Maybe you have to be over fifty years old (spoilers?)
Many people posting seem intent to make this film out to be about homosexuality. I really didn't see it that way at all. Maybe its a generational thing. I grew up in rural America during the 60's, with everyone telling me "you can't do that, you're a girl." or "why go to school, you will just stay home and raise children." etc. Women's liberation had not reached the heartland of America in those days. Regardless of sexual orientation, it would have been great to "pass" as a man, to be able to do whatever I wanted, without all of the societal restrictions. I doubt if men can relate to this, they were never raised with such severe limitations. I really doubt that young women today can relate to this, because they have grown up believing that they can pursue whatever profession they want, live independently, etc. while living life fully as a woman. That's because women in the USA enjoy the full complement of civil rights, and have done so since the 1970's or so.
Try to imagine Albert's reality. Women of Victorian UK couldn't live alone. A woman's father would marry her off at a young age or moan and groan about the burden of having a spinster daughter, and she couldn't just move away from home (no decent place would rent a room to a lone woman because it was assumed that she was a prostitute). Albert HAD to work as a waiter, respectable restaurants of that time did not employ waitresses, women were subject to rape, unequal pay and other abuse on the basis of gender. Passing as a man might have seemed like a good way to deal with several problems at once. If you are a man you can live alone, without a protector (father/husband/pimp). You are not expected to have children. You are not as much a target for rape and other violence because you are not perceived as being vulnerable in the way a woman alone was (is?). The character Helen is everything that Albert didn't want to be... vulnerable, victimized, used by men, then discarded. Albert didn't want to be a man (we see her profound joy, dressed as a woman, running free on the beach), just to have the money, choices and control that men take for granted.
I was struck by Albert's remark about life not being worthwhile without decency. I think Albert perceived most (if not all) of the power over decency/indecency in life being held by men. Therefore, the choice to live life as a man totally makes sense. It might be the most rational choice a person could make in those days. You can't appreciate the character or the choices she makes unless you consider what society was at that time, how stark, punishing, and hopeless life must have seemed to a poor woman. I can totally relate to someone, due to desperate circumstances, wanting to enjoy the perceived benefits of living life as a man, with sexual orientation not even a major consideration. I didn't sense that Albert wanted a sexual partner so much as a social ornament/life partner. Albert was lonely and wanted fulfillment, but I'm not sure she knew how to pursue it. The freedom that "passing" as a man initially offered eventually became a lonely prison.