Growing up I was always more drawn to women than men. My female friendships were intense, filled with four-hour phone conversations, secrets spilled and intense jealousy. When it came to boys, I was largely ambivalent – but as adolescence crept in, discussing them became a rite of passage. It seemed clear that experimenting with the opposite sex was a necessity to seem ‘normal’ among my peers.

Unfortunately, there was a major problem: my body wouldn’t respond the way it was supposed to. Boys would lean in for a kiss and, despite an inner monologue trying to convince myself that this was what I wanted, I would physically recoil. Any clumsy hands under my skirt would lead to vague feelings of embarrassment rather than the warm flush I was told to expect. Then finally, when I was 17, a friendship with a boy in my class blossomed into something more. I remember letting him kiss me and thinking that I had been ‘fixed’.

Sadly for my 17-year-old self, but happily for the 28-year-old queer person I am today, one relationship with a cis boy did not iron out the knotty, hard-to-pin-down aspects of my sexuality. I still had a fascination with brown-haired, blue-eyed girls, and when that relationship inevitably imploded, as most teenage relationships do, I slowly but surely rebuilt my life as something approaching a lesbian – dating mostly women but also non-binary and trans folks. Queer spaces helped me to understand the vastness of my capability for love and attraction, encouraging me to look beyond gender or sexuality and get closer to who people really are.

After years of a romantic life that could best be described as omnivorous – multiple partners of multiple genders, flings in different cities, first dates that lasted four days – the pandemic forced a blossoming fling into a monogamous, live-in lesbian relationship. Amid the stultifying domesticity, the monotony and the many fights, I began to fantasise about cis men for the first time ever – and it made me afraid. I was afraid that my belonging to the queer world – which encompassed the only spaces and people who made me like myself – would be revoked. I was also scared that I had been kidding myself all this time, and that all I’d really wanted was to be in a conventional cis-het couple.

It took a messy breakup from my pandemic era girlfriend, after three years of a serviceable but passionless relationship, for me to finally act on my identity crisis. After several months of tension with a colleague – a man my age who was soft enough to burn sage in his room every morning but tough enough to have Tottenham season tickets – I took the plunge on a staff night out. A kiss on the neck on a crowded dance floor became a hasty uber back to his, followed by long coffee breaks in the middle of the working day, weekend trips to the seaside, and eventually a fully fledged relationship.

It’s an interesting time to be dating a man again after so many years. When I tell straight women, the response is often incredulous: ‘Why would you choose to date men?’ After all, apps have facilitated a culture of lacklustre connections and overly casual treatment of others, and for good reason, many women have become disillusioned with dating and heterosexuality more broadly. Coming into it fresh and without preconceptions, however, I feel like I have learned and grown much more than I’ve suffered.

There are some things that I simply wasn’t prepared for – namely, the sex. According to the casually ignorant homophobe, queer and lesbian sex is not sex, but foreplay at best – yet this had been far from my experience. As a queer woman, I would get swept up in days-long romps; I would call in sick to work so that I could spend hours pressing every inch of my body against someone I barely knew.

With men, sex can be just as intense – but there are obvious logistical concerns that I had forgotten about. It’s not just the obvious issue of contraception, but the fact that multiple orgasms are rare and that men need down-time after they come. Their biology sets the pace. It means that even if they’re quick to get aroused, the sessions are much more short and sweet.

It seems to me that men’s attention to their bodies and to pleasure is much less attuned than women’s. They tend to view themselves as having a good time if they achieve orgasm, rather than focusing on the sexual experience holistically. More interesting, perhaps, is the fact that this very formula – male arousal, some foreplay, penetrative sex until ejaculation – makes it easy to take a casual approach to desire. Rather than engaging in elaborate, protracted periods of exploring each other’s bodies, sex can easily become something perfunctory or an obligation.

To combat this, my boyfriend and I have tried different methods of arousal – from exploring our erogenous zones to speaking candidly about our desires. Encouraging my boyfriend to cultivate pleasure has been important to our relationship, and it’s not just what we get up to in the bedroom. The first time I bought him flowers – something I’ve done for all my partners without really thinking about it – he seemed completely overwhelmed. He’s a sensitive guy. When I ask him about his feelings, it sometimes seems like he’s never been asked these questions before.

The thing that has surprised me the most is how little men are made to feel like they matter. Whether it’s their feelings or their pleasure, they seem so used to skirting through life without introspection or attention to their wants and needs. Yes, men experience untold privileges in the way they are treated and how they move through the world – but are they even having fun? One thing this experience has taught me is that queer and female people’s powers of attentiveness, nurturing and care are a force that improves life from the inside out – and that men need to learn how to follow suit.