lesbian but doubting?
Posted: Tue Jun 03, 2025 12:46 am
Where to start? I have identified as bisexual for four years and within the last few weeks/month have started calling myself a lesbian.
My only relationship was with a girl for about a year. I’m sure I was in love with her and attracted to her - my attraction to women isn’t something I question. It was both of our first relationship and we were both identifying as bi at the time. She’d say pretty earnestly that if something happened and we split up, she’d start dating guys. I didn’t take it personally because it was a bunch of hypotheticals and she’s been around mostly women in her life so she was just curious. I, however, would always tell her that men weren’t worth it (also never having been in a relationship with a man) and voiced/felt that this new thing of dating women I was experiencing was so incredible that I couldn’t be bothered to pursue anything with men after.
Every few months since the beginning of that relationship, I’d question whether my ‘attraction’ to men was comphet and never really come to any conclusions, but it would keep resurfacing. I kind of felt like it was inevitable that I would eventually have the lightning strike a-ha moment of realizing I was a lesbian.
I read a lot of books when I was younger and had this fixation on getting a boyfriend as a sign of being mature (like a box to check), which I let go of around when I realized my attraction to women. Still, for as long as I can remember, if I was recounting an interaction with a boy to my mom and she suggested I’d been flirting with him, I would get very uncomfortable and stressed very quickly in response to the idea of him thinking that I liked him, because I didn’t want to give him the wrong idea. I had plenty of obsessive crushes on boys earlier in life, and the two whose origins I remember both stemmed from me realizing that the boy in question wasn’t ugly (I didn’t find him attractive specifically), we were good friends, and he treated me well, so he’d be a good candidate for a crush. This somehow resulted in me crying over him and/or declaring my love (embarrassing - I didn’t know what the word meant) even though I consciously decided to like him.
A month or so ago, it all came to a head. What I told my therapist was that if the cutest guy in the world asked me for my number or otherwise hit on me (in a normal, non creepy way), he’d no longer be cute. It’s hard for me to say I still wholeheartedly believe that because I think I do but, since having begun to call myself a lesbian, the concept of a ‘cute guy’ feels too foreign to me lol. Nope, I agree with myself. This theoretical Adonis (I’m imagining a senior in one of my classes right now if it’s relevant that I can pick a specific person) asking me out would make me feel good because I knew he was cute and it’s nice to feel wanted. However, I right now can’t imagine a world where my response wouldn’t be I’m flattered but I’m not into this. I think the expressing interest in me and the possibility of an actual relationship makes me lose attraction.
I don’t think I’ve ever had a crush on a man whom I could realistically date without either actively choosing to be attracted to him or someone else pointing out that he was cute first. This applies if we consider the freshman/senior (in college) barrier unsurmountable (I personally think it is). After starting to call myself lesbian, I’ve been questioning if I jumped the gun in saying I wasn’t attracted to men. For example, there’s some rower who I see at the gym who made me think wait maybe I am bisexual today BUT I remember the first time I saw him my initial reaction was admiring his muscles not in a ‘wow he’s so hot i want to be close to him’ way but in a ‘damn he looks good i want triceps like that’ way. And then me noticing him after that was something that I kind of just decided to call a crush even though that doesn’t seem like the beginning of a normal crush (I wouldn’t know, apparently). I wonder if the feelings I have when I see attractive men aren’t me being attractive to them but me becoming hyper aware of how I’m perceived because I want to be attractive to them. It doesn’t feel nice, what I feel - it’s a nervousness/anxiety that makes me tense up and forms a pit in my stomach.
That’s all I can think of right now. I think this sounds pretty gay (please let me know if you think otherwise) but since I’ve started identifying as lesbian the moments of doubt when I see a good looking man and then analyze whether or not I’m attracted to him make me feel really guilty. Right after I came out to myself, I felt so much lighter and freer and lowkey barely noticed men in my life ever (except for when I have these doubting moments). My eyes linger on shirtless guys which worries me somewhat in terms of identifying as lesbian and I can…yk…when thinking about being with men theoretically but idk how I’d feel about it in practice (because I’ve never done it). But probably not great. I know I shouldn’t base my decision on that because straight men aren’t made to sleep with other men to prove to themselves that they’re straight.
In any event, this is all I can remember right now and I think my entry is sufficiently insanely long. If you get here, thanks for reading all the way through and let me know what you think vis a vis whether I’m a lesbian who’s just struggling with societal expectations of liking men or maybe I’m bi but 99.9% into women and 0.01% into men??? I also know that I don’t have to be wedded to labels - I felt such a rush of relief when I admitted I’d never liked men and if that is in fact the case (which I know only I can give a definitive final answer to) I would find a lot of empowerment in using the lesbian label. Just a personal preference
My only relationship was with a girl for about a year. I’m sure I was in love with her and attracted to her - my attraction to women isn’t something I question. It was both of our first relationship and we were both identifying as bi at the time. She’d say pretty earnestly that if something happened and we split up, she’d start dating guys. I didn’t take it personally because it was a bunch of hypotheticals and she’s been around mostly women in her life so she was just curious. I, however, would always tell her that men weren’t worth it (also never having been in a relationship with a man) and voiced/felt that this new thing of dating women I was experiencing was so incredible that I couldn’t be bothered to pursue anything with men after.
Every few months since the beginning of that relationship, I’d question whether my ‘attraction’ to men was comphet and never really come to any conclusions, but it would keep resurfacing. I kind of felt like it was inevitable that I would eventually have the lightning strike a-ha moment of realizing I was a lesbian.
I read a lot of books when I was younger and had this fixation on getting a boyfriend as a sign of being mature (like a box to check), which I let go of around when I realized my attraction to women. Still, for as long as I can remember, if I was recounting an interaction with a boy to my mom and she suggested I’d been flirting with him, I would get very uncomfortable and stressed very quickly in response to the idea of him thinking that I liked him, because I didn’t want to give him the wrong idea. I had plenty of obsessive crushes on boys earlier in life, and the two whose origins I remember both stemmed from me realizing that the boy in question wasn’t ugly (I didn’t find him attractive specifically), we were good friends, and he treated me well, so he’d be a good candidate for a crush. This somehow resulted in me crying over him and/or declaring my love (embarrassing - I didn’t know what the word meant) even though I consciously decided to like him.
A month or so ago, it all came to a head. What I told my therapist was that if the cutest guy in the world asked me for my number or otherwise hit on me (in a normal, non creepy way), he’d no longer be cute. It’s hard for me to say I still wholeheartedly believe that because I think I do but, since having begun to call myself a lesbian, the concept of a ‘cute guy’ feels too foreign to me lol. Nope, I agree with myself. This theoretical Adonis (I’m imagining a senior in one of my classes right now if it’s relevant that I can pick a specific person) asking me out would make me feel good because I knew he was cute and it’s nice to feel wanted. However, I right now can’t imagine a world where my response wouldn’t be I’m flattered but I’m not into this. I think the expressing interest in me and the possibility of an actual relationship makes me lose attraction.
I don’t think I’ve ever had a crush on a man whom I could realistically date without either actively choosing to be attracted to him or someone else pointing out that he was cute first. This applies if we consider the freshman/senior (in college) barrier unsurmountable (I personally think it is). After starting to call myself lesbian, I’ve been questioning if I jumped the gun in saying I wasn’t attracted to men. For example, there’s some rower who I see at the gym who made me think wait maybe I am bisexual today BUT I remember the first time I saw him my initial reaction was admiring his muscles not in a ‘wow he’s so hot i want to be close to him’ way but in a ‘damn he looks good i want triceps like that’ way. And then me noticing him after that was something that I kind of just decided to call a crush even though that doesn’t seem like the beginning of a normal crush (I wouldn’t know, apparently). I wonder if the feelings I have when I see attractive men aren’t me being attractive to them but me becoming hyper aware of how I’m perceived because I want to be attractive to them. It doesn’t feel nice, what I feel - it’s a nervousness/anxiety that makes me tense up and forms a pit in my stomach.
That’s all I can think of right now. I think this sounds pretty gay (please let me know if you think otherwise) but since I’ve started identifying as lesbian the moments of doubt when I see a good looking man and then analyze whether or not I’m attracted to him make me feel really guilty. Right after I came out to myself, I felt so much lighter and freer and lowkey barely noticed men in my life ever (except for when I have these doubting moments). My eyes linger on shirtless guys which worries me somewhat in terms of identifying as lesbian and I can…yk…when thinking about being with men theoretically but idk how I’d feel about it in practice (because I’ve never done it). But probably not great. I know I shouldn’t base my decision on that because straight men aren’t made to sleep with other men to prove to themselves that they’re straight.
In any event, this is all I can remember right now and I think my entry is sufficiently insanely long. If you get here, thanks for reading all the way through and let me know what you think vis a vis whether I’m a lesbian who’s just struggling with societal expectations of liking men or maybe I’m bi but 99.9% into women and 0.01% into men??? I also know that I don’t have to be wedded to labels - I felt such a rush of relief when I admitted I’d never liked men and if that is in fact the case (which I know only I can give a definitive final answer to) I would find a lot of empowerment in using the lesbian label. Just a personal preference