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I feel completely lost and have no idea where to go from here...

Discussion in 'Sexual Orientation' started by sadboi, Oct 9, 2020.

  1. sadboi

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    Glad to find this community. For starters, I'm 21/m. To give some background, I grew up as a very straight person until college, like we're talking playboy mags, crushes on girls in school etc. I suppose I've always found some guys good looking, but it was never really a sexual sort of thing in any manner until late 2018.

    As a result of these newly developed attractions, and some of the guys I found attractive being younger than me (like 16-17), I developed severe anxiety which eventually interfered with my life greatly to the degree I had to seek therapy, which resulted in me finally getting a diagnosis for OCD (not just for this stuff, but plenty of other stuff too,) as well as starting therapy and antidepressants, which have helped me function like a regular person again.

    But I really feel as if the straight part of me has died entirely, and I have been clawing desperately trying to get it back for over a year. Obviously all efforts to change my orientation have failed. I continue to ask myself how can someone so into girls just have their sexuality change almost entirely out of their control? How can I look at a guy and feel aroused when 2 years ago no such thing would have been feasible, or even within the realm of reality? Did the porn I watched turn me gay? How could this happen? I persistently rack my brain trying to figure out what happened - probably the OCD, but still. Something about it just doesn't feel "right", but this probably isn't helped by how I've always viewed my gayer tendencies as an issue, not a trait. Many people seemed to have always had these tendencies baked into their personalities, but I feel like my brain has thrown the biggest curveball of my life, resulting in copious amounts of shame, stress, and a severe debilitating decline in mental, and subsequently, overall health. In addition, I would say since that same period (late 2018), my sex drive has been slowly declining and basically any remaining sexual interest has now been killed by my medication. I almost feel asexual at this point.

    But... every once and a while, that straightness will come back and I'll "feel" it again. Even if it's for a fleeting minute. It isn't totally dead, but I still just wish it would go back to how it used to be.

    For me, ever since COVID began and I ended up in a situation where it isn't feasible for me to meet new people, I've been trying to figure out exactly what's next especially as I will basically be a full time professional after college next semester. Part of me is starting to desire a relationship, which is something totally new for me as I have never dated before and am a total introvert. But I am just really lost as to what I should be doing next. Sure many people will say do what makes you happy, but what am I supposed to do if I don't know and I'm too scared to find out what that is?
     
  2. SilentM

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    Hi,

    Sexual orientation just like introversy is something you are born with. It's just the specific yet natural way that your brain works. Don't worry, try to enjoy life.
     
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  3. sadboi

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    I just feel as if my orientation has changed dramatically and I much preferred the way it was before
     
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  4. Leynz45

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    You said before that happened you had different crushes to girls and you was aroused by girls.Ok here is a prove that you cant 100 percent gay because you cant change your sexual preference.Do you get an full erection by a same sex fantasy?Porn is not an indicator for sexual orientation.You cant switch your orientation.
     
    #4 Leynz45, Oct 11, 2020
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  5. sadboi

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    I think my attraction to guys is more romantic, is it possible to be romantically attracted to one gender and sexually to another?
     
  6. SilentM

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    Yes.
     
  7. Chip

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    There is no credible evidence anywhere of discordant sexual and romantic attraction. This idea has been promoted, with nothing to support it, by a small-but-vocal group of people and is, unfortunately, spreading in spite of the fact there's zero credible evidence.

    OP: Your situation is complicated by the OCD. Ordinarily, what we see with people with OCD is an obsessive need to check sexual orientation, but no indication they actually have sexual attraction/arousal to guys.

    So my first question to you is, are you masturbating thinking about guys? Are you strongly aroused when you're thinking of guys? Way more so than when you're thinking about girls? Do you look at hot guys on the street and find arousal within yourself (I don't mean a tiny tingling, I mean genuinely looking at someone and feeling a strong sense of arousal by seeing them.) Is this overall sense of attraction and arousal to guys a lot stronger than what you feel toward girls?

    That's going to be important to understand to know if this is an OCD problem or something else.

    Now... if the answer to all of the above is yes, there is strong attraction, arousal to guys, you get physically aroused thinking about them and masturbating to them, and you do not have this thinking about girls, then we can reasonably say that your attraction is about guys and not girls, which means you're gay, or at the gay end of the spectrum.

    As for the "change"... assuming the answer to above is yes, it's worthwhile to know that your orientation did not actually change. It's always been there. What happened is that something woke it up. And this isn't uncommon. It's super disconcerting, because it changes your whole perception of yourself, but it absolutely happens, and not uncommonly. Usually, once you get your hands around it and are able to accept it, you figure out that there were, in fact, other signs earlier in life that you were just oblivious to (or in denial of) at the time.

    But the first and foremost thing is to try and separate out the sexual orientation issue from the OCD and that can be difficult. And don't lose sight of the fact that the anxiety that comes along with OCD can, by itself, kill sex drive. So it may be that you can't get a clear answer to this until you get the OCD stabilized. And then, on top of that, there's the impact of medication on sex drive. This might be something to discuss with your doctor to see if there's a different medication you could try. But for now, it sounds like dealing with the OCD is the thing you need to do first.
     
  8. SilentM

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    What credible evidence do you have of a thing called 'love'?

    Gathering reports and/or measuring brain activity, sweating, pulse and breathing changes and hormone levels is not a credible evidence, because it is indistinguishable from regular sexual arousal. 'Love' is an idea that has been promoted, with nothing to support it, by a small-but-vocal group of people, and has spread in spite of the fact there's zero credible evidence...

    ...or perhaps the fact, that you haven't experience love does not mean that it is impossible or you have any right to deny people, who did experience it, validity of their feelings.
     
    #8 SilentM, Oct 12, 2020
    Last edited: Oct 12, 2020
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  9. sadboi

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    Chip, thanks so much for your reply. You raised a lot of good points.

    Although I have experienced the false feeling associated with OCD my attraction to guys is not a “what if” and is definitely real - this is something I have no doubt about it. I feel attracted to some dudes.

    I guess there have always been some signs - finding a guy good looking - but it was never a sexual thing. Just sort of an acknowledgement thing. But one day a switch sort of flipped, almost similarly to how it had for women a couple of years before.

    Discussing genuine attraction, this is something in my opinion I felt strongly for women which I feel has declined in lieu of my attraction to guys. Almost as if one was on a downward slope while the other was on an inverse rising one.

    Additionally I do think my meds have muted a lot of my sexual feelings, but for the current time being I’m willing to trade those to be able to function normally. I also plan on getting my hormones checked as well considering the issues I’m coming out of the past couple months.

    But beyond managing my OCD, when I move out in a couple months, I really want to work towards a relationship. One of the main things I mentioned in my first post is my indecisiveness and how I don’t really know how to proceed. I have existing but different attractions to both genders. Should I try for a relationship with either and see how it goes? Or just try and make new friends and see if anything develops. Not exactly looking for relationship advice, but more wondering how I can explore these feelings further. I’m just quite naïve I suppose.
     
  10. Chip

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    About 60+ years and hundreds of credible qualitative as well as quantitative studies. You are really not being helpful to people here.
     
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  11. Chip

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    One thing that we have seen, anecdotally, quite a bit at EC is that people who begin to accept that they are gay (or on the gay side of bisexual) regularly report that whatever attraction they felt for the opposite sex seems to rapidly decrease and fade away.

    To my knowledge, this has not been directly studied, so there isn't much definitive out there (at least that I have seen.) One theory that seems to at least make sense is that the attraction to the same sex was suppressed due to family or societal judgments we felt growing up. We somehow knew it was bad or unacceptable, so we pushed that part of ourselves down. Younger teens in particular are pretty hard wired to want to "fit in" and thus, may have a tendency to conform. Add those two things together and it becomes clear why we might basically fool ourselves into believing we are straight.

    But a number of people describe something where the dam breaks... they find one particular parson, or something catches their attention, and it's undeniable, and that basically starts to shoot down the carefully built schema that we are straight.

    It sounds like, other than the obvious "wishing it would go back to the way it was", there's no real concern about dating guys, so... sure! Why not make friendships with both, see where it leads. You could be bisexual in which case you might date both. Or you may find yourself dating mostly men. Or you could still end up with a woman. But I would suggest that you don't rush it and simply do what feels right. It feels like, in your case, you have the OCD under control, but I would suggest just keeping an eye on that, especially if you change medication. The problem with the OCD is that for the most part, you don't realize it's impacting your judgment, so having folks around you to help with that can be invaluable.
     
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  12. SilentM

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    Well I just think that by ruling out discordant sexual and romantic attraction you just erased all asexual and aromantic people and a large part of bisexual people who experience their sexuality in exactly that way.

    I don't know if American Institute of Bisexuality is a small group but it definitely is vocal because a lot of experts share their opinion, not yours.
     
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  13. Chip

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    Again, nobody is "erasing" anything, but simply stating facts. You also can't really "erase" something that doesn't exist in the first place.

    The data on asexuality is clear; there are plenty of asexual people in the world. However, again, that's a label that, while it has legitimacy, has largely been hijacked by a bunch of evidence-free folks to mean something completely different than what it originally did. One of the biggest issues there is that an awful lot of people who self-label as asexual are not actually asexual (which according to the widely accepted definition, is just as persistent over time as homo or heterosexuality), but instead have a history of trauma or, alternatively, depression or anxiety, any of which can suppress sexual desire, but are not hard wired in the way sexual orientation is. If I have the flu, I don't have much sexual interest or arousal, but that doesn't mean I'm asexual for that week. It means I'm sick. Likewise, if I have severe anxiety or depression, or a trauma history, those suppress the neural pathways associated with sexual arousal in the same way that having the flu does, albeit for a longer period. But with appropriate treatment, I can get over whatever the mental health issue is, and sexual drive will return. So many people who self-label as asexual are actually people with mental health issues (trauma, depression, anxiety, etc) or the suppression of sexual desire is a byproduct of medication they are on. Neither of those is in the same class as a hardwired sexual orientation such as hetero or homosexuality.

    Now as for "aromantic"... well, if there's no evidence of discordant sexual and romantic orientations, then, by definition, someone who is "aromantic" is either "asexual" or "sexual", and most likely, again, the "aromantic" thing is more likely a mental health issue than a sexual orientation. Again, the data is pretty strong on this, it is again, a mostly evidence-free notion dreamed up in the last 10 years by crowdsourced groupthink.

    As for the American Institute of Bisexuality, I don't know much about them, but I can tell you that a quick look at their 990 (Federal tax return) shows that about 90% of their income comes from the Fritz Klein Foundation, and there's a very close relationship between the two. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it does indicate that their perspective may be overly informed by the singular work of one person, which is never the best thing if we're seeking objective research.

    There are a half dozen folks out there that publish studies that are methodologically horrid, yet they are nonetheless repeatedly quoted by folks who are looking to support a given perspective. My own positions on things are pretty agnostic; they are rooted in the research I have read and continue to read, and I do my best to represent the most accurate and unbiased perspective I can based on decent research that's out there (which is, sadly, less common than you'd hope for.) When new data comes out that fundamentally alters the prevailing thought, I'm pretty quick to adopt the new perspectives, but there needs to be sound data to support it.

    With things like relationships, love, romance, sexual orientation, and this sort of thing, there's a good 50+ years of solid research in the field, from numerous researchers, coming from different perspectives, and enough studies that replicate others so (assuming that all the studies don't suck, which sometimes they do), we can infer pretty reliably what's going on. If these unsupported new ideas actually had any basis, it would have shown up in the literature decades ago. (And no, please don't pull up the tired trope about homosexuality not being removed from DSM until 1973; the credible research on it only dated back to the mid-60s, and once it was available, the update was pretty swift.) So that's largely what I rely on, is a combination of different perspectives as well as solid data to back up what's being claimed. And my issue with many of the things claimed is that there's simply not much of anything to support the claims.
     
    #13 Chip, Oct 13, 2020
    Last edited: Oct 13, 2020
  14. SGee

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    What you described is what Im living through now. Thank you for describing it so clearly
     
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