My 15 Year-Old Daughter Just Told Me She's BiSexual -HELP!

In My Humble Opinion
1

Hello,

I was driving my beautiful 15 year-old daughter to her Winter Formal (10th grade) last weekend and the conversation started when she sai that her guy friend said that he’s “Pan SexuaL”. I was like, “What the heck is that?”. She explained it… This night, it was all girls since most guys are “taken”… Let me give you some info on us:

  • We are from Texas and my kids always attended private schools, yes, we lived in a bubble up until…
  • We moved to Southern California 6 years ago. Kids were still in privates, sheltered from the crazy world out there, for the most part.
  • She suddenly got accepted into a very elite arts high school (after portfolios, interviews, grades) and we were all very excited. But we knew there were a lot of gay boys, since it’s a performing arts school mainly, though they have other conservatories with more diversity.
  • She has always had crushes on boys, since 1st grade, she would write them notes, blush, something she started on her own, never pushed or pressured to like boys by anyone. I even told her she was too young and to focus on school but she ALWAYS had a crush on boys.
  • She has an older brother who is 18, and she always thought at least one of his friends were cute.
  • We sent her to this school, this is her 3rd semester there and she has mentioned boys many times, she even had a date to last year’s Winter Formal and she was very excited about it. BUT she got very disappointed when he didn’t show more interest in her after that date.
  • This year she also liked a boy but nothing happened… she says there are too many girls to choose from for those straight boys…
  • She has a very supportive group of girlfriends who are mostly straight but last weekend she told me some of them were gay. I stopped breathing knowing where the conversation was heading.
  • I said, what are you? Since she was talking about others.
  • She said: “you will judge me if I tell you” and she laughed a little. She finally said: “I’m bi”.
    I asked her if she’s had any physical/intimate encounters with girls at school and she said no but that whomever she ends up loving in her life, that it wouldn’t matter if they were male or female.

Keep in mind, this high school is very, very liberal and we didn’t realize how much. I mean, some of the bathroom stalls (we just noticed last week when we visited) have upside down crosses saying “F” Trump and such. Super anti-trump crowd, etc. I don’t like him either, but to keep politics out, just so you get an idea on the crowd…

  • She has become much more feminist this year and a little of last (9th grade), standing up for LGBTQ folks, etc.

This isn’t your typical “I’ve been gay since I was young”, this is something sudden, but when I asked her since when she felt this way, she said about a year or two, which coincides with her entering this school.

She is almost 16 but has never had a serious boyfriend, though she dated one in 8th grade and held hands, etc. but they were never alone for making out and stuff.

I am thinking a few scenarios but I need help, I am freaking out not knowing how to guide her. Of course I was calm and understanding when she told me but I went home and cried all night not knowing how to properly handle it so she wouldn’t be hurt or feel unloved like a lot of teens feel. We are very close and we are definitely traditional with our thinking, we are Catholic, which she’s also suddenly rebelling against as well, when she used to always lead our table prayer at dinner. We definitely think this could be a case where she’s influenced by so many gay people around her meaning that she could be saying that to “fit in” or be cool, get attention, be accepted by others.

It’s very, very hard to date boys (she loves boys) because of how many are gay and the straight ones at school are all taken, she said. I’m thinking she feels accepted by the sweet girls and may have developed an attraction to that, because it has nothing to do with sex, she’s a virgin and not dating anyone, we talked about it.

We are very involved parents, always ask questions and talk to our kids but this time she didn’t tell us for the whole year, but she did open up to her older brother about it A YEAR AGO and we didn’t know!!!

Help, any ideas? We want to guide her, but part of me wants to pull her out of that school, though I know going into 11th grade is the toughest time to do so! She has a 4.2 GPA, excellent student, amazing human being, kind, caring, loving, not a mean bone, is kind to us her parents, we adore her! Help me please! If I pull her out I KNOW she will gt depressed and her grades will drop. She has ZERO emotional issues meaning, there is no depression, trauma, or divorce, NOTHING, we have a pretty stable and even boring home life. :slight_smile:

2

Love your daughter. Unconditionally. Who she falls in love with should have no bearing on things.

She sounds like a capable, strong young woman. There’s nothing in your post that gives me any reason to believe that she doesn’t know what she’s doing.

3

Any ideas? Yeah. Here’s an idea. Don’t ask random strangers on the internet how to raise your kid.

4

Unless you’re prepared to go full Honor-Killing, my advice is to chill the heck out.

5

nm. Maybe later.

6

It is good that your first action was to be supportive. I would suggest that you give yourself a break next by not thinking that this is a huge deal.

ETA: What the FUCK, Starving Artist??

7

Support her choices. Leave her in school, where she seems happy. Love her for who she is (she sounds awesome by the way).

If you do anything else, you run the risk of alienating your daughter, ruining her academic experience just when colleges really care about it, and teaching her that she can’t trust you with important personal information.

8

In the unlikely event that you genuinely joined a random message board to ask advice about this, just let your daughter find her own way and be supportive of her decisions.

9

NM

10

I’m thinking this’ll do better in IMHO.

11

Thanks ever so much for the preemptive strike. BTW, what’s wrong with being bisexual?

12

Honestly, you don’t need help. Your daughter is still your daughter, nothing has really changed.

13

She’s figuring out her sexuality, and she might not have it all figured out yet at 15. You don’t have to disbelieve your daughter when she tells you she’s bisexual, but you don’t have to believe her either. She will have to make her own way in the world, and make her own decisions, and some of those decisions won’t lead to outcomes you agree with.

In any case, I wouldn’t put a lot of stock into a 15 year old’s pronouncements about sexuality. Maybe she’s really bisexual, maybe she’s not. But what difference does it make either way?

Or to put it another way, what are you supposed to do differently now that your daughter has told you this information? The answer is, nothing. Nothing different. I mean, if you were previously making homophobic comments every day, maybe knock that off. But I’m assuming you weren’t doing that. Since there’s nothing to be done with this information, nothing needs to be done. Just keep on doing what you were doing before, and if by chance she tells you she’s going out with some girl, or kissed some girl, just act the same way that you would if she told you she went out with a boy or kissed a boy. Other than that, that’s it.

14

Bingo. Done in one.

15

She’s not having sex, right? So it doesn’t matter. She can like who she likes, and she can love who she loves, and there ain’t nothing wrong with loving everybody. Beats hating them.

If she was having sex, it would be better for her to be having sex with girls than guys - less chance of an unplanned pregnancy.

16

Don’t know why you’d ask this as in my redacted post I made no such claim.

17

And there is no way for me to show any evidence to the contrary, is there?

18

Certainly not, as it was never there to begin with. You’ve merely chosen to interpret it that way.

And now, so as not to allow myself to be goaded into posting comments that I subsequently reconsidered and withdrew, I’ll have nothing further to say about it.

19

From what you describe, she is in a school culture that is very artsy. Along with that will be a lot of gender fluidity and experimentation. I hesitate to use the words “peer pressure” because I don’t suspect anyone is consciously pressuring her one way or another. It’s really more about what is all around her.

She is likely not decided on this, and is testing her own boundries. Will she experiment with a girlfriend for a spell? Likely. If there were a guy she liked who liked her back she probably wouldn’t even be talking about this.

But you YOU crying all night about it? What’s up with that? Someone could give lessons in being a drama queen!

The worst thing you can do is make A BIG F*CKING DEAL ABOUT IT OVER AND OVER. Just let it slide and let it go. If she wants to talk more about it, she will. If not, don’t pester her about it.

20

Help with what? What is the actual problem here? I’m not seeing one.

And why would you pull her out of school?? Sounds like there’s nothing but downside if you make that choice. Don’t do that please.