LGBQ+ youth raised in conservative Christian spaces often struggle to develop a positive understanding of their sexuality. Home, church, school, and other community institutions can ideologically align in ways that teach them to hate, fear, and suppress, rather than embrace and explore, their emerging sexual desires. Counternarratives can be hard to come by.

As a result, and despite scholarly critique, there is a persistent narrative that in order to thrive, LGBQ+ people must leave these spaces and find more supportive communities. For those with the resources to do so, a four-year college away from home is one pathway out. LGBQ+ students are almost five times as likely as heterosexual students to select a college away from home in an effort to find a more welcoming space.

These students have high hopes for college, but does college live up to their expectations?

We interviewed 26 LGBQ+ college students in order to understand how their transition to college affected their emerging sexual identities and sense of self. In particular, we focused on how this process is impacted by opportunities for and barriers to sexual and romantic relationships. As we found in our recent article in Social Currents, while community support was important to positive identity-development, so, too was the ability to enact their sexual desires through sexual and romantic relationships.

Most students quickly built supportive communities that gave them new ways of understanding themselves. Sydney, a pansexual cis woman, said, “Everyone is just incredibly accepting, and their beliefs correlate with mine. I feel like it’s the family I wanted growing up… It’s exciting to meet somebody who also feels the same as you do in that regard. Growing up as a member of the LGBTQ community, it was hard to enjoy normal things because you felt so different all the time.”

This created a newfound freedom for students to be open about who they were to those around them. Tyler, a gay cis man said, “I used to be really conscious about [being gay]. But now I don’t even think about that. I mean I think people can tell that I’m gay. I don’t try to conceal it here anymore and I never faced any sort of retaliation or anything.”

New communities replaced their old ones. Almost all of the students we interviewed had distanced themselves from the Christian churches of their youth and instead involved themselves in spaces such as the LGBT Center or other LGBTQ+ organizations on campus. As Riley, a queer transmasculine person, said, “When I was younger, I very strongly believed in God. But it made me feel really shitty because of my sexuality and gender identity. I just couldn’t connect to [Christianity] once I realized it conflicted and I wasn’t going to be in line with it.” Instead, they joined a social justice advocacy organization for trans people on campus, explaining, “[It helped] me get resources initially and it made me feel like part of the community. Which I hadn’t had before because I didn’t know that many trans people.” Many now had social networks mainly comprised of LGBQ+ people.

But these communities did more than just make people feel good about identifying at LGBQ+; they also helped students broaden their understanding of their sexuality, which many found deeply affirming. Specifically, opportunities to explore their sexuality through sexual and romantic relationships mattered a great deal.

Just being able to act on their sexual desires validated their sense of self. As Benjamin, a gay cis man, explained, “After experimenting throughout college a little bit, I became more comfortable with myself.” Nicole, a queer cis woman, had hooked up with ten people since arriving at college, but only once with a woman, which she ranked that as her most enjoyable hookup, saying, “I think it’d be the one with the girl, just because it was the first time [having sex with a woman], and it really validated me. It validated my sexuality – like confirmed how I was feeling.”

Students also had the opportunity to experiment with BDSM, threesomes, and polyamory, which they found revelatory as each new opportunity taught them something about themselves and their desires.

But despite these positive experiences, LGBQ+ students still faced challenges finding sexual and romantic opportunities. And because these opportunities were so valuable for feelings of inclusion and positive identity development, students who struggled to find partners felt like they were missing out.

Given the contrast with their communities of origin, the LGBQ+ scene felt big when students first arrived on campus. But they quickly realized how small it was. Not only was it hard to find partners who hadn’t hooked up with a friend, a potential source of drama, it was also difficult to find LGBQ+ social spaces. Most of the parties and bars on campus were dominated by heterosexual students.

LGBQ+ students were left with organizations and spaces that felt better suited for advocacy and community building than for finding sexual and romantic partners. And through this, it became clear that LGBQ+ students had different ideas about what these spaces should be doing.

Hailey, a lesbian cis woman, said, “I feel like the LGBTQ Center should have some kind of resource. Whether it be a speed dating situation or a potluck, just creating the space. Cause the space isn’t working.” Owen, a gay cis man, avoided the LGBT Center because he felt it was more about activism than a space to meet other LGBQ+ people, explaining, “It doesn’t really appeal to me much. I feel like it’s more political than I’d like to be involved with. The main reason I would want to go to that is to meet other LGBT people, not necessarily to get involved with more political aspects.”

But other students felt that LGBTQ organizations should be more focused on social justice issues, calling out people like Owen as the privileged face of the community. For example, like Owen, Nashe, a queer genderqueer person, avoided the LGBT Center, but with a different critique, saying, “The spaces definitely feel uncomfortable to me…. It’s uncomfortable being the only Black queer person in a space.” In both instances, the spaces weren’t working in ways that facilitated desired connections and the resultant tensions spilled over into the hookup scene. Students felt like they missed out on opportunities for sexual and romantic relationships as a result.

This matters, because as our research makes clear, sexual and romantic exploration is critical to positive identity development in emerging adulthood. These experiences affirmed LGBQ+ students’ desires and allowed them to reconceptualize what they wanted from sex and relationships. Thus, any barriers to exploration are not minor for LGBQ+ students. Colleges must take the lead in creating spaces that attend to the diverse social needs of LGBQ+ students. This includes attention to sexual and romantic inclusion, which is vital to developing positive self-concepts, sense of self, and a feeling of belonging on campus.

Ellen Lamont is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology at Appalachian State University. She can be reached at lamontec@appstate.edu. You can follow her on X @EllenCLamont.

Teresa Roach is specialized teaching faculty and Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Sociology at Florida State University. She can be reached at tar09c@fsu.edu.