Before officially throwing myself out of the closet in sixth grade, I dated A LOT of guys. Some of which I still talk to today and others I haven’t spoken to in who knows how long. For many people this comes as a surprise, because anyone who knows me or has looked at me knows, I am a lesbian.
It’s not uncommon to see and hear the shock a person expresses when I say “my ex boyfriend” or “when I dated guys.” It’s pretty comical really, because to me it was just a part of my journey of coming out of the closet. My very first boyfriend was my best friend, he was a family friend who I now consider my cousin because it’s been that long. Were the feelings we had for each other real? No, definitely not. We were young and at the time it seemed like it was right because our family was convinced we were going to get married.. I ruined that dream for everyone when I came out as being a lesbian. Oops.
The first time I said I love you to a boy was in sixth grade. I thought he was the most incredible person in the world. Again, I was young and so was he, but it made sense at the time. He made me laugh, he was cute and we always had a great time together. All the reasons anyone dates in middle school. Did I love him? No. I was too young to really know what love was, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t care about him, because I did. It doesn’t change the fact that he was a person, and it doesn’t mean I used him to hide that I was a lesbian. Even though most people in my life at the time already knew before I ever even said it.
Now, I’m not going to get into every boy I have ever dated because, honestly, I don’t have the time for that. I have dated many guys and said “I love you” to pretty much all of them. The point is even though I wasn’t in love with them doesn’t mean I used them. Each one of them had wonderful qualities, personalities, and some of them were pretty good looking, too. In middle school it’s hard to just straight up say “I am a lesbian” especially when everyone around you is straight and is dating. It made sense to me to be in a relationship with a guy and didn’t make sense to date a female, because it wasn’t common in my middle school.
I was talking to a friend from middle school a couple days ago and we were talking about one of my ex boyfriends and I said “he was good at dating, I’m just gay.” It’s important to note if someone dates only males and then comes out as a lesbian, it doesn’t mean the person they were with “turned them” or “made them gay”—because that isn’t how it works. Being a lesbian, being gay or even being bisexual has nothing to do with past relationships and the fault and blame should never fall on them.
Being homosexual is not a choice, someone can not make you choose to be one. You just simply are and people seem to forget this. Not everyone knows their sexuality right away, it may take some longer than others, but their past dating history does not mean someone “changed” them. They just simply are what they are and they were born that way, not changed that way.