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Are sexual timelines different for many gay men?
They can be. “Most gay men are, in some sense, late bloomers,” said Amos Wolff, a marriage and family therapist licensed in New York and New Jersey. “We’re defaulted to heterosexual until proven otherwise, so attraction usually arrives long before we have the language or permission to act on it. I’d define ‘blooming’ as the first sexual experience where joy outweighs shame.”
“Many queer people are stereotyped by society as hypersexualized ‘sex addicts’ or indiscriminate in their sexual desires,” added Scott Duquette, a sex and relationship therapist and supervisor at the Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy’s Sex Therapy Division in New York City. “These stereotypes may unduly burden them with pressures to conform to social expectations, despite their actual desires.