I have a hard time recognizing my feelings. It may sound funny to some people, but my brain gets clogged up with possibilities and other people’s opinions and societal expectations and I often find myself questioning “how do I really feel?” This applies to my sexuality too.

Here is my situation: I have been in a committed relationship with a man for 11 years (he is 30m, I am 31f.) we are engaged :) I am struggling with a few things:

1.) when I was 7 my female best friend and I experimented sexually . We got caught by her mother and were crying and made to feel like what we were doing was bad. I kissed a lot of girls when I was a kid. I believe once I grew up I internalized that being sexual, and being attracted to girls, was WRONG. I have a lot of internalized homophobia.

I’m trying to do the work to accept my sexual attractions but I’m scared of what that might reveal. Am I still attracted to my female best friend, or am I just working out my issues? Sometimes I find myself having inappropriate attraction toward people in my life who I shouldn’t and it’s embarrassing. Like I’ve had sex dreams about my father or family members. I think I confuse a wanting to be close with someone with sexual intimacy. And I confuse extreme adrenaline / anxiety with attraction. Does anyone else experience this?

2.) when I told my male partner about my journey of questioning my sexuality, it combusted because I essentially wanted it to be an open relationship and he didn’t. I was somewhat codependent on him especially during the pandemic and didn’t feel like I could break up with him to explore my sexuality with women and be single. I felt trapped, because I wanted that sexual freedom but emotionally I loved him and depended on him massively. I chose to stay with him. We are engaged now, and we have sooo much fun together… but I feel like my approach toward figuring out my sexuality while with him was MESSY and now there’s a lot of internalized homophobia and guilt about my attractions. I hurt him a lot by making him feel like he wasn’t enough for me. I know I can talk this through with him and I have many times, but I still find myself feeling like my sexuality is what made our relationship struggle for so many years. And it still feels unresolved. We do enjoy our sex life together but I feel like I have a lot of shame for how I approached figuring it out with him. It’s not like I need his acceptance; he wants me as I am, a bisexual or pansexual woman… he just wants to be monogamous and a few years ago I didn’t. I kind of just stuffed it down because I wanted our relationship to work. I’m trying to get couples therapy started so that I can separate my sexuality with guilt for causing fights. Any advice on how to move past this guilt would be greatly appreciated.