Sexuality talk

You're in the right place to discuss these things but I understand that some things are hard to talk about. I too have kinks I'm not prepared to talk about or admit just yet.

In my nearly three decades of denial, I would try and find reasons or excuses why I couldn't possibly be gay. Looking back at some of them now I can even laugh at myself for just how well I deceived myself.

For example, I'd say to myself "I've found an article that says, while what porn you watch can be an indicator of sexuality, plenty of straight men like gay porn." Ergo, I'm straight!!

Digging into the porn viewing, I would skip over anything that showed faces and certainly no kissing. I'd tell myself that I'm looking at male bodies but not the whole man so clearly I'm straight. After all, there are penises and bums in straight porn too.

I could go on, and maybe some day I'll write a humourous blog post on unconvincing lies I told myself. But it's easier for me to jest because I'm not struggling anymore, unlike you. In the depths of my struggles I wrestled with self loathing, self doubt all while living in an abusive relationship with someone that, with hindsight, I was clearly not even remotely sexually attracted to.

So hard did I try to maintain my straightness, I saw the doctor's about what I had self diagnosed as erectile dysfunction. Of course I kept my sexuality doubts to myself, and they felt it was just a transitory issue related to stress. With hindsight it's plain to see, of course I didn't get aroused with someone who wasn't a man.

I looked into sexuality OCD at one point too and thought that this was why I kept on questioning. I'm not a medical professional, so firstly I shouldn't self diagnose any medical condition but rather seek professional expertise over my concerns. Secondly, I think it's perfectly possible to be obsessively thinking about something without it being a disorder.

Sexuality and relationships are a huge part of what make us human. Most of us have strong desires to share our lives with someone and to be physically intimate with them. It's a big decision to make yourself vulnerable enough to say that you love them and can't be without them, and it's ab even bigger vulnerability to get naked and physical. I think, like other big decisions such as buying a house, going to college, and so on, we should spend time working out what it is we really want and who we really are.

It's not easy, it took my 27 years to get to where I am now. I hope that with the help of all the loving people in this community we can help you reach your answers much sooner than I did.

Once I'm a full member in a week's time, please feel free to DM me if you ever want to discuss anything that you're uncomfortable discussing openly in the forum.

 

The moderator label should've been my clue!

Yes, I know that only too well. I've a few friends who have come out to me, a lesbian, a couple of gays and a couple of trans, and I've been able to help them on their journey all while denying it to myself.

At the age of 10 the other boys got really interested in the girls and didn't understand why. By 11 I would have the butterflies around certain boys and by 12 I understood that what I was feeling for the boys was what the boys were feeling for the girls.

I see you're a decade younger than me and I don't know what it was like in Estonia growing up. For me in the UK, I don't think I knew what gay or homosexual even meant until I was around 15 so I thought something was wrong with me when I realised butterflies for boys wasn't what everybody else was experiencing. There was barely any representation of gay men on TV, but when there was they were often quite camp and feminine which I'm not and so, I couldn't be gay, I must be wired wrong. There was also a very strong heteronormative narrative throughout school, parents, grandparents, TV, music and movies. I maintained that broken view of myself for years and, when we moved, I actively tried to be straight.

I am fortunate to have had these experiences, especially when I was young and we knew not what we were doing. I am so sorry to hear of your trauma and I do hope those scars can fade.

I agree labels aren't important and it's definitely far easier to say that then do actually not find them important. Labels can be a strong way of identifying yourself and finding others like you and I think that's why we do worry about what is right for us.

I tried telling myself I was bisexual because I had had sex with both men and a woman. The label didn't fit, and eventually I decided I was a homosexual - heteroromantic as I kept longing for sex with men, avoiding sex with my wife and could only imagine myself in a relationship with a woman.

Part of that struggle was not having any healthy examples to relate to in a strongly heterosexual world. I've been reading E.M. Forster's Maurice and have never ever identified so strongly with some of the characters. I'm feeling their longing, the confusion and the desire and I plan to read a lot more gay literature to almost drown out the years of Romeo's and Juliet's as the only romantic template to follow. It's with some irony that that's a tragedy, given my marriage.

A friend of mine, MtF trans, started hormones nearly a year ago. She found that after only a few weeks she felt completely different, and felt like she was her true self at last, like the nightmare was finally over. I hope your experience will be similar.

 

You don't have to do so if it bothers you. You're definitely more normal than many straight cis people that I know, trust me. Besides, who's normal nowadays? Anyway, you're perfectly fine the way you are, just to let you know. I don't mean to minimise the way you feel and your concerns about the traumas you may have or not.

If labels are not useful to you and you don't like them, don't use them. You're a human being as everybody else and, moreover and most important, a good person.

I understand you may have questions and it's up to you to answer them from the bottom of your heart and honestly. It's not easy. Have you considered talking to a nice therapist about these worries you have and these doubts? I went to therapy in the past and it was helpful to me. Maybe, it could be useful, but it's just an idea.

 

I am sure hormones plays a big part in my attraction and sex drive. When I was 16 I started taking the pill because I got a boyfriend, I took it until I was 17, at that point I had no boyfriend and was seeing a girl, so didn’t need it any more. Once I stopped taking it, my sex drive got so much higher. I did start finding guys more attractive too but didn’t take any action for another year. But even now at 24, I find my attractions change with my hormones. There’s always a low to medium desire for my boyfriend, but the attraction for women really does swing quite wildly from almost zero to not being able to think about anything else.

I do find the whole thing pretty strange. I am at ease with it and with myself, there’s no turmoil inside me about my label, but bisexual has just never felt like it fit me, although it does pretty accurately describe what I do. It has always felt like my attractions to men and women are different somehow. I can’t find the words to differentiate it but I’m sure there are other bi people here that feel the same as me, maybe you do?

 

My apologies Rain, I misunderstood and I certainly do not wish to cause you further stress. I was thinking that the doubts were like mine and being straight, but rather you do know your sexuality and gender yet doubts persist.

Am I correct in recalling your father is unaccepting? Many of us need to feel approval from our parents, might his unacceptance be a cause of these intrusive thoughts? I'm thinking along the lines that your intrusive doubts about yourself is a pressure from your subconscious to try and find an easy path back to acceptance, after all if you're not actually the gender and sexuality you are, you have your acceptance back.

Wishing you all the best and I always hope anything I write is a help and not a misunderstanding.

 

I get what you mean and I agree with you: a well-prepared therapist is the best option. We're not experts so we can give you an opinion as friends, but we may be wrong or make you feel bad for triggering something unintentionally.

Finding your inner peace is essential for you, because you need to feel understood and have a professional and right opinion.

For us, don't get worried. We're fine. All that we want is that you feel good with yourself and that you are happy with your life. And sometimes the topic is so complicated that we are not able to offer you the solutions, advice or help that you need.

 

I feel this. I don't like talking about sexuality because I was shamed hard for it by a step parent. She told me porn was disgusting and now as an adult I feel like people think I'm a creep whenever I talk about it. Trauma a lot of the time seems to be fairly mundane. You feel like why would I bring this up when other people have it worse. Sorry I'm coming in late to this thread but I hope you're feeling better. You're one of the first people who helped me on here and a good person you don't deserve so much anxiety.

 

I'm glad you're feeling better. If you ever need to vent feel free to message me. I'm always happy to lend a sympathetic ear.

 

Sorry, it was birth control / contraceptive pill. In the U.K. we just call it “the pill” and everyone here knows what we mean, I didn’t realise it wasn’t called that in the rest of the world too.

They’ve done studies on straight women and found that while on the pill, it can slightly alter a woman’s tastes so that they find feminine guys more attractive than they normally would and highly masculine guys less attractive than they normally would. This is physical features I’m talking about, not personality stuff. I don’t know how this experience crosses over to other people taking other sex hormones, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it does. I wonder if being on the pill made more more open to that first experience with another woman than I might otherwise have been?

 

I hope talking about it helps you find peace with it, Rain. I think it helped for me.