Hey there, I've been lurking in these forums off and on for awhile, trying to find some story that seems similar to mine, or an experience that I can relate to, to help me out. I haven't found that yet, so I guess it's time to share and see what you think! It's long, so, if you're willing to read it all: Thank you. I'm 27, male, straight. I've been straight my whole life, dated and slept with many women. My relationships with women haven't been great, though in the last couple of years they've begun improving as I've been doing more "self" work. I enjoy straight porn, I enjoy kissing, being with, sleeping with, women. For 25 years I never questioned my sexuality - it didn't even really occur to me that I might be anything but straight. I considered myself comfortably an "ally", and was generally comfortable kissing men on stage and film (used to be an actor). I remember wearing bright pink shirts, thinking that it was "cool" of me to not worry whether people thought it was gay or feminine or whatever. At 25, while traveling, I had a really intense experience with an older man. At first meeting him, I found him a little "weird" but considered him harmless. We spent a few days hiking together, and developed a friendship. One night, I don't even remember how it happened, but he started talking about sexuality, and how everyone was inherently bisexual, and I agreed, as I believed philosophically that you fall in love with a person, not a gender. I started feeling pressure to admit that I was bisexual, not just "in theory", but in actuality. Whether this pressure was coming from him or from inside me is...well, the entire crux of the issue, I guess. I did it, and then he said, "is that all?" and suddenly I felt compelled to tell him I LOVED him. After being frozen in...confusion, resistance...for several minutes, I said it, and he said I love you too, and then...I don't remember. We went to bed (separately). The fact that this part of my story is vague and murky is troubling to me, but I'm giving the facts that I can recall. The next day, he said we should get a hotel room, and I remember half-heartedly agreeing. My memory of this day is that I cried a LOT, while he "told" me about how my parents had screwed me up, how I was continuing to play out a father-abandonment complex, and how it was clear to everyone that I was into men. I felt like I was drowning, and at some point during the day I kissed him. I pulled away immediately, feeling totally revulsed. There was more psychology talk and more crying, and I remember him offering to "initiate" me. Later in the day, when we were not together, I wrote in my journal that I felt like I was "supposed" to make love with him that night. At some point during the day I shut down. We had dinner together, but I was totally blocked and unwilling to engage, and we parted ways the next day. I spend the rest of my trip thinking about this and trying to understand it. A few months later, I return home and begin a relationship with a girl. We date for a few months, and it's "honeymoon period" good, so good in fact that I feel completely on top of my life. I end up contacting this guy to say hello, and he tells me that I'm in love with him and that my girlfriend is a beard. Okay. Should easily be able to shut that out, I figure, but it totally derails me. My life, and the relationship, go to hell in the next few months. Since then I've gone through periods of talking to him, periods of not talking, periods of dating women again. Sometimes I've felt compelled to tell him that I want him to have sex with me, but I've always felt like I was saying this to "please" him - like it's what he "wanted" me to say. He's never far from my mind. For awhile I REALLY wanted to figure this out, so I started watching gay/bi porn, bought a dildo, made out with some gay/bi friends, had them in my bed, et cetera, et cetera...but nothing was "working". I constantly felt revulsed, and yet I can't get rid of the feeling that I'm "failing" but not being able to have sex with a guy. I've gone to therapy about this (continuing), and attended some meditation courses to try and work through all this crap. But I still have anxiety attacks now and then, and I feel totally stuck. I've considered that maybe what I "philosophically believed" is true, that I've fallen in love with a person rather than a gender - but I am blocked by the fact that I feel like he manipulated and "psychologically" penetrated me, plus the fact that I don't even really like him very much. I look up to him in many ways, as he has a lot of qualities that I admire and a great deal of life experience, but even when we are in regular communication I feel like it's a burdensome obligation to pick up the phone. Anybody have any thoughts on this, any advice, any anything? Sometimes I feel like just going to the city in which he lives and basically FORCING myself to sleep with him in hopes that it'll let me move on, and with that idea always come suicidal thoughts. Never serious inclinations, but still pretty troubling. Thanks for your time. Surabhi
To me it seems like you're just not that into guys, you just have this nagging thought in the back of your mind thanks to this guy you met. Really, not everyone is bisexual - if you don't like men, you don't like men. Simple. Same goes for women. Finally, this guy sounds mentally abusive and I'd seriously consider not staying in touch, for your own sanity's sake.
Yeah. Perhaps more people are bi than society cares to admit, but no, not *everyone* is bisexual. I definitely think you should stay away from this guy, he sounds rather abusive and manipulative. You don't seem to have really any feelings for men otherwise, and you haven't liked any experiences with men you've had. I think it's fair to say you're not into guys, you should try and get this guy out of your head and out of your life imo.
i would break off all contact with him. the word predator comes to mind. he abused you and you friendship.
Hi, and welcome to EC. I don't have any solid answer for you, but here are some thoughts: First, I think we have to separate out what's going on with your sexual identity from your interactions with this guy. Everything you're describing about how he approached you screams of the "grooming" that predators do... and people can be susceptible to grooming by a sophisticated predator whether they are 8 or 40. This guy sounds fairly sophisticated in subtly bringing up the idea of bisexuality, getting you to agree to that, and then pushing it incrementally further, bringing in the stuff about your family screwing you up and so forth. (Without more detail on what led him to that conclusion, I can't really comment on the validity or lack thereof.) And someone who is skilled at grooming people can, given enough concentrated time convince them of almost anything. So I think you can safely throw out any conclusions he came to, while at the same time, letting yourself explore the underlying feelings (I'll get to that in a moment.) One thing that's clear: This guy is not a good mentor/friend, and is definitely not looking out for your best interests. He wants in your pants. Someone who genuinely cared and honestly felt you were gay and in denial to yourself would very gently and slowly talk to you about it, give you time to think, ask you a bunch of challenging (and non-directive/non-leading) questions to help you think things through, not encourage you in any particular direction, and certainly not tell you that he wants to "initiate" you 24 hours after you've first broached the idea you might be bisexual. Someone who genuinely cares about you... the last thing they'd want to do is strongarm you into something you weren't ready for, because it could be enormously psychologically damaging, whether you are actually gay, totally straight, or somewhere in between. And it seems like most of his conversations in the past months have been focused on convincing you that you're gay, and you're in love with him, rather than on honoring whatever experiences you're having. I think, if I were in your position, I'd cut ties with him immediately and permanently. That may be easier said than done, because it's clear he's got your respect in at least some ways (again, a common trait of someone good at grooming people) and has used that to create a bit of a hook into your life and psyche. If you did, in fact, grow up with a father who was physcially or emotionally absent, then you may well be projecting the desire for that connection onto him (whether or not you're gay), and he may be using that to manipulate you into believing you're gay and in love with him. In short, any way you slice it, from what you've described, your relationship with him sounds very unbalanced, manipulative, and unhealthy. Now... let's move on to your authentic sexuality. That's a lot more complicated to work through, in part because you've had this guy feeding you a bunch of stuff which may or may not have any validity. So I think we have to start from scratch and throw out most anything he's told you. Putting aside your feelings for him for a moment, let's talk about your own sexual arousal, not with other guys, but by yourself. What happens when you masturbate without porn (and, for these purposes, without the dildo, just to remove another variable.)? If you just let your mind wander while masturbating, what images/fantasies come up? Is it guys? girls? both? Do you imagine being penetrated by a guy or girl? penetrating a guy or girl? The hard part here is literally being able to relax your mind and not conscoiusly think and noticing where your mind goes without judging... because your conscious mind will usually want a particular outcome (to be straight) but that may or may not be where your real feelings are. So what I usually suggest is masturbating a bunch of times over a week or a few days or whatever and, in addition to letting your mind wander, take some sessions where you consciously think about guys only, and some sessions where you think about girls only. (All of this without porn, and, preferably, without thinking about porn you've watched.) Notice what arouses you more, where you feel the stronger arousal, and if one or the other creates a more intense orgasm and ejaculation. It's also important to separate what is happening in the moment as you're masturbating from what you feel immediately after ejaculating; if you're masturbating and feel a strong and intense arousal when thinking about guys, it wouldn't be uncommon to feel really revulsed by that right after ejaculation, because the masturbation experience is driven by the unconscious arousal, while the post-ejaculation is driven by our conscious mind's response. The main difference is, someone who is completely straight won't have any arousal to speak of thinking about guys, so is very unlikely to even get hard thinking about guys, while someone who's got attraction to guys but is in denial will more likely feel the arousal, probably strongly, and immediately after ejaculation, feel a strong sense of revulsion, because the denial is kicking in and that isn't who he wants to be. This is usually one of the best ways to get a good handle on where your orientation lies. All of the rest of what he's told you, you can probably safely throw away, though if you want to talk about the issues you discussed with family and the alleged things that "screwed you up", you can get some other opinions here. And the last piece is coming to terms. If after all this, you feel little to no attraction to men when masturbating, you don't find them attractive when you're out and about and noticing people and their bodies, you're strongly aroused by women, and sex with women is fulfilling and sex with men is not... then you have a pretty clear answer that you're straight. If you have a more mixed message, and you feel some attraction to guys through the masturbation exercise and what your eyes are drawn to when you're out and about... then likely either you're bisexual, or you're gay and the denial process is getting in the way. If that's the case, once you process and accept that, the revulsion will go away and you'll be able to love who you are. The last piece is exploring whether there's an attraction toward a father figure. If so, that's definitely worth exploring in therapy. I have to say... if you've been in therapy for a while, and these issues haven't been raised and discussed in a meaningful way, then your therapist isn't doing his or her job, and you probably want to seek out a better one. On the other hand, if you've just been exploring other issues, you might want to take the opportunity to discuss some of what's been talked about in this thread with your therapist and see where it leads. I hope this helps. Please feel free to elaborate more if you want more input.
Sorry, but this guy does sound like a predator. Or else he has personal hang-ups that have nothing to do with you, which he is projecting onto you. Maybe he's the one with the father issues. Maybe he's the one in denial. It sounds like he is pushing your buttons on purpose. Actually, there are a lot of people like this who hang out around the BDSM scene who are KNOWN to be unsafe play partners, who like to play mind games with insecure people instead of behaving like proper doms. Either this guy made you insecure about your sexuality to mess with you, and now he's enjoying watching you struggle, or he has deep issues of his own that he's not taking responsibility for--your age might have brought these issues out; maybe he had a traumatic experience at 25 that he's still hung up on and so he latched onto you because you remind him of himself at that age. Cut ties and move on or try to help him with his own issues, but don't take them onto yourself. If you are really bisexual, it will come out eventually anyway. And if that's the case, you can talk to this guy again AFTER you figure out your sexuality on your own. But I can totally see him seducing you, messing with you, and leaving you completely dependent on him because he's the "only man" for you and "knows everything" about you. Or of course placing his entire emotional burden on your young shoulders. Either way it's unfair. Take care of yourself!!
Ai. Thanks everybody. I've definitely thought this before - and gone through it with my analyst. It hasn't seemed to help, though. And when I read you all saying "predator" I start to think "Maybe I told the story in an unfair way, and misrepresented him." I think it's important to point out that he never kissed me - I kissed him. Anything that happened, I led - despite the fact that it felt "out of my control" at the time. In addition I read over all my emails with him this morning, and they don't seem to have the "predator" vibe to them...they seem genuinely concerned for my best interests, even though I WANT to label him abusive. The rest of the picture doesn't fit. Maybe this was an isolated circumstance for him? I dunno. But is all this just part of the standard victim mentality? Ai again. Thanks all for your responses - Chip, I will try switching from men to women and back again while masturbating as you suggested. I've "tested" it before, but never with any real "system" to it, and it's reassuring to hear that trying to do so isn't just some stupid game.
