My 17 year old

Hi Kelli

In answer to your question re childhood crushes, I don’t actually remember having any. From what I can recall, and you should note that I usually can’t remember what I had for breakfast, all of my close friends were boys. During my teen years I went to an all-boys school and at university I studied engineering and sadly not a single girl in the class. So overall my opportunity to meet girls on a daily basis was non-existent unless I made a special effort which I didn’t feel the need to do.

I was a super geek before the term geek even existed and tended to mix with other guys who were also geeks and usually older than me.

Sporting wise I was hopeless at football and extremely dangerous at any game involving a bat/club and ball. My main sporting interest was mountaineering and orienteering. I had, and still have, no interest in watching sport; I would rather be outside participating.

When I left university I got involved with musical theatre (big gay give away – but I missed it) where the girls outnumbered the guys 3 to 1. I had a few girlfriends and had no problem having sex with them, although if I’m honest I couldn’t see what all the fuss was about, the sex was enjoyable but not mind blowing. I never had any attraction to guys even though I knew at least 10+ gay guys in the theatre; they were all stereotypically over the top gay guys. It was in the theatre that I met my wife who I married 26 years ago and have been with ever since.

Re. adolescent fantasies of guys or girls, I don’t recall any but I was, as a geek, an avid builder of sex toys for masturbation including a motorised wanking machine to take care of my sexual urges. I guess I was just a horny teenager but without any boy or girl friend. I should add that in those days it would not be acceptable to be gay.

My best friend during my teenage school days later on, after I had lost contact with him, turned out to be gay but did not, at least as far as I was concerned, appear to act gay. He did once make some sort of a hint at experimenting but I changed the subject and it was never spoken of again. In fact all my really close male friends either turned out to be gay or were the subject of gay rumours, I however was never aware of any suggestion or rumour that I was gay.

Hope this helps

 

If he can't be aroused by men or women, he's probably asexual. Some people have pointed out mild depression, and while I can't speak for everyone, depression personally did affect my libido. But when it was mild I still had some libido, not none at all. The only time I felt no attraction was during major depression and manic depression. If you take him to a doctor, they might try to say he has Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder. Personally I disagree with that, I think it's an orientation not a mental disorder.

 

Hi Kelli
While I was reading this story about your son I felt like I'm kinda connected to him because I'm in similar situation, I'm not sure who I am and almost everything what you have said for him I can connect it with me. So I guess he's not the only one who feels like that, good luck with solving and realizing it.

 

I can relate with not being attracted to anyone really in real life. As in you talk about being an adolescent and thinking about boys or girls all day and that wasn't my experience. I never had true crushes on classmates and didn't have an urge to ask anyone out or date. I remember a couple girls I had "crushes" on and I would try to get off to them because I thought I thought I was attracted to them because I thought they were pretty but there was this huge disconnect and I couldn't feel that way towards them. This lack of finding people in real life attractive persisted into college. Yet I did have a high libido and if I analyzed my fantasies (which I didn't have the wherewithal to do back the because I was very afraid of being different, being gay, and not fitting in) I would have came to the conclusion that I was mostly attracted to men with some small attraction to women... which is how I still am today.

Thinking logically, your son has masturbated (even if maybe not at such a high frequency compared to other kids his age). So.... he was thinking about something that made him sexually aroused. So.... whatever that was obviously is linked to his sexual orientation. If all those fantasies were of men... he probably has a stronger attraction to them or vice versa with girls. Now the problem is that you don't really know what he was thinking about those times . If you really want to grill him about this you could. Or you could just trust that he will figure it out in the end. He still has plenty of time to figure out his sexuality. A LOT of people never even have sex until after high school.... so at the very least he already has some experiences with which to draw from and determine his feelings regarding sex and dating.


One last thing. I can tell you are grasping for straws to have him be 100% straight but.... he probably isn't completely heterosexual. Straight people honestly don't watch gay porn consistently. I may have misread this anecdote but I would work on letting that go. Doesn't mean he won't end up married to a nice girl however. Finally I don't think you should assume attraction is so "obvious" for everyone. It can be a very subtle thing. Its not always like oh i see a guy, oh hes attractive, oh I should have sex with him.