Some setbacks and some progress

Hi everyone.
I haven't posted in awhile. I thought i was spending too much time here and not enough in the real world. I thought it would help me move forward but when I stopped posting here, I got busy at work... I went back into the closet... and in denial. How could I 'all the sudden' be gay at this age? I still look at women on the street all the time.

Then about a month ago I was at the ballet with a woman friend (I think she thought it was a date! :eusa_doh: ) . I was really tired from work and I became very relaxed. I realized I was totally checking out all the men dancers. If you have every been to the ballet you know there's not much left to the imagination . Then I thought about touching one of them... and became very very aroused. Let's just say I wished my playbill was bigger .

Ok, I said to myself "here's your chance, there are lots of women on the stage too, why aren't you checking them out.?" So i did. No arousal, I found them beautiful but no arousal no attraction no automatically fantasizing about holding them and kissing them. Then a memory came rushing back into my head. When I was nine or ten my mother took us to the ballet and even before puberty I remember being fascinated by the male's leads body. I had completely suppressed this and also, that at the time I was romantically fantasizing about another boy in my neighborhood, but this about the time we were being pressured to 'like' girls -"Who do you like" and play games like spin the bottle, and of course the first negative things about being gay. That's when the suppression began and I started a few years later to try to masturbate to girls but could rarely or sometimes get off from sheer effort but when i fantasized about another boy crush i had, it literally took less than a minute. I realized I have always been gay..

I am amazed how deep the suppression and shame and guilt are, even after posting here and feeling so comfortable and happy about being gay. It's so easy to slip back into denial. At this point it can't be more obvious that since I first admitted here that i just might be gay, and allowed myself to actually embrace those desires rather than oppress them, I nearly almost exclusively get aroused thinking about men, and the arousal is 100 times more intense and doesn't have to be escalated into other fantasies or porn or anything else.

Its so clear but its still so hard

---------- Post added 26th Apr 2017 at 05:53 AM ----------

That's the 'for' but on the street, I continue to only and always look at women. I don't get aroused but I naturally look at them... and find them beautiful sometimes get excited (but not sexually)

I really don't understand why but that behavior more than anything keeps me doubting and stepping back.

I have put my status back to 'questioning' because I just don't know anymore.

 

Thanks Mj, i think I might do that though I wonder about the bias of the therapist trying to push me in? But I am clearly not making enough progress myself.

Sometimes I think if there were no hang ups guilt, and i could live any sexual fantasy, or, for example, if i was in a room full of those dancers and they all wanted me, men and women, i no doubt would have gone with the one guy I was looking at.


On the other hand when I do look at women, I feel some distant longing, I wish I could sexually aroused and not out of guilt but out of genuinely wanting to experience that sensual beauty.

 

Thanks CameOutSwinging and OnTheHighway.
I realize I need some help to figure this out. I think i can accept myself if i knew what to accept it just doesn't seem to make sense.