Questioning my Sexuality

[fiarcurrin]

Hi! So I'm a fourteen, almost fifteen year old cis girl and I'm starting to question my sexuality. I used to think I was straight. In fact I was positive of it. But recently I've started to wonder if I could be bisexual. For me, I just know that I find men in general sexually attractive and if I ever -very rarely- dream or fantasize the other person is a man. But recently I've started to wonder if the way I react to women is just different from men. Like whenever I see an image of an attractive man I just smile to myself and go 'nice' or take a deep breath. It's just a such a simple reaction. Whenever I see an image of a pretty women I just smile and go wow, you are so beautiful. And it's sort of more of an awe thing, like wow, women are such gorgeous creatures. But could it also be sexual? I mean, I don't know if I can see myself just having sex with a women. I mean maybe? I think it would depend on the situation but I'm not sure. And whenever I think of a scenario with a women as the other partner I kind of go blank -granted, I do that pretty much whenever I try to do this, regardless of gender- and can't tell if I'm turned on by the situation or if it's just my body going 'hey, prepare yourself'. I mean my body does that whenever I think of sex so it makes it hard to just tell the difference. I mean I know that I like guys but I wish it was just as simple to tell with women. When I see a woman and think 'Oh wow, you're beautiful' is it just me appreciating her beauty or could I be attracted to her? I mean, I've never masturbated before because I've just never felt the urge to but that doesn't stop me from knowing I like guys. Could it be the same for women? My sister is going through this same thing and she's basically saying that she doesn't want to rule anything out when we've never had any experience in this area. And I'm okay with that idea I guess. I mean, if I one day find myself totally in love with a woman or someone in between I will be totally okay with that. If I love them, I love them. But the problem is that I want to wait until I'm married before I have sex. It's a personal choice because of how I've seen sex affect relationships but this doesn't mean I don't want to have sex. On the contrary, I find the idea to be very enjoyable. It's just that because of this personal choice it kind of makes it harder to you know, explore what my sexuality might be. So does anyone have any suggestions on how I might figure out if I am sexually attracted to women?

[Mo]

Hi fiarcurrin, and welcome to Scarleteen.

I think the best way to figure out your sexual orientation is to just give yourself some time to think about it more, and observe the feelings and reactions you have when thinking about or interacting with different people. Sometimes it can be hard to tease apart the difference between general aesthetic appreciation of someone and sexual or romantic attraction, and in general it can just take time to figure that out. It sounds like you're ok with maybe not knowing for sure what kind of pull or attraction you feel towards women right now, and I think that's a great way to approach it - sometimes sorting out identity takes time, and being stressed out that it's not immediately clear won't make the process any easier! It's ok if you just want to say "I'm not sure" or "I'm questioning" right now.

In terms of not wanting to have sex before marrying a partner, I don't think that will necessarily keep you from knowing if you are attracted to women. You don't have to get to the "having sex" stage of a relationship before establishing that interest, and if you do realize that you're attracted to women, you will probably be able to notice that attraction during an intimate conversation, or when kissing, or in a moment of nonsexual touch. People aren't necessarily attracted to various genders in exactly the same ways, but it's likely that some of the ways you notice your own attraction to men might be the same for women as well. Right now I know you're saying that it's not clear and doesn't feel the same, but given time I think it's likely that you'll be able to tell if you're noticing a sexual/romantic interest in women and that the moment will come without you having to be sexual first.

One other thought I have is that in a culture where heterosexuality is this assumed default state for everyone, it's often easy to imagine hypothetical heterosexual scenarios much more easily than anything else. If you grow up reading fairy tales, or watching Disney movies, or engaging with most other media produced for children and young adults, you wind up with a lot of narratives about how romantic relationships with men and women might look. We can argue about whether those are appropriate dynamics to model, but they're this cultural idea that's easy to absorb. And it's a lot harder to find same-sex examples of those stories! I think that can sometimes come into play when people are trying to sort out their attractions and having a hard time imagining themselves with a same-sex partner, whether that's in terms of a sexual relationship or being able to have something long-term. Just a thought, you may find that it resonates with you or not.

[fiarcurrin]

Hi Mo, thank you for replying so quickly.

Everything you have said has really helped, so thank you for answering my questions. I think my biggest fear would be that in this type of situation the other person would only think that they were an experiment or something. I think that if I ever entered into that kind of situation the best way would to just be honest and explain the situation. Again, thank you so much for your thoughts and insight into this.

[Karyn]

Hi, fiarcurrin. You've definitely got the right idea; if you ever do find yourself wanting to explore sex with women and had the opportunity to do so, all you can do is make it clear that you're still figuring out your sexuality, so that the other person has all the information they need to make their decision about whether or not they want to have sex with you. That's all anyone can do, really: we can't know how we'll feel in the future, so we just have to make the decision that feels best to us at the time with the information we have at the time.