My story

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I hope you'll forgive me the arrogance of talking about myself. I'm doing it because I haven't met anybody else who has been through the same experiences and I'd really like to hear from anybody else who has.

I'm a guy, an only child, living in Southern England. I came to puberty in the early 1980s and I felt that I must be gay. This was not a good time to be gay and attitudes were very different then; there were few public figures who where "out" then and those that were (Quentin Crisp and Boy George for example) weren't exactly good role models for me. The first wave of AIDS panic was just beginning and the government were hostile (Section 28 came along in 1988). There was of course no Internet and no school counselors to talk to. I couldn't talk to my parents or anybody at all. It was a deeply and profoundly lonely time for me and I didn't speak to a single gay person (or even hear a positive opinion of homosexuality) until I was 18.

From school I went on to University in London. It turned out that my college was pretty homophobic and didn't have a gay society I did however make contact with some other young gay people via a social group in another part of London. I kind of made a few friends but I never really fitted in and I didn't like the commercial gay scene. I certainly never had any relationships.

From my early 20s onwards I became asexual - not because I had no sexual feelings but because I had no way of expressing them. I began to notice that I was becoming more physically attracted to women and looked for social groups for bisexual people. There were none. Periodically I tried dating agencies to contact males or females but I'm not a handsome man and my attempts were clumsy and bore no fruit.

Now I'm in my mid 40s and I am pretty much exclusively attracted to women. My experience of relating to women is dreadfully limited and immature and at my age that can't look anything other than creepy. If I look at males I was once attracted to it's odd - the best way I can describe it is if you were mad over one particular band in your youth and then happen to hear them again years later only to think "this is nowhere near as exciting as I remember". I can't forget my past though and I will always remain a supported of LGBT rights.

However (and please forgive me) it feels like I went through a whole lot of suffering, isolation and loneliness in my teenage years for nothing. It sometimes feels like these years were stolen from me.

A psychologist has told me that it is impossible for a person's sexuality to change but I'm being honest with myself here.

Can anybody relate to any of this?

Please note that I haven't deliberately tried to change my sexuality. I wouldn't think that that would work. What has happened has happened naturally. It's just confusing. It may normally be easier to live a heterosexual life but I've been cheated of a lot of the experience that is expected at my age.

Thanks for listening.

D

I think it's possible to change your orientation from time to time. I know I have.

I'm trying to figure this out myself and was thinking of posting something on it in the LGBT forum sometime soon. I've been attracted to women my whole life, but after starting HRT to transition(pre-op mtf transsexual), My sense of being attracted to anything sort of tanked for the last two years and only recently has picked up again, and I find myself attracted to both male and female and it's confusing, but not overly burdensome to my life with trying to deal with it.

I was straight originally: I remember being attracted to girls when I was a young kid, and guys were nothing more than buddies. Then when I hit puberty it completely changed on me. Freaked me out an awful lot, but I eventually came to terms with it.

I think sexual orientation can change in people, in some people than others, but I've never seen it to be a choice. It certainly wasn't for me.

I have a friend, and his orientation changed from straight to homo. So I think the opposite dirrection is possible too.