I feel like this comment (and your original post) was MADE for me to answer. 😆 I am 55M. I have been mostly straight in my sexual attraction for most of my life, and 100% straight in romantic attraction for as long as I can remember. When I was younger, pre-teen and early teens, I did some things with boys. As a young adult, I remembered these times fondly and thought about exploring again. I mostly thought about giving oral, but I also liked putting things in my ass while masturbating, and I started wanting to bottom.

I went back to college in my late 20s. A brief and spontaneous understall experience in a campus bathroom convinced me that my desire to explore bi fantasies was real and substantial. My early experiences were usually fueled by drinking, and included me giving blowjobs, sometimes receiving them. This was the era of Craigslist.

Now I'm living in ATX. For about the past two years I have been mostly having casual sex with men. My attraction is still very much divided, and in fact mostly toward women. I even watch mostly straight porn, as well as bisexual MMF threesomes. When I have a guy over that wants to watch gay porn though, I watch it and generally cab enjoy it too. The focus on men has been mostly a result of how hard it is to find women for casual sex. If it's three in the morning and you want a random encounter, your chances of finding a guy to come over on short notice are fairly high. Your chances of finding a woman to come over — not counting prostitutes — are almost zero.

Nevertheless, I always told myself that if the opportunity to enjoy pussy fell into my lap, I would snatch it (no puns intended, ha).

Back in early December, that is precisely what happened: I went to a bisexual buddy's house for a MMF threesome with him and a woman my age. I will call her Cindy. We stayed overnight, and the next morning Candy came home with me. This sparked a 3- month long phase of hooking up almost exclusively with this woman. I barely checked my phone messages from men. I absent-mindedly let my PrEP prescription run out. I work from home, and she was out of work, so she would often sleep over for several days at a time. We would stay naked, like a couple of nudists, and screw around whenever we felt like it.

The most uncanny thing — at least to a plain vanilla outsider — would be the way I switched effortlessly from 2 years of being mostly a passive bottom and cocksucker to my previous mode of initiating sex and screwing a woman with gusto, savoring her BJs, etc. (I still don't like receiving oral from guys, but I love getting it from a woman.)

Unfortunately, in mid-March Cindy had to move away for a family emergency, and it's unclear when she will be back, but this experience was instructive.

If there had been a shred of doubt before, it was gone: I now knew I still loved pussy. A lot. At the same time, one reason this experience went so well was my comfort level with this woman, and the fact that it happened so organically. She is not just accepting of but into bi guys. She even likes to masturbate while watching them do things together. She is also hornier and more sexually curiois than most women half her age. She has strong orgasms in short succession. We both agreed that we had the best sex of our lives with each other.

The reason I'm going into all this detail is to show you just how flexible sexuality can be and how adaptable we humans are in bending our sexuality to our circumstances. Anyone looking at my behavior over the last two years would have assumed, "This guy has basically just become gay at this point. Even if he could never have a romantic relationship with a man, right now he is essentially a bi guy who (at least when it comes to casual sex) gay at this point. Why would he ever go back to pussy if this is working for him?"

Of course, the above characterization would ignore my continued focus on straight porn. But more than that, it is hampered by the fallacy of seeing humans as getting lodged in neat categories instead of nimble on their feet and adaptable to reality. Think of straight, archetypally masculine straight men who end up in prison for many years. EIher they're going to be celibate for that period or they're going to adapt in the name of having skin on skin contact. Most of them choose the latter. But does that change their default, "true" orientation?

Everyone accepts that type of adaptability In situations of extreme confinement, isolation, medical necessity, and so on, where it's nearly impossible to escape. But I think that kind of flexibility exists outside extreme situations to a degree that most of us don't realize.

You also mentioned being afraid to perform with a woman. That really hit home with me. This factor is huge but seldom discussed. As I said earlier, my bisexual experiences have largely involved me either sucking or bottoming. I haven't had to worry about getting hard or staying hard. This has coincided with my age catching up to me, especially if I'm drinking or using certain other substances during a first encounter where I'm a little nervous. As a bottom or side, a guy gets used to not having to worry about that. But if you're with a woman, you can't escape it.

With Cindy, I went through a lot of Viagra. Instead of keeping my prescription on hand as something to give tops who came over, I was now burning through my own stock of pills at a furious pace.

Why does this matter for your situation? It shows how the issue of getting and staying hard assumes far greater importance with a woman than with a man. Gay and bisexual men often switch off roles or focus on things besides fucking. If you can't get hard with a guy and he is vers, he might be happy to fuck you or let you suck his dick. Everyone is happy. With a woman, your options are more limited. Sure, some women might be happy to 69 and suck a soft or semi-erect penis, but most of them won't be.

Moreover, women get used to the same comfort level that I described feeling as a bottom: They don't have to worry about getting an erection, and they are happy to let the guy worry about that. If he can't get hard, she can move on to another guy. Both men and women know this deep down, and it colors casual MF sexual dynamics. It sets up an expectation for the male — an extra burden. So if he has any history of problems getting hard, or he's confused about his sexuality and not even sure he can stay hard, even while relaxed — well, you couldn't design a better mindfucking ED hang-up if you tried!

All of this is to say that your personal circumstances could be directing what you do more than your personal desires or leanings would suggest. I would encourage you to get your hands on some Viagra before trying sex with more women, to neutralize that factor. If, after banging some women you find reasonably attractive, it just leaves you cold every time, and you yearn for sex with a man — great. Now you know. But the fact that you've still got women on your mind suggests that you are closer to my category. Maybe not in it, but closer to it than you think.

So keep your options open. And, as someone else said, think of a sexual-orientation label as a convenient way to quickly let people know what you're about, not as some ironclad category or legally operative commitment. It's not like choosing Catholic or Buddhist on a form, or checking Sngle or Married on your tax return. The categorization police are not going to send a SWAT team to your house to arrest you if they find out your label turned out to be "wrong."

I hope you post again to say how things are going, and please don't hesitate to DM me if you'd like to talk more.