the feeling of exhaustion one experiences from pretending to be heterosexual in front of ones family.

Intelligence agency term for "psychological operation". A government or corporate-sponsored operation, usually taking the form of a "terrorist attack" or "crazed gunman on a spree", with the intent of panicking the public into demanding more police and laws inhibiting freedom. Psyops are usually carried out by drugging a civilian or group of civilians with aggression-promoting drugs, psyching them up, arming them, and sending them out to commit mayhem. Government-sponsored terrorism. See also blackshirts, conspiracy

When you grow up immersed in a culture of compulsory heterosexuality and labour under the misapprehension that you must be straight. Het lag typically lasts for years or decades.

It is particularly prevalent among those who do not experience a strong sense of romantic or sexual attraction to any sex or gender, and therefore have less obvious counter-evidence to the assumption of heterosexuality than those who experience strong same-sex/same-gender attraction. This is typically exacerbated by the lack of LGBTQIA+ education in schools and lack of awareness in many communities.

However, it is not exclusively experienced by people who identify under the asexual and/or aromantic umbrellas. Anyone whose sexuality is not the exclusively heterosexual 'default' that widespread social norms teach them to expect may experience het lag.

Originally coined in a tweet by Jared Pechacek (@vandroidhelsing):
"Mistyped it as 'het lag' so now we have a term for when you grow up thinking you're straight."

When you grow up thinking you’re straight but you end up not

When you grow up thinking your straight but turn out to be part of the lgbtq+ community

The time between straight relationships when you spend all of your time swooning over cute boys/girls and wishing you could go out with them.

aka Hetero lag- aka heterosexual lag: when you grow up thinking you are straight but you never really know but in the back of your mind you do really know you just push it back into your mind more though.