Hi everyone. I'm a 22 year old guy that feels a little lost. I've been watching porn since I was probably 13 and gradually I've slowly shifted from enjoying seeing the girl to watching the guy finish. Now don't get me wrong, I do love females. I've had several girlfriends and sexually, I'm extremely attracted to the female body. When it comes to guys, I enjoy seeing them orgasm. Not too long ago, the fantasy of wanting to touch another guy and replace the girl in porn has come up. I've had phone sex with a couple guys and I enjoy hearing them finish. However, these feelings only happen when I'm horny and really worked up. The idea of kissing or being romantically involved with a guy doesn't appeal to me and as soon as I finish, I want nothing to do with them. Gay porn doesn't do anything for me, there always has to be a female involved somehow. Is this normal? Am I bisexual?
I wouldn't call you bisexual, more experimental. I do believe bisexual is when you can see yourself with any sex: relationship, sex, emotionally, etc. What your going threw is something that you will most likely experiment with in some point threw your life. Nothing wrong with that. I can't be sure how you would react after experimenting; whether you would want to do it more, or never again. Just something that you as an individual will have to find out on your own.
I kind of agree with TroubledRyan. I mean, on the Kinsey Scale, you would probably be some shade of bisexual, which most people supposedly are. So, in answer to your first question, yes, it's perfectly normal. But, in all honesty, before you label yourself as bisexual, make sure it's not just you experimenting. Some people are sexually attracted to one gender or the other, but not attracted in any other way.
This is a complicated question to answer because, if you *are* more gay than bi, it's very common in the early stages for your unconscious to throw up all sorts of barriers and red herrings that make it difficult to discern what's really going on... essentially a denial mechanism. This is also what causes the revulsion to set in immediately after you've ejaculated; I was dating a (closeted) guy once who was like that, he was all into it up to the moment he ejaculated and then he'd basically run away, mostly because of guilt. And he was constantly fighting with denial. Today, he's happily married to a guy. The fact that you enjoy having phone sex with guys and hearing them as they orgasm makes it pretty clear you aren't totally straight. So I'm going to cautiously say that I suspect there's some denial and/or some unconscious interference going on, and once that's cleared out, you'll have a better picture of where your real sexual orientation lies. I have a couple of suggestions. The first is to masturbate a few times without using porn, just let your mind's fantasies guide you. And see what fantasies naturally come up for you. (This might be a challenge, as you might find yourself thinking one thing, and then sort of forcing yourself to think of something else.) If you find yourself imagining being with guys, or watching guys, and so forth, then you're probably more gay than straight. One of the things that gets in the way of just answering the question is the built-in internalized homophobia that nearly everyone has, thanks to society, religion, and other factors; we learn from all these sources that gay men are less masculine, or promiscuous, or heathens who will go to hell, or child molesters. Even if we consciously reject that idea, it still permeates us at an unconscious level to some extent, and makes it more difficult to accept and love ourselves, which creates shame. But just talking about it, exploring the feelings, and seeing what "fits" starts to dissipate the shame, and also to clear out the denial and other factors that keep you from seeing the real truth. So... that's a very longwinded way of saying, no way to tell for sure based on what you've said so far... but I think if you try that experiment, it will help you along in beginning to clarify. Also, I and any of the other advisors are available to talk with you one on one over IM or PM if you would like to discuss this in more detail in a less public setting. Feel free to PM any of us if you'd like to do that. Take care and I hope you stick around our community!
Hi there and welcome to EC. I agree with Chip. It's very hard to tell, and there might be a lot of denial going on. That was certainly the way with me. I slowly transitioned from straight porn to gay porn. I would have cyber sex and later phone sex with other men. Eventually I started meeting other men for sex. All this while I was married to a woman. I never thought I'd want a relationship with a man, or that I'd want to kiss one. But I'm now married to a man, and find kissing him one of the most erotic and arousing things we do. I had to work on accepting myself and overcoming the hangups that I had around all of this. Now that I have, I'm happier now than I've ever been. So you never know. Just give it time and see what seems to fit best for you.
Hi! It's possible that the reason that gay porn doesn't do anything for you is that it triggers too much anxiety about you being gay. Have you ever tried watching porn of a guy masturbating alone? Frankly, having phone sex with guys is actually much more significant to me than the porn. I mean, you and another guy are getting each other off. And you said you think about touching another guy. You say there has to always be a woman in the porn, but there is no woman involved in the phone sex. So, I think we can remove "straight" from the list of possibilities. It's possible that you are bisexual, but if the thoughts you find most arousing, or the thoughts that most naturally occur when you are aroused, are all or mostly of men, then it's likely that you are predominantly gay. Right now, you can only recognize your gay feelings when you are extremely aroused--this is the only time that your desires are powerful enough to overcome your internalized homophobia and denial. That's why you aren't aware of any romantic interest in men--you don't have a particular guy you are in love with or anything, and your romantic desires aren't strong enough, or immediate enough, to push through the homophobia and denial so that you can become consciously aware of them. It's very common for people in the early stages of acceptance to say that they are only sexually, but not romantically, interested in the same sex, for this reason. We get people saying that here all the time, and they usually (almost always) discover later that they actually can have romantic feelings for the same sex. For right now, I think it would probably be best to work on accepting that you are not straight. Worry about whether you are gay or bisexual later. Work on accepting the fact that you have feelings for men, until you are able to see yourself in a relationship with one. Until you get through your denial about how you feel about men, it's going to be impossible to be sure about your feelings for women. Your mind could be manufacturing them as part of the denial. One thing you could do, to help with self-acceptance, is to read some books and watch some movies about gay men. That will help you to see what a relationship between to guys might be like, and to make it seem less strange to you. Part of the problem with imagining yourself in a relationship with a man is that you probably don't have any models--it's not depicted that much in popular culture (although this problem is improving) and if you don't know any gay couples personally, then you might not have any internalized image of what a gay relationship would be like. (You would have to know both men well, and watched how they interact with each other, to have that as a relationship model.)
