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Give yourself some space to figure this out. It is okay to love people, have consensual sex with people, and develop relationships with people, regardless of gender and sexual orientation labels. Whatever conclusion you end on, you will be okay. Maybe this is sexual, and you’ll open the door to sex that is not dictated by gender. Maybe you’ll realize you’ve fallen into platonic love. Maybe you want to explore a relationship with this woman. Give yourself the permission to own what you are feeling, regardless of what that means in the long run. So where do you go from here? Being honest about what you’re feeling, which you’re doing by writing to me, is vital. That emotional intimacy can be as titillating (or, for some, terrifying) as physical intimacy. Feelings that feel like romantic love can develop for someone we don’t want to be physically intimate with. The other possibility is that you have fallen in platonic love, which happens more than we admit. More and more, folks are embracing pansexuality, which is essentially gender blind sexual, emotional, or romantic attraction. All of this to say, allow yourself the opportunity to feel your feelings because love, I believe, is about the person, the soul inside, not the body, not the shell.Īnd that can be true even when your sexual orientation skews in another direction. He did go on to primarily date men, maybe only men for all I know, but it wasn’t right for me to box him into any identity or to discount what our relationship meant to him. It wasn’t my job to declare what his sexual or romantic preferences were, nor was it my job to label them or limit them. How close-minded was I to assume I knew what he did or didn’t want, that he couldn’t have feelings for me as a person, outside of my gender? When he asked me why, I told him that he was gay, that it was okay, and he should be with men, not waste time with me.
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We dated for a month or two, but I didn’t take things seriously because I didn’t trust that he might actually have feelings for me. When he asked me out, I was surprised because I assumed he was gay. Is it radical to allow yourself to go where your feelings and attractions take you?Īs I thought about your question, I kept circling back to this guy I dated when I was 17. Moreover, many Gen Zers are shedding those labels altogether. We are moving into an era where there is a broader breadth of identity and sexuality labels. They told me that many of their friends reject the idea of boxing oneself into any identity in particular. And I think more and more folks have felt comfortable identifying as queer, above other more limiting labels.Ī while back, I had a conversation with a couple of teenagers about sexuality and gender identity. As we became more involved with allyship and activism, queer culture became the prominent umbrella for anything outside traditional heteronormative concepts of gender identity and sexuality. When I was a teenager and young adult, many of my friends identified as bisexual, although they may have had more partners of one gender over another. This upends things it challenges you, and potentially your peers, to expand the concept of who you are. I understand that there is an added layer of difficulty, especially when you may have fought for your identity. You’ve spent your life being physically attracted to men, and this is incongruous with what you’re now feeling for this woman. There is a difference between physical attraction and romantic love. While they can certainly be connected, that is separate from why or how we fall in love with a person. Sexual orientation is based on sexual desire toward people of particular genders. What if it’s a lot simpler than that? Is it possible to fall in love with someone at odds with one’s sexual orientation? The short answer is yes. The thing about love and sexuality is that we spend a lot of time overthinking things. That’s a platitude that is easy to latch on to, but developing feelings, be they love or lust or like or some combination, are nuanced, to be sure. What does this mean? Am I bisexual? I feel like my entire identity has been turned upside down. Now I’m confused about my sexuality, as I am starting to develop feelings for my female friend. She’s made all the mistakes, so you don’t have to… Ask Erin is a weekly advice column, in which Erin answers your burning questions about anything at all.