AUGUST 14, 2016

Hey Emily!
I’m a 20-year-old girl from England. As far as I know, I’m completely straight and in love with my long-term boyfriend. (OK, there was one time that I hooked up with a girl, but I decided it’s just not for me.)
Here’s the thing: When I masturbate (and even sometimes when my boyfriend is going down on me), I think about girls having sex with girls. Mainly, I imagine situations where a girl is having lesbian sex for the first time. Am I normal?! Am I even straight? There are absolutely no issues with my boyfriend and I really don’t think I’m gay. Am I maybe bisexual? Am I alone?
Thanks,
Bi-Curious Britney in Britain

Dear Britney,

I am so glad you wrote me, Britney. These are the types of questions that come up for a LOT of people, but they’re usually too embarrassed to talk about it. They worry that maybe they’re confused or in denial about their sexuality. But here’s the truth: Not only are you not alone, you are actually in great company.

It is “normal” (even though I dislike that word, especially when it comes to sex), healthy, and extremely common for women to fantasize about other women during masturbation and during sex—even when they’re with their boyfriend or husband! And just because you imagine two (or more) ladies getting down doesn’t necessarily mean that you want to be with women. Hey, you’ve actually already tried it, so you know this.

Here’s what it does mean: You have a healthy and active imagination and you know what turns you on. Good for you.

I think it’s really helpful to think about sexuality as a spectrum, rather than a fixed state. The well known sexologist Alfred Kinsey and a team of colleagues even created a scale to classify varying degrees of hetero and homosexuality. This chart rates sexual thought and behavior somewhere between zero and six, with zero being “exclusively hetero” and six being “exclusively homosexual.” So someone who would rate themselves a “three” on the Kinsey Scale would more or less be considered bisexual, because they prefer both men and women equally.

Women naturally tend to fluctuate on the spectrum, with the majority not 100 percent straight. So we are all what I like to call “fluid,” depending on where we are on any given day or based on our personal experiences and fluctuating desire.

In fact, women are actually turned on by a much wider range of sexual imagery than you might think. We usually think of men as the ones who escape into sexual fantasy and visuals, but actually, we women have a pretty solid and adventurous mental “library.” So for whatever reason, when most women retreat into that secret sexual lair in our brains, there’s some hot girl on girl action going on. Whatever “normal” is, it isn’t 100 percent straight!

I also want to remind you that everyone has all kinds of fantasies. Just because an idea or scenario helps keep the fires burning in the heat of the moment doesn’t mean that you necessarily want to play them out IRL.

I think the short answer to your question is this: you, like most women, might have an attraction to other women and find them sexy, but it doesn’t mean you have to leave your boyfriend or worry about coming out of the closet.

So when it comes to defining your own sexuality, try not to get too wrapped up in labels. Since sexuality is fluid, let’s all just go with the flow!

link: http://www.glamour.com/story/straight-fantasize-lesbian-sex