You know what, though? You are further along than I was for most of my life, because I didn’t know I could have a ‘-romantic’ designation AND a ‘-sexual’ one FOR LIKE TWENTY YEARS. I was so confused that I really liked certain people, but never fantasized about sex with them like everything around me told me I was clearly supposed to.  I thought well into adulthood that I somehow just simply hadn’t hit that point of obsession with sex that people kept telling me I was going through since I started puberty at like, 11.  All I heard was, “You’re going to want to have sex, but [insert public school education here].”  But I never had a problem with the first half of the sentence. I legit did not understand how so many people got accidentally pregnant, I didn’t get how it ‘just happened’, I certainly didn’t understand the ‘struggle’ of people who said they were ‘saving themselves for marriage’.  I was honestly sometimes like, “Do I even have to THEN?”  So, honestly, it’s great that you are at a point where you know you have two axis…esesess to work with.

And you’re saying it ‘doesn’t matter’, but if you care, then it matters.   It’s nice to find a word for how you roll if only to know there’s enough other people like you that it justified making a word.  If you never do anything with that word for the rest of forever, that’s rad.   If you decide to embroider it on all your clothes, that’s cool too.  

Like for me?  This word was kind of big to me: 

And I thought, ‘Oh my god, the times when I have been sort of cautiously okay or even slightly enjoyed extremely specific, safe, and tame sexual things featuring characters I like?  but then the moment that I kind of remembered that I existed and was sitting there or pictured being in any of the situations, I wanted to take my skin off with a cheese grater?  That might be THIS?’ 

I forget this word literally immediately after viewing this image, every time, because it’s not super elegant or memorable. (Sorry, Anthony Bogaert!)  But I saved it to my harddrive because it struck me so much.  I don’t have it emblazoned on my sidebar, I’m not even completely sure it’s exactly me since my Do Not Want pile is So Fucking High that I’m not sure I qualify, but it’s so close to things I’ve felt and I’m kind of cool just knowing it exists, tucked away in my image folder for when I need to think about it.

Incidentally, I think, much like gender, it’s okay to slide around the sexuality spectrum too.  Today, you can feel female and think you might be sexually into everyone.  Tomorrow, you can feel no particular gender at all and think you might be sexually into just dudes.   I think there’s probably a climate vs weather analogy to be made here, but I’d have to get back to you on that.

There is probably a term for sexuality spectrum fluidity the way there is ‘gender fluid’.   It’s just probably not ‘sexually fluid’ because I’m pretty sure that sounds super gross even to people not me. 

 It all matters as little or as much as you want it to, whether you’re in a stage of life or mental space right now to believe that or not.  It’s useful to have a word, don’t get me wrong, but like, in real life?  I mostly just tell people who casually find out I’m not straight that I’m bisexual, because it’s easier for them to understand and less energy for me to fucking sit through the ‘how can you not like pizza’ conversation and the ‘no, that means budding’ conversation.   It also saves me a conversation later if I should ever get involved with someone like, “Haha, now you have a boy/girlfriend, I see you like sex after all! You thought you were so high and mighty!”   And then I have to explain romantic versus sexual, blah blah blah, and bisexual is just an easier shield to duck behind to avoid people getting too personal about shit in real life.

SO ANYWAY, Good Luck!   I hope some fraction of that word spew was useful to you!