Okay but the way like Brittana were best friends and Klaine were best friends but Rachel never really had that with anyone. Even from the start of the show everyone would be paired off like Artie and Tina, Kurt and Mercedes. Then Brittany and Santana, Quinn and Finn. And Rachel was always left on her own. The only time she was ever really partnered with someone was if it was a boyfriend that was basically treating her like crap the whole time

And she never knows what it means to be best friends and soulmates with someone and she’s always projecting it onto Kurt and saying they don’t need boys, they just need each other, and that he’s her soulmate

And everyone wants to talk about comphet with Quinn but ignore basically the same things with Rachel. Quinn wants the status of being popular because it’s what’s expected of her. Rachel is drawn towards Finn bc she thinks it’s expected for the wide eyed young ingenue to get with the popular male lead. Quinn puts off having sex with Sam saying they need to win prom king and queen first. Rachel tells Finn she won’t have sex until she’s won her first Tony. She only ever goes after a boy because of what they can give her - a male lead for duets, song writing material, revenge, experience for a performance, “vaguely Eurasian children”

And it’s so obvious that she’s into girls. She barely knows how to act around Quinn bc what’s expected is for them to be rivals but she just doesn’t feel that way. She has nothing but respect and admiration for Quinn and that’s one pillar of Rachel Berry’s character that doesn’t waver, at least for the first 3 seasons. She can’t shut up about how pretty Quinn is and is never too busy to tell her how much she admires her. She’s always comparing herself to the Cheerios and talking about how beautiful they are, and she was practically glowing when Santana and Brittany complimented her Britney look

And it’s so sad because for the majority of the show, Rachel is practically hardwired to only see other women as nothing but her competition. Another thing she surely learned from all those showbiz movies she grew up watching. You know she didn’t have any friends before, so that’s probably where most of her knowledge of social interactions came from

But when she does drop all the pretense and just let herself be normal around other girls, it leads to some really sweet and touching and soft moments. And I think that Rachel is a pretty touchy feely type person. Always resting her head on people’s shoulders, her famous “I’m going to hug you now”, running her fingers thru Kurt’s hair and even touching Tina’s boobs during the Pilot (though those are obviously played for laughs). And then the sweeter and more understated moments, again all about the ladies. Braiding Mercedes’s hair, wiping away Quinn’s tears, all the hand holding with Santana in New York

And she starts getting along so well with Santana in NY since they aren’t fighting over boys and are on different career paths. Even considers her her best friend. But the second Santana steps onto Rachel’s path again, Rachel freaks out and flips the switch from friend to rival in an instant bc that’s honestly all she knows. If Santana stayed in NY I think they could’ve had a breakthrough moment and Rachel could’ve actually started to work through her issues and also we could’ve gotten canon Pezberry, but that’s verging onto another topic of post completely 

TL;DR Rachel Berry is a lesbian with a big gay crush on every girl she meets and doesn’t know how to handle herself because she’s so used to only viewing women as competitors. Left confused and with no real outlet for her romantic and sexual feelings, the comphet tendencies take over and she tries to convince herself that she can get what she needs from all the dumb boys in her life. Lesbian Rachel is real and it’s one of the great American tragedies that they never seriously explored this avenue in canon