When did you 'figure out' your 'sexuality' or have you never really understood it?

I didn't discover sex until mid-20's, never had girlfriends in school or when I tried university after high school. Parents were divorced when I was 12, neither of them ever talked to me or tried to help me navigate 'discovering' what sex and sexual attraction meant or was. I've never been big on friends in general, and throughout most of my childhood I always did things by myself.

I've always felt very confused about sexuality and sexual preferences, and don't feel I've ever really understood where I stand/sit/walk in that space.

Anecdotally, a lot of people seem that they 'worked it out' early on in teenage years, or they 'knew instinctively' what their sexuality and sexual preferences were by the time they became adults. I can't say that's happened for me.

I suppose for me because I doubt myself so much in terms of social anxiety and have a massive fear of everything around sexual attraction, sex, intimacy, relationships, etc. I find sexuality, etc. to be a 'blocked out' topic area in my mental 'library'.

Being single long term in a 'couples world' (as manufactured 1st-world cultures tend to be) kinda makes you question everything about your understanding of human intimate/sexual interactions because everything focuses on being 'coupled' and as a single person you're socially an outlier.

I'd love to get other people's perspectives on all this as I know we're all different.

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swirlie · 31-35

When I was about 10 years old and about 1 year prior to entering puberty which happened when I was 11, I had been very athletic. I was heavily involved in group sports at school and at the local YWCA on weekends and would always hang out at the town public pool on Saturdays with my sisters and our mom.

What I began to notice at the town public pool in our rural town, was that everyone would always be staring at me as we'd run around the pool area. I always thought it was because of the home-made kid-bikinis our mom had made for my sisters and I which were made out of bulky-knit wool and were all the same color, which was purple.

When boys or girls my own age began staring at me in particular, I began to feel something I'd never felt inside myself before. I had begun to literally 'feel' a person's stare. I could feel a person staring at me. I could feel the energy from their eyes it seemed. I could feel in my body, where they were looking and 'what' they were looking at. I was taller than most girls my age, very stick-thin and with very blonde short hair, all of which was the opposite of every other girl who ever showed up at the pool.

I suddenly became very popular at the age of 10 for no apparent reason, mainly I thought because they were all jealous of my purple hand-made bikini! But there was more to it than that!

I realized in my kid's mind that my body was behaving like a lightning rod in that it would attract attention to itself, attract other people's energy, even the energy of moms who'd be sitting around the pool's edge just like my own mom would do.

I didn't even have to say anything at all to make this happen... I could draw attention to myself just by being as quiet as a mouse as I walked from one end of the pool to the other. As I walked, I could feel a dozen sets of eyes penetrating my skin like they were laser lights shining on me.

I thought it was funny that people were attracted to me, but then again this only happened as I was just about to enter puberty. As I entered puberty at the age of 11, it suddenly occurred to me that I could 'turn-on' or 'turn-off' this magical power I had recently discovered about myself. It was in conjunction with the onset of my pubescent years that followed that I discovered what being 'female' appeared to be all about from a biological perspective.

It was therefore at 11 years of age that I figured out my own sexuality and how I could control the attention of others with my new-found sexual awareness.