A Broader Way of Understanding Attraction, Identity, and Future Relationships
By Koby Frances, PhD
For many people, the first experience of same-sex attraction can feel deeply unsettling.
Questions that may have never seemed relevant suddenly become urgent:
What does this mean about me?
Am I gay?
Will I ever be able to have a relationship with someone of the opposite sex?
Do these feelings determine my identity?
What should I do next?
These questions can feel especially overwhelming because they often arrive long before a person has had much opportunity to date, form meaningful romantic relationships, or understand how attraction develops over time.
When strong attractions appear, it is natural to assume they must immediately reveal something definitive about our identity and future. Much of modern culture encourages this assumption.
But human attraction is often more complicated than that.
One reason is that many people assume attraction is a single experience. In reality, the attractions that feel most immediate, powerful, and recurring are not always the same attractions that emerge within actual relationships. Attraction often operates through multiple pathways that can be easily confused with one another.
Why These Questions Feel So Urgent
Part of what makes these questions so difficult is that attraction experiences often arrive long before relationship experiences.
For many people, feelings, fantasies, attractions, or moments of excitement appear years before they have meaningful dating experiences or opportunities to develop deep emotional connections with others.
As a result, it can be tempting to assume that the attractions a person experiences today fully determine the relationships they will or will not be capable of tomorrow.
When people feel uncertain, they naturally want answers. The simplest explanation can quickly begin to feel like the only explanation.
Unfortunately, the desire for certainty can sometimes lead people to draw conclusions before they have enough information to do so.
Attraction Is Not Always One Thing
One common source of confusion is that people often use the word "attraction" as though it refers to a single experience.
In my work, I often distinguish between what I call triggered-attraction and connection attraction.
Triggered attraction involves experiences that create immediate excitement, fascination, longing, or emotional intensity. These attractions often feel involuntary and can become highly focused on particular traits, qualities, or types of people.
Connection attraction tends to develop differently. Rather than emerging primarily through sight or fantasy alone, it is often sparked by a personality connection and then grows through familiarity, trust, affection, shared experiences, common goals, and genuine enjoyment of another person's company.
Both experiences can feel exciting, but they are not the same thing.
Because attraction-triggers often feel stronger, more urgent, and more emotionally convincing, many people assume they reveal the entirety of who they are and what kinds of relationships are possible for them.
Yet, as discussed in Can Attraction Grow Over Time?, the attractions that feel most immediate are not always the attractions that tell us the most about future compatibility, relationship satisfaction, or long-term fulfillment.
Attraction-Triggers Do Not Necessarily Define Identity
Many people are surprised to learn how diverse attraction-triggers can be.
People may develop strong attractions to particular traits, qualities, experiences, scenarios, or personality characteristics involving either the same sex or the opposite sex. Though the object of attraction may differ, many attraction-triggers appear to operate through similar psychological processes.
Knowing this, we can begin looking at attraction-triggers less as definitive statements about who we are and more as signals about our psychology, emotional needs, and current functioning.
For example, we might ask:
What exactly is attracting my attention in this person?
What emotional rewards am I receiving from looking, fantasizing, or pursuing these experiences?
Why are those rewards so important to me?
What needs, longings, or desires might these attractions be connected to?
These questions often provide more useful information than simply asking:
"What label should I give myself?"
Same-Sex Attraction and Future Relationships
One of the most common fears people express is:
"If I experience same-sex attraction, does that mean I cannot have a meaningful relationship with someone of the opposite sex?"
But often the question itself assumes something that may not be true: that attraction-trigger experiences automatically determine future relationship experiences.
Many people with strong same-sex attraction fantasies or experiences have never had the opportunity to meaningfully date, connect with, or become emotionally close to someone of the opposite sex in a genuine relationship context.
Because same-sex attraction experiences are sometimes among the first powerful attraction experiences a person remembers, it can be easy to conclude that they represent the only type of attraction that matters.
For many people, however, later experiences of connection, affection, romance, and attraction emerge through pathways that were not initially obvious.
Often, when they encounter someone of the opposite sex with whom conversation feels natural, enjoyable, and emotionally comfortable, they discover there is no obvious reason why earlier experiences should automatically disqualify them from having new ones.
Some individuals discover that even while continuing to experience same-sex attraction triggers, they are capable of developing connection attraction quite quickly when there is genuine openness, compatibility, and a meaningful personality connection.
Many of these individuals develop satisfying relationships and marriages without having to change who they are and without necessarily needing intensive therapy. The personality connection, shared values, affection, trust, and life experiences that grow from such relationships become consistent sources of attraction and connection in their own right.
This does not mean that everyone who experiences same-sex attraction will eventually desire opposite-sex relationships.
It does mean that attraction experiences alone do not always provide enough information to answer every question about identity, compatibility, and future relationship possibilities.
As discussed in What If My Attractions Don't Fully Match the Life I Want?, many people eventually discover that understanding attraction and participating in real relationships often provides more useful information than analyzing attractions in isolation.
A Different Question
Many people approach these experiences asking:
"What am I?"
But sometimes a more helpful question is:
"How do I want to understand my experiences, my values, my relationships, and my future possibilities?"
The goal is not to force a particular conclusion.
Rather, it is to understand attraction more fully so that important decisions are based on thoughtful reflection rather than fear, pressure, or assumptions.
Moving Forward
Many people mistakenly believe they must first eliminate every same-sex attraction before they can seriously consider opposite-sex relationships.
Others feel pressure to adopt a fixed identity based primarily on the attractions they currently experience.
Neither conclusion is always necessary.
For many people, the more useful task is developing a deeper understanding of how attraction works, learning to distinguish attraction-triggers from connection attraction, and remaining open to discovering what kinds of relationships genuinely allow them to experience connection, affection, attraction, and fulfillment in a lasting and meaningful way.
When people begin to understand that attraction may operate through more than one pathway, they often experience considerable relief. Questions that once appeared to have only one explanation suddenly become more open to exploration, reflection, and understanding.
If there is one idea worth remembering, it is this:
The attractions that feel most powerful are not always the attractions that tell us the most about our future relationship possibilities.
Related Articles
• What If My Attractions Don't Fully Match the Life I Want?
• Can Attraction Grow Over Time?
• Why Do I Keep Falling for the Same Type of Person?
• Understanding Attraction: A Framework for Making Sense of Confusing Attractions - Coming Soon