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Unsure to "gay" to now... straight? (33M)

Discussion in 'Sexual Orientation' started by itsuka, Jul 11, 2022.

?

What do you make of this?

  1. Straight

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  2. Mostly Straight

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  3. Bisexual

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  4. Gay (but confused)

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  1. Searching2022

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    I get this but without the erection - I feel very aroused at an animal level if i saw the woman you described at the gym, but I just don't get a groin response.

    But if i fantasize in my mind it's about guys.

    I wonder if the internal fantasizing in interfering, like porn with my normal real life attractions.
     
  2. itsuka

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    Do guys irl ever turn you on physically?

    I shouldn't think fantasies would interfere with your innate attractions. The very fact that you're fantasizing about the same sex at all is itself incredibly telling, especially when, unlike in porn, you have to actively generate the erotic content. Also, you've made a choice to pleasure yourself to those thoughts...
     
  3. Searching2022

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    I might fantasize later I guess.
    It doesn't feel that way, like its my choice.
     
  4. Chip

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    Both of these point to attraction to men, not women.
     
  5. Searching2022

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    I know. I keep coming up with excuses or rationalizations. I am starting to realize these aren't just 'fantasies' but innate sexual desire, where the longing for women is just that, longing.
     
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  6. Chip

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    Longing is part of the bargaining and depression stages, as we begin to understand that where we are is not where we thought we were (or wanted to be), and that where we thought/wanted isn't likely to happen. It's part of letting go of the old self/belief and coming to acceptance of the self that is.
     
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  7. itsuka

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    What do you make of my own romantic longings for certain other men? The feelings are very real, although I don’t know how to interpret them anymore since gay sexual fantasies are not exciting to me and heterosexual ones are. I never find women cute or attractive however. I remember my best friend in high school asking if my first love and heartbreak wasn’t just finding a kindred soul who allowed me to finally love myself. I never got over this interpretation (nor my feelings for the boy).

    I’m also clinically depressed and deeply anxious and stressed from past trauma and being socially isolated and unemployed for nearly a decade. My life is a total mess right now. I just got my first full-time job, which has been a huge step for me. Thankfully I have a college degree and professional skills I can use to hopefully build some sort of career, but I feel like a traumatized, emotionally brittle and naked child oftentimes, and am terrified of other people, especially men, who might further degrade my sense of self.

    I’m guessing that figuring out my sexuality is likely much higher on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, something closer to self-actualization. This is also what my therapist believes. He also believes that I need to live in a larger, more liberal city in order to feel more comfortable exploring myself totally. I plan on leaving the small east coast city (I live in the United States) I live in eventually… but that’s as much a financial as a psychological risk.
     
    #47 itsuka, Sep 13, 2022
    Last edited: Sep 13, 2022
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  8. Searching2022

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    This is exactly how I feel except the sexes are reversed.

    I do have this feeling of wanting or needing to let go something to embrace something, it just feels scary to do and I don't know how to do it.
     
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  9. Searching2022

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    I just wanted to give an update this probably isn't a surprise to you but pretty much everything you have been saying has come true; A turning point came when I tried to fantasize about about a woman I found attractive instead I realize I couldn't get aroused but can easily fantasize about cute guys I see, both sexually and romantically, and I guess because it seems like a real possibility now, the fantasies are way more intense.Also, once the fear and anxiety have settled down I think about accepting myself and I feel so happy and excited.

    What do the women look like in your fantasies? Are they attractive?
     
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  10. itsuka

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    This isn’t directed at me, but I wanted to say that this is great.

    To be honest, I don’t think of their face, just their body and the whole act (foreplay and penetration and sex). Women aren’t cute or “hot” to me, unfortunately (at least not yet or to my knowledge).
     
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  11. Searching2022

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    Form what I have read here, that's how a lot of repressed gay men fantasize about men...and as they accept themselves they start to humanize the fantasies. Could the reverse be going on with you?
    I am not an expert but from what I have read here, if you fantasize about the 'parts' that's a good indicator of sexual preference.
     
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  12. itsuka

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    Nothing, I'm afraid. I'm totally limp. The moment I think of being with a woman... that changes drastically.
     
  13. Searching2022

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    This exactly what happens to be except the sexes are reversed. No matter how I try to fantasize about women..limp
    Early in this thread you wrote about my fantasies
    This sounds like what's happening with you except, again the sexes are reversed. Is there any other reason you have to doubt these fantasies/desires?
     
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  14. itsuka

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    I'm quite "sissy" at times and feel like a gay little boy, basically. My masculinity's been insulted my whole life, and I've been called homophobic slurs in public by total strangers just because I seemed gay. All my crushes have been on other males, and my first love was another teenage boy (who claimed he was straight but acted otherwise towards me in private) when I was 17. I long to have a certain kind of guy to share my life with, but I don't know that I'd ever find one, because I'm attracted to other men romantically and sexually (at least their "sexuality" as males, and so far, this has been purely fantasy, an abstraction with no real import outside masturbating) so exceptionally rarely, and when I am, they're 90% of the time almost certainly heterosexual.

    I'm painfully aware of all my shortcomings of being a "real man." I've gotten to the point where I wish I was straight. And so my body's intense arousal to sex with women just feels like some sort of self-trained response that I've cultivated out of total self-hatred and denial. But really, that makes no sense, because that is not possible (so everyone, and my own reason, says). I have no libido currently, so I don't desire sex with either sex, but in fantasy, it's heterosexual scenarios that arouse me and make for the most pleasurable masturbating and orgasms.

    The times I pretend to be straight, I get the strangest feelings. I've suffered from depression to varying degrees since puberty, and when my anxiety is at bay and I'm able to get into that headspace, it's very disorienting, but also sometimes thrilling. I've really hit a wall with all of this and don't know what to do but stay with my current boyfriend (yes, I have a boyfriend, and he knows about all of this, although we never have sex and fight badly and often) and continue imagining myself having sex with women when I masturbate in private.

    I wish this wasn't the case, because it's an extremely unsatisfying and unhappy existence, but the road ahead looks bleak and opaque, and I just don't see things improving, largely because of my own childhood trauma and anxiety disorder and general down in the dumps attitude about life I bring everywhere I go.
     
    #54 itsuka, Sep 24, 2022
    Last edited: Sep 24, 2022
  15. Chip

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    So given the confusion, and the fact that you're basically going in circles here, this is a situation that you really need to see a therapist with a specialtiy in sexuality issues. Not a therapist specializing in LGBT issues, but one who has the additional certification in sexology from one of the credible training programs.

    What you describe is somewhat contradictory, and that's why this really requires unpacking at a deeper level than one can do in an online forum.
     
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  16. Searching2022

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    As Chip has pointed out straight guys can act sissy, and many gay men are very macho.

    our situations seem like mirror opposites, in fact other than the sexual object being reversed your 'case' seems like the closest to my own that I have read here. Even that ratio!

    since our situations almost seem like mirror opposites, would this be recommended (your opinion of course I know its not professional advice) course of action for me?
     
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  17. Chip

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    That would seem to make sense to me.
     
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  18. Sadness

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    if i may say, i don’t think it is actually possible to have arousal or supress arousal, since it’s a response we dont have control over it. If you guys disagree i would like to know, our chemical reactions doesn’t happen when we want to, so tou cant hide arousal from something you like or have arousal for something you dont like, many man would be able to maintain sex performance if they had control over their physical reactions.

    what could be true is that maybe watching too much porn got you into this kind of stuff, because you masturbated too much to it and need something new, i dont know if its possible to reach fantasies since it start from a visual stimulus

    but i dont know if you watch too much porn
     
  19. itsuka

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    My current therapist thinks that because my living situation, self-esteem and mental health are so poor at this time, that it'd be more prudent to focus on practical solutions to my current "stuckness." He thinks that once I've made headway on more basic aspects of my situation, that it'd be fine stop seeing him and to pursue seeing a sex therapist, as at this time, it may not prove very fruitful given everything.

    I will say that he likened my situation (dating men but pleasuring myself to women) as in some aspects analogous to the religious fundamentalist who sleeps with other men outside his heterosexual marriage. He mentioned it in passing, so maybe it's not particularly apt. Overall, he seems reticent to give any interpretation of what I'm telling him, only that labels are not important in this situation and that ultimately I need to make my fantasies reality in order to properly test them.

    I think that I've become so attached to whatever is gay in myself, and to that label especially, that I can't fathom anything else. But again, gay fantasies don't arouse me, and straight ones always do.
     
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  20. Chip

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    That makes sense. I would concur.

    I disagree that one necessarily needs to make their fantasies into reality to test them. Straight people don't have to have sex to know they're straight. Most gay people don't have to have sex to know they're gay. I think his first point is probably on the money.
     
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