[Mallika]

Hi there,

Thank you so much for coming onto TeenHelp to share your story.

I personally believe that gender identity and sexuality is a spectrum. Our society loves to put things into boxes, but reality is that life is never black and white. We all experience different forms of attraction at different points in our life, but the important thing here is that we shouldn't feel pressurised to give ourselves a label.

I went to a girls-only secondary school. Many of us (including myself) were attracted to another girl at some point back then. However, I don't consider myself a lesbian, because I've still been into boys all along. While I felt attracted to a girl at one point in my life, I wouldn't think that would be my sexuality, but rather something that I experienced at a certain point in time at a given environment (i.e. girls-only environment at an age where hormones are raging wildly). And my fellow classmates who were also attracted to girls ended up being in heterosexual relationships after we finished up with secondary school. So in other words, some incidents may not define us entirely.

Whether you're attracted to someone from your own gender or to the opposite gender, remember that our feelings occur naturally. Many of us experience some degree of confusion about our gender identity at some point in life, but we shouldn't feel like we have to give ourselves a label. From personal experience, I wouldn't underestimate the power of environment, past relationships and other inter-personal interactions on our sexuality.

As far as fantasies go, the nature of your fantasies do reflect your personal beliefs, sexual preferences, identity, etc. So from your fantasies, it does appear that you are into men. From your description, it appears that negative experiences with girls has strongly influenced your sexuality, and reasonably so. However, the fact that you've been attracted to girls before probably indicates that you might be bisexual. Again, I don't want to assign you a label, because like I said, gender identity and sexuality can be very fluid. Of course, there are people who know right from a young age that they are 100% gay, but for many of us, it's not that straightforward.

Physical arousal can happen in many forms (even performing acts on oneself without a partner a.k.a. masturbation), so I feel that alone shouldn't be a parameter to judge your sexuality. At the end of the day, you should go with what makes you comfortable with yourself and what makes your heart content. Relationships transcend physical intimacy; so if you find that you are deeply in love with a person who happens to be the same gender as you, so be it! If you fall in love with someone of the opposite gender, that's also wonderful (remember that past relationships don't dictate the kind of relationships we might get into in future). Rather, go with what your heart says; more often than not, the answer is already there deep within.

Give yourself some time out to figure your sexuality - perhaps you might want to meet with a sexuality counsellor/therapist in your area to dis-entangle some of these confusions.

Take care!