Actually, I think your specification about being German is culturally relevant. In my experience, as an American who lived in Germany for 5 years, I connect with your sentiment about feeling gross speculating if somebody is somewhere on the LGBTQ spectrum. That seems rooted in a normal German custom (to me) to maintain more personal privacy than is usual in the United States.

We Americans seem to make fewer distinctions between friends and colleagues, we tend to be more casual (and free) about who we think of and call friends, and so we tend to share more freely with more people.

This is sometimes good and sometimes not. But as I say, I think it is culturally relevant.