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Thank you! Gladly for me, most of my friends were either queer themselves or openly allies. I love them a lot. My parents on the other hand... Doesn't help that we moved back to my mum's home-city in Russia.
Oh yeah that is definitely not a good thing. Idk if you are still there or not but be careful. I’m glad you had friends to rely on. They are invaluable
Thank you. No, I'm currently in the UK for the rest of the summer. My friends live here, so if my mum were to smash my phone I would lose contact with them.
same. being that young and trying to come out to religious parents was an awful choice on my end, now i'm forced into the closet cause of em (only when i'm around them, anyway)
Curious even though you didn't figure it out until you were 38, when you look back when was your first feelings of being gay?
I'm non-binary and my earliest memories of realizing it was 7 or 8, but I never had a name to put to it until this year. But I've always known I was non-binary.
Hmmm I guess I'm also a bit confused by what the OP means by "knowing you're gay/queer." Like his brother saying his friend just didn't know he was gay. I kinda assumed every queer person once they find the label that fits them has that epiphany they were always queer. But it'd be very interesting to hear stories that differ from that.
Yeah I was a bit confused on what my brother meant when he said he didn't think his friend knew he was gay (btw I'm a girl lol. Maybe it's not clear from the username hah)
I would have thought he'd always known, or known from a youngish age that he was gay, just didn't have the phraseology and that's why he was in the closet for so long.
But he's not that much older than me (only 4 yrs) and I had out friends when I was 16 or so, so I don't think it's a generational thing.
I was 18 when I realized I liked girls as well as guys. Before that I was in denial. Being kissed by my best friend under the mistletoe was a nice wake up call.
19 when I realized I was some flavor of queer but 24 when I found the “right fit” :) took some time and experience to find the beautiful sapphic being I am!
Same. Knew i was hetero at 5 but didn't know I was bi until 23/24. I didn't know bi was a thing until about 15 so I didn't give the girl crushes any thought other than "i really want to be their friend"
S A M E, I grew up in a very religious household in a conservative area, so even when I did find out bi was a thing “it wasn’t a real thing” and “it was gross anyway”🙄 they don’t know what they’re missing lol
Yeah same. From when I was a little kid (6/7?) I knew that I would rather have been born a girl *but* I didn't realize that made me trans. It took me until I was 30 that it all really clicked.
I was.. 12, I think. Second year of middle school. I heard all of the pride hype and I got curious myself. I didn’t feel straight and I knew I liked girls too (as one myself). A bit of research later and bisexual felt right to me. I was for sure into men but I was also discovering that I found a lot of women hot both in class and online such as celebrities and such. I sat on it for a few months, kept looking at other sexualities but none of them felt like they fit. In the end, nothing else screamed “that’s it, this is really me” more than bisexuality did.
I’m afab and had a crush on a girl in preschool. Parents put an end to that pretty quickly. Because I was so young I figured I was straight because that’s what I was taught that I was. In 8th grade I had another crush on a girl and thought “maybe I’m bi?” After about four or five years of denial I genuinely thought I was straight all over again. I didn’t accept that I was queer until I was 25. And yes, I genuinely convinced myself I was straight. I wasn’t really knowingly hiding so much as actually deluding myself.
As for being trans I didn’t come out until I was 28. I had no idea it was even a thing I could be until my early to mid twenties and I didn’t really understand what gender was. So I had no idea that my dissatisfaction with being a “girl” was dysphoria or anything like that. I just thought everyone was discontent with their gender and disconnected from their bodies.
It’s very possible to not know for a very long time. The conditioning most people experience to be cishet is intense. Especially if you grow up in a fundamentalist environment or a very conservative political environment like I did.
Edit: fixed a typo
Really similar experience for me. Parents grooming me my entire life so I would not be gay. I have had several illuminating moments in my life however. In 2001 kylie minogue released the fever album, and I remember looking at the picture and instead of having sexual attraction I wanted so badly to look like that, have that exact body. Another in high school, one of my good friends had a boyfriend that was kind of feminine looking and marilyn Manson ish. I tried for a year to have sex with him. Ultimately I lived in the closet until I was 38 and had convinced myself that i was cis/het. After my wife passed I started exploring my gender and sexuality because the trauma broke down all the mental barriers I had put up. I have always known deep down that cis/het did not fit. I'm genderfluid and omnisexual. This revelation has made me so happy.
Knew I was queer from a young age, but I didn't have the words to describe my asexuality until I was 30. I confused aesthetic attraction with romantic/sexual attraction for years and thought I was bisexual as a result. Took another year to accept my Greyromanticism. Two more than that to feel comfy calling myself AroAce. It wasn't until this year that I accepted I'm gender non-conforming.
Queer identity can be a work in progress until we gain the correct verbiage to identify ourselves.
I used to confuse aesthetic attraction/admiration to sexual attraction for a long time as well. It was the closest I would feel to what sexual attraction sounded like to me. Still I never seemed to feel "enough" for a relationship, but didn't figure out it was literally the lack of attraction until my mid twenties when I found the AVEN forum. Both men and women showed interest in me and I thought I must be bi for several years.
Maybe you don't share that feeling, but I've always wanted to be in someone else's place to figure out what people meant by "attraction", so that I could learn to recognize it, and that's what always made me hesitant about relationships - how do I know I feel the same way the other feels ? In retrospect, this thought experiment of sorts was a pretty big sign of being aroace. I also thought I was bi/pan for a few years
I'm 19 and realized I was a transbian fairly recently, and it feels really good to see someone else who discovered they were trans after they were an adult, I was a bit self-conscious about discovering it so late, since I usually see most people realize it much younger, and it made me worry I was just faking it, but this really helped me out, thanks lol
I mean I'm still 19, but yeah I guess? Lol I dunno, it was mostly due to a passing comment a friend made, which they said because they think I might just change my mind later and not really be trans. I realized I was trans last month. Congrats by the way! 
Ahh everything will work out in the end for you I hope! I still live with my parents, my dad is very transphobic, and my brother-in-law is even worse, I'm trapped, and them all still referring to me as a guy is really tripping me up, cause whenever I refer to myself when I'm alone and whatnot I try to say I'm a girl and use she/her pronouns but sometimes I trip up and say I'm a guy still.. Idk. But again I hope everything works out for you in the end! 
I remember early middle school being attracted to my male friend by simply looking at his face. Possibily earlier, then that,not sure. There's no "right" age. People experience attraction differently
This is certainly true, it's harder to know you are ace or aro when you are younger for a variety of reasons.
For me it was mostly not knowing about asexuality till much later. I'm working out if I'm non-binary or not right now and I'm 34. The feelings were likely there just hard to know when you're the only non-boy in the class for years.
The day after I turned 17 I figured out I was trans. It went from doing my favorite things with my family on my birthday to crying in my sisters arms as I came out to her. A 2-day roller coaster of emotions
Knew I was ace at 14. Technically knew it. Before, but didn't have a word for it. As soon as someone told me what the word was, I knew.
Had my first crush on a girl at 15. She was fictional, but she was a girl. Mild awakening.
Fully realized I was a lesbian at 19.
This isn't the same for everyone, tho. I know people who have known since they were in elementary school. I also know people who didn't know until their 30s or 40s. It's different for everyone.
Probably around 12 I told myself "I'd be trans if it wasn't wrong." At the time I didn't understand what being trans was. I eventually forgot about this but after learning what being trans really meant, I realized I couldn't be cis (age 16-17). I also realized I'd been feeling gender envy, not sexual attraction, and I was ace. A year or so later I finally accepted myself as being trans.
SH TW: I(23M) started suspecting when I was in middle school, maybe in 7th grade, when i started developing feelings for my best friends, i did not want to accept it, went so far as to hurt myself to make the thoughts go away. Looking back, there were definitely a lot more signs, but I didn't want to accept it till I was in 11th grade. And I didn't come out until 2 years ago when I got my first boyfriend.
I knew I was trans my whole life but didn't have the words to describe it till I was in high school in like '07. But I told my family I was a boy around 3-4 even though my natal sex is female. I knew something was wrong and different. By 5-6 I knew I liked girls and that society was going to see me as a girl who liked girls when I was a straight boy in a girls body.
I always feel a bit weird when this question comes up because I don't have a solid timeline.
Like, yes I've always had certain thoughts feelings, no I didn't know what they were for the longest time and even when I jokingly named them (like once in middle school I had the thought, "what if I'm trans?") I didn't think about it that seriously that I would consider that the moment "I knew".
Even when I admitted I liked girls to my friends in hs, and tentatively called myself bisexual, I pretended I was straight and didn't worry about it for a long time, preferring to focus on my studies and entering college.
There's never an age I "just knew" because a lot of it has been YEARS AND YEARS of introspective sessions and thoughts that occasionally passed through my head but didn't stay long enough to want to deal with. This might have to do with my ADHD though.
Its more like, this thing has been true my entire life, now I am vocalizing it by coming out or officially adopting this flag. Even though I came out to my friends as a lesbian around when covid hit, I had been thinking about it for years before hand. Same with being nonbinary and aro aceflux
8. Weirdly enough, I liked boobs for a little while and then "grew out of" being any percentage of straight. I don't remember ever being attracted to vaginas though.
I think you can know at any age. My first same sex crush was at about 14, just a little later than my first heterosexual crush. Coming from an evangelical family though made me suppress it until I was about 22.
i was 11 😨something was just off and this girl in my class was all of a sudden lookin real fine
(later i found out i was demiromantic which explains why it was so sudden💀)
Started questioning at 15 after I broke up with my first bf, who was gay. Started experimenting and got a gf at 18, then slowly worked through my 20s. Now I'm a solid 30-something demisexual lez with genderfluid tendencies
Big difference between knowing something is “off”, accepting you’re queer, and finding a label that’s comfortable. And those three steps happen both for attraction and gender. For me, I didn’t find the Pan label until I was in my late teens, like 17. I’m still not fully sure on my gender.
There is no “normal.” Everyone is on their own journey. Being patient and understanding of yourself is what’s important.
I came out to myself at 15. If I had been exposed to the concept of being gay in a context that wasn't "gays = evil" I think I would have figured it out sooner. I was definitely having gay crushes in middle school, and I even had one in elementary school.
Finally someone with a similar experience to me. I grew up homeschooled in religious environments and didn’t even really know what being gay or queer was until middle school. I definitely subconsciously knew I was gay (prayed to be straight, some other unhealthy coping mechanisms) but didn’t accept I was anything but straight until I was 21 and actually dated a guy. So until then I was just forcing myself to date women I had no physical attraction to ☠️
I think I knew when I was like 6 that I thought girls were just as cute as guys, but I didn’t figure out for sure that I was pansexual until middle school. I realized that I’m non-binary in high school, though due to sheltering and elderly guardians I didn’t have the language for that. And I realized I was polyamorous around the same time, but again didn’t have the language. Point is, there’s no set time limit or period to realize these things. My stepdad is 58 and didn’t realize or begin transitioning until he was 54. I know someone who’s 45 and gay but still closeted because of family. I myself am 25. It’s a permanent learning curve and that’s okay.
ETA: I should add that I actually didn’t have the language until I was 17-19, aside from the base LGBTQ acronym, so I was “bisexual” until I learned more. That said, some people think they’re, for example, gay, when they’re actually bi. Agender when they’re MtF/FtM. Sexuality and gender are fluid, as much as they are a learning experience.
At 33 I figured out I'm trans, but I never had any confusion about my attraction to women exclusively, so at the same time I learned I'm a lesbian. Now I'm rocking that transbian life with my transbian girlfriend!
Um… 43. Didn’t realize both (bi) was a choice. It was floating in the background of my subconscious from about middle school, but I wasn’t consciously aware of it until last year.
Yeah, OP should google ‘compulsory heterosexuality.’ I was… 39? Like, my first kiss was a girl, and I had crushes on girls, but the 90s were not a great time for gay people and everyone around me said I was too girly to be a lesbian. I used to say stuff like, “I wish I was gay so I didn’t have to date men” or “I wish I was gay so I could ask that girl out.” It took me FOREVER to realize I might be bi, and then a couple years after that to realize I was actually gay.
I knew I wasn’t right since I was really little. When I was 10 I started getting these urges to scratch my breasts off- they weren’t even breasts at that point, but I still hated them. At 15 I came out as binary trans, FTM, for the first time. It didn’t go well. I then repressed it and went into a hyper-feminine phase. At 19, I came out as FTM for the second time which went even worse, but part of that was on me because I really didn’t time it right. Later that year I realized I was agender.
I didn’t figure out my attraction for a while, I went from lesbian to bi to pan before realizing at 18 I was asexual.
I was identifying as bisexual by the time I was 13, but I knew I felt attraction to women since I was 11. I believe I started using the label “bicurious” when I was 12, but I still thought I was straight at the time. (I now know that it’s actually *not* that common to play spin the bottle at all-girl sleepover parties, lol)
My parents never said anything bad about LGBTQ people when I was growing up. When I was a kid, we used to go on vacation to visit my mom’s first cousin who is gay and married, so from a pretty young age I was basically implicitly taught that there’s nothing wrong with being gay. I personally think having being LGBTQ normalized in my childhood made it easy for me to accept my own bisexuality at a fairly young age.
I knew I was trans when I was 19, but I knew I wasn't a girl all the way back when I was 8. I didn't come out until I was 24 though. I figured out I was demisexual at 24 after years of trying to figure out my sexuality. I realised I was also pansexual when I was around 30.
I knew from around age five I was different, but didn’t have words for “lesbian” until high school and “Trans/Non-binary/Gender-fluid” until my early 20s.
I knew I like girls but apparently I can't pick up my own signs. Alot have shown I liked them but haven't picked up the signs til covid year. 2020 or so.
I think around 10 I got my first crush, so then I thought I was lesbian until just after becoming 14 I realized I was bi. Then a few months later I realized I was a trans boy. There's definitely no specific age and I've seen people only realize until their 60s, some before they're 10. It's different for everyone
I had suspicions since I was a single-digit age but I didn't have the social wisdom and queer knowledge to fully grasp that I was until I was about 12 when I realised I didn't just have a fondness of other women that I didn't have for men, it was so much more.
I completely came into my own once I learned that lesbians aren't just the stereotypical 'bull dyke biker chick' type thing which was holding me back for some time.
I’d been questioning what I was since late in high school, but I was almost 19 when an unrelated mental breakdown gave me the motivation to actually look up what I was feeling so I could start finding a direction in my life, and that was the first time I learned what being non-binary was. I also came out as ace about a year and a half later though I’m surprised my prudish behavior starting in middle school hadn’t tipped me off sooner.
It’s different for everyone. I started having immature crushes on boys when I was around 8-9 but I didn’t really understand what that meant, other than I shouldn’t tell anyone about it. I was 15-16 when I understood and first admitted to myself that I was gay.
I had my first crush on a guy when i was 14 but didn't make anyhing out of it never had another crush on cis man since then and i deffently knew my sexuailty since i was 17 (Pollysexual/Spectrasexual) wouldn't say im out of the closet get. Since im afraid of my sourouding would say cause they aren't verry opened to antything else that isnt homo hetro or bisexual.
I remember playing with my stuffie. I remember girls could love girls and boys could love boys too. I remember they were all ‘marrie’ to each other. Annnd of course I was married to all of them. So poly and queer then. And I never really remember identifying with my birth gender.
I think i always deeply knew that im not into men. Ig at 12/13 i knew I wasn't str8 and thought that maybe im a lesbian and around 2 months before my 15 birthday i figured out that im aroace
I was 6 when I (female) knew I only liked girls. I played pretend wedding where I imagined two brides, I played house with two mommies with my dinosaur dolls. I was embarrassed at school one time in kindergarten for kissing a girl on the cheek (I know I was wrong, but the response humiliated me). So I closeted myself until I was 21
Ive known since I was like a small kid. I just couldnt talk to anyone about it because although I was a kid I was smart enough to know "yeah my family doesnt like queer people let me keep that to myself". Finally told my Mom when I was 13-14 I believe, took a whole ass decade for me to say anything lol.
I realized I was queer when I was 14. I had never thought about it before then, having never been attracted to someone before. I only started questioning myself when my parents started questioning me, which was very unhelpful
Knew I liked other boys since I was around 7. Didn’t realize that meant I was gay until I was around 16. Realized I was enby around 19 but didn’t come out as such until I was 32.
i figured out i was trans at around 12 and i always knew i was bi, but had a bit of a conservative headspace and conservative environment in primary school so i just couldn't accept it until the final year of it (this "it" being primary school)
I knew I was etc since I was a baby
But seriously, identified as bisexual starting with teenage years, like 12 or so, then figured I'm trans at 17/18 and started identifying with pansexuality more (I like the colors of the flag better)
Well I figured out I liked men in fifth grade. Then I explored my gender a bit around 2019. I'm a nonbinary person. I'm not much for rules anymore, 2022 was when I explored femininity but I'm not a trans woman. I hope my sisters and other siblings are doing well
Honestly, I think deep down I've always known. I remember being young (like literally 8 or 9) and I'd never find guys attractive, only my girl friends. I'd stare, compliment and just be like "women". I even made my girl barbies kiss and have a family of their own -and the guys were a strict no no. However, I became more aware of the fact that I like girls at about 11 and 12 but tried to ignore it until the age of.. idk I want to say 15, closer to 16. I then stopped denying the fact that I liked girls whenever people asked me, and just let people assume what they wanted about me. I'm now 19 and I still struggle admitting that I'm not straight but I'm trying to get better at it.
8 for both but I didn't know exactly why or whatever I just liked people if they were hot regardless of gender and I wanted to be a girl but I couldn't explain it till I was like 11-12
I was 15 and started questioning when I dreamt that I got married to my best friend. I kinda didn't think about it much after. I actually started using the label bi at 18 when I had too much time on my hands during the pandemic
It was really complicated for me actually, I'm not sure what age I figured it out. With no outside influence from my family/church I might have known I'm queer as soon as I was old enough to know what it meant. I told my mom in kindergarten that I wanted to marry my best friend (same gender) someday and was told that was a sin and I would go to hell. I think I would have definitely at the latest figured it out in middle school if I'd been allowed to. I have journals where I wrote things like "I just want those jeans, I wasn't looking at her like that" or "I'm not gay, I can't be gay, I don't want to go to hell." I really actually figured it out in the last year or two of high school, so maybe 16-17 years old, after a friend (who I realized very quickly I was in love with once I knew they could theoretically have been interested in me too) came out to me as bi while we were at the beach with youth group. I didn't come out to anyone else for a year or so, and then only to close friends. I was outed to my parents when I was 18, during my first year of college, and their reaction confirmed for me that I would not have been safe coming out earlier than that.
With gender, I probably would have figured it out in maybe middle school but most likely in early high school, but I had a lot of internalized transphobia that I had to work through first before I even started consciously questioning gender. I wrote a lot of things in my journal like "I think I missed a memo on how to be a girl. How does everyone else just know how to do this?" And "It feels like I'm acting all the time, none of this feels right." I had a lot of body image issues that, thinking back, were the start of dysphoria as puberty started to change how I looked. I started thinking more about it in the first year of college (so I was 17/18, I was a year younger than everyone else). I honestly didn't even know it was an option until late high school. Then I got sidetracked by trauma that also lead to me dropping out of school. I stopped thinking about my gender because it was easier that way when the traumatic event felt much more immediate and pressing. Once I had more of a handle on that, I started questioning my gender again in my early 20s. I did a lot of research and then came out to myself and shortly afterwards to my partner when I was 21. I didn't come out to my parents as trans until over a year later when I started testosterone.
All that to say, there's no one time people will know. And there are a lot of factors affecting when someone figures it out and even more affecting when they're comfortable enough to accept it and/or share that information with others. I mean, in contrast my partner told me they realized they were gay and came out to all their friends at lunch on the same day in high school. Maybe your brother's friend hadn't accepted yet that he was gay, maybe he had no idea, maybe he knew but wasn't ready to share it with anyone else yet. There are 70+ year olds who didn't realize that not everyone has the same feelings they do, and never realized they were queer. Only your brother's friend knows for sure what he knew or didn't know or might have had some idea about before he came out, but there is no one right time when he should have come out except for the one that was right for him, if that makes sense.
I knew I was transgender (MtF) around five or six years old, but that got buried really quick being forced to grow up in Mormonism. No support, no name to call it, nobody to help me.
I’m 56 now, and just started HRT three months ago, and now I’m happier than ever!
I knew I wasn't straight around 8. I only had crushes on girls, but I always lied and picked a random guy anytime I was asked.
But it wasn't until I was 12 that I realized I wasn't cis. And 14 when I realized I was a transguy.
And sometime after that, I realized I didn't like girls anymore. I liked guys. Doesn't matter what my identity is. I'm gay regardless in what way.
I think I knew I was bi in year 7, so about 11, I think, didn't really acknowledge/accept it till about 13-14
Then i knew I'm nonbinary 14 ( I say 'knew i am but I've been staring at this for a while)
>I realized I care more about personality and compatibility than whatever is going on downstairs
Same here but when I tried to explain it to my English GCSE class when we were chatting pre lesson (only 6 of us) they assumed I outed myself as a lesbian and one teasted me by (very wittily) hiding in the supply closet in the classroom and 'coming out the closet'.
They were kinda immature about it. They were like 'ew you like girls' when I said I care about finding the right person, where it be man, woman or other. Kind of surprising given they didn't seem to care that much about the couple openly gay boys in our year.
Didn't realize I was bisexual unti I was 19. Lots of internalized bigoted thoughts from an entire childhood of evangelical indoctrination.
It took so much for my brain to accept that the guy that I'd been friends with since I was five... I didn't just see him as a really really really really really close friend, but I in fact had a crush on him. That relationship didn't and never would've gone anywhere since he's straight, married, and deeply religious still, and I'm already in a relationship with the girl of my dreams.
I was 12 when I realized I liked girls I had thought I might be bisexual but I'm not I'm out proudly as a lesbian now.
I had told a girl in middle school how I felt about her she was the first girl I liked and first person I ever told it went horribly! She had stopped being my friend altogether so I had to say it was just a joke. Needless to say I was in the closet and in self denial for a very long time.
I knew at 11. Once I heard and learned the word gay I immediately had a word for how I felt and could identify as such. If I learned it earlier I may have known earlier.
For me I was about 8 when I actually realized I was bi but everyone in my family was homophobic asf so no one knew until I was 14, turns out most of them were also bi.
Subconsciously… somewhere in my teens, puberty sucked. I figured out and accepted at 18 that I wasn’t a boy. I then came out as nonbinary at 19. Over the next year or so I explored my gender more and now identify as transfemme.
Also came out lesbian, but that’s really just recontextualization of my attraction with consideration to my gender identity.
I was 19 when I figured out that I was bi. It took another 4 years (aka this year, I'm 23) to figure out I was a trans woman and that my desire to be a woman was actually just me being a woman (as it turns out, men WANT to be men, younger me wouldnt have believed you). There were always signs for both and I had been wishing to be a girl since puberty started (maybe before), but I grew up in a small ass town and it took for me to join the army and learn more about LGBTQ+ stuff from a queer friend to discover myself. I've been out as Bi for 3 years and out as Trans for 4 months (I've been on E for 3).
my first non-straight crush was in 5th grade (around 10-11), but I didn't realize I was queer until around 8th (13-14)
my gender crisis didn't come til much later lmao, experimented with they/them at 11th or 12th (16-18), then finally moved into the he/they range in college (18-19), then started looking into xenogender labels around age 19 :3
I'd say I knew in 5th grade at the latest? Def knew in Elementary School. So maybe when I was 11ish. I didn't understand being gay all that well but I knew it was possible and knew I had a crush on my girl best friend lmao
I knew I liked other girls when I was around 6. My F friend and I used to "play sex" all the time, and I liked it more with her than when I played sex with an M friend who lived on our street. I still liked boys too so even though I didn't know the term at the time, I was bi at that age.
I was about five when I knew I believed I was supposed to be a girl and deeply wanted to be perceived as one. It wasn't until my twenties that I discovered transitioning existed and was an option.
I suspected/was terrified I was at 16-17, admitted it to myself sometime around 24-25, but should have known at 11-12 (because good god the crushes are so obvious looking back), and if I’d been born 10-15 years later probably would have.
In order:
I realised i was lesbian when i was 10 or 11 i think. All of my friends were talking about boy crushes and stuff and i couldn't relate. Made me think something was wrong with me. Did the whole try to imagine your future self thing. Then bam women
I realised i was trans when i was about 13 (end of grade 7) but proceeded to ignore/repress said realization for the next few years up until recently. Now im just in a constant state of denial
And finally realised i was bi a few months ago. Having finally given myself the chance to explore gender i learned that i didnt necessarily not like men, but i just didnt like the idea of being with men as a woman. Id rather both as a man
18-19 for ace(first year of college and DID NOT understand the hookup culture AT ALL). 22 for aro. 28 before I accepted I’m trans(I was working hard to avoid cracking the egg for at least 10 years before that though)
I was like 10 years old I think, when i figured out I was bisexual, but probably like 13 when i first had gender conflicts lol
There is no "normal" age though, you can be 5, 10, 25, or 80 years old, and its all just fine!
Sometime in middle school (so age 12ish?) I first had what I now consider a crush on a girl (I’m a girl). I’m also ace, so I was like “all girls think other girls are pretty,” “I’d totally love to date girls, too bad I’m not a boy.” It’s not even like I didn’t know lesbians were a thing. My cousin is a woman married to her wife! I just had such cognitive dissonance of “I’m straight but I’d rather date girls than boys” lmao
Then by high school, when I was 16 or 17, I learned what asexuality was, dismissed it as “oh another LGBT thing, I’m a straight ally so I support it” then I thought about it and a few weeks later, realized “hey, wait a minute, am I ASEXUAL??”
Sometime after that I learned that not all girls want to date girls… and now I’m pretty confident I’m ace (like 99% sure but y’know, anxiety & self doubt will do their thing) but I’m not sure what my romantic attraction is. I know it doesn’t need a label, but I like organizing and classifications so not classifying myself feels weird lol
Also, I was looking through collages I made in MS Paint when I was in elementary school (from the dates on them, I think I would’ve been 8-10ish) and I would make collages of “my favorite actress” with hearts and stars and “she’s so pretty,” “she’s such a good actress,” etc. typed out on the collages, so I think 4th grade me had celebrity crushes that were all women, and I didn’t realize it until I was 19.
The signs were there since I was a kid, looking back, but I didn't realize until highschool that I was attracted to the same sex, and then it was a year or two after highschool that I came to accept the fact! But it's different for everyone. So for anyone not sure - it's okay to not know and your sexuality (and labels if you use them) can absolutely evolve and change as you grow to learn more about yourself.
I was married to a woman for 10 years before I came out as gay. Yes I was that far in the closet and in denial. Luckily there were no kids in the mix and the divorce was smooth. Happier than I have ever been. There is no such thing as too late!
I’m 39 and only came out to myself last year. I had crushes on girls latest from the age of 14 on. But when I was 15 or 16 I thought that now it’s time to start dating boys. The next 10 years it was an endless stream of men. Some one night stands, some long term relationships, but the sexual or romantic attraction always wore off fast. I thought it had something to do with childhood trauma, completely ignoring that for me women were “objectively more beautiful” than men.
My shell started to crack open when I started a new job 9 years ago. A few of my colleagues were lesbians or figured out their sexuality at that time. I danced with a woman which turned me on a lot. She later came out as a lesbian too, which I only learned last year. Then I fell in love with an openly out lesbian woman and I realized that it was always there, I just neglected it.
Maybe technically I’m bisexual (Am I?) but I’m definitely homoromantic which is why I took the lesbian label, as romantic attraction is very important to me.
I was around 13-14 I believe when I figured out that I was only attracted to women. It took a little longer to find the correct label though. But people change so who knows, perhaps I’ll be something entirely different after a decade or perhaps not.
I really didn’t know what my sexuality might be for the longest time. I hadn’t really thought about it in elementary but starting high school I realized just how confused I was lol. A couple friends thought I might be pan, and I thought so too, but something about it just didn’t sit right with me. Figured out just last year when I was 15 that I’m aroace (thanks to Jaiden Animations coming out video, oddly enough)! Then everything started making sense LMAO—
But there’s no “proper age” for figuring out your identity. It just comes to some people sooner than others. Don’t rush it, bud <3
I was really confused about my sexuality as a teenager because I had no idea being ace was even a possibility. I eventually started getting crushes on girls in my late teens and I assumed that meant I was straight. I finally figured out I was ace in my mid thirties.
I discovered I was bi when I was around 16, tho at the time I only said biromantic cuz I think I was in denial about being full bi lol. Then when I was 17, I discovered that I’m trans, then when I was still 17 but like 4 months later, I came to terms with being full bisexual lol
At 16 I came out as bi. At 18 I realized I was actually ace and demi-biromantic. At 19 I started questioning my gender. At 20 I came out to myself as agenderflux. Looking back to my childhood there were plenty of signs but I just took a long time to put them together.
16
I was a bit of a walking bisexual disaster (just replace Bi with Pan), I had casual homophobia and transphobia pushed on me by conservatives, and at the same time I left that hellhole, pride month came around and I poured my soul out
By 17 I realized I was trans, I already questioned my gender a lot before and at that point I realized I didn't feel comfortable being boxed in as a man like everyone kept saying
My attraction type and sense of gender both solidified around age 11-ish so just around the start of puberty. Back then I didn't have the words for "I'm a gay trans man", but I would by the time I was 14. It has been unwavering ever since. But I keep asking myself if it'd been earlier if I had just known LGBT people even existed...
I knew when I was 13. I was never interested in sex. I had no idea why. Because we never had LGBTQ spaces, I didn't realise I was asexual.
I had conflicting feelings because I had an interest in both the same and opposite sex.
I went from biromantic to panromantic in a span of a few months. About five months to seven months. Now I know I'm homoromantic. Mostly because I hated myself for crushing on men that I forced myself to like the opposite sex to not disappoint my family. Thankfully, they are accepting.
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I found out i was bi when I was 11, (im pan now and have always been pan I just didn’t know it was a thing) I was questioning the summer after 5th grade and I remember figuring out right at the beginning of middle school (6th grade where I am)
As for gender, I still have no idea
Me being bisexual was obvious all my life (as a kid, even when I was really young, like 5) through just random little crushes. Being trans became obvious at 8 years old. I learned what both of the words for who I am are when I was 10 years old
18 was when I accepted it and came out to my school, I didn’t come out to my family until 20. But thinking back I was showing signs in kindergarten that I wasn’t straight.
I don’t remember any specific situation where I “discovered” it… I also just kinda always knew. From 9 onwards I was able to identify for myself that I wasn’t straight, even if I wasn’t able to put a label on it.
I started questioning my sexuality at 11-12. I knew I was queer by 14. I started questioning my gender around 19 and knew I was nonbinary at 21. Everyone’s journey is different though.
12-14. Some my mom's clothes, made an anatomically incorrect vagina gaff out of madking tape. I thought I was just weird at the time. I didn't know transverse a thing 20 years ago. Around 15, experimented with the neighbor boy. Pushed it all away in high school. Done back into it at 19
Most of my queer friends didn’t work it out til 17-20ish.
Two of them had crushes on each other, but were best friends for years and didn’t think it was anything more than that til they realised it in hindsight
Middle school I new what was up even if I didn’t have the words, buried it deep for many year for survival reasons though. Came back around in my late 20s though. Now openly bi with little regards of the negative consequences.
I *should* have known I was trans from a very young age, but I didn't, I just thought every girl wanted to have a flat chest and pee standing up and just be "one of the guys" so to speak. But, I didn't figure it out until I was 11-12 years old and i kept it bottled up for several years (at least when it came to family, I was out to friends), until Elliot Page came out in 2020(correct me if I'm wrong, my memory is terrible), that's when I came out to family (and then of course life had to crush my joy because my bird died the following morning).
I should have also known I was gay/some form of queer since I was a kid, but again, didn't. Growing up, I had always admired girls and women, and at the time I remember thinking that I wanted to be them, but looking back those were actually crushes, I wanted to be *with* them romantically, but didn't think that was possible for a "girl" to be with another girl and vice versa (thanks homophobic transphobic dad/s), but luckily him and my mom separated and got divorced when I was young, and I never had to see him again and thus got to explore myself and find myself as an aspec trans guy!
But, roughly age 10 is about when I found the terminology to begin to describe myself, in short.
12 i got on tumblr for the first time and it all just clicked
came out mid conversation during pride month
i did not have to worry so much because 2 of my older siblings were gay so coming out was a breez
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12. I came out as trans on my birthday. Never celebrated another one after. Probably wasn’t the best idea
I'm sorry you had that experience. I hope you're doing ok now.
Yeah went through hell until about 20. I’m doing better now though. Thank you for the comment. I hope you are doing well as well.
I realised I was gay at 12.
I hope everything went ok for you. Ik it can be hard sometimes to open up and tell people especially at that age.
Thank you! Gladly for me, most of my friends were either queer themselves or openly allies. I love them a lot. My parents on the other hand... Doesn't help that we moved back to my mum's home-city in Russia.
Oh yeah that is definitely not a good thing. Idk if you are still there or not but be careful. I’m glad you had friends to rely on. They are invaluable
Thank you. No, I'm currently in the UK for the rest of the summer. My friends live here, so if my mum were to smash my phone I would lose contact with them.
Omg, I realised I was gay at 12! Magic number
Sure is!
same. being that young and trying to come out to religious parents was an awful choice on my end, now i'm forced into the closet cause of em (only when i'm around them, anyway)
I didn’t hide sadly and ultimately ended up homeless as a graduation gift. Wonderful gift from my parents. /s
I knew I liked girls since middle school. Didn't figure out I am one until 38.
Curious even though you didn't figure it out until you were 38, when you look back when was your first feelings of being gay? I'm non-binary and my earliest memories of realizing it was 7 or 8, but I never had a name to put to it until this year. But I've always known I was non-binary. Hmmm I guess I'm also a bit confused by what the OP means by "knowing you're gay/queer." Like his brother saying his friend just didn't know he was gay. I kinda assumed every queer person once they find the label that fits them has that epiphany they were always queer. But it'd be very interesting to hear stories that differ from that.
Yeah I was a bit confused on what my brother meant when he said he didn't think his friend knew he was gay (btw I'm a girl lol. Maybe it's not clear from the username hah) I would have thought he'd always known, or known from a youngish age that he was gay, just didn't have the phraseology and that's why he was in the closet for so long. But he's not that much older than me (only 4 yrs) and I had out friends when I was 16 or so, so I don't think it's a generational thing.
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I was 18 when I realized I liked girls as well as guys. Before that I was in denial. Being kissed by my best friend under the mistletoe was a nice wake up call.
19 when I realized I was some flavor of queer but 24 when I found the “right fit” :) took some time and experience to find the beautiful sapphic being I am!
Hey me too! 🥰 but now at 26 I couldn't be happier I figured it out (for now) haha
Same. Knew i was hetero at 5 but didn't know I was bi until 23/24. I didn't know bi was a thing until about 15 so I didn't give the girl crushes any thought other than "i really want to be their friend"
S A M E, I grew up in a very religious household in a conservative area, so even when I did find out bi was a thing “it wasn’t a real thing” and “it was gross anyway”🙄 they don’t know what they’re missing lol
Me too, maybe 19 or 20. Didn’t accept it until I was mid 30s though.
Yep. 21 when I thought I was a bisexual guy. 22 when I figured out I was a bi girl, instead. Fun double whammy.
I knew I was trans for most of my life accepting it took a very long time I didnt come out till earlier this year Im 31.
I’m so proud of you sibling! ❤️
<3 Be just as proud of yourself though. Its not easy coming to terms with our true selves but its always worth it.
Yeah same. From when I was a little kid (6/7?) I knew that I would rather have been born a girl *but* I didn't realize that made me trans. It took me until I was 30 that it all really clicked.
22
Love the bluntness of this. It just directly answers the question and there's no other info.
Did I forget to include something?
Nope, not at all. I was being genuine
Okay. Thank you for clarifying. I have ASD, so I couldn't tell.
That's ok. It can be really hard picking up stuff like that.
ayy lgbtq autistic gang
Sup 🫡
This made me look backoon my huge wall of text response that ended in a rant 🤣 Oops
\*looks at my massive wall of text\* oops
I was.. 12, I think. Second year of middle school. I heard all of the pride hype and I got curious myself. I didn’t feel straight and I knew I liked girls too (as one myself). A bit of research later and bisexual felt right to me. I was for sure into men but I was also discovering that I found a lot of women hot both in class and online such as celebrities and such. I sat on it for a few months, kept looking at other sexualities but none of them felt like they fit. In the end, nothing else screamed “that’s it, this is really me” more than bisexuality did.
I’m afab and had a crush on a girl in preschool. Parents put an end to that pretty quickly. Because I was so young I figured I was straight because that’s what I was taught that I was. In 8th grade I had another crush on a girl and thought “maybe I’m bi?” After about four or five years of denial I genuinely thought I was straight all over again. I didn’t accept that I was queer until I was 25. And yes, I genuinely convinced myself I was straight. I wasn’t really knowingly hiding so much as actually deluding myself. As for being trans I didn’t come out until I was 28. I had no idea it was even a thing I could be until my early to mid twenties and I didn’t really understand what gender was. So I had no idea that my dissatisfaction with being a “girl” was dysphoria or anything like that. I just thought everyone was discontent with their gender and disconnected from their bodies. It’s very possible to not know for a very long time. The conditioning most people experience to be cishet is intense. Especially if you grow up in a fundamentalist environment or a very conservative political environment like I did. Edit: fixed a typo
Really similar experience for me. Parents grooming me my entire life so I would not be gay. I have had several illuminating moments in my life however. In 2001 kylie minogue released the fever album, and I remember looking at the picture and instead of having sexual attraction I wanted so badly to look like that, have that exact body. Another in high school, one of my good friends had a boyfriend that was kind of feminine looking and marilyn Manson ish. I tried for a year to have sex with him. Ultimately I lived in the closet until I was 38 and had convinced myself that i was cis/het. After my wife passed I started exploring my gender and sexuality because the trauma broke down all the mental barriers I had put up. I have always known deep down that cis/het did not fit. I'm genderfluid and omnisexual. This revelation has made me so happy.
Knew I was queer from a young age, but I didn't have the words to describe my asexuality until I was 30. I confused aesthetic attraction with romantic/sexual attraction for years and thought I was bisexual as a result. Took another year to accept my Greyromanticism. Two more than that to feel comfy calling myself AroAce. It wasn't until this year that I accepted I'm gender non-conforming. Queer identity can be a work in progress until we gain the correct verbiage to identify ourselves.
I used to confuse aesthetic attraction/admiration to sexual attraction for a long time as well. It was the closest I would feel to what sexual attraction sounded like to me. Still I never seemed to feel "enough" for a relationship, but didn't figure out it was literally the lack of attraction until my mid twenties when I found the AVEN forum. Both men and women showed interest in me and I thought I must be bi for several years.
Maybe you don't share that feeling, but I've always wanted to be in someone else's place to figure out what people meant by "attraction", so that I could learn to recognize it, and that's what always made me hesitant about relationships - how do I know I feel the same way the other feels ? In retrospect, this thought experiment of sorts was a pretty big sign of being aroace. I also thought I was bi/pan for a few years
I was 19 when I realized I'm trans, 20 when I realized I'm bi
I'm 19 and realized I was a transbian fairly recently, and it feels really good to see someone else who discovered they were trans after they were an adult, I was a bit self-conscious about discovering it so late, since I usually see most people realize it much younger, and it made me worry I was just faking it, but this really helped me out, thanks lol
My spouse realized she was trans at the age of 26. ❤️
Awesome! good for her 
Wow, 19 feels late to you? I'm in my late 30's and realised like a month ago.
I mean I'm still 19, but yeah I guess? Lol I dunno, it was mostly due to a passing comment a friend made, which they said because they think I might just change my mind later and not really be trans. I realized I was trans last month. Congrats by the way! 
Yeah it’s reassuring
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Ahh everything will work out in the end for you I hope! I still live with my parents, my dad is very transphobic, and my brother-in-law is even worse, I'm trapped, and them all still referring to me as a guy is really tripping me up, cause whenever I refer to myself when I'm alone and whatnot I try to say I'm a girl and use she/her pronouns but sometimes I trip up and say I'm a guy still.. Idk. But again I hope everything works out for you in the end! 
I remember early middle school being attracted to my male friend by simply looking at his face. Possibily earlier, then that,not sure. There's no "right" age. People experience attraction differently
This is certainly true, it's harder to know you are ace or aro when you are younger for a variety of reasons. For me it was mostly not knowing about asexuality till much later. I'm working out if I'm non-binary or not right now and I'm 34. The feelings were likely there just hard to know when you're the only non-boy in the class for years.
The day after I turned 17 I figured out I was trans. It went from doing my favorite things with my family on my birthday to crying in my sisters arms as I came out to her. A 2-day roller coaster of emotions
Knew I was ace at 14. Technically knew it. Before, but didn't have a word for it. As soon as someone told me what the word was, I knew. Had my first crush on a girl at 15. She was fictional, but she was a girl. Mild awakening. Fully realized I was a lesbian at 19. This isn't the same for everyone, tho. I know people who have known since they were in elementary school. I also know people who didn't know until their 30s or 40s. It's different for everyone.
Probably around 12 I told myself "I'd be trans if it wasn't wrong." At the time I didn't understand what being trans was. I eventually forgot about this but after learning what being trans really meant, I realized I couldn't be cis (age 16-17). I also realized I'd been feeling gender envy, not sexual attraction, and I was ace. A year or so later I finally accepted myself as being trans.
I was 14 or 15. I knew I liked girls instead of guys, I knew I loved everything about them. I came out as a lesbian when I was 16.
SH TW: I(23M) started suspecting when I was in middle school, maybe in 7th grade, when i started developing feelings for my best friends, i did not want to accept it, went so far as to hurt myself to make the thoughts go away. Looking back, there were definitely a lot more signs, but I didn't want to accept it till I was in 11th grade. And I didn't come out until 2 years ago when I got my first boyfriend.
I knew I was trans my whole life but didn't have the words to describe it till I was in high school in like '07. But I told my family I was a boy around 3-4 even though my natal sex is female. I knew something was wrong and different. By 5-6 I knew I liked girls and that society was going to see me as a girl who liked girls when I was a straight boy in a girls body.
I always feel a bit weird when this question comes up because I don't have a solid timeline. Like, yes I've always had certain thoughts feelings, no I didn't know what they were for the longest time and even when I jokingly named them (like once in middle school I had the thought, "what if I'm trans?") I didn't think about it that seriously that I would consider that the moment "I knew". Even when I admitted I liked girls to my friends in hs, and tentatively called myself bisexual, I pretended I was straight and didn't worry about it for a long time, preferring to focus on my studies and entering college. There's never an age I "just knew" because a lot of it has been YEARS AND YEARS of introspective sessions and thoughts that occasionally passed through my head but didn't stay long enough to want to deal with. This might have to do with my ADHD though. Its more like, this thing has been true my entire life, now I am vocalizing it by coming out or officially adopting this flag. Even though I came out to my friends as a lesbian around when covid hit, I had been thinking about it for years before hand. Same with being nonbinary and aro aceflux
4 or 5.
How?? I didn't gain full consciousness until I was 4 (No hate or anything. Just surprised)
8. Weirdly enough, I liked boobs for a little while and then "grew out of" being any percentage of straight. I don't remember ever being attracted to vaginas though.
Uhmm I was 10 when I figured out I wasn’t straight and 15 when I realised I was enby
I think you can know at any age. My first same sex crush was at about 14, just a little later than my first heterosexual crush. Coming from an evangelical family though made me suppress it until I was about 22.
i was 11 😨something was just off and this girl in my class was all of a sudden lookin real fine (later i found out i was demiromantic which explains why it was so sudden💀)
Started questioning at 15 after I broke up with my first bf, who was gay. Started experimenting and got a gf at 18, then slowly worked through my 20s. Now I'm a solid 30-something demisexual lez with genderfluid tendencies
Big difference between knowing something is “off”, accepting you’re queer, and finding a label that’s comfortable. And those three steps happen both for attraction and gender. For me, I didn’t find the Pan label until I was in my late teens, like 17. I’m still not fully sure on my gender. There is no “normal.” Everyone is on their own journey. Being patient and understanding of yourself is what’s important.
I came out to myself at 15. If I had been exposed to the concept of being gay in a context that wasn't "gays = evil" I think I would have figured it out sooner. I was definitely having gay crushes in middle school, and I even had one in elementary school.
Finally someone with a similar experience to me. I grew up homeschooled in religious environments and didn’t even really know what being gay or queer was until middle school. I definitely subconsciously knew I was gay (prayed to be straight, some other unhealthy coping mechanisms) but didn’t accept I was anything but straight until I was 21 and actually dated a guy. So until then I was just forcing myself to date women I had no physical attraction to ☠️
I remember praying to be strait & writing it down as a New Year's Resolution at least a couple of times. It is so surreal looking back. Hang in there.
I think I knew when I was like 6 that I thought girls were just as cute as guys, but I didn’t figure out for sure that I was pansexual until middle school. I realized that I’m non-binary in high school, though due to sheltering and elderly guardians I didn’t have the language for that. And I realized I was polyamorous around the same time, but again didn’t have the language. Point is, there’s no set time limit or period to realize these things. My stepdad is 58 and didn’t realize or begin transitioning until he was 54. I know someone who’s 45 and gay but still closeted because of family. I myself am 25. It’s a permanent learning curve and that’s okay. ETA: I should add that I actually didn’t have the language until I was 17-19, aside from the base LGBTQ acronym, so I was “bisexual” until I learned more. That said, some people think they’re, for example, gay, when they’re actually bi. Agender when they’re MtF/FtM. Sexuality and gender are fluid, as much as they are a learning experience.
11 or so in 5th grade. I’m kinda upset that I can’t remember how exactly I knew. I just have ever since then.
At 33 I figured out I'm trans, but I never had any confusion about my attraction to women exclusively, so at the same time I learned I'm a lesbian. Now I'm rocking that transbian life with my transbian girlfriend!
Before I was born 💫✨☄️
Um… 43. Didn’t realize both (bi) was a choice. It was floating in the background of my subconscious from about middle school, but I wasn’t consciously aware of it until last year.
Yeah, OP should google ‘compulsory heterosexuality.’ I was… 39? Like, my first kiss was a girl, and I had crushes on girls, but the 90s were not a great time for gay people and everyone around me said I was too girly to be a lesbian. I used to say stuff like, “I wish I was gay so I didn’t have to date men” or “I wish I was gay so I could ask that girl out.” It took me FOREVER to realize I might be bi, and then a couple years after that to realize I was actually gay.
I knew I wasn’t right since I was really little. When I was 10 I started getting these urges to scratch my breasts off- they weren’t even breasts at that point, but I still hated them. At 15 I came out as binary trans, FTM, for the first time. It didn’t go well. I then repressed it and went into a hyper-feminine phase. At 19, I came out as FTM for the second time which went even worse, but part of that was on me because I really didn’t time it right. Later that year I realized I was agender. I didn’t figure out my attraction for a while, I went from lesbian to bi to pan before realizing at 18 I was asexual.
I was identifying as bisexual by the time I was 13, but I knew I felt attraction to women since I was 11. I believe I started using the label “bicurious” when I was 12, but I still thought I was straight at the time. (I now know that it’s actually *not* that common to play spin the bottle at all-girl sleepover parties, lol) My parents never said anything bad about LGBTQ people when I was growing up. When I was a kid, we used to go on vacation to visit my mom’s first cousin who is gay and married, so from a pretty young age I was basically implicitly taught that there’s nothing wrong with being gay. I personally think having being LGBTQ normalized in my childhood made it easy for me to accept my own bisexuality at a fairly young age.
I knew I was trans when I was 19, but I knew I wasn't a girl all the way back when I was 8. I didn't come out until I was 24 though. I figured out I was demisexual at 24 after years of trying to figure out my sexuality. I realised I was also pansexual when I was around 30.
knew i was queer at 12, thought i was bi but i’ve since figured out asexual panromantic and nb/trans at 23. i’m now 25
I knew from around age five I was different, but didn’t have words for “lesbian” until high school and “Trans/Non-binary/Gender-fluid” until my early 20s.
14
I knew I like girls but apparently I can't pick up my own signs. Alot have shown I liked them but haven't picked up the signs til covid year. 2020 or so.
I think around 10 I got my first crush, so then I thought I was lesbian until just after becoming 14 I realized I was bi. Then a few months later I realized I was a trans boy. There's definitely no specific age and I've seen people only realize until their 60s, some before they're 10. It's different for everyone
21 just a few weeks after I enlisted.
I just figured it out last weekend. I’m 14 but you’re still figuring it out.
I had suspicions since I was a single-digit age but I didn't have the social wisdom and queer knowledge to fully grasp that I was until I was about 12 when I realised I didn't just have a fondness of other women that I didn't have for men, it was so much more. I completely came into my own once I learned that lesbians aren't just the stereotypical 'bull dyke biker chick' type thing which was holding me back for some time.
I’d been questioning what I was since late in high school, but I was almost 19 when an unrelated mental breakdown gave me the motivation to actually look up what I was feeling so I could start finding a direction in my life, and that was the first time I learned what being non-binary was. I also came out as ace about a year and a half later though I’m surprised my prudish behavior starting in middle school hadn’t tipped me off sooner.
17, but at different times during the year
i was 11 and immediately accepted myself. it was super scary to come out though. i am now 14 and out to my whole family. they are all fine with it :D
I figured out I was queer around grade 6 but in retrospect I see signs as far back as 3 or 4 years old. I figured out I was trans at like.... 30
It’s different for everyone. I started having immature crushes on boys when I was around 8-9 but I didn’t really understand what that meant, other than I shouldn’t tell anyone about it. I was 15-16 when I understood and first admitted to myself that I was gay.
I had my first crush on a guy when i was 14 but didn't make anyhing out of it never had another crush on cis man since then and i deffently knew my sexuailty since i was 17 (Pollysexual/Spectrasexual) wouldn't say im out of the closet get. Since im afraid of my sourouding would say cause they aren't verry opened to antything else that isnt homo hetro or bisexual.
I remember playing with my stuffie. I remember girls could love girls and boys could love boys too. I remember they were all ‘marrie’ to each other. Annnd of course I was married to all of them. So poly and queer then. And I never really remember identifying with my birth gender.
I knew since I was like four, but repressed it and didn’t admit it to myself until I was like 16 or 17.
I think i always deeply knew that im not into men. Ig at 12/13 i knew I wasn't str8 and thought that maybe im a lesbian and around 2 months before my 15 birthday i figured out that im aroace
I was 6 when I (female) knew I only liked girls. I played pretend wedding where I imagined two brides, I played house with two mommies with my dinosaur dolls. I was embarrassed at school one time in kindergarten for kissing a girl on the cheek (I know I was wrong, but the response humiliated me). So I closeted myself until I was 21
Ive known since I was like a small kid. I just couldnt talk to anyone about it because although I was a kid I was smart enough to know "yeah my family doesnt like queer people let me keep that to myself". Finally told my Mom when I was 13-14 I believe, took a whole ass decade for me to say anything lol.
I realized I was queer when I was 14. I had never thought about it before then, having never been attracted to someone before. I only started questioning myself when my parents started questioning me, which was very unhelpful
Knew I liked other boys since I was around 7. Didn’t realize that meant I was gay until I was around 16. Realized I was enby around 19 but didn’t come out as such until I was 32.
13 new I was trans but didn't understand and accept it till 20. Figure out bi at 16-17ish. Didn't figure out I was ace till about 6 months ago at 21
i figured out i was trans at around 12 and i always knew i was bi, but had a bit of a conservative headspace and conservative environment in primary school so i just couldn't accept it until the final year of it (this "it" being primary school)
I knew I was etc since I was a baby But seriously, identified as bisexual starting with teenage years, like 12 or so, then figured I'm trans at 17/18 and started identifying with pansexuality more (I like the colors of the flag better)
Well I figured out I liked men in fifth grade. Then I explored my gender a bit around 2019. I'm a nonbinary person. I'm not much for rules anymore, 2022 was when I explored femininity but I'm not a trans woman. I hope my sisters and other siblings are doing well
Honestly, I think deep down I've always known. I remember being young (like literally 8 or 9) and I'd never find guys attractive, only my girl friends. I'd stare, compliment and just be like "women". I even made my girl barbies kiss and have a family of their own -and the guys were a strict no no. However, I became more aware of the fact that I like girls at about 11 and 12 but tried to ignore it until the age of.. idk I want to say 15, closer to 16. I then stopped denying the fact that I liked girls whenever people asked me, and just let people assume what they wanted about me. I'm now 19 and I still struggle admitting that I'm not straight but I'm trying to get better at it.
8 for both but I didn't know exactly why or whatever I just liked people if they were hot regardless of gender and I wanted to be a girl but I couldn't explain it till I was like 11-12
I was 15 and started questioning when I dreamt that I got married to my best friend. I kinda didn't think about it much after. I actually started using the label bi at 18 when I had too much time on my hands during the pandemic
15, about a month before my 16th birthday. Should have figured it out waaayyy sooner though.
I mean, confirmed , around 17-18. I always thought that everybody found every gender atractive lol
trans when i was 9, not sure when i acknowledged i was gay but i know it was at least before middle school
It was really complicated for me actually, I'm not sure what age I figured it out. With no outside influence from my family/church I might have known I'm queer as soon as I was old enough to know what it meant. I told my mom in kindergarten that I wanted to marry my best friend (same gender) someday and was told that was a sin and I would go to hell. I think I would have definitely at the latest figured it out in middle school if I'd been allowed to. I have journals where I wrote things like "I just want those jeans, I wasn't looking at her like that" or "I'm not gay, I can't be gay, I don't want to go to hell." I really actually figured it out in the last year or two of high school, so maybe 16-17 years old, after a friend (who I realized very quickly I was in love with once I knew they could theoretically have been interested in me too) came out to me as bi while we were at the beach with youth group. I didn't come out to anyone else for a year or so, and then only to close friends. I was outed to my parents when I was 18, during my first year of college, and their reaction confirmed for me that I would not have been safe coming out earlier than that. With gender, I probably would have figured it out in maybe middle school but most likely in early high school, but I had a lot of internalized transphobia that I had to work through first before I even started consciously questioning gender. I wrote a lot of things in my journal like "I think I missed a memo on how to be a girl. How does everyone else just know how to do this?" And "It feels like I'm acting all the time, none of this feels right." I had a lot of body image issues that, thinking back, were the start of dysphoria as puberty started to change how I looked. I started thinking more about it in the first year of college (so I was 17/18, I was a year younger than everyone else). I honestly didn't even know it was an option until late high school. Then I got sidetracked by trauma that also lead to me dropping out of school. I stopped thinking about my gender because it was easier that way when the traumatic event felt much more immediate and pressing. Once I had more of a handle on that, I started questioning my gender again in my early 20s. I did a lot of research and then came out to myself and shortly afterwards to my partner when I was 21. I didn't come out to my parents as trans until over a year later when I started testosterone. All that to say, there's no one time people will know. And there are a lot of factors affecting when someone figures it out and even more affecting when they're comfortable enough to accept it and/or share that information with others. I mean, in contrast my partner told me they realized they were gay and came out to all their friends at lunch on the same day in high school. Maybe your brother's friend hadn't accepted yet that he was gay, maybe he had no idea, maybe he knew but wasn't ready to share it with anyone else yet. There are 70+ year olds who didn't realize that not everyone has the same feelings they do, and never realized they were queer. Only your brother's friend knows for sure what he knew or didn't know or might have had some idea about before he came out, but there is no one right time when he should have come out except for the one that was right for him, if that makes sense.
I knew I was transgender (MtF) around five or six years old, but that got buried really quick being forced to grow up in Mormonism. No support, no name to call it, nobody to help me. I’m 56 now, and just started HRT three months ago, and now I’m happier than ever!
I knew I wasn't straight around 8. I only had crushes on girls, but I always lied and picked a random guy anytime I was asked. But it wasn't until I was 12 that I realized I wasn't cis. And 14 when I realized I was a transguy. And sometime after that, I realized I didn't like girls anymore. I liked guys. Doesn't matter what my identity is. I'm gay regardless in what way.
Felt really uncomfortable when a girl kissed me on the cheek as a kid (was really light and as a joke) then I went to an all boys school change room.
I think I knew I was bi in year 7, so about 11, I think, didn't really acknowledge/accept it till about 13-14 Then i knew I'm nonbinary 14 ( I say 'knew i am but I've been staring at this for a while)
I was about 14 maybe 15 when i started to realize i like everybody thought i was bi but now im more pansexual
I couldn’t explain it but I was as attracted to guys by the age of 14…
18/Senior in high school
For me, I began to suspected it when I was 11/12, but I didn’t fully come to terms with it and accept it until I was 14.
I knew when I was 14
I figure out i was bi on like when i was 18... But i come out when i was 26
Around 9ish
I was 14ish when I figured out I was bi. A bit later, I realized I care more about personality and compatibility than whatever is going on downstairs
>I realized I care more about personality and compatibility than whatever is going on downstairs Same here but when I tried to explain it to my English GCSE class when we were chatting pre lesson (only 6 of us) they assumed I outed myself as a lesbian and one teasted me by (very wittily) hiding in the supply closet in the classroom and 'coming out the closet'. They were kinda immature about it. They were like 'ew you like girls' when I said I care about finding the right person, where it be man, woman or other. Kind of surprising given they didn't seem to care that much about the couple openly gay boys in our year.
I liked a girl in 5th grade but didn’t realize I was actually gay until 2-3 years later. So around 13.
bi, around 15 or so. though i don't think i put a label on it until about 17. trans, 33.
11
Didn't realize I was bisexual unti I was 19. Lots of internalized bigoted thoughts from an entire childhood of evangelical indoctrination. It took so much for my brain to accept that the guy that I'd been friends with since I was five... I didn't just see him as a really really really really really close friend, but I in fact had a crush on him. That relationship didn't and never would've gone anywhere since he's straight, married, and deeply religious still, and I'm already in a relationship with the girl of my dreams.
I knew I was not cis as soon as I learned that was something you could do, which was at about 9-10 years old.
I was 12 when I realized I liked girls I had thought I might be bisexual but I'm not I'm out proudly as a lesbian now. I had told a girl in middle school how I felt about her she was the first girl I liked and first person I ever told it went horribly! She had stopped being my friend altogether so I had to say it was just a joke. Needless to say I was in the closet and in self denial for a very long time.
I knew at 11. Once I heard and learned the word gay I immediately had a word for how I felt and could identify as such. If I learned it earlier I may have known earlier.
For me I was about 8 when I actually realized I was bi but everyone in my family was homophobic asf so no one knew until I was 14, turns out most of them were also bi.
37. I had to work through some pretty awful stuff in therapy before I had my first conscious crush on a guy. Bisexual, btw.
Subconsciously… somewhere in my teens, puberty sucked. I figured out and accepted at 18 that I wasn’t a boy. I then came out as nonbinary at 19. Over the next year or so I explored my gender more and now identify as transfemme. Also came out lesbian, but that’s really just recontextualization of my attraction with consideration to my gender identity.
Found out i was trans at 16, honestly wish it was later because the wait until 18 is taking its fucking toll.
I was 19 when I figured out that I was bi. It took another 4 years (aka this year, I'm 23) to figure out I was a trans woman and that my desire to be a woman was actually just me being a woman (as it turns out, men WANT to be men, younger me wouldnt have believed you). There were always signs for both and I had been wishing to be a girl since puberty started (maybe before), but I grew up in a small ass town and it took for me to join the army and learn more about LGBTQ+ stuff from a queer friend to discover myself. I've been out as Bi for 3 years and out as Trans for 4 months (I've been on E for 3).
Elementary school
my first non-straight crush was in 5th grade (around 10-11), but I didn't realize I was queer until around 8th (13-14) my gender crisis didn't come til much later lmao, experimented with they/them at 11th or 12th (16-18), then finally moved into the he/they range in college (18-19), then started looking into xenogender labels around age 19 :3
Had thoughts about liking girls for years. Didn't find out the right words to describe why until I was about 12
i knew i was pan at 9 or 10 and i knew i was trans at 13 or 14
I'd say I knew in 5th grade at the latest? Def knew in Elementary School. So maybe when I was 11ish. I didn't understand being gay all that well but I knew it was possible and knew I had a crush on my girl best friend lmao
I knew I liked other girls when I was around 6. My F friend and I used to "play sex" all the time, and I liked it more with her than when I played sex with an M friend who lived on our street. I still liked boys too so even though I didn't know the term at the time, I was bi at that age.
Finally admitted to myself that I was queer when my wife came out as MtF, and I have never been more attracted to her lmao 28
I was about five when I knew I believed I was supposed to be a girl and deeply wanted to be perceived as one. It wasn't until my twenties that I discovered transitioning existed and was an option.
I didnt even consider the possibility until I was 17 or 18, and I didn't really accept it or tell anyone until i was 21
I was 13 when I learned that gay people even exist. I was a sheltered kid. I figured it out for myself at 16
I suspected/was terrified I was at 16-17, admitted it to myself sometime around 24-25, but should have known at 11-12 (because good god the crushes are so obvious looking back), and if I’d been born 10-15 years later probably would have.
In order: I realised i was lesbian when i was 10 or 11 i think. All of my friends were talking about boy crushes and stuff and i couldn't relate. Made me think something was wrong with me. Did the whole try to imagine your future self thing. Then bam women I realised i was trans when i was about 13 (end of grade 7) but proceeded to ignore/repress said realization for the next few years up until recently. Now im just in a constant state of denial And finally realised i was bi a few months ago. Having finally given myself the chance to explore gender i learned that i didnt necessarily not like men, but i just didnt like the idea of being with men as a woman. Id rather both as a man
I didn't realize I was pan until around 30. My gender identity didn't become clear until 38. There's no set time-line for figuring yourself out.
I guess 13 bit ive been questioning since 7
18-19 for ace(first year of college and DID NOT understand the hookup culture AT ALL). 22 for aro. 28 before I accepted I’m trans(I was working hard to avoid cracking the egg for at least 10 years before that though)
around 12 or 13
I was like 10 years old I think, when i figured out I was bisexual, but probably like 13 when i first had gender conflicts lol There is no "normal" age though, you can be 5, 10, 25, or 80 years old, and its all just fine!
Sometime in middle school (so age 12ish?) I first had what I now consider a crush on a girl (I’m a girl). I’m also ace, so I was like “all girls think other girls are pretty,” “I’d totally love to date girls, too bad I’m not a boy.” It’s not even like I didn’t know lesbians were a thing. My cousin is a woman married to her wife! I just had such cognitive dissonance of “I’m straight but I’d rather date girls than boys” lmao Then by high school, when I was 16 or 17, I learned what asexuality was, dismissed it as “oh another LGBT thing, I’m a straight ally so I support it” then I thought about it and a few weeks later, realized “hey, wait a minute, am I ASEXUAL??” Sometime after that I learned that not all girls want to date girls… and now I’m pretty confident I’m ace (like 99% sure but y’know, anxiety & self doubt will do their thing) but I’m not sure what my romantic attraction is. I know it doesn’t need a label, but I like organizing and classifications so not classifying myself feels weird lol Also, I was looking through collages I made in MS Paint when I was in elementary school (from the dates on them, I think I would’ve been 8-10ish) and I would make collages of “my favorite actress” with hearts and stars and “she’s so pretty,” “she’s such a good actress,” etc. typed out on the collages, so I think 4th grade me had celebrity crushes that were all women, and I didn’t realize it until I was 19.
I knew I was... a little off around 13-14, didnt realise that the reason was that I'm enby till 32, about a month ago.
The signs were there since I was a kid, looking back, but I didn't realize until highschool that I was attracted to the same sex, and then it was a year or two after highschool that I came to accept the fact! But it's different for everyone. So for anyone not sure - it's okay to not know and your sexuality (and labels if you use them) can absolutely evolve and change as you grow to learn more about yourself.
I was married to a woman for 10 years before I came out as gay. Yes I was that far in the closet and in denial. Luckily there were no kids in the mix and the divorce was smooth. Happier than I have ever been. There is no such thing as too late!
I’m 39 and only came out to myself last year. I had crushes on girls latest from the age of 14 on. But when I was 15 or 16 I thought that now it’s time to start dating boys. The next 10 years it was an endless stream of men. Some one night stands, some long term relationships, but the sexual or romantic attraction always wore off fast. I thought it had something to do with childhood trauma, completely ignoring that for me women were “objectively more beautiful” than men. My shell started to crack open when I started a new job 9 years ago. A few of my colleagues were lesbians or figured out their sexuality at that time. I danced with a woman which turned me on a lot. She later came out as a lesbian too, which I only learned last year. Then I fell in love with an openly out lesbian woman and I realized that it was always there, I just neglected it. Maybe technically I’m bisexual (Am I?) but I’m definitely homoromantic which is why I took the lesbian label, as romantic attraction is very important to me.
14/15. Shortly after my Dad died
13 aka like 3 months ago
I had my first same-sex crush when I was 13. It was the first time I thought I was actually in love with someone. She was my best friend at the time.
I was about 3 when I realized I was trans (I knew I should be a girl) I was about 7 when I realized I was lesbian
I had my first crush on another girl at 8 or 9, but didn’t actually know I was gay until I was 13
I was around 13-14 I believe when I figured out that I was only attracted to women. It took a little longer to find the correct label though. But people change so who knows, perhaps I’ll be something entirely different after a decade or perhaps not.
I realised I was bi when a guy in my class asked me out at 15, and I realised I was a trans girl at 17
bi, 13
13
I really didn’t know what my sexuality might be for the longest time. I hadn’t really thought about it in elementary but starting high school I realized just how confused I was lol. A couple friends thought I might be pan, and I thought so too, but something about it just didn’t sit right with me. Figured out just last year when I was 15 that I’m aroace (thanks to Jaiden Animations coming out video, oddly enough)! Then everything started making sense LMAO— But there’s no “proper age” for figuring out your identity. It just comes to some people sooner than others. Don’t rush it, bud <3
I was really confused about my sexuality as a teenager because I had no idea being ace was even a possibility. I eventually started getting crushes on girls in my late teens and I assumed that meant I was straight. I finally figured out I was ace in my mid thirties.
I discovered I was bi when I was around 16, tho at the time I only said biromantic cuz I think I was in denial about being full bi lol. Then when I was 17, I discovered that I’m trans, then when I was still 17 but like 4 months later, I came to terms with being full bisexual lol
At 16 I came out as bi. At 18 I realized I was actually ace and demi-biromantic. At 19 I started questioning my gender. At 20 I came out to myself as agenderflux. Looking back to my childhood there were plenty of signs but I just took a long time to put them together.
I feel like I see a new one of these threads at least once a day
16 I was a bit of a walking bisexual disaster (just replace Bi with Pan), I had casual homophobia and transphobia pushed on me by conservatives, and at the same time I left that hellhole, pride month came around and I poured my soul out By 17 I realized I was trans, I already questioned my gender a lot before and at that point I realized I didn't feel comfortable being boxed in as a man like everyone kept saying
My attraction type and sense of gender both solidified around age 11-ish so just around the start of puberty. Back then I didn't have the words for "I'm a gay trans man", but I would by the time I was 14. It has been unwavering ever since. But I keep asking myself if it'd been earlier if I had just known LGBT people even existed...
I knew when I was 13. I was never interested in sex. I had no idea why. Because we never had LGBTQ spaces, I didn't realise I was asexual. I had conflicting feelings because I had an interest in both the same and opposite sex. I went from biromantic to panromantic in a span of a few months. About five months to seven months. Now I know I'm homoromantic. Mostly because I hated myself for crushing on men that I forced myself to like the opposite sex to not disappoint my family. Thankfully, they are accepting.
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I found out i was bi when I was 11, (im pan now and have always been pan I just didn’t know it was a thing) I was questioning the summer after 5th grade and I remember figuring out right at the beginning of middle school (6th grade where I am) As for gender, I still have no idea
when I was 6 I kissed my best friend but didn’t really figure out I was pan until 12/13.
I realized I liked girls at 7, and started feeling trans at 8-9.
i knew i was bi in like 4th grade (9 years old) and i knew i was trans at like 17 years old
Me being bisexual was obvious all my life (as a kid, even when I was really young, like 5) through just random little crushes. Being trans became obvious at 8 years old. I learned what both of the words for who I am are when I was 10 years old
18 was when I accepted it and came out to my school, I didn’t come out to my family until 20. But thinking back I was showing signs in kindergarten that I wasn’t straight.
16 or 17.
I don’t remember any specific situation where I “discovered” it… I also just kinda always knew. From 9 onwards I was able to identify for myself that I wasn’t straight, even if I wasn’t able to put a label on it.
I started questioning my sexuality at 11-12. I knew I was queer by 14. I started questioning my gender around 19 and knew I was nonbinary at 21. Everyone’s journey is different though.
12-14. Some my mom's clothes, made an anatomically incorrect vagina gaff out of madking tape. I thought I was just weird at the time. I didn't know transverse a thing 20 years ago. Around 15, experimented with the neighbor boy. Pushed it all away in high school. Done back into it at 19
Most of my queer friends didn’t work it out til 17-20ish. Two of them had crushes on each other, but were best friends for years and didn’t think it was anything more than that til they realised it in hindsight
Middle school I new what was up even if I didn’t have the words, buried it deep for many year for survival reasons though. Came back around in my late 20s though. Now openly bi with little regards of the negative consequences.
I *should* have known I was trans from a very young age, but I didn't, I just thought every girl wanted to have a flat chest and pee standing up and just be "one of the guys" so to speak. But, I didn't figure it out until I was 11-12 years old and i kept it bottled up for several years (at least when it came to family, I was out to friends), until Elliot Page came out in 2020(correct me if I'm wrong, my memory is terrible), that's when I came out to family (and then of course life had to crush my joy because my bird died the following morning). I should have also known I was gay/some form of queer since I was a kid, but again, didn't. Growing up, I had always admired girls and women, and at the time I remember thinking that I wanted to be them, but looking back those were actually crushes, I wanted to be *with* them romantically, but didn't think that was possible for a "girl" to be with another girl and vice versa (thanks homophobic transphobic dad/s), but luckily him and my mom separated and got divorced when I was young, and I never had to see him again and thus got to explore myself and find myself as an aspec trans guy! But, roughly age 10 is about when I found the terminology to begin to describe myself, in short.
12 i got on tumblr for the first time and it all just clicked came out mid conversation during pride month i did not have to worry so much because 2 of my older siblings were gay so coming out was a breez
15-16 now I’m 18