had been gay all along. Im still not out of the closet, but im getting there.... sweatdrop  

[373s8f5789d30]

OK, I am going to try to answer this question as simply as possible. I think since I am "human", and not some fictional character, I am complex and that's normal. Who isn't complex or 3 dimensional or whatever you wanna call it?

When I was a little girl, I had a lot of issues with myself. I always felt I was ugly and I always felt maybe I was born the wrong sex. I liked a lot of the guy things and so on and so forth. But than again, I hated the idea that I did not look very feminine when God made me a girl. Now for those who don't believe in a God, you can cross that out and put whatever you like in there. xp
But yeah, so I felt, if I was made to be a girl why couldn't I be more feminine? And I hated myself, my appearance for a long time. Girls in school helped with that as well. Telling me how much I look like a boy. Now why does this matter? When ultimately, I am trying very hard NOW to be as feminine as possible? Well, I think my disliking my appearance could be a factor in my being the way that I am.
Not to say of course, that all lesbians dislike themselves, have low self esteem and that's why they are lesbians. No, of course not. You see, I always thought I was too ugly for any guy to notice me or like me. But..... and this is a big 'but' here..... I did find it easier to fall for girls than guys. Well, because I thought I was so ugly, I thought at first that maybe I liked girls because I wanted to look like them. My last crush, however, I started wishing I could be a guy, because I always saw how guys made her smile and laugh, and she seemed to like a guys attention and at that time I also heard about the TATU girls. Lol. So than I started wishing, if I can't be a guy, why couldn't I be a beautiful girl, so than maybe, just maybe, she would consider being with me, as a little more than a friend. Lol. You see, I wanted to be able to make her smile the same way the guys did. Throughout my life, since childhood, I always though of women as fragile creatures that deserved a lot of love. A great amount of love. And I always met women now and than, who I thought deserved unconditional love and I used to feel bad that I couldn't be the one to give it to them, because I was born female, not male.

Yeah, all so complicated. My feelings just kept changing over time, but all leaning more towards my attraction to women than men. But it was all the more confusing because of my low self esteem. So it was hard for me to really decide if my feelings toward my same sex was more of admiration, jealousy(but it was definitely not jealousy), or a desire for intimacy.

At one point, I was so desperate for affection, so I thought I will be with the first person who will give me the time of day, and I wouldn't care if it was a man or woman. I did get a few offers from men, but I was scared of them, lol, so I turned them down. Than, I was lucky enough to meet this woman. And I fell head over heels in love with her. And I learned a lot from being with her. I learned I don't have to be a man, or even manly, to give her the love I want to give her. She even taught me that women come in all shapes and sizes, and they can be beautiful no matter what.

OK, but yeah, I don't know if that explains how did I know. I am probably hogging up a lot of the page here. Sorry. But yeah, that's my story. I bet it will be too long for anyone to want to read. rofl

But to try and sum it all up... well.... it wasn't easy for me to get to where I am today. And there was really no easy answer.  

[Painted Bastion]

I was always dressing up as a boy ever since i was nine or maybe eight.(bad memory) any way, i didn't really like playing boy games though, i liked playing "pretend " and stuff like that. never really liked sports. when ever i would play pretend i would always be a boy. no matter what.
one day stands out in my memory , i was at the movies with my family. i was dressed as a boy and looked like a boy . i was about eleven and we were in line to get popcorn . well there were these girls standing in line behind us. they were giggling and talking. as we were walking away, my mom told me that they(the girls) were saying how cute i was. when i heard that, i immediately wanted to go over towards the girls again, to basically flirt with them. but i didn't really know that was what i wanted to do.
then when i was twelve i got a crush on a girl in my neighborhood. after a month or so i told my mom that i had a crush on my friend. she didn't think that it was anything i should worry about and that i was just confused. then, when i was thirteen i still had the crush on the first girl and i also had a crush on my other friend that was a girl. so i told my mom again, she believed me and said that it all made since. she was very supportive and encouraging. she always let me wear boy clothes and never tried to make me wear girl clothes. shes really a grate person.( i brag, sorry.) well that's that. it was always in me, i just didn't notice it or understand it until i was older. sorry that was so long sweatdrop

i forgot to mention that the girls thought i was a boy.  

[44hrygydi]

Ha, there are longer ones than yours. rofl But your story kind of reminds me of a comic I recently read called Claudine. Except Claudine's story was a sad one in the end, but yours sounds happy and I think a lot of us, or all of us, wish we could have a mother as supportive as yours.

Interesting stories. Keep 'em coming. I enjoy reading them.  

[Auroraphobia]

Ehh, thats a hard question. o.o I realized I was bi in 6th grade. Buut, at the time I was living in Mexico so the few people I told kinda flipped out and so I started denying it, because everyone around me (other than my mom, but she didn't know at the time) thought it was wrong. Then in 8th grade I finally moved back to the States, back into my lovely little hippie town that would rather smoke pot than worry about someone's sexuality, so I basically just told one person and then was like >.> I'm stupid, why'd I deny it. And then I told everyone o.o and yeah. But now I'm thinking I'm probably a lesbian xD Eh, that works too.  

[c a n d y w o l f]

i only realised about 6 months ago that i was gay, i'm not sure what done it, something just clicked and then i came out. For a long time before that though i thought i was bi, but wasn't out.

i've liked girls since i was 11 ish, but i didn't realise what i was feeling were crushes and put 2 and 2 together till a few years ago. Then i gradually realised i wasn't attracted to males.

i think what made me realise i liked girls was my best friend (a girl) hitting on me and practically molesting me every day at school since y10, it totally freaked me out and i hated it, not because i didn't like it, but because i did. it made me realise i liked girls but then it put me in deep denial because i was so scared of my feelings.

i stopped liking her though not long after when she grew her hair out really long (like, to her knees, unhealthy and unstyled, it looks really bad) it wasn't just because she stopped taking care of herself and got ugly though, her personality changed a lot too, she lost all her self confidence and sexually harassed me constantly (i like a challenge lol, she took all the fun out).

i look back now and have no idea how i didn't see it, even when i was a kid i was extremely gay looking and acting. my first and only boyfriend asked if i was gay a lot too (he's a closet case btw lol) and we were more like best friends than lovers lol, only made out once in 3 years and it was horrible. but it was still another 3 years after we broke up before i realised i was gay.