Q & A: Why Have My Feelings Changed To Focus On My Girlfriend?

Q: I’ve been relationship a person for a number of years, and I like him. We are sexually energetic, and we’re each comparatively glad. Recently, I’ve developed emotions it appears for a feminine pal of mine. I’ve at all times recognized as straight, however now I’m not so certain. I actually am undecided who I can discuss to to be able to kind all of this out.

A: Sexual attraction is a curious factor. Nowadays we have a tendency to make use of a number of labels – somebody could also be gay/homosexual/lesbian or heterosexual/straight. Some use “bisexual” to point somebody who has romantic or sexual attraction to folks of a couple of gender;  others use the time period “pansexual” to both discuss with attraction to folks of a couple of gender and even an openness to gender in addition to a wide range of (consensual) sexual  experiences. And these are simply the tip of the iceberg with regards to sexual identities!

Based on the hundreds of interviews that he and his colleagues performed within the early to mid-1900s, Alfred Kinsey noticed romantic and sexual attraction as mendacity extra on a continuum. He believed that people might find their points of interest or sexual behaviors on a scale from zero to 6 such that zero indicated solely heterosexual or opposite-sex pursuits or behaviors and 6 indicated solely gay or same-sex pursuits or behaviors.

Not solely that, however he felt that folks might change over their lifetime. In different phrases, he would see it as comparatively widespread that somebody might be predominantly or completely drawn to males for years after which discover themselves having emotions for a lady.

You Don’t Have to Stay in One Place

To use the Kinsey scale, one would possibly say that you just started out as a zero however moved to a one or two, for instance. That doesn’t imply that you just preserve shifting additional alongside the size to a 3 or a six (although actually that’s doable too). According to those concepts, you would end up at a zero once more; it’s unimaginable to foretell.

You additionally would possibly take into account how your reactions to your current same-sex attraction examine to your previous other-sex points of interest. Did these concern you in the identical approach? If not, why not? What is it that’s completely different about this attraction (apart from her organic intercourse)? Sometimes, regardless of all of the cultural scripts that recommend we’ll solely fall for a person who’s a sure gender, race, age, nationality, height, weight, or kind of attractiveness, we really feel attraction or love or curiosity for somebody merely due to their humanity, and it surprises us indirectly.

And that’s not essentially a foul factor … I feel it’s nice that you just’re taking the time to study extra about your private sexuality. As you discover, you would possibly discover it fascinating to learn a number of the analysis on this space. In addition to tutorial research about ladies who’re sexually drawn to each ladies and men, there’s additionally an fascinating ebook known as Sexual Fluidity that, whereas primarily based on analysis, inform the tales of ladies’s journeys into understanding their very own altering experiences of sexual points of interest, behaviors, and identities.

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