Hi folks, need some advice, I'm tearing my hair out. Here goes my story... For the last 5 years I have been smoking weed twice a week minimum. Early into January this year, I had an awful experience and completely forgot who I was, I real sense of depersonalisation and it really scared me. Since that day I have never touched weed. For weeks after this happened I was having thoughts about harming my close friends and family and also deep thoughts of depression and confusion, I remember being obsessed with something to do with a jukebox at one point, fucking random I know. The following week one of my colleagues at work told me a story behind one of our customers and that they had a confidence knock and developed a speech impediment. For almost a week after this I found myself talking to myself to make sure that I hadn't developed the same thing. Anyway to cut a long story short, one day I got talking to someone and she was telling me about a gay family member. Since that day, I have had irrational thoughts about whether or not I may be gay, what if I am gay, every man I saw I would tell myself I am attracted to them, even the 60 year olds and the 70 year olds. Now let me tell you a little bit about earlier life... Around the age of 12-13 I had same sex experiences with a guy who at the time was a good friend of mine.. They happened for about a month and were to me, what just felt like a mess around. We never kissed or anything like that and I know for certain there was no intimacy. I didn't feel like I was attracted to him and the thought of kissing him or putting my arm around him made me feel sick, not a pleasant feeling. Oh we never had full penetrative sex either, we just pissed about trying to grab each other and stuff like that. Since those happenings stopped, they never once crossed my mind or plagued my brain into how I am thinking now. After this, I met a girl at school who I had really strong feelings for, we were together for 18 months and had very satisfactory sex during the relationship countless times. When we split up I was extremely depressed and couldn't imagine being without her, I even had a week off school. Since then I have had quite a few relationships with different girls, most of which not working out for one reason or another. At the age of 18, I met a girl called Nat, I knew her through another girl who I had kissed the new year before I met her. We dated for about 3 months until we finally decided it was time to make it official. From then on everything seemed like a dream, we would spend hours and hours together and I adored her company no matter what we did or where we went she was like a best friend and a girlfriend all wrapped into one. After we'd been together for about 18 months we went on holiday together, to this day I still feel it was the best of my life along with all the other memories we made. We ended up splitting up because I became controlling over her and at times I wouldn't let her see her friends or go out, I had heard rumours that she was cheating on me and it made me uncomfortable. This led to numerous arguments and no trust so in the end we called it a day. Since then I have slept with 16 girls, all of which I really enjoyed! I've currently got a girlfriend that I've been with about 3 months, we've gotten really close but this constant thought in my head and not being able to let go of my childhood is convincing me I have lived a lie for the past 21 years. My sex drive is zero and I always get scared incase I can't get an erection for because of these thoughts. It was never an issue before this happened, she only had to touch my body and I would have an instant erection. I have cousins who are gay and I've never had anything against gay people, it's just never been my preference. The doctor has prescribed me with antibiotics and since I have been taking them the thoughts have gone a little and I'm starting to feel myself again!! I wanted to see what you thought!
Well, you sound straight enough, there could have just been something like erectile dysfunction that was making you believe you might have been gay because you couldn't get an erection.
I just don't understand.. When you are in denial do you not think about men? Or do you still think about men but tell yourself you don't want too? Because until this happened I have never once thought I might be gay. Now I am anxious and I don't feel like I want to spend time with my girlfriend
The short answer to this is no one can tell you if your gay or not you kinda have to figure it out for yourself. I can tell you when I was in denial I would convince myself I had crushes on girls but make up every excuse under the sun as to why it would never work out and hence there was no point trying. While at the same time I had really close friendships with guys that I only realised looking back on them were crushes. Hope this helps try not to worry to much about it things always find a way of working out if you give them time.
Denial doesn't literally mean sitting there and telling yourself that you're straight. I think overthinking is a form of denial. I know I tried to think of ways around my sexuality. Or I used to try thinking myself into a label.. if that makes any sense. Now I'm happy with who I am, and you'll get to that point. Your sexuality won't matter. You'll just be happy with who you are and what you want from life. No one can define your sexuality for you, it's something you have to do for yourself. There's no rush.
Have you been assessed for OCD? It sounds like you have a pattern of obsessively worrying about things. Questioning your sexuality could simply be a continuation of your pattern of worrying.
I can't speak for everyone, but for me, denial was something I realized more in retrospect. In my teen years I tried to convince myself that I was bisexual as I thought being attracted to girls and guys meant I could choose to marry a girl and please my parents and live a mostly normal life. I also at times tried to convince myself I was straight and that my attraction to guys was a brief phase. But the truth is I never really liked girls and I am 100% gay and will remain that way forever. It didn't really occur to me how ridiculous my attempts to rationalize and hide what was really obvious were until I accepted myself as gay.
I agree that this really sounds like OCD and since there are lots of ways to treat it it might be good for you to explore that possibility. I have OCD, and that sounds a lot like what I do when it's really bad. I was in denial, but that didn't feel like OCD. I had sexual thoughts about women and just kept telling myself "Oh, straight women do that too, it doesn't mean anything." It doesn't sound to me like you're having sexual feelings for men but denying them.
