I'm In My 30s And I'm Finally Ready To Come Out

I’m going to jump right in and get real with y’all. It’s time to get something off my chest, because the weight of it is just too damn heavy to hold anymore. I’ve been living for over 20 years with an epic secret only a few people know.

You ready? Okay. Here goes nothin’.

My name is Lindsay Wolf, and I’m bisexual.

I’m just going to repeat that because dayummm, that felt good to say out loud! I, Lindsay Wolf, love the dudes and the ladies.

If I’m being 100% honest – which I want to be, duh! – I should inform you that I also love everyone else too. Basically since I was a young teen, I’ve identified as someone who believes that romantic relationships transcend gender. And bisexuality has been the label that feels like the best way to describe all of that.

This is literally the first time in my entire life that I’m talking about being bisexual so openly. So, I guess you could say this is me officially coming out to you.

Congratulations. You have, in a really awesome way, become my immediate support system. Thank you for sticking around, because I have some things to say.

I’ve been crushing on girls since middle school, but I didn’t realize it was actual attraction until one of my high school besties and I were dared to kiss one night. I was about 16 at the time, and she was one of the most popular girls at our school. Her lips were soft and full, and I didn’t want to stop kissing them. Of course, I awkwardly pulled away, pretending like it wasn’t the most magical experience of my young life.

But it sure as hell was.

I wish this was my only memory of that amazing kiss, but some A-hole at my school totally ruined it for me. As I sat in English class the next day, he randomly blurted out details of our smooch that made me realize my entire grade had been gossiping about it. The whole room started laughing, and I felt the hot sting of tears as I ran out. My English teacher made the kid follow me down the school halls and apologize to me. While I appreciate that he did, it certainly would have felt better if no one had talked to me about it ever again.

Then my little brother began noticing that I was dressing differently and in true rival sibling fashion, he started playfully ragging on me for looking like a stereotypical lesbian. It wasn’t very long before I changed my style to something else.

At night, I felt most safe to be myself. I’d stay up until the early morning with my bedroom door locked, watching gay women kiss in movies like “If These Walls Could Talk Too,” “But I’m a Cheerleader,” and my personal favorite, “Gia.” Angelina Jolie had it goin’ on, and I was totally hooked from the first moment I saw her gorgeous face onscreen. I immediately splattered photographs all over the walls above my bed. My mom thought it was because she inspired me, and I guess you could say, she did. She inspired me to feel things I’d never felt before in ways I never thought I could.

I had this wacky idea that when I went off to college, I’d find a willing BFF and we’d hop around gay clubs as a way of finally getting to experiment with my sexuality. At the time, I was definitely attracted to boys too, but they were easy to crush on because I was expected to like them. But girls? That was like a tucked away cookie jar I couldn’t tell anyone that I desperately wanted to reach into.

Just three months into my freshman year, something unexpected happened. I fell in love with the man who would become my first husband. And that’s when shit got really messy. Because while I was very much in a long-term relationship with a college boy, that didn’t stop me from drunkenly making out with every single woman who was interested.

This was, as you’d expect, a very confusing thing for my boyfriend to make sense of. Especially when the sloppy drunk kissing turned into semi-sexual experiences. And TBH, he started jumping in at a certain point, even if he didn’t fully understand why I was doing what I was doing. If you can’t beat ‘em, join ’em, amiright? Through it all, he supported me as I wildly danced in the chaos of figuring out exactly how to be the most authentic version of myself possible.

Unfortunately, being authentic also came at a painful cost. One college summer, I dyed my hair red, chopped it all off, and after years of disordered eating, happily gained a little bit of weight. I came home, super confident and so ready to tell my younger teenage siblings that I was bisexual. But as I was in the middle of officially coming out to them in our family’s kitchen, my mom quickly barged in. Terrible words about my sexuality were flung at me. Shame-inducing statements about my appearance were made. And there was a whole lot of yelling.

That’s the day I moved out of my childhood home and began living with my dad. That’s also the day I stopped talking about being attracted to women. The radical phase of sliding lips with the ladies had ended, and before I knew it, I was married to my college sweetheart.

And then four years later, we got divorced.

Heartbreak is a bitch, as most of you know. But the end of my marriage also felt like a liberating beginning, as I could finally open myself up to the possibility of dating both men and women. I wish I could say that I did just that. But I didn’t. I lost all confidence and got scared as hell when a few of the ladies I was flirting with on a dating app wanted to actually meet in person. I had never given myself the chance to tangibly show up in this way before, and now that the moment was upon me, I was fucking terrified to seize it.

Again, I eventually fell in love with and married a man who is now my ultimate life partner. We have two adorable young kids of our own, and I’m also the stepmom to his 13-year-old daughter. Once I met my husband Matt, I thought I’d need to stuff my true sexuality as deep down inside of me as humanly possible. Which makes sense, since most of my past experiences had taught me that who I really was didn’t jibe with the Lindsay everyone else expected me to be.

But when a young family member in my life began vulnerably questioning their own sexual identity, I knew I had to get honest with Matt and myself.

It took several long talks, and by the end of them, I felt closer to Matt than ever. Not only did he accept my bisexuality, but he’s totally cool with me openly crushing on the same female celebrities as him. As of right now, it’s Lizzo, Scarlett Johansson, and Tess Holliday.

My name is Lindsay Wolf, and I am — finally! — an out and proud bisexual woman.

If you’re reading this and you have yet to come out as however you identify, I want you to know that I’ve been there. It’s so damn hard to own who you truly are, especially when the world around you is feeding you the lie that it’s not okay to be yourself. And it’s even more challenging to allow yourself to be fully seen by others, regardless of what they may think about you. But after surviving the hardest mental health year of my whole life, I’ve realized that I don’t want to spend another minute pretending to be someone I’m not.

I’m ready to be exactly who I am. And who I am is absolutely wonderful.