It's possible to honestly believe you're straight when you're not, and it's called compulsory heterosexuality. You get so many social messages that you're expected to be straight, that you expect yourself to be straight, and may miss or ignore signs that you're anything else, in favor of what you think is heterosexual attraction.
When I was a teenager, I really did think I had crushes on boys. I was aware that I just didn't want to have a traditional romantic relationship, but years later, I realize that I didn't want to have any romantic relationship at all - if I thought someone was a cool person and I wanted to be friends with him, I figured I must be romantically interested in him, because that was what everyone talked about, right? I had male celebrity and musician crushes, too, but now I know it was also just admiring somebody's style and personality and thinking he seemed like an interesting person! When I was 18 and I started college, a guy I had recently made friends with wanted me to be his girlfriend, and since I liked him as a friend, I went along with it. But naturally, to him that meant treating me differently than before, and I didn't get it, so I was unenthusiastic about his treatment of me as a romantic partner until he broke up with me. After that, I realized it wasn't just him and I didn't want to try that with ANY other guys, so I didn't think about relationships for a while.
Later, I realized I liked a female friend more than usual, and when I put more thought into whether I liked other women and how, everything began to make far more sense than it did when I thought I was straight. The only sign I can think of that I was gay is that I have always noticed girls' appearances more than guys' - with guys, I understand what's considered conventionally attractive, but I don't really have my own "type" or opinions about their physical features, whereas noticing pretty girls was more intrinsic and for my own reasons. But I hadn't ever thought about being romantically interested in girls, because I didn't know it was a likely possibility, so I just didn't notice until I was 20. I can imagine how somebody wouldn't notice for even longer, to the point of staying in unsatisfying relationships with partners of the wrong gender and thinking that's just the way it is, if they had less exposure to information about other orientations, and more pressure to be straight.
26 Jan 2015, 5:32 pm
