Very unusual story- am I gay??

I am right now volunteering for a gay hotline and I got a call from a married woman whose story is very, very similar to yours. She noted that the sex with her husband of 10 years isn't what it used to be so she is having recurring and endless thoughts that she might be gay.

We ended the call agreeing that the problem was the underlying anxiety. She herself mentioned the example of obsessive hand washing, it's not that the hands are dirty, the enemy is the anxiety.

 

If you go back through this thread, you'll notice nobody has given you more than the most rudimentary responses in regards to your sexuality. Most are of the type "well, maybe you are, and maybe you aren't". And I think that's because their mindset is the same as mine - that your sexuality isn't the issue. In fact, let me go one step further.

You're on the wrong website.

Let me explain. Say you saw your OCD specialist for something else - you obsessively cleaned your closet, for instance, or washed your hands a lot. During that time, you might have gone to a website devoted to "beating clutter" for advice, or searched online which anti-bacterial soap worked the best. But these things wouldn't have helped you at all, since the problem wasn't your closet (or soap) but your perception thereof. Similarly, we at EC are not going to be much help, because your problem isn't your sexuality - it's your perception thereof.

Judging by your posts, you have always been anxious about things, far beyond the point where the anxiety is warranted. And put simply, this is problematic. Yes, it's a good idea to examine the possibilities, and weigh your options. But if you've been pondering your sexuality daily for seven years, and still don't have an answer, the problem isn't your sexuality.

My suggestion? Start over. Go see a doctor and/or psychiatrist, perhaps brand new ones. But this time, focus solely on your anxiety. Tell them about your past, but just how it relates to your anxiety. Don't tell them "I'm afraid I'm gay" - tell them "I have been anxious about my sexuality daily for eight years". Tell them about being paranoid about getting a heart attack as a kid, and about freaking out that you became HIV+ after some rather casual sexual contact. Make your responses to these things the focus. See if you can't get that under control. Because your entire life is going to kick so much more ass once you can not freak out over this stuff.

Lex

 

I am slightly OCD myself. Obsessively worrying about an issue, while beyond our control, is sometimes more worrying than the issue itself and clouds everything. It is a hamster wheel you cannot get off unless someone outside stops he wheel, extend a hand and says "OK, off you go!"
Go see someone and bring that post with you- sums i all up perfectly.
Then take the fear and worry out of the worrying about what you are, so you can actually discover what you are. And in the end whatever you find that you are - gay straight or bi, pansexual, monogamous, open, whatever - its ok.
good luck!

 

Here is what I think based on your initial post:

1)You were traumatised by the bullying in your school and as a result you have deeply internalised the rejection form your schoolmates.

2) this trauma has made you feel emasculated/weak and as a result gave you severe anxiety which lead to erectile disfunction.

3) you question whether there is not something internally 'wrong' with you that justifies the sexual disfunction, when in reality it is a result of bullying and the anxiety which arose from it. You get anxious about desire and as a result you loose it which creates more anxiety.

4) being into men or women has nothing to do with the issues you have associated with being 'gay'. In your mind it is associated with something inherently 'different' in you that gave your bullies a reason to pick on you.
You probably also associate it with being 'less of a man'. This is internalised homophobia. Being male and into men does not mean that you are less masculine, in many cases gay men are more masculine than straight men.

5) there might also be other issues in your life, not only the bullying that contribute to your anxiety. You seem to have an oddly close relationship with your mother for example. I had a close relationship with mine, but I'd never talk about such intimate topics as my sexual life with her, beyond the necessary 'educational' talks one receives as a teenager. Stop involving her in your adult life: it might still be that you want to please her somehow, and maybe this is what stops you from enjoying your sex life. She might be the third, invisible person in the bedroom.

6)Try to detach issues of your sexuality from the issues that lead to your anxiety and OCD, because it is those issues that are stopping you from enjoying sex, not your sexual orientation.

Being gay is just a different flavour of attraction, it does not make you 'wrong', or 'different' inside.
My strong feeling is that if your bullying was based on your handedness you would be obsessing right now about being right- or left- handed.

You would be somebody who would say 'I've spend all my life writing with the right hand, but there were 2 days where I used my left hand for most things, how do I know I am not a repressed left-hander?'. If you were made to feel inadequate because of the way you hold your pen you would be questioning that right now, most likely without having issues with your sexuality.

The reality is that you were made to feel inadequate and you try to find the fault within yourself and it is messing up your life. You have picked the area of your life to search for the 'difference' in which you were bullied as a child. You have picked sexuality to obsess about, because that was what you were bullied about as a child.


The fact is that there is no 'objective' reality that justifies bullying, there is nothing in you that has caused it. For one set of bullies it could have been your hair, for another your sexuality, for another your shoes. People become targets of bullies because they happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, because bullies have their own issues that they need to project on others.
I suspect that you've learned to associate attraction to men with the felling that your bullies had a good reason to bully you, that is why you are so scared of the whole thing. You were only able to cope with the whole thing as long as you knew they were wrong in assumptions about your sexuality, once an actual attraction to men materialised you had to confront those issues from the past that were not confronted. In reality you could have been picked on for a variety of reasons and even if you are gay that does not make them 'right', and being 'straight' does not make them 'wrong' and protect you from the reality of having being bullied as a child. Those issues have to be confronted outside of the issues of your sexuality, probably with the help of a therapist.

7)When it comes to your actual sexuality there parts of your post that make me think that maybe you have asexual tendencies, or at least were a late bloomer in school and that you are forcing yourself to be sexual to prove a point to yourself.

I'd strongly suggest you stop having sex, stop thinking about it, stop masturbating, go on a sexual fast.
Try to find a different outlet for your obsessive personality/ develop a ritual, maybe meditation, or get a hobby: taking apart bikes, learning math, collecting something, or even organise your entire room according to colour of all the objects. Some kind of activity that will act as a catalyst for your anxiety/ need for closure, but that will have an external focus and that will not harm you physically (because I suspect all the masturbation is harming you physically as well).

Once the OCD focus is taken off your sexuality you might be able to actually figure out what you want/like, but you will not be able to do it as long as your sexuality is the outlet for you anxiety.

good luck.

 

I stand by my last post.

Lex

 

I can kind of understand you...
Sometimes I ejaculate without even penetrating a girl with just foreplay and sometimes my erections just die..
I have gone through hours of pornography testing between lesbian , straght and gay porn. This suffering went on for more than a year. Sometimes I would be convinced I am straight sometimes gay, nowadays kind of bi...
The point of it all is that there is no point.
If your masturbation is a compulsion to prove something and not enjoyment, just give it up for some months. I once got off to lesbian porn and girls solo 4 times to prove my heterosexuality, the thing is that it didnt help at all....I still dont know shit.
If you fall for a girl go for her...if you get more intrested and curious abut men go hit a gay bar. If you have extreme anxiety and maybe even a physical problem use viagra again (the sex you had was satisfactory so...).
Life is too short for labels and solving jigsaw puzzles.
Go outside, do something else... be happy...

 

When I was 14-15 I had many crushes on girls and I masturbated to thoughts of girls .In my 20's I became aware of my identity (as gay) but refused to accept it . I had several GFs and I almost got married ! (thank god I did't!) . I did everything I could to repress the homosexual fantasies but obviously I couldn't .

I don't think that someone can turn gay in a specific age but maybe he/she can become aware of it .

I am not saying that you are gay I am just giving you a reference to compare to .

Good Luck

 

Eric Dave your not gay there. Sheesh. Lol.

---------- Post added 30th Nov 2014 at 11:27 PM ----------

It's all in your mind and you should stop questioning yourself about your sexuality. It seems like it's become a game for you after all those years of worrying about it. You won't even listen to what people are telling you.

 

About the finger ratio test: my ring finger is much larger than the index. I have the "straight finger ratio". and I'm gay, sooo...

Now listen

STOP WORRYINGYOU ARE NOT GAY. NONE of your "signs" is remotely an indication of you being gay. But please, get your OCD treated asap.

 

My ring finger is about the same size as my index finger what does that mean?

 

Hey ED,

Glad to see you back here, but sorry to hear that your crisis continues.

I can't diagnose your orientation, and even if I did it would do you no good. One thing I can say with some certainty is that anxiety messes with your perceptions of things, most especially your sex drive. I don't think you can be anxious and aroused at the same time.

So I would favor finding a way to deal with the anxiety on its own. I realize that you're thinking, "once I figure out if I'm gay or straight or whatever, the anxiety will go away!" But I don't think that's how it works.

On the contrary, my perspective is that our sexuality is fixed, either by genetics or very early childhood experience, doesn't really matter -- it is what it is. The problem is that your mind is so clouded by anxiety you can't see it clearly.

In my own experience, which has a lot of similarities to yours, I've come to accept that I am bisexual. Some people see this as a cop-out; to me it's a milestone since I am so heavily inclined to black-and-white thinking and bisexuality is the very definition of a gray area. Making that assertion has decreased my insane drive for answer-seeking.

The day-to-day anxiety has diminished significantly, though I still have a lot of anguish and challenge about how, exactly, to live a bisexual lifestyle (as mentioned in another post).

I guess what I'm saying is that the harder to try to solve the gay-or-straight problem, the more anxiety you will generate and the less results you will get. So see if you can find a way to defuse the need to resolve the problem. Therapy can help. Meditation is another approach. Or simply open yourself up to the idea that you are both, or neither.

It doesn't have to be a categorical truth -- just some mental position you can live with. When the anxiety subsides a bit you will be in a better place to make some choices about your life.

 

It is a theory that studies the digit ratio between the index finger and the ring finger. It is related to testosterone exposure for the fetus when in the uterus. Men tend to have a larger ring finger in comparation to the index finger than women. I have looked up information on the internet and some sources say that gay men have more masculine ratios than straight men, and others say the opposite.

Today out of curiosity (yeah, I'm such a nerd) I checked my straight's father hand and his ring and index fingers are the same length, while a straight male friend of mine has a ring finger longer than the index, like me. So there doesn't seem to be any link between digit ratio and sexual orientation