so when I was about 10, I remember was sleeping over at my friend’s house. i remember nothing else except when she fell asleep, i was staring at the ceiling and I was thinking to myself “i’m a lesbian.” nothing had happened, but for some reason i was thinking that. i’ve gone over that night a thousand times over and over but I can’t remember anything else. then, when I was 11, I remember I was thinking about being a lesbian for a few days. during these few days, i looked up the hashtag #lesbian on instagram, stared at girls butts at volleyball practice trying to see if I liked them, and one night, i went downstairs to sit with my parents far past my bedtime. my dad had been drinking and for some reason, the topic of who i would marry came up and he said “when you marry a man, hell you might even marry a woman!” and I felt happy that he had said that because I was thinking about it at the time and i thought to myself “oh my god he just said that” and i sat down with my mom. so i think what caused those few days of questioning was a “crush” i had on an older girl at girl scout camp. i say “crush” because i don’t know if it was; i don’t THINK it was. I thought she was very cool and I wanted to be her friend and she dressed so cool and I was excited that we were in the same group and so in my head I was like “you have a crush on her” but I was like ????what I don’t think so anyways after those few days of questioning, i completely forgot about it and just carried on being completely boy obsessed. never crushed on girls, never looked at women in “that way”, i was really just boy crazy. later that year, I had my first “big crush” on a boy at school. I thought he was the best person to ever exist. my heart raced when he texted me, i thought about him 24/7, I was in a generally euphoric state during the period which i felt I was in “love” with him. i would lay awake at night happy crying because i liked him so much. id write his name on the shower door, id talk to anyone and everyone about him, etc. this carried on for about six months, but he was never interested in me so i moved on. fyi i’m young for my grade so this all happened in sixth grade/summer leading up to 7th. I also started puberty at around 9. then, on december 21st 2013, i went to the mall with my friend and my mom and all day, i had this weird feeling in my vagina, like just there was a feeling like an ache, and it was literally to every single woman i saw- old, fat, ugly- it didn’t matter. then we were in line at the food court and i remember thinking, “this means you’re a lesbian” and I was like “no, i dont look at girls like that!” but then I was like “oh jesus do I??”. then it went away for like, 2 weeks, but as i spent time alone watching movies over christmas break, i just kept getting these thoughts that i might be gay, like creeping into my head like "you need to think about this" and id be watching movies and feel like a single pulse to completely non sexual stuff of women. and so i did think about it and it was all i was thinking about, but I wasn't having like terrible anxiety, it was more like I just was thinking about it so much and felt removed from myself. like id be looking at a conventionally pretty actress in a movie, and i would feel ****sorry this is NSFW***** a single pulse down there? it was so weird, and nothing I had ever felt before but I didn't like it. anyways, i went to school after break for one day and i was still thinking about it, and so I said "if this is still happening, then I'm going to talk to mom about this". and so I told my mom, she told me it was perfectly normal to be thinking about this because i was going through puberty, and she told me it didn'[t mean i was gay or bi. then she said, even if you turn out to be a lesbian, we will love you no matter what. and I felt so happy that I wasn't a lesbian! I was so relieved. I went to school on cloud 9 and was my old self, but the doubts came back and i became wildly anxious and depressed and whether or not I was gay was all i could think about.

hi i’m a lesbian! and i have known im a lesbian for a really long time and i have a sweet girlfriend of 1 year. it all started when i saw this masc lesbian come out as straight, after that i had my guy friend over and he’s a sweet guy and he was flirting with me (he didn’t know i was gay) im not sure but i panicked and my brain froze and i was like “do i like him”, ever since my brain has been over worked 24/7 for 2 months now and it’s spiralling constantly. im trying to control it but all these thoughts are so disgusting and my brain tries to put him and i in scenarios that make me uncomfortable and i feel panic and i hate it. i have always been comfortable being a lesbian and i still am comfortable as a lesbian, but i dislike these thoughts i have about him and men and i want it to be over. i do not want to experiment with men even tho my brain is telling me i do, i find it disgusting and i dread it, i have a sweet girlfriend and i want to be with her forever, i do not imagine anything with any men and i hate these thoughts. im scared of becoming bisexual/straight one day and i hate hearing sexuality is fluid. its a whole mix of comphet and so-ocd

I’ve always been straight my whole life and I’ve never considered being different nor have i ever had attraction to women but lately I’ve been going through a lot of different thoughts that definitely feel unlike me. When I was a kid and I don’t remember how old I was but im sure like 7 or 8 and my cousin that was I very close to had me do inappropriate things to her that I didn’t really know anything about at that time. After that happened to me I knew it was wrong and I felt so bad and disgusting and scared but at the time I didn’t really know anything and I remember when my mom would drop me over my grandmas house while she would work, I’d take my grandma’s phone and I looked up kissing videos and I saw the kissing scene from Jennifer’s body and looking back on it I just feel so much shame and confusion bc it certainly feels embarrassing. My cousin always liked girls but I never did. I loved sitting and watching Disney movies preferably princess and the frog and wanting to be a princess getting married to a prince just like in all the movies. I knew who I was from a very young age and that never changed about me. When I learned what porn was at an older age, I started becoming hyper sexual so I watched tutorials videos of women to learn how to pleasure myself. When I was a kid and to now I’ve never looked at women in that way. I’ve had best friends and sleepovers it’s never been anything sexual, romantic, or intimate. Just simply innocent friendships and hangouts. When I got to high school that’s when i started remembering what happened to me and i remember how the girls would talk about their first kisses and i remembered my sa and how I felt so scared to say anything to anyone bc I didn’t want people to think badly of me simply bc my first kiss was like that so I would simply just not say anything. Lately I’ve been having obsessive thoughts out of nowhere wondering if my sexuality has changed or if im bi or is it just my thoughts? I’ve always had ocd and even in school, the kids would pick at me because I always eat my food in order and by the lightest color. But lately it’s gotten worse. It’s like I’ve never had thoughts like this nor have I ever been like this. Not even when I was a child. And humans question themselves of course but this feels like something different. I’ve gotten distant from my best friend who’s also a girl and I’ve just cut off social media and female friend relationships at all because for some reason my brain tells me that it’s “gay” to even hug your friends or hold their hands anymore like you used to do when you were kids. I even got to a point where I would watch women porn and try to masturbate just to see if I was attracted to it or not like that’s how bad the thoughts got. It felt like an evil voice was in my head trying to convince me and sweet talk me to do and enjoy those disgusting things even when my body didn’t want to. I eventually had confided in my bf about it because he was also a victim of sa and so he helped me through it and I stopped doing it but then and my bf (now ex) broke up a couple days ago and now ive been dealing with this alone which feels like the hardest part for me. So I’ve texted my bff a lot to catch up because I’ve been distant dealing with this and I was just checking my phone awaiting for her responses to my texts because she tends to type slow and usually I never think anything of it because I used to check my phone all the time when I would await my boyfriends reply or simply just a text from him and so now im having thoughts like “why am I awaiting her texts” “do I like my friend?” Its just so many obsessive thoughts and so much overthinking that I am getting tired of because It’s been going on for months so I know this is a lot but please if anyone can please help me I beg, it would be such a great help appreciated bc this has became a really big impact on my life and not in a good way lol. Thank you !!

MY STORY i’ve grown up in a mostly supportive family and area and we are not homophobic. i grew up knowing what gay people were and i don’t care i grew up not to care. im from nj. my parents are friends with a lesbian couple and we see them once in while. i grew up watching people like joey graceffa whose gay. i also had some school friends that were gay like this kid kevin and this girl elizabeth. i also babysit a little gay boy who likes to dress up as a girl and i always tell him to embrace it and defend him. i wouldn’t care if a friend was gay or anything like i wouldn’t care if my sister was it would just make me rethink things about myself i think. from a young age i liked male attention and had labeled boys as crushes from my mom says. i dont think i liked girls when i was younger and my mom said it was only guys. but idk maybe there was. However i do remeber hairy men when i was younger would gross me out like with black hair and pale. my mom said every since i was a little girl i would tell her i liked boys. as i got older and in middle school i always wanted guys to want me and think i was funny and pretty and i would get awkward around them and nervous around them. but i remeber i didn’t have specific things i found hot or attractive and if someone said something was hot i would just agree and start telling myself it was hot even when i didn’t care i just wanted to be cool. then hocd hit at 13-15 during covid where i was so confused. the first time i had hocd i would like not avoid the thoughts i would do a lot of testing to figure it out for hours and hours in diffrent ways and would feel the same arousal and attraction im feeling now. but i remeber wanting to end up straight and try and rule out gay stuff. but it wasn’t avoidance i didnt have anything against gay people. when the thoughts were still there i still would only act on stuff with boys. when i first had it i remeber crying to my mom for like a month and i was like whatever she’s not helping im gonna figure this out by myself. that’s when i started testing myself for two years. over time it was just there. ofc it was distressing but i don’t remember much. slowly when i went to high school it faded because i loved going to parties and flirting with guys and talking about them and thinking what boy am i gonna kiss tonight it’s gonna be a crazy night. when covid ended and we went back to real like i started going to parties and kissing boys. i started dating one boy and we would talk all the time just not really hangout so we broke up because i wanted more male attention and was kinda bored of the relation shop. i started hu with this one boy and like didn’t really know if i was into it cause i kinda wanted to hoe around and we were kinda like locked in and i didn’t know if i wanted that. so he got the hint i wasn’t into it and stopped talking to me moved on to another girl and got popular in the span of like two weeks. after this i was obsessed with him and got all nervous to see him and i always just wanted to be like can we go back to the way we were. we then started to “hate” eachother and i was so sad all the time he didn’t want me anymore and moved on. we hooked up in and off for two years. then i started hooking up with this one kid cause i always thought he was really funny and chill. we hooked up for a little and then i started to get the ick. i then got with like two other boys at parties. so then we stopped talking and i started talking to the “hate eachother kid” again. we then started dating and he’s my current boyfriend of a little over a year. all these instances made me feel good and i loved the attention and drama. but i struggled with committing with people. i don’t know if this all for validation because i loved when men wanted me it gave me an ego boost and still does even if i didn’t really want them or couldn’t get it to last with a boy. i’m scared it was all for attention and confidence there attention gave me. i liked feeling like a baddie. i liked when the hot funny guys liked me now at 18 it’s back and for six months all i been doing is talking to my mom my sister and my dad about it constantly researching and checking and for those six months i was in a haze of just despair. i was also in erp but it was so bad i couldn’t sit with the distress so i didn’t make much progress and my pyscuatrust told me to stop for a while until we get my brain right with meds. after three weeks no erp and more meds of seretonin and rexulti i finally don’t feel distress or anxious but the feelings of attraction are still there. i thought there supposed to vanish. i’m from nj and from a supportive family and ig supportive environment and friends. i’m 18. and in high school okay so growing up my mo said i only liked guys and would talk about guy crushes and had two celebrity guy crushes. this was all the way up into middle school. then when middle school came around i started liking this guy cause he was funny and popular. then we started dating and everytime he would do something affectionate i would start crying and get so tense and freak out so i broke up with him because he made me so nervous . a year later i still liked him and i got back together with him and the same thing happened so i broke up with him. i think during middle school i liked guys. my mom said i did. i also would get really nervous when any of them would come around to hangout and i wouldn’t talk. but i would also just follow what my friends and sister said. if they said a guy was hot i would just agree. i dont know if i actually found them attractive. i still kinda do this to this day. then covid hit for two years. during those two years i was in my house house and got hocd. so i had hocd sexual intrusive thoughts only and had the groinal really bad. but i would still try and have crushes on guys and think i did. but my hocd also attached itself to one of my pretty friends who was a girl. it made me have a lot of sexual thoughts that i would masturbate to about her. it was about her waist and stuff and it made me loose myself. before hocd me and her were bestfriends and really close and im not sure if i had feelings for her. i mean i was always jealous cause all the guys always wanted her and thought she was pretty. then we got out of covid and i was now in high school. the hocd slowly faded my freshman year. in the begining of freshman year there was this tall brunette guy who i started talking too for months and started dating and i would get all nervous when he came around. i really liked him and enjoyed talking to him. then we broke up cause we never hung out. after that for the next two years i developed what i thought two be two genuine crushes. i would make out with cute guys at parties for the experience and to add cute guys to my kids list. basically hocd was gone but i did this one thing sometimes i did is i would always try to prove i was straight to my mom. like if we were watching tv i would say a guy was hot. i didn’t want her to think i was gay even though she wouldn’t care at all but i would do this because she was the only one i would talk to about my sexual intrusive thoughts and feelings. i was hooking up with my guy best friend but then started to looses interest but he was still obsessed. one day he caught on i wasn’t into it started hanging out with older people and going to there parties and started hooking up with this older girl. i got super jealous and heartbroken cause he didn’t care about me. i don’t know if this heartbreak and crying was because he got popular, he wasn’t giving me attention, we weren’t friends anymore or because i actually liked him. i always had a thing for him after this. i started going to the older people parties and i always wanted to see him there and make him jealous. one and half years later we started talking again and we started dating. once we started dating we started having sex. almost every time or most of the time i finish when he eats me out, we have actual sex or if we’re just humping. we say i love you and stuff. ths first six months we would do everything together like just little shopping trips or whatever. we were always hanging out. then it started to dial down and i started getting annoyed with him sometimes which my mom and sister said was normal. but i still said love you and we would hangout and have sex but idk. i would have thoughts like we aren’t going to last because he’s not smart enough, and sometimes my mom would say this too. but she would also say how much he loved me and how he was such a sweet guy and how he would do anything for me. but idk i just wouldn’t feel it. like i still showed pda and did like him. would a lesbian who didn’t know it yet likely date a guy for a year and a half at 18, have sex like once a week, have orgasmed during penetration, creamed, squirted finished by his hands and mouth then hocd hit again. this time much worse. it was even stronger it felt like with the feelings. the first three months i was in this haze and was crying everyday that i might be gay and how i really really really didn’t want to be. i still have hocd and im in therapy and on medication. i cant tell if my attraction to men is real. my mom says it is and she knows me and im not gay and ive shown genuine excitement about guys. my sister says the same thing. but it feel like ive convinced myself ive been doing it to fit in. the thoughts got bad and ive told my mom my sister my dad and ive told three friends. my mom and sister ive told the details too or the intrusive thoughts and false attraction. i’ve always found women attractive and i find it easier to find them attractive like physically but never felt this way can i conclude im not lesbian? or like is it likely my attraction to men hasn’t been genuine