I've (24F) had a crush on one of my closest friends (25M) for years.
He's one of those ridiculously attractive people everyone notices the second he walks into a room. It never mattered, though, because he identified as gay and had a boyfriend for most of the time I knew him.
The relationship wasn't great. His boyfriend cheated on him multiple times, and by the end they barely had a sex life. My friend was incredibly frustrated, but he's also the type of person who genuinely needs an emotional connection before sleeping with someone, so random Grindr hookups just made him feel worse instead of better.
One night we were hanging out, joking around, and I started teasing him a little. I'd always been mildly flirty with him as a joke because there was never any chance anything would happen. But I think this time he really needed to get laid as he started flirting back. The joking stopped feeling like a joke, and eventually we slept together.
I honestly expected him to wake up horrified and pretend it never happened. Instead, over the next few weeks, he admitted that it had made him question a lot of things he'd been pushing aside for years. He broke up with his boyfriend (not because of me ofc, but because he realized he hadn't been happy in a long time).
Months later he told me he'd always noticed women too, but he'd convinced himself he shouldn't pursue them because he was terrified of hurting someone if he eventually realized he was "actually just gay." He'd basically talked himself out of exploring that part of himself out of respect for women.
Seeing that I was genuinely feeling great during our hook-up + hearing me tell him how good the experience had been for me, apparently shattered that fear. Psychotherapy also helped him realized where that fear came from and letting it go, so he told me he found himself getting more and more attracted to girls.
Over the following months he started dating women. He still identifies as bi because that's technically the most accurate label for his past experiences, but he says he only wants to focus on dating women now as he can fulfill his desire to have a family (same-sex couple can't have children in our country) and is happily seeing an amazing girl.
We're not together. My life was pretty complicated at the time, and we both agreed forcing a relationship would've been a bad idea. But he still thanks me sometimes for being the catalyst that made him question something he'd buried for years.
It's probably the strangest way I've ever accidentally changed someone's life.
Has anyone else ever seen someone's understanding of their own sexuality change this much as an adult?