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 think gayness is a spectrum. Likewise, I think emotions are not back and white. So you could have some feelings for this guy, you could be confused, and if this was ancient Greece you probably would have slept with him by now, but whether you see him as a partner or a little brother you want to protect is a conscious choice you can make.
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.
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.
Yes, quite a bit. I was struggling to find the right label. But at some point I switched to the mindset, that a label is a description, not a rule, and that i shouldn’t have to worry who I do or don’t like. Right now I’m in the “meh, I’m fine, thanks” camp, but it might change any time.
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
Not really. Never felt anything else than being straight, as I’ve never felt any inclination towards liking guys, and for as long as I can remember I’ve always liked women, including in that special way that gave me that funny feeling in my pants when I was very young.
Sexuality may be a spectrum, but my location on it has always felt like a very uncomplicated one.
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.
In the teenage boy caught in the hyper masculine world of American highschool? Yes.
In the actualized adult trying to understand myself and the world? Also yes.
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. 💜
I was in denial about being gay for several years after puberty, but that’s not really the same thing.
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Yep, have been doing so for a few years now. I’m happily married to a woman so it’s somewhat irrelevant what my feelings towards men and NB people are.
But fi you’re single and the guy is open to dating give it a shot.
No. I like feminine women who are healthy, strong, and supportive, and always have.
Its like a math question. You need to show your working, even if you guess the right answer, or you don’t get full marks for it.
I’ve never questioned the sexuality itself, in fact it was a friend of mine who had to inform me I was asexual (aceflux to be exact). I did not question it, but he had realized he was asexual based on conversations with his siblings, and he let me know based on the signs that caused him to realize it. I in turn went to his GF and did the same thing. We’re all asexual.
The biggest sign, for those wondering, is really just that NSFW thoughts don’t come naturally, and it was profound enough in us that, in my guy friend’s case, he thought that when people get physically lovey-dovey with each other, it was simply a form of rebellion against social norms. One day he was asked why he and his GF don’t “do it” and he had the epiphany “wait, I didn’t know that’s something we’re supposed to do”.
Even more intriguing is we all have different “fetishes” that all correspond so little to relationships and would be irrelevant to anything we encounter in daily life that our minds did not connect the “feeling” of the fetishes to “doing the act”. So a lot of people have looked at us, the two friends being in a relationship and me being in one with a non-asexual (but who is genderfluid), and they see we get “turned on”, and they think we’re offensively misusing the asexual label, unaware that it’s not cut and dry. Often I’m asked to explain how, in their words, such a thing is possible, as if someone whom the whole concept of sexuality is alien to couldn’t ask them the same thing, and it’s even a source of hate as people looking to hook up with me think it’s just a trend/phase/excuse.
Aside from all of that, I’ve also had enough trans friends that occasionally the thought goes to my mind that maybe I myself should start questioning it, which is why there will be times when I am identified externally as the gender I am not. I, however, don’t identify as trans at the moment, not that I am fully aware. I have always identified as female. Though I’m jealous of my friends for having acedar (the asexual equivalent to gaydar) while I seem to have a subconscious transdar.
