How come it takes till their 30s sometimes for someone to know their LGBT?
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That’s not really accurate, it would be fairer to say that a lot of LGBT people simply chose not to come out of the closet till later in life for a variety of reasons.
A family member of mine didn’t come out until his 40s because his parents were hardcore catholic and didn’t even believe that gay people existed. The fact he was gay came out by accident and to his surprise everyone in the immediate family just shrugged it off and were happy that he came out of the closet, while his parents were in their 80s at the time and chose to essentially ignore the fact with selective memory. But if he had come out decades earlier he admits he probably would have ended up in some form of conversion therapy.
Lots of people who are gay realize they are attracted to the same sex or both sexes from puberty. Whether or not they chose to act on that is up to them.
Social stigma against being gay is very real. Coming out at a younger age to someone is a risk, because if they don’t reciprocate or worse out you as being gay it can make your life very difficult both in school and with your family.
Being gay is much more accepted today that it was even 20 years ago, but depending on your background coming out the closet can be no big deal or even welcome, while on the other extreme your family might disown you.
Social pressure is immense and many wait until later in life to date same sex people because of the pressure from family or society to be ‘normal’, or they don’t want to be picked on, harassed, looked down on, or disowned. Sometimes they just want a hetero family because having their own children is important to them.
Sometimes it takes being in a hetero relationship for them to realize it doesn’t make them happy, or they aren’t attracted to that person the way they thought.
For Transgendered people they usually realize it at young age as well but the idea of transitioning is either beyond their means, or foreign to them.
It’s only in recent history that being able to transition is even a possibility and social stigma against it is far far worse than against gay people. Transgendered people suffer from tons of harassment and hate, and many chose not to come out simply to avoid that.
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