After a short (kind of) I’m back, although not on the right day. I’ve been trying to adjust to working 40 hour weeks while still having some sort of social life. As a result, the blog got put to the side. But I’m back today, posting about a topic I rarely speak about (on here or publicly).
To kick off pride week, I’m talking about sexuality, and more specifically some of the things that may go through your mind when accepting your sexuality and sharing it with others. Of course, these are just from my own experience and do not extend to everyone nor is it an all inclusive list. It’s just 5 things I experienced, and how I dealt with them.
1. “But… If I marry a girl I can’t have my own baby.” This one was probably what kept me from accepting myself for the longest. At one point I told myself being bi was fine because I could still choose to marry a guy and have my own kid. I’ve now dismissed this and am okay with adoption if that is how my life turns out, but it was a really hard thing for me to accept. There was no way I could marry a girl and have a kid that was biologically both of ours.
2. “I hope things don’t get weird when we hug now that she knows…” This may sound stupid, but I felt hesitant to hug friends or say “I love you” like I had a hundred times before, once I’d told them. Even though none of my friends seemed to care, I always worried about this a bit. I eventually got over it and it got easier with every positive response (I think I only had 1 negative response ever).
3. “When is the right time to tell someone I’m dating? Do I even have to tell them?” Of course if someone is gay/lesbian they don’t experience this. But everyone else in the LGBTQ+ community may experience it. In my first relationship after accepting myself I was accused of “lying” about it because it didn’t come up for 3 months. I never said anything, but I never said otherwise either. It wasn’t about hiding, it was more timing. I felt like the sooner I said it, the bigger of a deal it would be. In my second and current relationship, it came up somewhere in the first month or so and wasn’t a problem. I still don’t have an exact answer for this question, I suppose when the time feels right.
4. “Does it make sense to tell my parents if I haven’t dated a girl yet?” I know I am fortunate enough to have a family I could come out to. But it seems weird to me, having not actually dated a girl. I may not be taken seriously until I do (or at least that’s how I feel). So for now I’ve decided to leave it until I have a girlfriend (if I do).
5. “Why do I even have to come out?” In my opinion, if you don’t know who I’m dating you don’t need to know who I could be dating. That may sound strange coming from someone writing about this on a blog. But I just never felt the need to tell everyone from that kid I met at camp 6 years ago to my best friends via an online declaration. That isn’t to say I’m not “out” – most of my close friends know, there are social media posts of mine relating to it and there are people I’ve met that I told in 5 minutes because it just sort of came up. I just never felt the need to write something explicitly for the purpose of “coming out”. If you know, you know. If you don’t, either you’ll figure it out eventually or you won’t.
Sikirar 