Unexpected change of sexual orientation?

Hey there YLT, it sounds like you may be bisexual. Some bisexual go through a period of what is called a “bi-cycle” where they experienced fluctuations in their attractions to certain genders or sexes. You may of had a simple fluctuation in your attractions from women to men more. When I first fell for a woman for the first time in a long time (I was very closeted mind you), my attraction to women exploded out of the box. It may be the same for you, but with men. You may be realizing you are attracted to men. Or maybe not. In the end of the day, you may decide whatever label fits you best.

 

TBH this sounds pretty par for the course for a lot of gay guys I know. I can pinpoint the moment in my life when that click happened--I was older and perhaps a bit more experienced, but still I haven't felt that way about a woman at all in the thirty years since. My guess is that if you were ever able to be fully comfortable with the idea of being gay you'd find that's where you are. It sounds like there's a lot else going on and you should probably tackle some of that first, though. I hope wherever this takes you it brings you peace.

 

Definitely can't claim to know one way or another. All I can say is, as someone who came out late in life, I understand the pull toward same sex being stronger. It was certainly the case when I embraced my bisexuality, and it's been on and off like that a lot since (not like I lose the attraction, but more like an ebb and flow; stronger attraction to men at times, stronger towards women at others).

You could be bi and going through the flow aspect, or you could be fully gay. I think it's something that will take time to work through, however, in order to be certain. The good thing is, there's no rush; be kind to yourself at this time, and I'm sure the answer will come to you when you're ready.

 

So, I'm not a shrink but I know something about the map and the territory. How have you been feeling since you accepted your homosexuality? Sometimes, when we try to repress who we are, we end up causing internal conflicts that can manifest as mental problems. It may take a while, and it may take some time, but you could feel a lot better once you accept yourself for who you are and work toward reversing some of the internalized homophobia you may have gotten from your family or culture. We can't really be at peace unless our conscious and unconscious thoughts, feelings, and beliefs are aligned with our true inner self and its desires. A harsh "superego" is not going to be something you want to hold onto, but it may be hard to recognize and discard, especially if you are younger.

As you work towards self-acceptance, you might find that dissociation and derealization can go away. In my case, for example, accepting myself as gay is the only real problem I've had. The rest is just details.

 

Well I heard a sexologist (more than one actually) relating that in his therapy work he met bisexual people who had bad luck with opposite-sex relationships (experiences like: rejection, humiliation, trauma, violence) and as a result lost the drive towards other sex for quite a long time. Some of them came out as gay/lesbian only to later discover they still have it. Could this be the case?

 

Well, OP is going to have to tell us how it's going. If he represses his urges, they'll gather strength and come out in some form. I think that two facts that mitigate against this interpretation are that it's been 4 years since this happened to him, and it was just after fantasizing rather than a negative experience. Of course, only OP knows how bi he is. Maybe he's just on a very long bi-cycle.

 

Backing off what PeterWI said, this is exactly my experience right here. I continuously repressed my attraction to women for 3 years because of internalized homophobia and wanting to fit in and it took me falling really hard for a girl to hit the nail in the coffin to finally face my attraction to women.
Secondly the "sexologist" thing seems suspicious to me. It may have been a bi-cycle thing. But at the end of the day, only OP knows what's going through his head.

 

It always pays off to be suspicious.

On the other hand people can hurt really deep and healing trauma takes really long time. I know about a guy who realized his left-handedness late in life, after over a decade of successful compeating in fencing. Then he relearned to be even more successful. The key was self acceptance.

 

That is true and it can go the same way for sexuality. I know there are many late bloomers in life who realize they are same-sex attracted. I'm a bit younger but I'm coming to the realization now.

 

I feel for you. As a matter of fact: I can relate to that.

I had a couple of relationships where the girl would not turn me on like girls normally do. I did it because I liked them "as a person" and wanted to have a nice relationship with a nice girlfriend and yeah these ended abruptly too. What I found more damaging were these relationships where I was in love, turned on... but didn't really like the person I was with.

One good piece of advice I got about relationships is that if you ever feel overburdened with how things turned out, you should remind yourself that a relationship is a shared responsibility. It never rests on you 100%, more like 50%. So no matter how bad it ended up, you just cannot blame yourself for trying and hoping that things sort themselves out. Sometimes they do, sometime they don't we all take our chances and try to learn from it.

 

This has puzzled me for a time now and i can’t get my head around it. How do we really explain these shifts in sexuality or attractions or cycles? What really triggers them? While I have read about the studies and research about sexuality and the spectrum mainly the Kinsey one and the Fritz Kline one but I don’t understand how or why on a deeper level.
Is it because that we are unhappy in our lives or situations at a certain point in time and look for something different?

 

I love the word 'trigger' that you used.

In the modern psychology a 'trigger' is a object or situation that changes the way that information flows through your brain, which is usually associated with a surge of emotions. We seem to gather those triggers as a adaptive mechanism, which means that rewarding, happy situations are more likely to produce lasting results than unhappy ones as our brain tries to repeat the former and avoid the latter.

So say you activate one of the 'danger' triggers. Your brain shuts all unnecessary activity and sends warnings to your organs: "prepare to fight or run". Now which one? People think that this is a conscious choice but in reality an awful lot depends both on the trigger and the part of the brain that manages aggression/fear responses. If your brain got damaged and you could not feel fear your response to 'danger' trigger is always 'fight' direction.

I guess you could say, that if you activate 'sexy' trigger, the info goes into a part of your brain that manages attractions. The way that part of the brain is developed largely determines your ability to have other-sex and same-sex responses.

Now imagine what happens if your activate a series of triggers and a complex reaction occurs where different parts of a brain compete for the information and right to respond. Like young people kissing, this is 'sexy', OMG they are the same gender 'danger'. This is called cognitive dissonance and makes you feel bad, so your brain will try to shut it (repress) short term and resolve it long term.

 

Interesting analogy. It looks like you have been reading up on psychology and sexuality. It’s good am not the only one going OMG. Why do we think and act the way we do?

 

I’m interested to know what this means really. How long do these typical cycles last? Does it just fully go to one gender all of a sudden?

 

I started having "bi cycles" about three years ago. Infrequent at first ( 1-2x a month) but they gradually increased. They started lasting longer too - from a few hours to a few days.
About a year ago the "gay phase" started lasting longer than the "straight" phase. That really threw me. But now the straight phase lasts maybe a day and the gay phase much much longer. In fact I have lost interest in women nearly 100%
So much so Im accepting that im gay now

 

I don't have any sort of prejudice or the like. My account here is about something that occurred to me and seeing that the original poster experienced something similar, I decided to also share. I've searched a lot for accounts like this but this was the first. So, I will tell you what happened to me. Apologies if it doesn't come across very clearly.. I tried to summarise some points so as not to be too lengthy and used ChatGPT to assist since my written English isn't that good. Anyway.

I am from Brazil and come from a very humble family. As a child, I was exposed to some things that children shouldn't be exposed to. Anyway...

I have always had a very strong attraction to women, to the point of engaging in the typical pranks of a perverted teenager, such as spying on the neighbour or falling off my bike while looking at an attractive woman in the street among other worse teenager lewd acts. However, between the ages of 11 and 12, I began to explore pornography on the internet, which has everything. Although most of my interest was in heterosexual pornography, I occasionally encountered gay pornography, especially involving trans women, and this too aroused me.

Everything started to change around 2012/2013. At that time, I was in a relationship with a girl for whom I had very strong feelings. Despite an intense romantic disappointment that deeply affected me, I decided to give the relationship another chance. During this turbulent period, I noticed my ability to maintain arousal and achieve orgasm during sex began to fail, which was frustrating and detrimental to my self-esteem. My consumption of internet pornography increased, and I found myself more and more drawn to gay content, especially videos of transvestites and trans women.

An aspect that always intensified my attraction to women was their scent, something that deeply aroused me. However, during an encounter with my girlfriend during this phase, I realised I could no longer smell her. This left me confused and worried, making me wonder whether I was catching a cold or if something more serious was happening to me.

In the following days, I returned to pornography, and it became what most excited me in the days that followed. Nevertheless, I could still feel attraction to women. One day, I decided to use a vibrator to masturbate in the bathroom, and while looking at myself in the mirror, I felt a "click" on the right side of my head. Since that moment, my attraction to women completely disappeared, even reaching a point of repulsion. My ex-girlfriend, who once had a body that enchanted me, now looked different to my eyes. I tried to be with her again, but everything seemed strange, as if I was searching for something I had lost.

This change was extremely painful. In the days that followed, I suffered greatly and even sought help from psychologists and psychiatrists, but none of them were able to effectively help me. Since then, my life has changed drastically. Today, at 36 years old, I've had some involvement with trans women, but I feel as if a part of me is missing. I still suffer a lot from this. After masturbating with gay pornography, I experience brief moments where I feel as if I could go back to who I was before, but these moments are fleeting, and the confusion and intrusive thoughts quickly return. It's a strange and very difficult situation.

It took me a long time to find someone in a situation similar to mine... Original poster, know that you are not alone. I don't know how you are doing now, but I hope you are well. I still believe it's possible and while I'm happy to have found someone else in a similar situation, I'm also sad because I know how extremely challenging this situation is... I would do everything to return to the attraction to women Ia hed before.

 

I think it would be really helpful for you to stop looking at porn. It sounds like it has messed with your attraction/arousal response.