I'm 28 and despite most people knowing they were gay at (early) teens one thing that I acknowledged at that age was the fact I had a fetish for some male clothing pieces. I've never been sexually attracted to males neither females, but, at the same time having a fetish for something that has something to do with males you end up daydreaming 'oh it would be nice to play with someone else' even though at the same time I shut down myself because I would feel very very veeeery awkward. For like 15 years I made a couple of friends from this but never had any sexual contact with another person whatsoever, also on the meantime I found another fetish I had not related to objects (no idea how graphic can I be here so let's just say it involves another man), and then one of these friendships started to get closer. He knew I needed a job and offered his home and I ended up staying there like a month (this was 1 year ago). He was one of those fetish-world friends, so I knew he was gay (which I didn't identify as) beforehand and knew about all the kinks, so there were nothing to hide at all. Needless to say I enjoyed a lot staying with him, which is one of the reasons I didn't come back at first. On one of these nights he grabbed my hand and started caressing it, I became a stone statue curled on the other side of the sofa shaking, I've never had someone do this in a serious manner and I didn't know how to react. A few days later I was ok with it and things escalated to the point he asked if he could oral me (can I say that here? If i can't I'll edit it) and I agreed. It stopped on that. This was the only sexual experience I've experienced and up to this day it boggles my mind, I still can't classify as good neither bad, it was just weird. I've never kissed him and was blatantly honest throughout all of it that I didn't want it. Talking about the kissing part. Back the days whenever two men showed affection I just thought it was cool they were happy with themselves and stayed with that. Since a couple months I've noticed I started getting turned on by that kind of behavior but I'm still not interested in the sex part. Bodies don't attract me at all, but the kissing and cuddling started getting on me. If I was with someone how would I justify I get turned on by kissing and cuddling, which is a path to the next level but I'm not interested on going further? I have a feeling if I had the chance to have a kiss with someone I'd probably not go through it as well, watching others do it is easy, doing it myself feels weird and awkward. However, I started having the urges to, maybe the sexual desire would come with time like kissing did? My parents still question me, when I'll have a girlfriend, if I never been interested in any of the girls at school, when I'll give mom grandchildren, my dad ended up offering me on multiple occasions money and his car so I could ""get the ladies"", and there was this once time when my mom asked me if I ever liked any girls proceeded by if I ever liked any boy, which I said no as well (which held true within my beliefs at the time). Back then I would check other boys, think he's handsome and that's that, no further desire or anything. It's still like that today, but I started thinking with myself of going to sleep at night with someone else and tried both ends, again with a woman it felt just wrong, like it didn't make sense, like I would stare at her startled and say "What are you doing here?!", with another man I feel like I wanna hug him and fall asleep. There comes the relationship part, I have a sexual drive, I have kinks, I started getting turned on by simply seeing PDA between two men, but at the same time I don't want to have anything sexual with another person. At which point is this asexuality? I've seen many couples deciding to drift apart because the sexual desire towards each other wasn't enough/didn't exist anymore. I feel like I want to pursue a relationship but being a mess my mind is at right now doesn't help me neither helps who I'd be with. It's hard to explain all those like I had a manual to function and even worse someone else to comply with it. This has been spinning on my head over and over and while I disclosed this with 4 friends (which were positive) I have no idea if telling my parents will have the same effect. I'm not really close to my dad and I have a feeling he's the one that will think this is absurd and utterly bullshit which leads me telling my mom first (and I want to, I just don't know how). It's just too complicated explaining all those compared to saying "I'm gay" (which I don't know or maybe just in denial?). Erm.. I guess I spurted everything I wanted, sorry if this isn't the right place or if i needed to do something, didn't find anything about it and decided to post. Also a big thank you beforehand for reading this wall of text.
Hi there and welcome to EC! I'm glad you've found this site so that you could share what you're thinking and feeling and what you're going through. That's the whole point. Of course only you will ultimately know if you're gay or not. It seems like you're leaning in that direction. The fact that you're tunred on by seeing 2 guys being affectionate and you can't imagine lying in bed next to a woman is a pretty good indicator. In terms of your sexual attraction though - that might just come in time. If you've been a very 'closed off' and isolated person then you might have a hard time even envisioning yourself in that kind of sitaution. If someone touching your hand made you freeze like you say it did, then maybe there is some anxiety around intimacy that you need to work on. Could it be fear or anxiety rather than being asexual? I think working with a therapist or counsellor of some kind would be really helpful to work through that stuff. In terms of telling your mom, I wuoldn't rush into it until you have something a little more concrete to say. Because I think what' you're describing would be fairly difficult for them to understand.
