I don’t know how to verbalize my attraction to women
I (28F) grew up in a traditional Baptist church and family. I fully ascribed to the beliefs I was taught until I started questioning them when I turned 18. By 20 I had lost most of the beliefs and was questioning if I might be bisexual after experiencing my first crush on a woman. I’ve spent a long time going back and forth about labeling myself bisexual. Mostly because of imposter syndrome and doubting that I’m attracted to more than one gender enough to “deserve” the label. Luckily all of you here and other people I’ve seen on social media have helped me become more and more validated and comfortable accepting that I’m bi.
Something I’ve started noticing, though, is that I don’t know how to express my attraction towards women. When I see a man I’m attracted to, I’ll look at my friends and be like “damnn, he’s hot” or “he’s fine as hell,” or any variation of those expressions. I’m also able to point out particular traits that I’m attracted to, like his facial features, arms, chest, hands, butt, etc. But when I see a woman I’m attracted to, I feel clammed up. I know I could say the same or similar things, but they just come out awkwardly or not at all. I don’t know if it’s because looking at a woman and admiring different parts of her body makes me feel like a creep. Which means I have a double standard cause then I should feel like a creep for how I admire men. I also think it’s cause my friends are mostly straight. Only one friend and my sister are not straight. But they are both in relationships, so we don’t admire people while we’re out together. So, I don’t really have anyone to express my attraction to. I think it’s probably more so because I grew up being told that I could only admire female bodies as art, but that to think of them sexually was wrong.
Have any of you experienced anything like this? If so, were you able to work past it? How?
Ps. I don’t typically spend a lot of time (if any) just pointing out and talking about attractive people. I guess I just want to be able to express my attraction because if I start to date a woman, I want to be able to express my attraction to her and to others about her. Right now I feel like I wouldn’t know what to say and it’d make it seem like I wasn’t attracted even though I was.