I just need some feedback please...first post... Where to begin...about a year ago, I moved back home for a bit. It was also at that time that I began to question my sexuality. At the time, I didn't know why. It was almost like a voice in my head telling me that I was lying to myself, and that I was gay and that was all there was to it. I go into therapy, and talk it out with my counselor. In hindsight, no real conclusions were reached, but it did give me the courage to begin exploring my feelings. Time passes, and I am constantly debating this with myself. It reaches the point where any time I feel any kind of arousal, I have to examine myself and my thoughts to see what it is "about" (who's turning me on, why, what is it about, etc.). I am in misery, and I have no one to talk to at this time. I begin to try and be honest with myself about my feelings. It was at that time that I had a little epiphany. I realized I wasn't gay, b/c I was still sexually attracted to women, and I also sought out their company in relationships. Sounds great, right? Not quite... Then I ask myself if I am bi. Not so easy to answer. I have never been with a guy in my life, never been attracted to one. But I begin to think-really think- about how can I know I wouldn't like it if I haven't tried it. I'd like to think I would know something like that, but perhaps not. I begin to do something I thought I would never do. I begin to fantasize about guys- as in, closing my eyes, and focusing on the thought of being with another man and trying to....you know. Mixed results on more than one occasion. Sometimes, I feel a little SOMETHING, but I would get freaked out and stop. Usually, I'd feel nothing, and I would be relieved. Evidence, right? The thing is, I can't seem to stop. It's almost like a compulsion...only by doing and not enjoying the thing that I don't want can I get any peace. Which brings me to tonight. I don't know why I did this....the notion just struck me to try fantasizing and doing you know what. And....my body responded. In that way. I stopped and said to myself that I could possibly learn something about myself if I do this all the way. So I do. And now, I am sitting here feeling very very strange and a little distrubed. I never EVER thought this would happen to me. I am not ready to say if I am bi or not. I do know that I have a beautiful girlfriend that I am not prepared to lose, that this is not something that I am willing to make room in my life for, and it is not something that I think I would ever seek out. My body may have responded, but mentally I did not enjoy what I did to myself. I don't know what I'm trying to say here. I'm frightened that something is happening to me, something I can't control and don't want, and that I am going to have to change my whole life as a result of it. I don't want that!!!!!!! I just want to be able to decide waht I want and not let my mind play games with me.. Jesus.....this is getting long. I do not know if anyone has any insight or advice, but anything anybody has to say would be appreciated.
Hmmn... well, there a lots of ways to interpret what you've posted. The first thing that might be worth mentioning is that most people who aren't non-straight don't get voices in their heads telling them they are, or compulsions to jerk off to guys to see if it turns them on. Most people do, I think, "just know" whether they are straight or gay or inbetween. You sound like you don't really trust your feelings, though, from what you've said--maybe you have a hard time "hearing" what they're saying. You sound more like you're caught up in what it would mean if you were gay or bi than in finding out whether you are or not, if you can see the distinction. I used to come when fantasising about women--that doesn't really make me doubt the fact that I'm gay. Depending on your biochemical make-up, I'm sure anything could turn anybody on in the right circumstances. I remember as a teenager being quite enamoured with a telephone pole once. Please don't repeat that to anyone, though... it ended badly. *grin* Guys can "respond" to stimuli but not necessarily be all that into it. However, what I'm thinking of there is when they're being sexually coerced/assaulted. What you were doing to yourself was, I'm pretty sure, consensual. Having strong feelings can definitely make us feel out of control but the fact of the matter is that "the gay" is not some kind of external force that is going to take you over and make you into a pop-music-loving, club-hopping, gym bunny drug addict with a flair for witty rejoinders and a FABULOUS wardrobe. Either you have feelings for guys or you don't and really only you have the final say on that. Some things to consider might be: --why are you attracted to women? --if your body is responding enough to come, does it matter what you're thinking about? do fantasies hurt anyone? people have completely inappropriate fantasies all the time... what is so bad about yours in this case? --what would be the huge, unmanageable change in your life if you were bi? --if this stuff has been going on as long as this message makes it seem, could it be that maybe you're on to something? --is this type of intense focus on your feelings in character for you? that is, do you tend to latch onto things and get wound up about them or are you generally easy-going? do you usually trust your instincts or do you often second-guess yourself? (if it's out of character, I would say that's a definite sign something is up, although what particularly I couldn't say) Generally we don't get to "decide what we want..." If you don't like oranges, you generally can't make yourself like them rather than apples. That's not to say that every taste we have is fixed in stone but sexuality is generally considered a relatively immutable notion. That being said, the amount of effort you seem to have put into resisting the mere possibility you might be gay or bi seems to be exacerbating whatever's going on with you. Maybe if you can relax about it more, if the possibility didn't seem so awful, you'd be able to get to the heart of the matter. My experience has been that often people react to their reactions to their feelings, rather than face their feelings head on. By this, I mean things like the following: you feel really sorry for yourself when you hear a a loved one is seriously ill and then you feel guilty for thinking about yourself first. People will inevitably then focus on the guilt and leave their actual feelings unaddressed. I do this a lot... mainly I get angry at myself for feeling certain ways and then feel embarrassed or upset by how angry I am rather than dealing with whatever my underlying feelings were. It's a pretty pervasive cycle in a lot of people, I think. So maybe if you tried to focus more on your feelings than your reactions to how freaked out they make you, you'd be able to figure things out better. Anyway... I'm sure other people will have valuable things to say or ways to approach things that I haven't thought of. Feel free to post back and keep us in the loop.
Thank you my friend...much of what you said was dead on. In the moments where I am calm, the notion of being anything other than straight doesn't even occur to me. When thinking about being with my chick, I laugh a little and wonder why I would want anything else. In other words, you are right when you said that getting wound up is A) not helpful and B) a feature of my situation. This is not out of characater for me either...I can remember TONS of situations in my life where something has been upsetting me personally, and it's all I can do to not think about it for just a few seconds. I'm inclined to believe that this al is related to a (former) friend of mine who came out to me, and immediately left his wife and kid to go do whatever. It's relavant because it sort of put the idea in my head that a person's sexuality could just switch, and that I could go about my life, get married like I want to, and then one day wake up and realize that "hey wow, I don't like girls anymore!" That was a bit troubling, and I don't think I've really sat down and dealt with it yet. Now that I've had some time to think about it, I've come to a conclusion that arousal and attraction can indeed be separate. Kind of related to what you said about that "thing" that I promise I won't mention . My body may respond, but what matters (in my opinion) is if I seek it out. And looking back on what has happened, I realize that I am not disgusted or ashamed or repulsed by what I chose to do...it just wasn't for me. It produced a sort of cognitive dissonance...that what I was doing didn't fall in line with what I knew about myself. In other words, I tried it, and I didn't like it. What I do know is that I really do not think I would ever seek out the company of a man...that it is good and fine and ok for the people that want it, but that I really don't think it is for me. OK, this is half responding to you, half talking to myself. I appreciate your help, and being honest...it's always nice to be able to talk these things over instead of trying to debate with yourself.
Glad to be of help... When someone comes out, I think it can often seem very abrupt to people who did not suspect but I think 99% of the time, it is not at all a switch flipping but rather a long, sometimes arduous internal process (one would think that it's arduous for people who get married and have children) that the person has not made public until the point of coming out. People do not wake up in the morning and suddenly say, "I think I'll be sexually attracted to X today! I'd better let everybody know!" It's interesting you keep framing it in this "seeking it out" kinda way for a variety of reasons. First, one assumes that people who are closeted don't really "seek it out" until they, well, do. Second, it does not sound like your recent experience in self-pleasure was something that just spontaneously happened--most of it sounds relatively deliberate and conscious, which to me evokes "seeking it out" in some way. The whole way of constructing it as "seeking it out" reminds me of how often I've heard guys who are just coming out express sexual interest in other guys but always follow that up with "but I couldn't see myself in a relationship with a guy because blah-blah-blah love of a woman, women are warm and cuddly, I want children, a relationship with a man is just not something that fits into my 'perfect' (aka boring, pedestrian, white middle-class bourgeois) vision of my life, I can't see myself "growing old" with another man, etc etc etc." That kind of thinking seems particularly based around how one has internalised mainstream ideas of what adult life should entail, rather than on how one actually feels and what one actually wants. What I guess I'm trying to say is that a guy could be attracted to other guys his whole life, never ever "seek it out," marry a woman and have children and grandchildren and that wouldn't change the fact that he was attracted to other guys. I'm not saying that's the case in your case, just that "seeking it out" is probably not the best analogy. Maybe "being gay" or "being attracted to guys" in that context is more about what you don't have than what you do. That is, if a guy marries a woman and has kids or has a girlfriend or dates women, etc, and isn't really into the women in his life and feels like there's something missing, that's probably more the indicator of what's going on than how he feels about what gets him off sexually. So if, as you say, you are happily partnered with a woman and women have always turned your crank, you don't need to freak out about your sexuality.
