I’m a bisexual 19-year-old woman. I never dated a woman before. I came close to dating a girl who matched my type (literally my type but female) at 16 but I won’t talk about why.
I can’t even name a woman I’ve ever been attracted to nor a woman I’d date, I just wanted to try it in high school.
I don’t even have feelings for non-binary people. They’re alright, but I would probably never go out with them. I know for certain that I like men.
Men are hot. They give me a spark, they make me feel that special way, and not only could I see myself dating/having sex with a man, but I would also enjoy it. (Because I know some asexual people, for example, can imagine having sex but would not enjoy it due to having little to no sexual attraction.)
Women are stunning. I’ve never really had a crush, and while I can imagine myself dating one, I can’t imagine myself having sex with one at ALL.
But I guess I sort of like it when a woman compliments me and treats me like I’m the best, and I really just want a woman who has common interests with me. (One who likes makeup, TikTok, men, etc.)
I’m not homophobic or anything, but I would not date a lesbian simply because they don’t like men and I can’t relate. But that doesn’t mean I think of women as just friends. It just means that I may prefer men to women romantically and sexually for sure.
(I realize biromantic straight women also exist, or maybe bicurious straight women, I dunno.)
(When I say I’m bi, this is a good representation of what I mean)
I'm totally down with anyone calling themselves bi (because deep down everyone is bi...) but I'm curious what that little corner of same-sex attraction is for you? You say that you like getting compliments, and sharing interests with a girl. How is that different, for you, from having a close friendship?
Totally not trying to say you're not bi - "I'm a little bit bi, but massively prefer men" is much more honest and believable to me than "I'm 110% straight, I can't even imagine...". But since you've posted I guess you want to talk about it? And while I love bi-stuff and homoerotic relationships, sometimes people ARE just good friends, roommates, bffs, etc. Plutonic relationships can be intimate and strong too!
That's a good point - why think the feelings are non-platonic? I hope OP responds to your question, I wonder what she would say.
Hopefully it's OK to share my experience - feel free to ignore this if it's off-topic.
Before I transitioned I was a lot more like OP, but about men - I could tell I was bi, but it was rather theoretical. There had never been a man or boy that I was actually interested in romantically or sexually, and it wasn't easy to feel stimulated by gay porn for example. At the time there was a real question of why I thought I was bi, and ultimately it came down to some deeper sense of openness and that I found I could be sexually aroused by men in some situations even if it wasn't that common. In some sense I was "incidentally" bi in this sense. Unlike OP, though, I didn't want to be gay or bisexual. (Though I was part of gay rights student activist organizations, I identified as a straight ally.) So I basically hid this aspect of myself and only shared it with one other person growing up. Even now that I'm out I still consider my sexuality something private, and I don't particularly need or want to be seen as gay or bi (though it's unavoidable now).
However, when I transitioned, estrogen really changed my sexual feelings. Though I am aware the same underlying theoretical capability for attraction to men was still present, I found the incidents of attraction towards men increased significantly. There are times I am in public and I am suddenly struck by how attractive a certain man is, and that never happened before estrogen. Overall, though, even if I were single I still wouldn't want to date a man, but for reasons that don't have anything to do with my sexuality, which is not the issue. 😅
That's super interesting! There's so many ways the attraction (sexual and otherwise) can shift and change. Hormone treatment must be such an interesting (among many other adjectives I'm sure!) experience. I've come to terms with my attraction to people changing, and linked that to different attitudes and moods, but I hadn't really thought about the basic hormonal forces that might make us express our sexuality differently, even though that's a pretty obvious big part of things! Thanks for sharing!!
Yes, transition has been a lot - it's hard to describe accurately.
I also don't know how to think about my shifting sexuality - part of me is adamant that my underlying sexual orientation didn't change at all, that I'm just as "bi" now as I was before transition. However, it's undeniable that my actual feelings and experiences of attraction changed. Still, it doesn't feel like I became more "bi" even while it feels surprising to experience attraction to men more strongly.
Part of my resistance to thinking my sexual orientation changed has to do with the lack of evidence for this in the scientific literature, and also the dubiousness that changing sexual orientation is possible in contexts like conversion therapy. That's where this attitude of openness seems threatening to me, I don't feel comfortable implying that orientation can change based on mood, for example - it seems dangerous to me. I know it's not meant that way, but I worry that a perspective like that could accidentally be used to justify conversion therapy in a courtroom, for example.
Totally. I didn't mean to suggest that someone's fundemental sexual orientation would change. I can see why that would be worrying. I was meaning a much more mundane fluidity and fluctuations on what I find attractive and how I express myself sexually (which I thought was pretty normal, but I can only speak for myself!) There have been times when I've been more attracted to wild types, and other times when I'm strongly attracted to safe and nurturing people. I've always been generally attracted to guys & gals (& nb pals), but how equal my preferences are changes back and forth. And even at an individual level, I can think of someone entirely nonsexually for years, then one day see them in a fancy jacket or whatever, and suddenly I'm totally attracted to them.
Defintely not arguing for conversion therapy! Just curious thinking about the different influences on the experience of attraction.
Oh of course, I didn't think you were advocating for conversion therapy 😅 It's just where my mind happens to go when I think about fluctuating sexuality - just thinking through what does it mean to have a belief that sexual orientation is fixed while recognizing all the variety and fluctuations in my actual sexual experiences and desires, esp. one where I went from being only incidentally attracted to men to becoming almost as capable of feeling those desires as for women. One way to look at that might be to think I went from being mostly gay to being bi, for example.
But yeah, even past that there is a lot to think about the way sexual desire works beyond gender, like you mention. It's honestly more than I could even begin to speculate about.