True Life: I'm 29 And I Still Haven't Quite Figured Out My Sexuality
Sometimes I wish that my sexual preferences were just straight up black and white.
I wish I could just be like, "I'm into THIS... I'm NOT into THAT. Wa laaa!"
Unfortunately as much as I would like for that to be the case, my experience thus far has shown that it's most definitely many weird shades of grey.
And if I had to be totally honest with you…
It’s been really difficult to deal with.
I’m writing this article because I want to be vulnerable and open.
I know that I’m not the only person in the world feeling this way, even though sometimes most of the time I feel like I’m all alone.
In a nutshell, I hope that by me sharing this perspective I can also inspire others to share, relate, or seek to understand more of who they are.
...even if you are a bit of a late bloomer, like myself.
What The Hell Am I?
Thus far in my life I've had a variety opportunities to explore my sexuality in different ways but for whatever reason, I have still found myself in this middle ground where my feelings about who I am sexually seem to constantly deviate and it's hard to understand what is real and what is not.
On top of that, as I explore new worlds of sexuality, it's not always easy to understand how to operate, especially when they are not embraced by mainstream culture.
This week I'm doing a challenge through the Cycle Up Project where I am choosing to love myself for the next 7 days.
That essentially looks like me finding ways to love more parts of myself whether that be parts of my body, parts of my mind, my self-worth, my health, and today… my sexuality.
To be totally honest and vulnerable with you, I identify as a straight male but I don't know if that is an accurate label or not.
Now I've had gay experiences before but when it happened I wasn't particularly turned on... but I also wasn't turned off.
And after the experience I actually felt more straight than gay which was kind of odd to me.
Ever since that time I've gone in and out between feeling totally straight and then other times, finding myself fantasizing about not being straight.
When this first started happening I really had to work hard to accept these deviant thoughts that I was having.
I was just like,
“What the hell... where did these thoughts come from and why are they here now?”
It was so odd at first. Nothing really added up.
I was probably about 24 when I first started having these thoughts which was a total surprise for me because I presumed that once you hit about 20 you have a pretty good idea of what your sexuality is...
Clearly that was a false assumption.
And since I'm not actually attracted to the physical looks of men, it makes for a very complex scenario because there's basically a gap between meeting someone and actually having a sexual experience with them.
That has been quite a major conundrum for me.
I'm just like...
“Well how do I even explore this if the door that needs to open isn't quite there?”
I'm not attracted to actually opening the door that would lead to the experience that I am attracted to.
Hmm...
Sometimes I feel like I’m a bit of a straggler because I'm 29 years old yet I still don't fully understand who I am in a sexual sense.
Sometimes I ask myself,
"Did I miss something?"
I do a ton of personal development work on myself and so I'm always wondering why this part of me has been so latent.
Life seems to be a process of opening up more and more and finding the courage to be more vulnerable.
I thought I was a pretty vulnerable dude, but ever since these feelings have come around I’ve realized that I still have quite a ways to go.
A New Way Of Relating
I will say that the gay experience I had, which happened a few years back, really opened up a lot of doors for me in terms of my own sexual exploration.
It was after that experience that I realized something very important:
I am not monogamous.
I desire to form intimate relationships with more than just one person.
This was yet another curve ball that was not easy to accept.
Over this past year-and-a-half I've been given the opportunity to explore polyamory with my girlfriend.
Polyamory is a form of what I like to call “decentralized dating” where you can choose to have more than one partner, or as the word polyamory suggests, "many loves".
The difference between that and a swinger or just a plain open relationship, is that in a polyamorous relationship you are looking for a sense of consistency.
For me, I’m looking to create a lasting relationship, even though that one relationship is not the only one.
Exploring this new structure of relating has been absolutely fascinating to me.
It has also been one of the most challenging things I've ever explored.
And with that, it has truly shown me that there are alternative ways of approaching life.
Although those ways may be difficult and seem very outlandish at first, they can serve as very real and sustainable ways of living your life
I live with my girlfriend and just last night her partner slept over at our house.
It was just a sleepover, nothing sexual about it, but for some reason it felt incredibly new to me.
In the morning there were so many thoughts and questions running through my mind.
It required me to really get real with myself and truly accept the reality that I am choosing to live.
Polyamory really encourages me to look at my sexuality and how I relate to other people in a whole new way.
It's a constant challenge that is quite often...
...very confusing.
It's Been Quite The Journey
For me it seems that confusion and growth seem to go hand in hand.
It's as though the confusion inspires my mind to ask more questions that I may have not asked, had my life my been a bit more straight and vanilla...
The more confused I am, the more I feel like I am learning and growing.
This of course comes well AFTER all the shit hits the fan... but the feeling of growth sets in soon enough.
So as much as it's uncomfortable to be confused and not always sure as to what is happening, I always feel like I am growing and transforming as a human being.
For me, the big lesson I’ve learned is to accept yourself no matter how slow the process is.
You'll always find the experience you need when you need it.
If you continue to search for who you are, you'll find that part of you.
And although that part of you may be much different from the way you first imagined it…
It will likely be one of the best things you could have ever uncovered...
I’m excited for the moment I feel confident enough to say,
“Hey... this is who I am and it’s fucking great!”
I know there will be a day when that comes around but for now I am just going to be grateful for the things I know...
...and remain excited for the potential of whom I will become.
Thank You So Much
Thank you so much for taking the time to read this. I really appreciate your support. It's the first time I've ever shared anything like this, especially on a public level.
There are some family and friends that I have yet to share this with and thus writing this has been quite a rush!
It’s definitely something I hesitated to do, but in the end I’m really glad I did.
Here’s to opening up... just a little bit more :)
~ axios
This is me :)
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One of my issues with society is the urgency with which it wants to label everything. Not everyone fits into left or right, so they make a third option or 46 options...why not just leave it open ended? Why does your sexuality need to be defined? i would check off a box that said straight male in a survey but I don't really identify as being a straight male much more than I identify with being a "right cheek freckle-er". It's an arbitrary word to make it easier to catalogue me and I would rather not be catalogued.
Glad you decided to love yourself :-)
@whatamidoing you are so right. As much as labeling can be a useful thing in terms of being able to more easier interact with the outside word, the concept in itself implies a lot of limitations. It can easily feel like an obligation... I HAVE to know who I am so I can SHARE who I am. I'd like to live in a world where you are encouraged to take your time and that it's okay to say "I don't know" when you really don't know.
Thanks for sharing and reading man. Really appreciated this.
We'd love to have you in the Be Awesome chats, link is on my profile. We talk about this kind of stuff sometimes
Wow, this is a very special topic, sometimes difficult to talk about. Congratulations for opening your heart. It's a raw soul. I didn't have such an experience to compare, but I feel deep respect for everything you wrote here. Congratulations one more time :)
I so appreciate you! Always feels good to hear that validation. Thanks so much for reading and sharing :)
I so appreciate people being real about their lives and their struggles.
If it helps at ALL, I struggled a lot with my own sexuality in my twenties... and thirties...
Hell, I'm 46 and STILL feel confused by it all. It's all very similar to your struggles (I was honestly really surprised to see so many similar thoughts and struggles that I've had myself written out like that!) except that I'm married with children.
Thank you for sharing, I'm sure that wasn't the easiest thing to do, but I'm sure it will help people to feel less alone as I'm sure it's at least somewhat common for some others as well.
Wow @byn I really appreciate this! It's amazing how many similarities we discover about each other when we choose to share the things that are more sensitive in nature. It feels good to know that I'm not the only one. I've always known that, just isn't as evident when you're in the thick of it! It feels good to accept that sexuality, in its nature, is a long process of discovery. Probably one of the most challenging too!
I really appreciate your thoughts here @byn, thank you so much for sharing :)
I love reading people's 'inner thoughts' so to speak. I appreciate people who can be real and put themselves out there. It's been good to watch your videos and read your posts.
It hurts me to read posts like this. It's as if there is so much pain, sickness and mental disease in this world that "simple" things leave us confused and wondering. Why simple? Because attraction is just that and love goes deeper than attraction so it doesn't really matter "what" you are, it matters that you allow yourself to find love (and that our world allows you to find love). I hope you find yourself, and I hope we can heal in ways that will allow our next generation to simply worry about what they are and not so much who they are sexually.
Thank you @metzli, I fully agree with you and truly hope that too. We are the trailblazers!
I feel like our life purpose is to become androgynous in a sense while still honouring the body we are born in and our life path. I do feel we have to unite within the masculine and the feminine rather than try to seek that wholeness from another person because that is a 3 d dualistic experience rather than an internal unification which would result in an outer Union. Maybe we can learn from different energies on our journey for different reason for healing. Although I am feminine I identify more wifh masculine wounding and patterns and hand hd to work on balancing my feminine and I often am attracted to more feminine guys wifh more feminine patterning. I think the human body isn’t always a representation of the soul but that ultimately all that matters is learning through these partners and expressions to find our own inner union between the polarities. Hope that made sense so hRd to explain this stuff
Want to write a post on this now
Yes that does make sense to me @ultravioletmag. It wouldn't surprise me at all if one day in the future we discover that we're all a lot weirder, and unique, and diverse than we originally thought. Maybe we'll start seeing ourselves from an analog scale where we can identify in a variety of ways that are constantly changing rather than a digital one where we are either this, or that. Maybe we won't need to label as much because we discover that the human essence expresses itself in a variety of diverse ways.
I think that in the end we live in a vehicle thats a body and we have a mind that filters experiences. That mind and body has an impact on our desires. Those desires can also be impacted by our environment growing up. And so there's a lot of things that are filtering the experience. So maybe we are androgynous in our purest form, but here on Earth we tend to lean towards finding the energies that balance our vehicles. Its a concept I'm constantly exploring.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts here @ultravioletmag! Much love