Ask Sam letter

Hi there,

Thank you for your letter.

For many young people who are trying to work out who they are, sexuality is in their thoughts a lot.

You’ve been in a relationship with your boyfriend for 9 months and it sounds as if you’re happy with him. I can hear how your best friend has talked about being attracted to you - maybe this has made you even more curious about a potential relationship with a girl.

Even though you have mixed feelings, you’re wondering if the butterflies you feel when you’re with her mean you should try out a lesbian sexual experience.

It seems to me that there might be two things to think about. As we say on our Sexual orientation page, some young people know at a very young age what their sexual orientation is and for others, it may take some time to work that out. It’s really tempting to want to have a definite answer now (as you say to “finally find out”), but in fact, that’s not always the way that discovering your sexual identity works.

The other thing you might want to keep in mind is that whatever the sexual identity, all sex is about intimacy - and intimacy is about relationships. Your boyfriend says he’s okay with you trying out with your other friend, but it sounds like you’re scared to try out a lesbian sexual relationship while dating him.

When it comes to the consequences on your relationships, you’d need to think about how it’s going to affect things between you and your boyfriend and whether anyone might get hurt – including yourself.

You've made a really good start thinking about it with this letter. You’ll also find there are a lot of posts on our message boards on Sexuality that are similar to the thoughts and feelings you’ve told me about. You may find reading some of those helpful. You might even want to post a message to get support from others in similar situations.

Finally, I hope you’ll think about talking to us more about this with an online chat or a phone call. We’d really like to keep supporting you.

Take care,
Sam