ABSTRACT
Women tend to become aware of their same-sex attractions a bit later than men — in late adolescence rather than early adolescence or pre-puberty. Not only is there an imperfect relationship between attractions, behavior, and identity, population surveys for the last 50 years or more have indicated that more people experience same-sex attraction than engage in same-sex behavior, and fewer people still identify as gay, lesbian, or bisexual. The major takeaway is that sexual orientation is complicated, and that self-proclaimed sexual identity, while important, does not tell us that much. While clients with mixed capacity to be attracted to men and women may arguably have more options over their behavior, they did not choose their orientation nor do they choose how their orientation fluctuates. A bisexual client who desperately wants to live as a heterosexual may have an easier time doing so than a client who is purely same-sex-oriented, but neither of these people can successfully eradicate their same-sex attractions.
