Is this normal? (Context: I’m gay but have sexual orientation OCD)

Hi everyone. I’m a 20 year old gay male and I have sexual orientation OCD. Basically HOCD but the opposite. It’s mainly over stuff I watched and was aroused by in the past. I get worried that it means I’m not actually gay or that people, if they were to find out I watched this stuff, would think I’m lying about my identity.

So I was introduced to porn from a very young age. When I was 4 I discovered it by mistake on the family computer. Then I searched it a few times out of curiosity when I was 7 to 9. Then when I was around the age of 10, I began to watch it more regularly and actually get aroused by it. I watched it because so many people I went to school with, male and female, talked about it at school, which is really sad honestly. Kids that age shouldn’t even know what it is. But anyway, when I watched it around this age, I began watching almost every genre of porn. From straight to gay to lesbian to trans. You name it, I watched it. I would even sometimes look up erotic or vulgar key words on google search and that action alone would be enough to arouse me. It was so weird because at 10 I didn’t even hit puberty yet. I looked so young for a 10 year old and still at 20 I look like I’m 14. But I was still aroused by all of this and eventually at around 12 I learned how to masturbate. I was always very feminine and have been getting called gay before I even knew what the word meant. I always had a strong attraction and fascination with masculinity. I feel like I’ve been attracted to masculinity ever since I was a young child. Something weird happened around this age of 10-12 which I think contributed to my arousal to women at the time (I was aroused by both men and women and masturbated to both). I’ve always been solely attracted to straight men, never to gay men, and that is still the case today. That’s why I’ve never been in a relationship, and I’m honestly okay with that. I think I realized that I was only into straight men at a young age, subconsciously, so I started to develop this fetish where I was aroused by the thought of myself as a masculine straight guy. So many of my fantasies involved imagining myself as a guy who’s ultra masculine and as weird as it sounds I would sometimes imagine myself as guys from my school that I was attracted to. In some weird way I think this was my way of fulfilling that desire for a straight male since I knew I couldn’t actually have one. So I think I developed this pseudo-attraction to women since my whole life, my primary example of a masculine figure was my father, who openly sexualized women in front of me. He had no shame. Again I know how weird this sounds but I think I started to associate women and specifically overly sexualized women with masculinity, in some weird, inverse way. So sometimes I would sit there and jack off to pictures or videos of naked women. This wasn’t the only thing I masturbated to but was one of them. This lasted until I was about 16. I never wanted to be in a relationship with a woman, and the thought of it has always made me uncomfortable. I have no romantic desires for women and I feel and have always felt nothing around real life women. I never had crushes on girls at school, only boys. When I was 14 I dated this girl, because I felt socially pressured to, and everyone laughed it off because they thought I was gay and in denial (which was absolutely true in hindsight). She wanted to “go further” than holding hands, but I didn’t want to. We never even kissed. When I was 15 I came out as gay to my friends and they laughed that it took me so long because everyone knew. This wasn’t a secret to me because people have been calling me gay since I was in kindergarten.

Now that I’m 20 and a half, I feel absolutely nothing when I see a naked or sexualized female. I haven’t watched porn in years (since I was about 17) and I think detoxing from porn use I went back to my “default setting” of only being attracted to men. But now I’m left with this feeling of “what the fuck?” over the stuff I used to watch and fantasize about. I fear that someone will find out I used to watch this stuff, either by somehow viewing my search history (even though it’s been deleted for years), or some other way). My fear is that people will think I’ve been lying about my identity or that homophobes will use it as “proof” that it’s a choice to be gay. I have extensive history with OCD, and have struggled with just about every “theme” possible. I don’t know what to do. Is this normal?

 

Hi David. I was diagnosed with OCD at 13 years old. I have all the classic symptoms like excessive handwashing and “magical thinking” as well as intrusive thoughts. I’ve had several themes over the years like existential OCD, harm OCD, and currently real event and sexual orientation OCD.

 

I have a therapist currently but it’s just a talk therapist. I’m on the waitlist for an OCD specialized program so hopefully that will help! I haven’t really talked much about this OCD theme with my therapist since it’s a newer obsession but I should bring it up. I know for sure she’s LGBT-friendly.

 

To clarify I mean I’ve been struggling with OCD for years but this sexual orientation obsession only started recently.