Am I a Lesbian or Just Compulsorily Straight? How Comphet Confuses Attraction

Brittany Glasscock
40 minutes ago
3 min read

If you’ve ever wondered, “am I a lesbian, or am I just bad at being straight?”, that question didn’t come from nowhere. Many women questioning their sexuality aren’t confused because they lack desire, it’s because they were taught what they should want long before they were allowed to notice what they actually feel.

That conditioning has a name: compulsory heterosexuality, often shortened to “comphet.” Understanding comphet doesn’t give you a label. It gives you context — and context is often the missing piece when attraction feels blurry, delayed, or contradictory.

What Is Compulsory Heterosexuality?

Compulsory heterosexuality is the social system that assumes women are naturally attracted to men and organizes life around that expectation.

It shows up as:

The assumption that women will date, marry, and center men

The idea that attraction to men is “default,” while attraction to women is optional, experimental, or rare

Cultural narratives that frame heterosexuality as safety, maturity, or success

Under comphet, women are rewarded for choosing men emotionally, socially, and often economically whether or not attraction is present. That doesn’t mean women are “lying” about past relationships with men. It means desire and conditioning are not the same thing.

Why Comphet Makes Attraction So Confusing

Comphet masks lesbian attraction. Many women learn to interpret:

Relief as attraction

Approval as chemistry

Safety as desire

Being chosen as wanting

Meanwhile, attraction to women is often:

Dismissed as admiration

Reframed as envy

Labeled “just friendship”

Treated as unserious or temporary

So when women later ask “am I a lesbian?”, they’re often untangling years of mixed signals — not discovering something new, but decoding what’s always been there.

“But I Liked Men… Didn’t I?”

This is one of the most common sticking points.

Comphet can make relationships with men feel:

Comfortable but flat

Fine but effortful

Stable but emotionally distant

Acceptable but draining

Many women describe heterosexual relationships as something they did well rather than something that energized them.

Attraction to women, by contrast, is often described as:

Immediate

Disruptive

Hard to rationalize

Felt in the body rather than the mind

Neither experience invalidates the other, but confusing performance with desire can delay self-recognition.

How Comphet Shows Up in Real Life

Compulsory heterosexuality isn’t abstract. It shows up in patterns like:

Dating men because it felt expected or inevitable

Believing attraction was supposed to “grow over time”

Feeling more excited about male approval than male intimacy

Feeling emotionally closer to women but romantically unavailable to them

Fantasizing about women but dismissing it as curiosity

These patterns don’t prove anything, but they explain why so many women feel stuck between “I’m not straight” and “I don’t know what that makes me.”

Why Journaling Helps Untangle Comphet

Comphet lives in the mind, and journaling brings awareness back to the body.

Instead of asking: “What label fits me?”

Journaling asks:

When did I feel desire, not obligation?

Who made me feel present instead of performative?

What felt natural before I learned what was expected?

That’s why journal prompts for questioning your sexuality are so effective. They slow down the noise, interrupt reflexive explanations, and let patterns surface over time. You don’t reason your way out of comphet.

The Question Isn’t “Am I a Lesbian?” It’s “What Am I Feeling?”

Labels come later (or sometimes not at all). For many women, the breakthrough moment isn’t a sudden certainty. It’s a quiet realization that:

Attraction to women feels different

Relationships with men required more justification

Their body knew something their language didn’t

Understanding comphet doesn’t tell you who you are.

It explains why it may have taken time to recognize it.

Want a Practical Way to Explore This?

If you’re trying to understand your own patterns without pressure, timelines, or labels, I’ve created a free resource to help.

👉 Download: 14 Journal Prompts for Questioning Your Sexuality (Free PDF)

These prompts are designed for: