This is strange for me to type. Here goes! I have only ever dated men. I’m married to a man. Being 40, I grew up in a time when being anything other than a straight cis person was weird/bad/supposedly made up. I had crushes on boys as a kid. Starting as a teen I was attracted to girls too but more in what I thought was a “wow she’s hot; I wish I looked like her” kind of way. I’ve hooked up with women a couple of times (with a guy there) and thought I was being experimental and that any excitement I had was just the novelty and the threesome aspect.

I was on vacation this past week and there were a lot of younger people around and I started reflecting on how things are so different now and young people are much more comfortable being and dating who they want. It got me thinking that had it not been SUCH a huge, huge deal when I was growing up, it’s not crazy to think I would have identified as bi or would have dated a girl. Which then made me go “huh…but if I was bi then, that must mean…” So then I conducted a little experiment where I mentally noted each time I saw an attractive person and noted what gender they presented as, and the attraction was about 70% women, 30% men. (I was really not trying to be a creep about this; just noting as I people watched.)

One reason I’ve always thought I’m not bi is that I’m not attracted to these women in the same way I’m attracted to men. Like for ex., growing up I’d daydream about having a family one day and marrying a man. But on the other hand, if I’d grown up with any LGBTQ role models of any kind, would I have been more likely to imagine female partners in those scenarios?

I’ve had similar thought experiments before and always landed on “Wait, am I …? Me…? Nah!” so I don’t know what shifted or why this feels like a revelation. Also, any time I’ve thought about being sort of “out” bi I worry that I’m just doing “gay tourism” or whatever you might call it.

Anyway, I’m open to sharing this with my husband (he’ll probably be like “duh”) and I’d love to explore this in therapy or something but in the meantime - what the hell? Is this real? What am I supposed to do now?