Porn Turned Me Bisexual And Almost Ruined My Life

The mainstream narrative is that porn doesn’t have any harmful side effects, so what’s the big deal? I’m here to prove that false with my own experience.

I have long believed and even confided in a couple of my close friends that porn “turned me bisexual.” Seeing the recent Evie article backing up my theory with empirical data really validates my experience, and I feel compelled to tell my story to help other girls avoid my mistakes. 

*This article is intended for readers 18 and older.*

Discovering Porn

Starting from the beginning, I had only ever thought of boys romantically from a young age. As young as kindergarten, I can recall being fascinated with boys in a different way. I was always a girls’ girl, had a clan of awesome female friends, and had all-girl sleepovers my entire childhood. Never once did I think of touching or kissing girls, and I even asked my mom to pick me up from a sleepover once when the girls started kissing each other during a game of truth or dare in the 6th grade.

Flash-forward to discovering internet porn as a teenager, perhaps around 15 years old. I was fascinated by this intriguing new world. I wasn’t sexually active yet, but seeing naked people online felt both wrong and exciting – the classic description of sin. I knew that I shouldn’t watch it, but I couldn’t look away. I wanted to learn how I could please a man for when I would soon become sexually active. Again, I had only ever thought of being with boys. (I thank God that, as a millennial, I grew up prior to the mass glorification of alternative sexuality as portrayed in Euphoria and similar Gen Z teen TV shows.)

I started out watching porn from pure curiosity, but the more I watched it, the more I became aroused by it. The only issue was, I wasn’t aroused by the men in porn. In fact, they were the worst part. I was a teen, and the hairy old men were far from appealing to me at that time. Not to mention, they were almost always portrayed as being violent and domineering, which was completely foreign to me and not at all how I wanted my romantic first time to be. The women, on the other hand, were almost always portrayed as being soft, young, and beautiful (even some appearing to be close to my own age, which I sincerely hope they weren’t, given the legal implication of that). 

I imagined someday making love sweetly and softly, which is exactly what I found in lesbian porn. I began to exclusively search for lesbian scenes, which accomplished several of my new goals: I could see examples of female eroticism to model, I wasn’t interrupted by the gross male characters, and I could get off even better by seeing more of my body parts being stimulated on screen, rather than a focus on the male perspective. Over time, I became addicted to lesbian pornography, which evolved into seeking female-only threesomes, then later all-girl orgies. The girls were, in some ways, aspirational.

While I did find women unarguably attractive in real life, I only craved true intimacy with men, really one specific man.

When masturbating without porn, I started visualizing women performing oral sex on me instead of male penetration. Years later, when in a long-term relationship, I would often imagine being with a woman while having sex with my boyfriend. Let me be clear that I had absolutely no feelings of sexual dissatisfaction toward my boyfriend, nor did I experience any urges or interest in pursuing a real romantic relationship with a woman. I was even open and honest with my boyfriend about my fantasies about women, which he was ironically supportive of. I learned that most men aren’t scared off by a woman who is sexually fluid, and oftentimes, they are turned on by it, which only encouraged my curiosity. While I did find women unarguably attractive in real life, I only craved true intimacy with men, really one specific man.

Experimenting with a Woman

That changed when my now ex-boyfriend and I broke up – I wanted to retaliate by distracting myself with something new. I decided that I would use my newfound freedom as an opportunity to experiment with a woman. I went on a dating app for the first time ever, made a profile, and selected “Women'' as my dating preference. Within 24 hours, I had a date planned with a beautiful, feminine girl. I was so nervous because it was all so new to me, but to ease my nerves, I told myself to pretend that I was simply going to dinner with a new platonic friend. 

The date went smoothly. We girls can understand each other very well, so in some ways, it was even more fun than a traditional first date. To be honest, it did feel almost exactly like going out with a girl friend. The only difference was that at the end of the night, when we decided to go back to her place, I ended up having sex with her. On the date, we had had a few drinks, and whenever I get buzzed, I typically feel pretty horny. That was enough for me to want to be touched by a beautiful human being; gender was not even important in the moment, but nonetheless, my long-time sexual fantasy was finally coming true. The novelty of the experience made it easy for me to enjoy and even orgasm.

However, the next day, when I woke up sober next to this girl, I felt awful. I felt guilty because, normally, waking up to a beautiful man after having sex with him, I would still be sexually attracted to him the next day. But in this case, even though she was just as beautiful as she was the night before, I simply wasn’t sexually interested in her anymore. The appeal was all as temporary as the night sky and had worn off by sunrise. This was perfectly clear in my early morning sober mind. I asked myself what I had done, I couldn’t take this back, and more than anything, I was concerned that it would hurt this girl’s feelings to discover that I never wanted to see her again and that she was simply the subject of my little experiment. In that moment, I felt the empathy of a woman overshadowed by the apathy of a man who has had a meaningless one-night stand. I had always been such a feminine woman, but in that moment, I realized how truly out of my element I was. Over breakfast with her, I discovered that I was also an “experiment” for her, and we mutually agreed not to meet again, so that fortunately worked out.

Coming Back to My True Self

After that experience, I thought long and hard about whether or not I was really bisexual, despite having had – and momentarily enjoyed having – sex with a woman. It wasn’t until much later that I started to ponder the source of my interest in women and attributed it to my porn consumption. I reflected on the many reasons why I sexually preferred men, what I appreciated about masculinity from a romantic and sexual perspective, and why true intimacy with a woman would never deeply satisfy me (no pun intended, but also that). I resolved to stop watching porn, all porn, and sure enough, my sexual thoughts involving women slowly dissolved. I also committed to actively rebuking intrusive sexual thoughts about women when masturbating or having sex with men after that point. (I’ve since become completely celibate after realizing the harm of hookup culture, but that’s a story for another day.)

My temporary bisexuality was absolutely a habit that I cultivated and developed rather than a “genetic mutation” that I was born with.

In all honesty, the shift was challenging for me due to the mass over-sexualization of women in the media. It’s impossible to disagree or forget that women are sexy creatures. I admit that sometimes I open Instagram, and an “innocent” lingerie ad tickles me down there a little bit. In fact, these days, we women are often just as guilty of sexualizing women as men are. Lust is a very strong sin, and I committed myself to seeing all people as people instead of sexual objects. I’m not perfect, and sometimes I falter, but I know that my temporary bisexuality was absolutely a habit that I cultivated and developed rather than a “genetic mutation” that I was born with.

Luckily for me, that one-night stand was an enlightening moment rather than the unintentional opening to a whole new destiny. It makes me sad to imagine that some women could have a similar experience but end up getting gradually sucked into the LGBTQ+ lifestyle. What if I had been in a more vulnerable state, and the guilt made me give into a second date, and that evolved into an actual circumstantial relationship? This kind of thing happens, and it would have utterly destroyed my lifelong dreams of becoming a wife and a mother in a traditional family. 

Closing Thoughts

I’m sure that at least one person may be reading this thinking that I am just in denial of my bisexuality and doing all that I can to avoid it. Culture says that sexuality is a “spectrum,” so maybe there is some truth to my occasional same-sex attraction. I don’t really know what’s “normal” for certain. But what I do know is that everyone gets met with intrusive thoughts at some point in life – they could be temptations around same-sex attraction, infidelity, sexual abuse, self-harm, or even suicide – and you can choose to feed those thoughts, act on them, let them carve your future, and define you. Or, you can train your mind to choose a thought pattern that aligns with your true essence. It’s well-known that pornography is very addictive, and I would argue that the same applies to thought loops that you don’t actively get a handle on. I can speak for myself to say that my curiosities were nothing more than sick thoughts because they deviated from my true nature, and today, I’ve never been more secure in my sexuality and pursuit of solely heterosexual relationships.

I say all this so I can hopefully help at least one girl not to make my same mistake: Don’t open the door to porn, as it’s a gateway to a variety of thoughts that weren’t originally yours. Honor your true self and your true sexuality. Do not let the media and culture shape your desires and make you believe that you are something you’re not or missing out on anything. You’re not. Trust me when I say that there’s nothing in porn that will come close to portraying the magic of making love with a real man who loves you.