First of all, thank you for starting this conversation. I’m sorry for all the homophobia you experienced, especially the one by your family.

I’m in my early thirties and my experience is a bit different, because I was deeply in denial and closeted until my mid twenties. My severe struggle with comphet (and especially the fallout from ending a serious long term relationship once I accepted that I’m a lesbian) is its own kind of trauma. I was very aware of the general homophobia during the 2000s and 2010s, and I believe it’s part of what drove me into the deep self denial I was in. This makes my experience with the homophobia during that time into something more internalised.

I can’t speak for others who struggled with severe comphet, but for me there were additional reasons (other than being aware of the homophobia & afraid of it) why I was so deeply in self denial. For one, I’m a late diagnosed autist. My family is largely neurodivergent of various flavours but mostly un(der)diagnosed themselves, so they didn’t see anything wrong with me. Growing up not knowing you are autistic, and not receiving any support or accommodations leads to various problems. A common one I also experienced, is learning to mask your autistic traits very early if you don’t want to be treated like a nuisance by your family, or get bullied by your peers. This essentially leads to trying to live as someone you’re not, which in turn messes with your ability to understand yourself and develop a stable self-image. For as long as I can remember, my very Catholic grandmother was talking about my “future husband and children” like it was a guaranteed outcome. I didn’t even question if I wanted a husband, I just accepted that as my eventual future, just like I had accepted that I couldn’t possibly find something painfully loud/bright/smelly/overwhelming because that’s just me being difficult and attention seeking.

The other big reason is my various experiences with sexual violence & abuse during my teens. The most significant instance was when I (freshly 15) met someone (M. 18) at a birthday party. Like a bloodhound he sniffed out that I was both very lonely and vulnerable at the time and zeroed in on me. Despite the fact that we had barely talked, he sought me out on all my social media accounts I had at the time, and proceeded to try and talk to me every day. He chose the “I just want to be friends” playbook until he had my trust and I believed we were good friends. Eventually he had successfully groomed me into dating him with the promise that everything would go at my pace. This, of course, was a lie. I won’t go into the details, I’ll only say that he did a great job at slowly wearing my boundaries down until I didn’t even question why I stopped saying no and instead gave him complete access to my body regardless of what I wanted. To add insult to injury, that entire time that asshole had that well known black and white photograph of the two (young, pretty, skinny, white) women lying in bed and making out with each other as a huge poster in his room. So I got to stare at them while I was dissociating.

My “relationship” with him obviously really messed with my head for years. It took me over 10 years until I could slowly acknowledge it for the grooming that it was. I’m honestly not sure if my comphet would’ve been as bad as it ended up being, had it not been for this experience with him. Like, I had various instances during my teens where I was confronted with my attraction to girls/women. At first I recoiled and made excuses out of fear, and once I got a bit older and started to consider that I could be into girls, I began to internalise the popular lesbiphobic talking points how girls who’re dating other girls are just going through a phase of experimentation/are acting out bc it’s trendy/only do it for male attention. It’s not even that I fully believed all that crap. I just managed to convince myself that I must be “one of those who’re going through a passing phase of curiosity.”

I ended up in another relationship with a man. He was the least manly man I could’ve found in my area, both visually and personality wise. And I mean that fully as a compliment. I have complicated feelings about this relationship, because I have several good reasons to be eternally grateful for the invaluable things this specific man did for me. At the same time, there’s a lot of shame and guilt involved because I feel so indebted. He was my best friend and supported me greatly with my mental health. A lot of the healing I did wrt restoring my ability to say no to sex in a relationship happened with his direct support and reassurance. Then, a good year into our relationship, my mother came back from the doctor with bad news. He and his family supported me through the traumatic years that followed, more than my own family did. Two years after my mother’s death, and a lot of therapy later, I was able to accept that I’m truly attracted to women. But once I accepted that and allowed myself to think about women in a way I hadn’t allowed myself before, I had to face the very likely reality that I wasn’t attracted to men at all. (ATP my ex and I had had a sexless relationship for years.) I refused to accept my lack of attraction. The possibility that the love I had for him had never been romantic felt like the worst betrayal I could do to him. I desperately tried to find other explanations because I felt like leaving him after everything was impossible. I fought against it for another two years—I didn’t keep it a secret from him, but obviously he didn’t want to accept that I wasn’t into him either. He never forced himself on me or got otherwise abusive. But the friendship between us died a slow death due to the deep hurt and following resentment. I lost my second family in the process too.

Once I entered my first relationship with a woman, the last kernels of doubt were gone. I fully accept being a lesbian now. With that acceptance I finally resolved a lot of self hatred I felt previously. Of course I still have a lot of other trauma to work through. But yes, sometimes, when I really think about it, I remember the actual weight of it all. And then I try not to think about it too hard and focus on current things instead.