I’m a man. Only ever dated, been attracted to women. Recently I met this guy and I’m having weird feelings. I can’t quite tell if I’m attracted to him as a person or just like the way he treats me; nonetheless something makes me want to treat him differently than any other guys - the way I would a girl I suppose. My friends say I might be attracted to femininity in general regardless of gender and that’s why I feel this way, and the reason why it hasn’t surfaced until now is because I haven’t yet met a guy to tick those boxes. Wondering if anyone has been through something similar.
I took me a really long time and a lot of confusion to figure out that I’m ace
Saaaaaame…
I went from being homophobic because I mistook my being uncomfortable with overt sexual advances from anyone as being uncomfortable with gay men because “of course I’m attracted to women I just haven’t met The One yet,” to thinking I was bi because once I thought about it I realized I didn’t really feel any differently toward men and women, to finally my now wife when we were dating introducing me to the concept of being asexual and I realized that yeah I do have the same attraction toward men and women… Zero.
Compulsive Heterosexuality is strong yo.
Someone who is ace explained it to me that it was very difficult for them to figure out if they were bi/pan or ace because they were equally attracted to everyone, it’s just that the attraction was zero lol.
I can confirm that. At first I thought this “butterflies in the stomach” feeling was just an invention and I had girlfriends but I never felt a real spark. Then I got into a queer space and slowly figured things out. These days I always say I’m either content how I am or I have a happy surprise waiting for me, you could say I can only win.
It’s not an easy sexuality to figure out, and I imagine the almost complete lack of ace visibility prior to cca 2020 did not help
I spent years questioning my orientation because of how rare and mild my attraction to men was. It wasn’t until I started hormones and it went away completely before I realized definitively that yeah I had been attracted to men.
My question for you is, do your labels matter more, or your desires? And it’s ok to use the questioning label
I have a sort of extreme opinion, but I don’t believe anyone is 100% straight or 100% gay. (But I don’t believe people should call themselves bi just because they’re 99% straight or 99% gay.) I just think there are way too many people in the world to definitively say you’d never fall for someone of a certain gender.
I am bisexual. But that’s a bit of an oversimplification. I’m definitely attracted to femininity regardless of gender expression (“femboys”) and find masculine women attractive (“tomboys”), but it’s rare that I find masculine men attractive. My attraction to men in general is pretty rare and usually more like demisexuality. But it feels like such an insane mouthful to say that I’m gynessexual but buromantic because even then that’s still not really giving the whole picture. So I just say I’m bi.
I found out I was bi in my mid/late 20s, I don’t really remember when. Looking back on some of my friendships with boys in highschool I wonder if some of them I actually was romantically attracted to. As a kid I had a very difficult time knowing when I had a crush on someone, so there is precedent for me having crushes on boys in highschool and not realizing.
I’ll close with this. There’s nothing wrong with being “heteroflexible”. I used to call myself that before I started calling myself bi. There’s nothing wrong with being straight and calling yourself straight and liking a guy. (Insofar as long as you aren’t lying about it.) Sexualities are just labels to help us better communicate our preferences in an easy way. Don’t let the words define your attractions. Let yourself decide what you’re interested in and then worry about what label to use later. 💜
Who cares? If you like him, and he likes you, go have some fun. If you like it with him, do it again with him. If you like it in general, do it again with other guys as well.
If you don’t like it, don’t do it again, wt least until the next time you feel curious
Don’t let weirdo’s dictate.thst you can’t have fun with being curious, don’t feel the need to label everything
First, romantic attraction isn’t the same as sexual attraction. Do you want to spend time with them or fuck them?
Second, honestly I somewhat wish I was attracted to men, but I’m not. I’ve known gay/bi men who are attractive, but I’m not attracted to. I’m not off put by men by any means, but there’s zero sexual attraction to them for me. If this isn’t the case for you, then you may be interested in men but repressing it because you haven’t considered it before.
This is something you have to figure out for yourself. Consider the idea of sleeping with them and if that idea is interesting to you then I guess you’ve learned something new about yourself. Just like being attracted to women doesn’t mean you’re attracted to all women, the same is true for men and maybe you just hadn’t met a man that does it for you until now.
Always remember that sexuality is not “I was born this way” sexuality changes throughout everyone’s life. Just like ones gender.
It’s a spectrum of many things and many ways from no sexual feelings to all sexual feelings towards any or no genders.
There is no binary there is no definite answer. It’s whatever you feel. And that’s completely ok.
Just to expand, having a fixed sexuality that is unchangeable is an expression of “homonormativity”, which is to say it is queer identity that tries to coexist within the heteronormative default without challenging it.
It is easy to box oneself into a sexuality archetype like “gay” or “bi” or “ace” because they provide convenient labels that can be used to more easily understand/relate to others, and it helps to be able to organize and rally under a defined identity, but it fails to acknowledge that not everyone can perfectly fit the same mold, nor are they inherently going to follow the same path throughout life.
Semi-relevant side story: over Thanksgiving, I went to visit my folks, and walked in on them watching some cable TV channel which was airing an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond about (fittingly enough for my visit) a misunderstanding that Ray’s brother might be gay. And so there were some deeply uncomfortable canned laugh tracks at gay stereotype jokes that made my skin crawl before the two brothers confirmed their mutual heterosexuality, to great relief of both, but there was one line that stuck with me as having something of a grain of truth (paraphrasing): “Maybe I could be gay and I just haven’t met the right guy yet”.
Obviously if you’re a man who is into women 99% of the time but one day end up genuinely attracted to a guy, it doesnt make you “gay” (bi, maybe) but I’d argue that no one is inherently “gay”, nor can one be perfectly “straight”. Heteronormativity instills that concept of essentialism in order to perpetuate the “us vs them” binary of sexuality, and so essentialist identities are as much a trap as they are a convenience. People are better off thinking less “What am I” and more “Who am I attracted to”, and accepting that can change over time.
Yes I’ve seen Jason Mamoa.
Btw, questioning things is usually a healthy thing to do. And sexually or attraction is complex. For some people it’s also (or more) about personality and less about body features. Or it’s multiple factors. You can be attracted to more than one gender. It’s a wide bandwidth. And there’s a lot of different things out there. You do you.
Adults fuck whatever they want.
“Sexual identity” is for children who need to get out more.
Adults fuck whatever they want.
There’s limits
Sexual identity is simply a descriptor of the type of adults you generally go for. It is a quick way to explain to another person what you are into. It’s not really necessary to explicitly label, but it can be helpful.
It’s not prescriptive, it’s descriptive.
It’s taking a step back and looking at your self critically, like an art piece. Who am I? How might others see me? How might I communicate myself to others? Am I living authentically to me? OP is noticing new details that is making them reconsider their own ego. That’s all normal human connection and philosophy. Thinking isn’t childish, lol.
I picture an old man with a really scraggly beard laying on a couch with a beer in one hand, cigarette in the other saying this lol
Is this that new camera hack where the led turns off? Jk I don’t smoke.
Adults can fuck whatever they want with consent
I’d hope people would just assume statements like that imply consensually lol.
And in the current era specific age limits are set.
That’s not exactly true. Being able to talk about sexual identity using specific terms is highly useful for people who are in relatively unsafe communities.
Won’t somebody please think of the children. Lol.
I think anybody who says they haven’t questioned their sexuality is likely to be lying. Then again, we’re all biased by our lived experiences and I’ve spent a lot of time questioning things, so I could be projecting.
At the end of the day I want to say to like who you like. What happens between consenting adults is nobody’s business but theirs, and the sun isn’t going to implode because you dig on a girly dude.
Hell, you don’t even need to put a label on your sexuality. Or your gender for that matter, although that’s a whole different can of worms.
Depending on where you are, you might be growing up alongside harmful anti-queer rhetoric. That kind of thing makes it very difficult for a lot of people to admit their sexuality with any degree of nuance. People living in fear will lie to their friends, family, and selves in order to hide their attractions. It’s sad and harmful, and it also makes it difficult for some people to be open about sometimes liking a person that is outside what they believe society expects of them.
You guys should get coffee or something. I wouldn’t pass up on a chance to learn more about myself
Binary gender is such bullshit. Nobody is attracted to every man or every woman. It’s totally normal to be attracted to people who fall into both buckets if that’s your only way of categorizing people. Because that’s not how attraction or sexuality work. It’s so much richer and more nuanced than that.
I’m a 44 year old (mostly) straight guy who’s at a point where I don’t really know why any of that stuff really matters to people.
I was a teenager in Britain in the '90s when it was ridiculously common to refer to something bad as “gay”. So I grew up not homophobic as such, but having definitely equated being gay with negative connotations. But some 15 years ago I started to question my own attitudes, and, helped by a woman I was seeing at the time, I explored the idea of playing gay. I didn’t actually do anything, but she thought the idea was as hot as hell.
Fast forward to now, where I’m married to a different woman who also thinks that guys fucking is hot, and so do I. So it’s something that’s become an occasional part of our sex life, and it’s great.
Now, I’m not necessarily answering your question, because sex ≠ emotions. To me sex and emotions aren’t really linked. One is something to be enjoyed, and the other is something to be shared with an intimate partner. But the point is, if you’re a naturally open-minded person then your baseline for who and what you are will be constantly subject to change.
Are you straight? Are you gay? Are you bi? Are you any of these things? Does it really matter?
As to your point about being attracted to femininity: I definitely get that. Regardless of how someone identifies, if they’re feminine I’ve got a soft spot for them.
You’ve summed up my feelings pretty accurately.
I’ve never thought “I’d like to be in a romantic relationship with a man.” But my wife has hinted that she’d love to watch me suck a dick, and I wouldn’t think twice about doing it.
It doesn’t have to “mean” anything. It’s just people having fun.
Exactly that. There’s sex as an intimate act between loving partners, then there’s sex as recreation. The two things aren’t necessarily the same. It’s why swinging is so popular.
Romantic attraction and sexual attraction can often be different. It’s just society says you can’t have sex with people you aren’t romantically involved with, and once you’re romantically involved with someone, you can’t have sex with others. That’s totally unfair IMHO. You should be able to have a romantic relationship with someone and not expect sex and then be able to have sex with others who are interested in sex. This is why asexual people have a hard time with monogamy and have to pretend to be into sex because otherwise they can’t have a relationship with someone they love.
I think that in reality, every human can relate to this post. Straight, gay, bi, asexual. You meet a person that makes you go “what the fuck is happening?”.
My opinion is that it doesn’t really mean (or necessarily equate) that you want to have sex with the person. For myself, I consider myself to be heterosexual although I wish I was bisexual. I do however consider myself to be biromantic, and could very well see myself in a relationship with someone of the same gender. The difference is that when I’ve envisioned or been close to trying the sex part, I get actually physically nautious. Not to say “gays make me sick” but, uh 😂😂 Me personally having gay sex makes me sick.
Everyone, and I think probably especially intellectual people, questions their sexuality (am I attracted to the opposite gender in some way?) and at least their gender expression (am I masculine / feminine enough?) to some extent. It’s no different for a lot of people I think than imposter syndrome and can be tied to a lack of self confidence.
Everyone is also capable of fantasizing about, basically, whatever, and enjoying it, without the fantasy or enjoyment having to mean anything about how they feel about themselves or how others will feel about them.
Also, sexual preference, as kinks and fetishes, develop and change in men at least until some surprising age, like, into your 50s. Like you could live your entire life identifying and living as a one thing and by fifty-five be identifying as something else. I think, and I’m not sure yet, be that’s just life. Most people who don’t live in a safe space bubble and don’t leave their home town or school aged friend group have to reinvent themselves multiple times in life.
Also also, sexual pleasure and gratification is a full body and mind experience and it’s possible that different partners stimulate and gratify different parts of that experience, even different encounters with the same partners. And none of that has to be carried around with you as if it changes anything about who you are or how you should be treated.
And lastly, it’s fine to treat this person and anyone else in a positive and fun way for both of you. It could be that this person expresses themselves femininely and so your instinct is to be a little different, whether that’s with more compassion and tenderness and even flirty, and I would say confusion is probably a very healthy and intelligent, internal reflex to something like this that is new to you.
And finally, anyone that says the Roman Empire collapsed because of all the fucking without making babies is a right cunt. If society collapses because of who any of us are fucking then… it was coming either way.
Edit to make sure someone catches that joke, which may be one of the best I’ve written.
