sorry for all the yapping and yammering, tl;dr at the bottom. sorry for any formatting issues, this is my first reddit post :p
i'm in high school and have known i was attracted to women since elementary school. when one of my friends told me about bisexuality, i realized that it was how i felt to an extent. i thought that i was a lesbian in middle school, but i concluded i was bisexual after meeting some older men and women online in eighth grade and realizing i liked them kinda? they gave me attention and i liked it, but i wouldn't say i was attracted to them romantically/sexually. i hated when they would do anything sexual, but telling me i was pretty and stuff felt nice. i was definitely attracted to the woman involved, though.
i've been reflecting on my orientation, and i've started to realize just how much i don't like men compared to other opposite-sex attracted women. even on forums like this one, it shocks me whenever a woman talks about how much she likes men or is attracted to one? whenever my bi/hetero friends talk about guys, it feels so foreign. they talk about how they want to date our male peers and how they find male actors or characters attractive, but i can't relate. i have a friend who always yaps about how much she wants a boyfriend. i don't understand why anyone would ever want a boyfriend?? even when i dated a guy, i couldn't understand why anyone would want to date them. and i have another friend who thirsts over a wide variety of guys, but i don't understand what's so appealing about guys' looks. i don't have a type of guy i find attractive. men's bodies are just... really gross. their faces, too. i guess it's because women are taught to value beauty, but i've never seen a guy that looks good enough to thirst over. i also realized pretty recently i never had a crush on a guy, real or fictional. i've never had the urge to cuddle or kiss a man, go on a date with one, among other feelings. i never desired it. idk, i'm just not that attracted to men? i can't really pinpoint one guy where i was definitely into him romantically or sexually.
i love everything about women, though! all my fantasies have been about women, and i've only had crushes on women. my desire for women has gotten way more intense and carnal as i got older, but i've always wanted to be with and grow old with women. i remember wishing that girls could date and marry each other when i was four or so because i wanted to raise a kid with another girl. there were a lot of other signs i liked girls, too. i only get flustered or aroused by other women, and i find everything about women attractive. i daydream pretty often about cuddling with a woman, waking up next to my girlfriend/wife and making her breakfast, coming home after a long day at work to my wife and three cats, among other fantasies. i definitely have a type in women, too. i can pinpoint times where i have been attracted to or aroused by women as well as real/fictional crushes i have had on women. i have always seen myself only being romantically and sexually involved with women, i could never see myself dating or getting married until i realized i could do those things with women, even when i thought i had to date/get married. whenever i hear about a woman talking about her love for other women, i can relate heavily. i love talking about my love for other women! my attraction to women has never given me any distress about my identity or my life experiences, it comes naturally to me.
i've only dated two people: a girl in middle school and a guy in high school, both relationships lasted two years. i get that nobody cares about who you dated in middle school at my age, but that relationship felt so much realer than my most recent one? i never did anything romantic/sexual with the guy i dated, i would actively avoid going on dates, kissing, or doing anything i wouldn't do with my friends. sex was out of the picture, i knew i never wanted to be intimate with him or any man like that. with my girlfriend, it was completely different. it felt natural to say that i loved her, that she was my girlfriend and i was her girlfriend. i enjoyed thinking about her and wanting to be near her. i desired to be with her, i could touch her and hug her and kiss her and feel genuine joy. if she wanted me to kiss her or hold her hand, i would do it without question. i loved being reminded that i was with a girl that i loved, i loved spending romantic time with her and getting her gifts and talking to her. when something reminded me of my girlfriend, it gave me butterflies and stuff. i loved seeing something and going "oh hey! that reminds me of girlfriend!". the only time i was reminded of the guy i dated was whenever i got annoyed by something. whenever he said he loved me or whenever he touched me, i would feel this need to scrub my flesh off. i would cry about this a lot freshman/sophomore year, like full on stomachache-inducing cries. i still feel this way about the whole ordeal, thinking about how i put myself through that makes me want to bash my head into a wall. i wanted to break up with the guy since day 1, but i thought i had to push through to like him and it was normal to not like guys at first. by the time i realized i was never going to be attracted to him, i felt like i had to stay for his sake. he was declining mentally and academically, and he would constantly talk about how he was going to kill himself and how i was all he had. i didn't want to leave him when he was so vulnerable. there were also some other reasons i stayed, mostly stuff relating to my image and status among my peers and teachers. it's stupid i know, but a lot of people saw us as this cute couple even before we started dating, and i didn't want to let them down i guess. i did try to break up whenever i got too fed up with pretending several times throughout the course of our relationship, but he would argue with me for hours each time, so i would give up until i got the courage to try and break up again. i only really said yes when he asked me out because i wanted proof that someone could love someone as ugly and pathetic as me + proof that i wasn't some loser who didn't date in high school (???? idk i was a weird 14 yo), and i also wanted to prove to myself and others that i could properly like guys (if that makes sense). my girlfriend and i broke up amicably, but i never once hated her. we're still close friends!
i get that bisexuality is vast, so i'm not going to be able to relate to every bisexual woman, but i feel like i'm defective or broken for not liking men as much as other women. all my friends are saying i'm a lesbian, and i agreed for a while, but it feels wrong to call myself a lesbian when i do have some evidence of attraction to men. i must be attracted to men somehow since i dated one for years, i could've just left or rejected him if i wasn't attracted to him in some way. he was a genuinely bad person for most of the relationship, so it's not weird to not like him. same with those other guys i met, if i wasn't attracted to men i wouldn't accept that kind of attention? sometimes i'll romance a guy in a video game if he has a nice story, too. so i guess my problem is that my attraction to men is so miniscule i have a hard time understanding it. it even feels wrong to say "i'm attracted to men"??
is there any way to overcome not liking men as much as other bi women?? or at least better understand it? the only solution i can come up with to solve this is to try and find a guy i like, but i never want to be romantically or sexually involved with men. any advice is appreciated :-)
tl;dr: i'm bi with an unclear attraction to men and a very strong preference for women, and i've been having a hard time understanding and accepting my orientation because of it. i've been in relationships with men and women, but i still feel strongly for women and not strongly enough for men. in need of advice on how to navigate having such a strong preference for women/rare attraction to men