Julia Shaw

And so people would show up in the 70s and 80s in his practice and they would say, I'm struggling with my sexuality.

And he would say, how can I help you?

And they would say things like, I wish I wasn't interested in men and I'm a man.

And he would then work through sort of what that means.

Does that mean you don't want to have these feelings?

Does that mean that you don't want to have these attractions?

Does that mean that it's the implications of like how your friends and family will see you?

That's the problem.

And so he created this much more complex scale.

which I think is really interesting for everybody to do, no matter what their sexuality is, because what it is is it gets you to think about things like, yeah, your sexual identity, easy, but not just that, but in past, present, and ideal.

And so if you say, well, I used to identify as straight, now I identify as bisexual.

And then I have in my head, this doesn't mean that other people think this, in my head, I have an ideal, which could be straight, because that's what maybe society's told us we should be.

But it could also be something else.

And so I've also had friends who've gone, you know, past, present, straight, straight, but ideal bi.

So you get into these interesting dynamics where sometimes people just wish they were a different sexuality than they were for other reasons.

And then there's other things in the scale that ask about your lifestyle.

So, for example, if you are going to parties, queer parties, if you have queer friends, then you might have a homosexual lifestyle, even if you're straight.

But then again, it's how much lifestyle would you like?

And so for me, that was a real moment where I was looking at that going, wow, my lifestyle is really straight.

And maybe I need to change this.