What am I? Just oversexed, bisexual or what?

[claire from SD]

OK, so I started writing my life story and got so long winded that I didn't think I would ever get to my real question so I'm going to make this as short as I can.

I'm a 16 year old girl in high school in California. I've always been "body aware" and fooled around with girls sometime when I was younger. I can't remember not masturbating and I don't remember how old I was when I had my first orgasm but maybe when I was 12?

I "lost my virginity" when I was 13 and have been very sexually active since then. I've had mostly good to great sex with guys although some times have been just boring and a few times just bad. I usually always have orgasms when I have sex, even if I have to do it myself. I don't really have any big dreams that I want to fulfill in life, just go to college, maybe go for a masters, get married after working a couple of years and have a couple of children when I'm 30 or so and just have a normal upper-middle-class life like my parents.

I've been into gymnastics since I was 5 and I was selected to be a cheerleader last year. In my school, you have to have some sort of gymnastics or other athletic experience to have any hope of being a cheerleader.

So I met this girl last year (I'll just call her Laura) and we became friends pretty quickly. To be honest, I felt sexually attracted to her. In October of last year I went over to her house for a sleepover and we talked about our mutual attraction and ended up making love all night, not getting any sleep.

We call ourselves heterosexual, both still have sex with boys, but we also find some time for each other at least once a week. Neither of us have ever said that we were bisexual but right now I'm not so sure.

I really can't see myself being sexual with women past college. I know that I'm attractive because both boys and a few other girls have told me so (and I can look in the mirror and see).

So my real question is this – can a girl (or a guy) be bisexual for just a while? I love Laura and the sex we have is great and I do find myself being attracted to some girls and thinking of what it would be like to have sex with them. But I do the same thing with boys.

Can anyone help me? I don't know if what I want makes any sense. I think that I could call myself bisexual now, but I know that I'm not a lesbian and could never be and that when I finally find a guy that I love and get into a relationship with I want to stop having sex with anybody else, including girls, and that I would accept the same from him.

Can you be bisexual for just a while? Even though I've only had sex with one girl (which has been terrific and I want to try with other girls, too) can I call myself bisexual now or should I even do that?

I'm kind of confused about all these labels. I only have a few friends that call themselves gay and none that say that they're bisexual. I just want to experiment some more before I settle down. I don't want to have all of my fantasies to be unfulfilled when that time comes.

Does any of this make sense? Can you call yourself bisexual for just a while to let other girls know that you have an open mind but then stop when you get older?

I just have so many sexual issues. I have fantasies that I want to fulfill while I'm young even though I know that some people will call me a slut or whatever.

Any advice for this bisexual slut?

Claire

[Heather]

Human sexuality is something that can -- and often does -- shift and change throughout a person's life. We're not the same person all of our lives after all, so it's pretty much a given our sexuality won't stay exactly the same either. Those shifts and changes can be about many things, and yep, orientation is one of them.

That said, we probably can't make any accurate predictions about who we will or won't be attracted to later in life unless we've got ourselves one helluva crystal ball and some serious psychic skills. So, I'd say that while that could happen that your attraction to women goes poof, it's just as likely, if not more likely (since you have it, clearly), to stick around.

The idea you can't imagine being attracted to women after a certain age is more likely based on cultural ideas (and probably some biphobia and homophobia, as well as some sexism, as none of us are immune to those things, especially since you finding a woman you love and want to be monogamous with is also something you may experience in life, not just a man) than amazing skills of predicting the future.

Now or later, you get to use what words you want to for your orientation. By all means, you're describing an experience of bisexuality -- of feeling attraction to people of more than one gender -- so if that's the term (or terms like queer or pansexual) that feels right for you and you want to use it, you get to. But if, for any reason that's your reason, you don't want to do that and feel better or more truthful identifying as heterosexual, you get to do that to. This is all up to you. What terms and language we use to describe our sexualities is up to us.

You also get to choose your own sexual behaviours and what relationships you want to pursue. So, for instance, it'd be okay for someone who was and did identify as bisexual to choose to only have sexual (or other kinds of) relationships with people of one sex or gender if they wanted, or to change who they chose at any time in life, again, based on what they wanted and felt best about. It's not like it's required for anyone to have sex with anyone (ever, even!) to "earn" their sexual orientation. We all have a sexual orientation just based on our feelings of desire and attraction (or lack thereof), whether or not any of those feelings are ever expressed, or regardless of how or when they're expressed. Make sense?

By the by, hopefully you already know you landed where you did, but know that no one here is going to be calling anyone anything derogatory for wanting to explore their sexual desires or fantasies consensually.

But it might also help to take the pressure off to know that the clock isn't ticking like a bomb: you do have a whole lifetime to explore your sexuality in, and even "normal middle-class" older people (the quotes are because I have no idea what that means in a real way) are people who can, and do, do that in their lives. So, if it feels at all pressure-y to think you have to do all you want to when you're young, know you really don't. It's not like our sexuality or desires stop once we're older!

[claire from SD]

Heather,

Thank you so much for answering my question so soon!

I don't know why I've put an age limit on sexual experimentation, and since I've only had sex with one other girl so far the only reason really that I want to call myself bisexual is so that other girls will at least know that I'm open minded to the idea.

And I really am ridiculously attractive – I have the body of Alicia Sacramone (if you know who she is) and my dad says that I have a Audrey Hepburn face (pixie haircut, long neck, almond eyes). And like Alicia, I've grown these giant breasts over the past year (which is the only thing I don't like about my body, gymnastics and big boobs just do not go together). But overall I like my body a lot. The only reason that I mention that is because some girls in my school bully the girls who identify as lesbians saying that they're only lesbians because they're too ugly to get a guy.

And I don't really know why I put that time limit on my sexuality. I haven't even imagined what it would be like to fall in love with another girl like that. Right now I am more attracted to guys than girls, but I do want to fulfill some of my fantasies and they include both guys and girls. I can only envision myself in a permanent relationship with a man and I can't imagine having sex with other people once I am in a permanent relationship. I haven't thought about suddenly turning from one sexual identity to another so quickly-I guess I am thinking of it being something gradual. Play while I'm young and then settle down later. I really do believe in monogamy whether straight or gay and I just want to be as nasty as I want to be before I get into a monogamous relationship (that may sound bad?)

I'm in my bedroom on my iPad right now and I really, really need to print your reply and read it close so that I can respond and ask the right questions. My girl will be over tonight so I'm going to print out everything and let her read it.

I also have to look up pansexual, never heard of that before.

Thank you so much, I'll be back soon!

Claire

[Heather]

If words like "nasty" work for you and don't make what you want seem like something shameful or not-okay, by all means, those are your words to use. But no, to me, none of that sounds bad OR "nasty." At worst, it just sounds limiting: if you only had fun with your sexuality during a small period in your life, that'd be quite a shame, that's all. It also sounds limiting when it comes to long-term relationships: monogamous or not (and it's not like people can't settle down, have a family, AND be queer, poly or both, after all), it's not like you're likely to feel so psyched if you have this sexual life when you're young that's about your desires, then shut them all down later on. They tend to be a renewable resource, too, so if you have the idea all of these desires are things peoplecan use all up when they're young, then be rid of them later on...well, not so much how it tends to work (and thank goodness for that).

You don't need to qualify or verify your sense of your own attractiveness, nor show how it meets some current standards of beauty for me to go, "Okay, you feel attractive and are found attractive by others, noted." Since what people find attractive is very diverse, there's really no one standard everyone either meets or doesn't. Sometimes it can feel or seem like that, especially in less diverse areas by any token, or in very small (as in, less than a few thousand people or so) social groups or communities, but it really isn't. Around the world, and even just in one given city somewhere, what is and isn't attractive -- and does and doesn't feel attractive -- varies incredibly widely.

It does sound to me like over time -- it's not a hurry, and it's also not about you doing anything wrong -- you may want to take some time to just start to consider the impact heterosexism probably has had on you. Again, none of us are immune. One common thing that tends to show up in is when bisexual, homosexual or otherwise queer people so often, especially when young, tend to state that they can only picture themselves in a marriage or family with someone of the "opposite" sex. But you have to think about how very many presentations of that everyone has been socialized with versus the alternative for one, right down to probably the first children's books you ever had read to you, or children's shows you saw. It's no wonder people have such a hard time picturing other options: it's hard to picture what we see so little of!

Again, that's not a shame-on-you. It's just that when we can be sure to at least look at that stuff, it can help us to make our own best choices in life, feel best about them, and do our best to really figure out what we want. Even if it turns out something we do want is within what's more pervasive and/or permitted, we're likely to enjoy that a lot more when we don't have to wonder if we only picked that because it felt inevitable or like the way it had to be, if you follow me. And, of course, if it turns out you do really want something different, you're more likely to hone in on that want and feel less conflicted about going for it. It's much harder to even find things we may want and find enrich our lives if our minds have ruled them out as options.