How did you know you were gay/bi?

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I felt a certain fascination with both males and females from the time I began to experience sexual feelings, but I only really thought of myself as 'properly bi' after I started to have full-blown crushes on members of both sexes. It was something I grew to accept quite easily, though I felt rather self-conscious about discussing it with almost everybody I knew. I still keep it from most of the people in my life, in fact, but there's a reason aside from my discomfort: I'm currently in a long-term heterosexual relationship, and so I don't feel that I'll need to 'come out' unless I happen to become romantically involved with another female at some point down the line.

As for the self-consciousness itself, I don't know where that stems from. There's a vague feeling that it's the sort of thing that ought to be kept private, but it's difficult to explain. My hunch is that I'm aware of the fact that things like homosexuality and bisexuality make many people I know feel uncomfortable, and so I'm reluctant to say or do anything that could cause tension. Strange, really, because I hate the fact that many gay and bisexual people feel forced to mask their identity for the sake of other people's prejudices, but I guess that's just how I feel...

+1!

Things that did not yet make me realize:

Whenever I heard of a movie featuring girls liking girls I really wanted to see it ("Kissing Jessica Stein", etc.) but obviously did not want to bring up with anyone that I wanted to.

My primary motivation for wanting to go to school some days in the last year of high school was to see this girl who was my friend.

It made me feel giddy just being around her.

Watched Lost even when I was getting really sick of it cause I had heard Michelle Rodriguez would be back on it.

I started visiting afterellen.com (lesbian/female bi site) "just out of interest."

After a while I thought, wow, I am visiting this site a lot for a straight person! That's weird. Should probably scale it back (felt guilty).

"Really, really admiring" Kristen Stewart.

The thing that made me realize:
STEP 1: Going back to read the afterellen forums to find a "what made you realize" thread that contained so many experiences just like my own.

I thought... euggh... but I'm just really good at imagining being bi!

Then (2) I saw a picture of Kristen Stewart at Coachella in an outfit that a lesbian blogger excitedly claimed was proof of her queerness and I was just as excited as this lesbian blogger.

Wow that sounds creepy doesn't it. I'll probably erase this later.

Anyway, there was really no denying it after I got otherwise irrationally excited at a clue that the celebrity I really really admired might like girls.

After high school started finding guys ascetically attractive. Found girls attractive when I was in 6th grade.

when i was in high school i started thinking about girls. a lot. in the same way that i thought of boys. but i was confused because i didn't become attracted to them simultaneously. girls came after. i thought it was a phase or hormones but hormones fade and phases don't last this long... the issue was further complicated by the fact that i didn't know what the word bisexual meant. i thought it was gay or straight and i was just something strange. the library helped a lot here. i wouldn't know about bisexuality were it not for books and i wouldn't know about girl on girl sex were it not for comics. yep, i got my sex ed from comics. then i did lots of research into same sex sex because its what i do. and again it was made more complicated by the fact that while i found women attractive i did not find the male member um, well i thought it was gross actually. i have to really find a guy attractive to want to touch it or have it touch me. so basically i was really conflicted for a couple of years before accepting myself. i'm attracted to genderqueers too. didn't figure that out until i saw andro looking people and cross dressers and realised that i didnt give a crap what peoples bits looked like. fudge gender. i guess you could call me pansexual but i prefer bi because no one knows what pansexuality is plus the word sounds better plus pan suggests fewer boundaries.

When I was 9 years old, I had a crush on another girl in my class. I distinctly remember having thoughts such as "I wish I could've been born a boy so I could tell her I like her" and "Is it normal for a girl to like another girl the way a boy likes a girl? Would other people get angry if two girls liked each other that way?" I was ashamed of those thoughts and didn't tell anyone about them for a long time.

When I was around 12, I fell in love with my best friend. I kept it a secret until I was 14, and then I told her my feelings as a last-ditch effort to save our then-faltering friendship. She rejected me and I was upset. We wound up saying and doing things that hurt each other very badly emotionally.

It was around that time that I tried to come out to my family, but that didn't go over very well, so I went back into the closet over the remainder of my teenage years by claiming that I had just "gone through a phase" and that "there is no doubt in my mind that I only like guys". I should state that I have had crushes on guys as well (most notably on actor-extraordinaire Johnny Depp), but I was never as boy-crazy as my sisters or female friends, which becomes more apparent the older I get.

I have been attracted to some guys who are hot as hell, but the majority of whom I have been attracted to have been women.

I've always had the weird urge to aggressively show off around girls and boys, but it didn't solidify until my sexuality did at eleven.

I then promptly repressed.

I am VERY good at self-hypnosis, and somehow I managed to hypnotize myself to not undo the repression until I 'had another life'. Which of course didn't happen, since I meant literally another life. But then a friend asked how I knew I was straight.

Down came the repression.

So in other words...I knew I was bi because of a very weird series of events that can only happen to me. On the other hand, I don't particularly care anymore. Gender is a non-issue. I call myself bisexual, though, because NTs need a label, and in my thinking, if they keep producing my Power Rangers, they're more than welcome to my labels. :p

I don't remember.

I think my friends told me around the point that they saw that I wasn't sending them nude photos of men (and pics of catboys!) to annoy them, but because I found said men attractive.

I didn't have sexual feelings either way as a little girl, so I can't do the whole "I always knew" thing.

Mostly it was high school. Noticing that I liked some girls a lot, and thought about girls sexually. I like females sexually different than I like males, it's hard to describe.

I was hopelessly in love with a girl from my high school and wanted to ask her to the school dance, but she was straight. To this day I think of her fondly and wish her well. As they say, you never forget that first love .

Not much to say. Right around the time that most boys start liking girls, I started liking guys. I tried to force myself to have romantic feelings for several girls who liked me, but it wasn't happening.

Growing up I actually didn't realize I was very different until puberty struck me, afterwards the word 'gay' and what I actually was had no connection, basically I was your stereotypical pre-teen spurting 'gay' at every negative thing I could have thought about. Meanwhile, me and my friends 'experimented' together until I began high-school, in which everything fell apart (found computer games).

I'm not really that social currently, making friends isnt as high as a priority right now as getting into college and finding a job.

I was 15 but it's taken until now to fully accept the fact that I'm gay. It's been a source of confilt in my head but now it's reslove I would like to move forward.

Well I did not have an inkling about it all untill I was in JR high and in the dressing room with the other girls. I felt a weird sexual attraction to them as they were undressing, but as I am so unaware of myself...I thought that "if I feel that way about them, then they must feel that way about me...gee they are weird." So I got D's in gym because I refused to dress out. Then I developed this phobia that the whole school thought I was lesbian, even though no one said such a thing to me. It was my way of projecting my thoughts about myself onto others which I have done all of my life. Then in high school, I started thinking maybe I AM lesbian??? This thought scared the mess out of me since I live in the deep south, part of the US where such ideas can get you really hurt by homophobes. So I repressed it while dating guys. Then when I was in college, I met a girl who was blatently bisexual....and she flirted with me alot. I really liked it. She was soo pretty and so cool and soooo taken. I realized that I was bisexual at least when I thought for 5 seconds about what it would be like to be sexual with another woman...and to my suprise...the thought was actaully pleasant. I have slowly moved over towards the lesbian side if the sexual orentation spectrum after realizing that I really prefer women over men...although I am still kinda bi-ish.

So here is my coming out story
I told my mom...she was talking about her new fountain and I said mom...I need to tell you something
Sure honey...what is it
I am bisexual
well that makes my fountain pale in comparison
Then she said what ever you do....dont tell anyone else this

SO what does she do???
She tells everyone....herself
her freinds, my aunt, all of my family
I wanted to CHOOSE who I would come out to....helloooooo
Anyway,
my sister who is NOT religious tells me that I am going to hell
my brother said it is a phase because I just wanna be weird
my dad said it was his fault (I was not going to tell him otherwise...alittle guilt would do him some good)
my mom's friend says it is not natrual because homosexuals cant repeproduce
My aunt said nothing....as usual

go figure!
I just wanted to tell my mom, not the wholw world at the moment.
However I told a good friend, and he said congradulations for realizing that which made me feel better.
I have not yet told my birth father because he is a penicostal and believes that all homosexuals are evil and God hates them...eeek
Our relationship has really suffered since I realized that I am bisexual/ maybe lesbian....he does not know why I am avoiding him, but this secret that I am forced to keep is putting a deep divide between us.

I don't even know what my orientation is. Growing up as a boy, I had attraction to girls, but I didn't want to act on it.

I now know that I'm a woman in my mind. Since starting taking female hormones so I can transition, I've noticed that I have some interest in guys. I see my (male) best friend and get a feeling like I want him to hold me and kiss me.

Some of my sexual fantasies have been me with a guy. Not any particular guy, though, which is a little strange I guess.

It took a while for me. I was raised in a strict household that was not very gay-friendly....

I'm a girl, and in high school I started having crushes on girls. I brushed it off and considered it "admiration" towards beautiful girls. My mother threatened me with kicking me out of the house if I were gay or had a girlfriend, etc. I brushed all feelings for girls aside for the remainder of my high school career.

After I started college I realized that I definitely had crushes on people of the same gender, and of the opposite gender and to me I have crushes depending on the person, not their gender. I don't like somebody just because they have certain sexual organs. I consider myself open. I also think I'm lucky because I've been dating a man for a couple years now, and he's aware of how I feel towards other genders. He is okay with the fact that I cross dress frequently which makes me happy =] I have to say, I usually brush these things off, (since to me, I figure, I'm with him and that's what matters in my life right now), but honestly, he's very accommodating. I'm not really sure when exactly I became completely okay with the fact that I'm bisexual. I've always had the feelings, but I suppressed them for so long thanks to my mom. I just know that it was something that I was hiding for too long, and finally it's come out, and I'm okay with it. I think I'm lucky to have a boyfriend that is okay with my bisexuality. Here's our last conversation regarding this subject:

him: (regarding a movie where there was woman on woman a action) "I heard there was a lezzie scene with two women."
me: "oh, nice!"
him: "...you like that, huh?"
me: *smiling and not saying anything*
him: "oh you do!!"
me: "I didn't say anything!"
him: "I know you like that."
me: *smiles*

He just laughed and was like "yeah, I knew you did", smiled and turned around. I couldn't ask for a better man in my life.

Either way I mean, I had a feeling for so long that I was attracted to both genders, but I wasn't able to accept it as the truth until I moved from my mom's place, because she was so against it that I felt like it was "wrong". After I moved out, I discovered that it wasn't wrong at all, it was just how I felt.

I can't believe that this thread has been around for two months and I have yet to reply to it. Must be asleep at the switch!

Anyhow, my discovery of my sexuality was very typical--at the age of 12 or 13, as I began to develop sexually, my fantasies were all exclusively male. I would watch the other boys in the locker room at school, (All boys, private school. Not all the stereotypes are true, alas.)

It was a very, short gap from this budding sexuality to the realization that I was exclusively attracted to men. It was a longer gap to become reconciled to that.