Hi guys, please to meet you. I’m new here and i would like to tell you my story to get some advice. I’m italian so forgive me if my english is poor. So, i’m 31 and i started questioning my sexuality when i was 25. I never had a girlfriend since highschool, and never falled in love with a woman, but at the same time i always masturbated a lot on straight porn and didn't feel attracted to men. Then someone told me that i was “secretly gay” and i started to wonder if he was right, because i didn't called in love with women or date them . At that time i went to a psycologist, and he told me i was not gay, i had HOCD. The psychologist was not an homophobic person (he is an atheist and a supporter of marriage equality) and it was not the first time i had an OCD, (before i was obsessed by death) so i believed him and my fear passed, but still didn’t date women. Later when i was 27/28, i discovered that i was incredibly aroused by images and stories of women being beaten or even killed. I was so aroused i wanted to masturbate on those images and stories, and even had fantasies about women getting killed. Well that scared the shit out of me, i was terrified that i could be a murderer or a psychopat. That was a bad period of my life, but it passed when i realized , (with the help of my therapist) that the reason i was so scared was because i didn’t want to hurt anyone, that fantasy and reality are 2 different things, and that every child has killed people in videogames but that doesn’t mean he is actually going to kill someone. So this obsession too passed, but i still didn’t date women. Now my feelings toward women are complicated. I am excited by them, but i’m scared to try to have a relationship with them cause i don’t think i’m ok for them, and i don’t fall in love with them. In fact , it seems to me that it is impossible for me to fall in love with a woman. Also, i noticed that i’m sexually excited by women in TV, but not very much from women in reality (in the last month, only 2 times i was aroused by real women. I don't make a lot of social life though). Recently, i started to feel attracted to a male gym instructor, so i went to the teraphyst to talk about it, but he told me again that he doesn’t think i’m gay (well , he rates me a 1 on the kinsey scale) but he can’t be sure as before, cause my sexuality it is weird . I tried to watch male gay porn, but i didn’t like it. I don’t feel comfortable with the idea of having sex with a man. But at the same time, it seems to me that it is possible for me to have an emotional connection with a man. So i think that maybe i’m gay and it is some kind of omophobia that stops me from accepting it. I live in a very omophobic family and city after all. And i am very ashamed to admit that i don't feel very comfortable with very feminine gay men around (forgive me guys, i was raised catholic, even if later i became agnostic) , and yet i kinda envy those that are so confident in their sexuality and in love with a partner . Well, this is it. Now i feel very confused. I don’t like the fact that my sexuality is such a mess. If i’m gay, i want to accept myself, i want to go to the gay pride and have a male partner . But if i am straight , i want to stop obsessing about my stupid sexual identity.
"But at the same time, it seems to me that it is possible for me to have an emotional connection with a man. " As I always say, there's not only one type of love. There are: - passional love (with sex) - platonic love (who you can feel for everybody: to your mom, dad, dog, friends, women, men). So, as your therapist says, I think you're not gay. Take a look on this pages (they are in italian) E... se fossi omosessuale? | MEDICITALIA.it La trappola delle ossessioni — Psico Blog di Dr. Armando De Vincentiis | MEDICITALIA.it
It sounds like you have enough attraction to women that you're probably not gay, but you may be some flavor of bi. Romantic and sexual orientation don't always line up nicely. So it is possible that you're romantically into men but sexually into women. Romantic love does not necessarily need to include sex, at least not for everyone. One thing that's interesting is that you mention wanting a male partner if you're gay. If you turned out to be straight, would you want a female partner? It may be worth investigating asexuality (lack of sexual attraction to anyone) and aromanticism (lack of romantic attraction to anyone). While you did describe some romantic and sexual attraction, you may still relate to either or both of these terms, or the closely related ones gray-asexuality and gray-aromanticism.
Thank you. I know how ODC works, i had them all my life (fear of death ,fear of being a monster, fear of being gay, and also a little bit of fear of premature Ejaculation when i was younger, which is ironic beacuse later t turned out i don’t ejaculate easily when i make sex),all with a big dose of anxiety. Recently I'm having a high level of anxiety. It works like this: every time I see a cute guy I became very anxious, it seems to me to be attracted to them, and the anxiety only goes away when I'm attracted to a girl. Wednesday I was at the gym with nice guys and my anxiety went through the roof. At the same time on Thursday I did walking with a beautiful girl called Rita around in tight suit and my anxiety was 0. One time i readed a comment of a gay saying that the difference to say if you are gay is if you fall in love or not and i became very anxious, later i watched the hunger games 2 and there was a scene of a beautiful actress getting naked and i was aroused and my anxiety stopped, and so on. Having this conversation also gives me some anxiety. My situation is this : i feel a general attraction for real men and real women. This attraction seems more frequent for real women than for real men (even though i ma not sure cause i try to avoid having attraction for men) , and the strongest attraction it is for women on TV and internet . At the same time the idea of “sex with men” do not really appeal to me, but the idea of “falling in love with a woman” seems impossible to me. Also i never had experience with a man in bed. Sex with women most of the time is not a great experience. And emotionally, when i try to see if i can be “linked” to a man, it seems possible. So i think that maybe , if i was not raised in an homophobic environment, i could be happily gay now. That my repulsion for gay male sex comes from my homophobia and fear of disapproval and even of divine judgment. That if i surpass these fears and homophobia i could be happy. That i just don’t have the guts to accept myself. I read a lot of comments of people that discovered it late, and sometimes it seems to me that i can relate to some of them, like when i readed someone asking if you concentrate on the male when you watch straight porn, and i have to admit that i don’t “concentrate” on him, i mostly watch the girl , but if the guy is cure it is easier for me to be aroused. Also it is hard because , when someone tells me that i’m not gay, i start thinking that i have misleaded him, just like i mislead myself. I mean, it is a fact that i don’t want to be gay* so maybe i’m not true to myself. *Sorry guys, i feel ashamed when i say this, you are all wonderful and you must never feel the lesser, i’m the one with problems not you. ---------- Post added 14th Jan 2014 at 10:10 PM ---------- What i want is to fall in love,and to be loved back and being happy. So if i ‘m gay i want a male partner, if i’m straight i want a female partner. Well, to be more honest, i would like not to be gay and "fall in love" with a girl and be loved back. But is hard to say "why" i want it. But if i am gay i want to accept it, not to be anxious or scared, and i want to come out and being accepted and then fall in love and surpass the fear/disgust of sex. Bottom line i want to be happy. When i think of “love”, it seems possible with a man. When i think of sex, i think to females, but internet females, if i think of real sex i found it less satisfying that to masturbate on females on the net. In media on 3 experiences i find only 1 to be satisfying. Well, sex for me is hard because i'm super anxious when i do it, and everything is complicated by the fact that sexually regarding females i’m a sadist (and that is 100% sure).
sounds like a paraphilia erotophonophilia. keep in mind you havnt hurt any one and psychopaths have other components like lack of empathy. paraphilias can be a result of childhood trauma, .im not sure if your therapist got into that but maybe its worth bringing up.bear in mind i just got that off a wiki page so dont value my advice over theirs.but Cognitive behavior therapy could be an option. as for being gay i kinda doubt it if you have repulsion for gay male sex.i have a repulsion for sex with girls i dont think its cos i hiding the fact im straight .maybe your emotional attraction comes from your struggle with your lack of emotional connection with girls im not sure. i have emotion attachments with both girls and guys so you may just be normal in seeking human emotional bonds my guess. as for you being uncomfortable with feminine gay men.its pretty forgivable if you realise it comes from social pressure like you stated and not from anything wrong from being feminine.often even if our logic becomes sound it can take a while for our emotions to catch up.im guessing you will become more comfortable with them in time. im not going to be wise talking about ocd with you its pretty clear you will know far more than me.but hope things get better you sound like a pretty caring smart guy.
Hi burg pleased to meet you. Regarding to girls, my therapist says that i do have a lot of grudge towards them. My parents didn’t have a very healty marriage, my mother was and is always insulting my father and trating him badly, and if she was more liberal and less catholic she would probably be divorced now, so this may be one of the causes, me resentig her for the way she treats my father, since we are pretty much identical. But there is nothing sure, since like for homosexuality the origin of sadism are not really clear. I was not raped as a child though. Also, i did a lot of tests and it seems that i do rate kinda higher than the average man on the psychopatic scale, it seems that i don’t easily feel emotions like everyone else and i’m not comfortable with them , but still not very high , and definitely not enough to be eligible as a psychopath murder, i’m just colder than the average person. Regarding to not being comfortable around gay feminine males, rationally i know that my feelings towards gay feminine men come from emotions that derivate from me labelling them as an “out-group” , and from unconscious stereotypes that were created on biased informations and passed to me when i was too young to judge them critically, and are now deep in my subconscious , that unfortunately it is not very moral. I rationally know this but at the same time, when i see one, i istantly turn into an asshole. I mean, i don’t act badly, i never once talked against gay people in my life (but after i started worrying about my sexuality i didn’t stand up for them neither when other people did talk bad, sorry guys for this), but i feel uncomfortable and go away. Or if i force myself to stay, i am uncomfortable and anxiuos all the time. I remember that one time i was seeing this video on YT of 2 girls, Kaelyn and Lucy (i suggest you see their videos, and Rose Ellen Dix too, they are very beautiful) , and i thought “if you feel uncomfortable around feminine gay male it means you think that there is something wrong to be gay, wich means you think that there is something wrong with these 2 girls. But guess what? There is nothing wrong with them, they are amazing and you wish you could love someone the way they love each other, and you are an asshole for thinking that”. I still think that. I do feel this repulsion, but maybe it comes from the homophobia. Maybe i force myself to feel this repulsion, and if let myself go it will change.
I think what you feel when you are around guys is just your anxiety. I don't think its an attraction at all. I know when I see a girl I like I get very anxious because I like her. And that if I see a guy i can get anxious also, but because of my ocd too and I will start thinking if I like him or if I feel attracted Because I'm so worried and that creates my anxiety. So what happens is that you can just keep mixing those two up. But i have no say, only you can know. Maybe you genuinely do feel a little something for them, but if u ask me I don't think you do. do not think that you feel anything for guys at all I fact. You sound just like me man exactly. I have ocd too, fear death of family members, fears I had an STD and I never even had sex, feared there was going to be a terrorist attack, or fears that a nuclear bomb was going to hit and I would always worry about my family members.
Well my fears have been fear of death, fear of being a monster, fear of being gay. Also i fear my mother will die because she is fat and almost 60, and i can't have sex without later checking for STD, even if i always use the condom. You know, when first i had this gay fear, at 25-6, the explanation that it was an OCD convinced me, and of course when later i found i was aroused by images and stories of beautiful women getting killed i got so terrified that the other fear looked like a joke. But to overcome that "monster fear" i divided what i like in fantasy and what i like in reality. I know I like some thing in fantasy that I don’t like in reality. But then I started to pay attention to the fact that, in reality, it seems I have little to 0 attraction for women. Also I fantasize about women, but when I start to think to actually put in reality a fantasy, the buzz wears off. And when i start to thinking to actually try with one, i get terrified. I do get aroused by real women sometime, when I see breasts or when it happen to touch a woman’s hand or if a concentrate on having sex with a real one, but it is not a pull so strong that makes want to pursue them. Also there is the complication that I have a lot of anxiety, like that I’m not good enough in bed, i am not good at having conversation with them , and that I am not right for them because I don’t love them and i may even be gay. One day I had this crush for this guy, the gym instructor. I don’t think it was only anxiety, it was the trigger to anxiety but the crush was real. I’m not in love with him, and yes when I see him I get very very anxious, but I somehow also get , you know, attracted, and so I start to think that maybe I can be happy if I am with him . Well , not exactly, I think that I’m not happy now because I’m gay and I don’t accept it. It’ s complicated, because I ask myself “In a world where no one judges you badly and he is in love with you, would you want to be with him?” and it seems to me the answer may be yes, so I get scared, and then I start to think of having sex with him and I get more scared and so on. Also when I start to tell myself that it is an OCD, I think I may be lying to myself. About sex with guys, i try to think how it would be, and i watch male porn, but it seems that i don’t have a good reaction. (not like the first time i watched a rough sex scene and i felt guilty but definetly aroused). But i think that maybe it is because what i want in reality is something romantic, that if i let myself fall in love then later i will enjoy the sex, that my reaction is just driven by fear and homofobia. That if i accept myself i will like it. I have also readed that many times gay guys may like straight porn or girl/girl porn, or lesbian may like guy/guy porn. I want to ask to the guys here: do you get attracted to male porn, or you don’t like it? Before you accepted yourself, did you like it?
[QUOTE I want to ask to the guys here: do you get attracted to male porn, or you don’t like it? Before you accepted yourself, did you like it?[/QUOTE] ive only ever like male porn. just a question here do you have any friends that are girls.i mean not just ones you hang with but friendships? im pretty sure you have a genetic component .but take that with a big grain of salt.but it does sound like you have a gene sequence that may help to explain whats going on.my other question is do you find that when you act empathtic it is very rational. not like i feel bad for this person so i will help. but more like i should feel bad for this person so i will help? what im trying to find out is if you are the type of person who has learnt their emotional responses over someone who has had it more hard wired.its not really bad if you have learnt it in fact in many cases it very positive in regards to how empathic some one is to other people but for that to happen their needs to be more feed back from acting empathic.
No, i don't. Also i don't have close friends and i don't hang out a lot. I'm always nervous when i meet people outside my work place. I mean , at summer and christmas i go with my cousins and their friends and if they invite me i don't decline , but i'm nervous all the time. Well, i have an hard time to decipher my thoughts, but it is true that 99% of the time i don't think "i will do this because it feels good" or something, more like "this is the right thing to do in this situation". Sometime i also feel strong emotions. Like when i readed a story of a girl accepting herself later in life and i cried because i connected. Regarding emotions when i did the rorschach i only noticed forms and didn't focus much on the colors, and i didn't see a lot of things (not sure to remember this rightly though). And when i did the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory i remember that my Psychopathic Deviate was high, my MF was very toward masculinity, my Psychasthenia was high. What do you think this means? Is it possible that i never let myself feel in love with guys cause i didn't find it appropriate? Right now it seems to me that: 1) i don't want to be with girls in reality 2) i like to masturbate on the beautiful girls on the net and sometime i get excited from them also in reality 3) i have good feelings around guys, i can have emotional connections with them 4) there is only 1 guy that may sexually excite me in reality, but even with him when i concentrate on having sex with guys i still fell repulsion. Is it possible that when i "hardwire" i will stop feeling the repulsion and anxiety and i will be gay and happy about it? That would be a huge success. PS: right now the mindset is more like "this is what i have to do". But it is hard to follow emotions, i mean they are so fucked up and make no sense.
bear in mind again i really wont be a good replacement to trained professionals and i know very little about ocd.but im pretty sure that you have a unrealistic fear of being gay :icon_bigg.i do think you have emotional attachments to guys that may just be fulfilling your basic human need for companionship and or friendship. how is your anxiety being treated? have you been helped given any advice on building relationships with girls .really they arnt much dif than guys as friends. id guess once again if you can build up friendships no matter how small and confront a bit of your anxiety.tho it may be hard at first in the long run things should get better.i think the fact you seem comfortable with people at work i see no reason why you cant be comfortable with people out side of work.maybe go to hobie group.like a chess club.treking group etc. you really are complex by the way.i bet your real logical in your thinking?
Yes, i tend to be logical. you can find my posts around here to see the way i think (i'm more good at giving advices that at taking :dry: ). Also, when i post, i do exactly as you say, i think "what is the most appropriate and correct thing to write now? i will write it." , i don't say "these feel good so i will write it". Maybe also because to think "this feels good", leads me to think "why?" and then i go bonkers. I have problems in group because i start thinking about my sexuality. For instance, a guy smiles him and i ask myself if i like him, a girl smiles me and i ask myself if i want to have sex with her. Then i ask myself why i like him and why i want to have sex with her. Then i ask myself if the fact that i like him means i am gay . Then i ask myself if i'm trying to like to have sex with her because i don't want to be gay. Then i ask myself why i don't want to be gay. Then i ask myself if am an homophobe that pretend he is not. Then i ask myself if i am a closeted-non-coming-to-himself-gay. Then i ask myself if i have ocd. then i tell myself i do have ocd, but this doesn't mean i'm not gay. At work is different because you don't have to think about sexuality or the meaning of life or being happy, you have only to do your work efficiently, and i can use science and study so it is easy. I do the same when i write here to respond to people, i try to find the best things i can write to help , and try to use science much as i can so i don't make mistakes. At this point, to be gay and in love with a guy that loves me and out and proud would be a huge success. To be straight and in love with a girl that loves me back and non obsessed with my sexuality (and a member of PFLAG , because i despise myself when i hear people talking down gays and don't respond back, i feel like a soldier running away from the enemy, a coward leaving his brother alone) also would be a huge success. Both work fine for me. I want to love and be loved. I want to be happy. My anxiety is treated by exposure (try to date a girl, try to have fantasy about same sex and let's see what happens) and talking (all the "duty don't exist" stuff). Last update: yesterday i took the courage in my hand and watched a straight porn, but this time i masturbated on the guy. I tried to picture having sex with him while i masturbated. It felt good. I was happy because maybe i'm no more homophobe, since now i am capable of doing this, and maybe, if i'm gay, this will lead me to sex with guys and to come out. But today i went out, and started to think if it is possible to fall in love with a guy now that i think i may like to have sex with him, and it seemed impossible, like with girls, or at least very very difficult, like trying to become an astronaut. So i feel kinda :icon_sad: Also i fear that, if i find out definitely that i'm gay, i will start an other OCD about it, like catch 22. Which is easy because i have one obsession after an other (death, monster, gay etc.) . PS: Tell me , what was that "genetic component" you were talking about.?
i cant remember to be honest i have a mate who told me about it.but i have seen the ted talk about it that he showed me. im sure you can find it.but i could hit him up for it.the gist of the ted talk is why you should love your kids and in particular for people with that genetic code. my friend who told me about it shocked me one day bear in mind hes a real good guy but guess he had some dark thoughts.yea one day out of the blue he told me he thinks of killing people.after i said i think yea i think a lot of people do he told me nar innocent people.i was pretty shocked coming from him more so.he had already got help before that.but the thoughts stemmed from ptsd(finding out his dad was never his real dad at 15 and his whole family knowing all his life) and his genetic make up had played a key role .he told me he got pretty cured from it.after i asked him how he said he learnt how to forgive.so nice end but he said he had suffered a lot from it and needed someone 2 know. glad to hear your anxiety is getting treated by exposure.i get it a lot my self it used to be a lot worse.for ages i didnt know why i fainted etc i thought i had a heart problem.i did the wrong thing for ages and avoided all my triggers(like girls being the big one). i can tell you exposure is a pretty good thing.i would hate to think of not having my girl buddies now.
hey i found his web page on ocd hope it helps..Fear of being Gay/Lesbian | Intensive OCD Anxiety Cognitive Behavioral Treatment New York. i found it pretty interesting Having repetitive, intrusive fears or doubts about sexual orientation is a common, and often misunderstood, form of OCD (it is sometimes referred to as H-OCD). For someone with this theme, obsessions about sexual orientation and the resulting distress often lead to an ever-increasing panicked effort to prove to themselves and others that they are attracted to only the opposite (or same) sex. Someone who has had primarily heterosexual attraction may experience anxiety when she thinks about women; another individual who has had primarily homosexual relationships may fear having thoughts about people of the opposite sex. In either case, no matter how hard the person tries, doubt and anxiety inevitably creep back in and compel a new effort to to prove the nature of his or her sexuality, often with a re-doubling of effort and distress.
