TW just to be safe? Mentions of kink/BDSM and dating/being intimate with men, no in-depth details though for either of those!

I have been kinky for a long time…like even before I really knew what that was. I didn’t realize I was a lesbian until my early 20s (like had zero clue before that). I think there are manyyyy factors at play as to why I had no clue I liked women/am a lesbian for so long (comphet, conservative & homophobic family, religion, societal expectations, etc). But I do think being kinky also played a role in that too. It at LEAST played a role in why I was so hesitant to call myself a lesbian even after I realized I liked women (and that I only liked women). Because I had my fair share of boyfriends prior to ✨the gay awakening✨ lol and I was intimate with them, and kinky with almost all of them, and I enjoyed that. But I think it was the kink I was attracted to, not the guys themselves.

When I first suspected I was a lesbian, I knew I had only liked women since the moment I realized I liked women, and it had been a while, so I was getting more and more skeptical that I was going through the “bi-cycle” and that my attraction to men would come back at some point (spoiler: it never did lol). Being a lesbian made sense to me, it felt like the right label. But what I just couldn’t wrap my head around was how that could be because of my past relationships with guys. I know it’s not uncommon for lesbians to date and be intimate with men prior to coming out. I could kind of explain what I thought was attraction to them at the time as comphet (it’s still is/was kind of confusing and hard to wrap my head around but it makes sense).

But what stumped me was like…I kinda enjoyed my sexual encounters with them? Sometimes a lot! I never liked their dicks (I’ll leave it at that), I always knew I did NOT like doing stuff to them and I never did. But like I definitely enjoyed receiving and the overall interactions for the most part? And I think it was because of kink! And I was confusing me liking the kink experiences as me liking them (my male partners), if that makes sense?

For context, my kinks are very important to my sex life. Like to be honest, I don’t think I could be with a partner that didn’t at least have a little bit of kinkiness in them and indulge me from time to time. Like they’re a hugeeee part of what turns me on. I’m-not-sure-I-could-get-off-without-them type of thing.

I knew I had kinks by the time I had my first boyfriend and we got intimate. Almost every guy I was intimate with, I was able to incorporate some level of kinkiness into. Obviously nothing crazy, because I was still new to the BDSM world and I was the one introducing it. But still, I think those experiences gave me SO MUCH dopamine because they were my first times indulging in my kinks in real life, so therefore that aspect made me enjoy it so much more than I would have if I wasn’t kinky or if kink hadn’t been incorporated.

And like, BDSM content was hard for me to come by as a teenager to begin with. So the stuff I DID come across was ALWAYS male/female dynamics. Like I was the kind of girl reading One Direction smut in bed at 1 am💀 (And to be fair, I’m sure part of my lack of exposure to WLW BDSM content at the time was partially just because of me not even searching for WLW kink content because I was so deep in the closet lol, but still, male/female bdsm content is def way more common to come across). And I liked the kinkiness of that content, so I think I conflated that with liking men since that’s the only time I was experiencing kink. And also, now that I know I’m a lesbian, I am heavilyyyy drawn towards masc- and androgynous-presenting women. So I feel like that was also part of why there wasn’t a huge, obvious disconnect between me and the shit I was reading with men. Because I do like masculinity...just only in women LMFAO.

So yeah. Just curious if anyone else also experienced this or something similar!!