How old were you when you began questioning/considering you weren’t “normal”? I’m in my 30s and almost all at once feel like I’m not sure what I am in most demensions and struggling to figure out what I feel about anything. I’ve been married, happily for a while, which adds a little to the confusion.
I was in high school when I started to realize that I was bisexual. I started questioning around Grade 11 and 12, and then came to terms with it in my first year of university. However, it didn’t really change anything for me. I was in a long term relationship at the time, and after that one ended I very quickly ended up in another relationship which I’ve been in ever since. Both of them were “hetero” relationships.
Knowing that I’m bisexual hasn’t changed my feelings for my partner. All it has done for me is help me accept that what I’m feeling is normal, and that it’s perfectly okay to be attracted to both males and females.
The fact that you’re happily married shows you still love your spouse. Questioning your sexuality doesn’t have to change anything about your marriage. If anything, I would talk to your spouse about it and go “hey, I’ve been thinking about this a bit, and I’d like your support while I try and work through these feelings.” You can question and work through it without having to “experiment” or look for anything outside your current relationship.
And remember, being in a “hetero” relationship does not invalidate your sexuality. You don’t even have to label your sexuality if you don’t want to.
Yeah I’m definitely not looking to experiment. I feel pretty confident in my sexual preferences, but for whatever reason just started question, expression, I guess? I’m not quite sure. We’ve been married ~10 years and loving it, but somewhat suddenly, questions came up and I’m not quite sure how I feel about anything.
Do you mean expression in terms of gender? Or just more generally how you present yourself to the world?
I’m not totally sure… Maybe both? I felt somewhat uncomfortable with certain aspects of my body, on and off, as I assumed all do for a long while.
I had assumed that gender expression was about how you revealed yourself to the world, but this is all so very new to me. Newer than I would have expected.
I had my first homoerotic experiences at 18, realized I was bi and trans at 24, came out as bi at 32, as gay at 40, and trans at 42. In retrospect, I would have been much better off coming out (fully) earlier. Unfortunately, I was born into a conservative, patriarchical family and it took a long time to shed all of that awful self-loathing baggage.
I felt an attraction to older men around 7 or 8, not in a sexual way but just a general attraction. At 13 had a “girlfriend” online because that was the normal thing to do. One of my other online friends was a lesbian and she explained her attraction toward women. That was my lightbulb moment that I was gay and had a specific attraction toward older men.
Of course that had a slew of problems being a teenager attracted to older men 55+. Overtime I went from bi, to gay, to hating myself, to finally accepting myself and lifting my depression at around 22. I always thought there biggest hurdle was social acceptance, it turns out, it’s self acceptance and being comfortable with who you are.
You should consider seeing a LGBTQ friendly therapist to help unpack how you’re feeling. A therapist is there to help you learn tools to self analyze.
I’m not sure what “a-spec” means, and my best assumption at the current time is that I am somewhere in the non-binary area, but the romantic part of the spectrum is definitely new to me as of the last couple weeks.
I kinda knew I didn’t vibe with my AGAB at a pretty young age, maybe 12 or earlier? Idk i just kinda remember vague disassociation towards my agab. One of the first concrete trans thoughts i had was while watching an anime where full body cyborgs exist and I remember thinking/wishing for that to be real so I could swap into a woman’s body. The same show also made me aware that being attracted to the same/both genders was a thing that could exist.
At the time I didn’t really have the knowledge to really grasp the ideas that were forming so I didn’t accept/understand I was bisexual until I was maybe 20. And I didn’t really come to understand this general disdain for my physical and social gender and sex were a symptom of being trans until about mid 2019, or when I was about 24. The weird thing was that I knew and understood trans women specifically because i’d befriended a few over online MMOs (and asked the mandatory prying questions that apathetic teenagers tend to ask. thank you so much for your patience Kira/Demi.) but didn’t associate the status with my own situation.
Figuring ourselves out is a hell of a path and nobody’s is identical to anothers, so don’t feel too overwhelmed with your current situation or the possibility of being a late bloomer, things fall into place eventually.
I can relate to some of that. I do have some memories of being uncomfortable about my body and wondering if I was supposed to have been the other and somehow everyone got it wrong when I was born, though whatever age I was, I don’t think trans was anywhere near mainstream and had no idea it existed.
Also, I think it was some egg_irl memes that started the questions. I stumbled onto it and they were kind of funny, until “Wait. Are these too funny?” This being sometime after also realizing I had adhd after finding their memes too funny and relatable.
Maybe I will end up accepting myself the way I was, or not, but yeah it is a hell of a thing. It’s like I was vibing trying to survive life and someone suddenly pulled the fucking floor out from under me.
