Hello all - this is my first post here, so first I'd like to say thank you to anyone who reads this and can connect with it or has anything to share. I've been reading through a lot of the forum posts and have learned a lot, but I wanted to share some of my details to see what ye good folk out there on the internet have to say. I have been seeing a therapist for about a year and half, but I haven't made much progress on this specific front and I would like the input of all of you out there. This might read a bit stream-of-consciousness-like, so I apologize in advance! I am in my mid 20's, and I have recently been questioning my sexuality. It has been three years since I was in a committed relationship with a woman that lasted for about three years. This relationship is fairly critical in terms of where I am now, so I want to explain it a bit. Hindsight is always 20/20, and I now know that it was an emotionally abusive relationship. We were both in college, in the same year, the same major. She would get jealous of me doing well in classes, and I started to intentionally make my grades worse so she would feel better and not yell at me. Sexually, things were okay-ish. We didn't have sex for a year after we started dating. Toward the halfway point, though, things got fairly strange. There were many times when we were going hot and heavy, and suddenly she would throw me off her for no apparent reason (we were both virgins when we first started dating, fyi). She liked peeing on me in the shower, which I didn't like. Things ended between us, we went our own ways to separate grad schools, and I haven't been in a relationship since. She is the only person who I have had sex with, and my only long-term relationship. Growing up in a rural area, I was frequency called gay, which I believe to be because I am fairly intelligent didn't drive around with confederate flags on my car. I was attracted to girls in my class, but I was a fairly nerdy dude. I don't recall being attracted to any males in my high school, with the exception of one time when I was driving down a scenic road and saw a fit shirtless runner from my high school and my heart rate skyrocketed. The wrench in the works is that I have been more or less addicted to pornography since I was 14 or so. It started with Playboy, but with the advent of the internet, things got much easier to find. I recall watching heterosexual porn predominantly until I was dating the girl I mentioned before. I started to think that since she didn't like me, all women must not like me (I know how irrational that sounds...) In heterosexual porn, I found that I started to watch the men more, thinking that I just really wanted to look like them (as an aside, I used to be pretty chubby but am now in good shape). All of that being said, I do recall watching some male solo videos when I was younger and thinking "this isn't weird, it's just different." It started there and progressed to more traditional hardcore stuff. Before I made a commitment to stop watching porn, I realized that I was watching half and half gay porn and heterosexual porn. I only ever watched so called "high production value" clips, for what it's worth. I have gone on dates with about 10 different women in the past 8 months, and in all of the cases I was the one who stopped things. One of the women I dated for a month. She was without question, a total knock-out beauty. She was really stunning. But when we made out, nothing was happening downstairs. There another woman, who I am very good friends with, who I consider myself attracted to. When I think of her, and when I would hold her hand when she still lived near me, I felt the kind of butterfly-in-your-stomach feeling that I haven't felt for quite some time. The one other important thing about me is that I have been experiencing moderate to sever depression for the past year and half or so. Truthfully, I am rarely attracted to anyone. They could be absolutely gorgeous, like the girl I mentioned above, and I have basically no reaction. The same goes for men who I could consider myself to be attracted to, though I am more often attracted to men than I am to women. I seem to only be capable of romantic relationships unless I already know the person quite well. If you've read this far, I can't thank you enough. Whatever my sexuality is, I am totally okay with it - it would just be nice to have a bit better of a feeling for what it is! I have two questions to run by all of you: 1.) Is it possible that the combination of an abusive relationship and the availability of porn just kind of pushed me in the direction of looking at gay porn more frequently, but might not be the best litmus test for my sexuality? 2.) Has anyone noticed that there sexuality changed after having a particularly bad relationship? Again, thank you all so much. In the spirit of internet karma, I plan to help and write in other posts as well! I'm so glad this resource exists.
Hello I am also first time here in EC but I have been wandered around here for like about a week. I totally don't think I am experienced enough to tell you yes/no as I never date anyone yet, but I have heard a lot from my friends who actually got some histories related to the questions you ask. So I decided to say it and let you figure out~ Let's first talk about porn. I don't know if it's true that porn you watch will affect one's sexuality, but until I am brave enough to actually search online and look for one, I choose to watch lesbian porn, and this happened before I was out to myself that I might be bi. I always like guys in my life but since middle school I realized I had some feelings toward girls. I think that feeling what comes closest in definition is sensual attraction, and I have that more with girls. That have been affected me until now, and I finally decided to accept I have that potential, even if I have no clues if I will like to have sexual activities with girls. One friend told me, if you are doubting about your sexuality, you probably is not at all straight. You could be attract to same sex but not in sexual way, that's fine too. Because straight people (she is very straight) don't ever have a thought of "am I really straight?" I could see this with my other straight friends: never mention anything about LGBT, only want to hold hands (romantically) with opposite sex... etc. Anyway, back to the topic about porn. Ya so before I realized, I didn't choose to watch straight porn because I am not interested to see a male's genital when he's not my love, and I was wondering how the whole women sex thing can come. The second time I watched was also before I realized my real orientation, but I guess I just accepted the fact that I would choose les porn over others no matter what. Still, I never have had any experiences, it's hard for me to imagine having sex with a girl, but I just decide to say I am bi because it's easier than keep doubting without ending. So it's hard to tell if that affects someone's sexuality. I do hear that many straight people watch gay porns but they are still straight. It is all up to your reasons of watching gay porn, but no need to worry about it too much because can't tell you much out of it. As for abusive/bad relationship changing sexuality, I think I will talk about it with your second question. Here again a story for you, a bad relationship: So there is a friend's friend, a girl, who has studied in a girls school, maybe until high school or college. But she had a boyfriend few years ago, probably pretty in love. One night when she got home, she saw him having sex with another woman on her bed. I think she was mentally broke down at that time; she picked up a knife and chased that guy around the house. After that night the girl became a lesbian. I didn't know if she was already a lesbian when dating the guy but not realizing it, due to the fact that she was always studying in a girls school (because she said, when you see the same people (gender) all life long, you only know how to fall in love with them), or she was just so broke down and became a lesbian because of that guy. It's very very bad for her because her culture is very conservative (from Asia). This could be a trigger for sexuality changed. Here is another one, abusive. My straight female friend, who has always dated men for more than half of her life (she is in her late 20s), had gone through a divorce, some weird relationships, and had lots of sexual experience, all with opposite gender. Once she had a very emotionally abusive relationship with a super spoiled guy. That guy would never do any simple physical contacts voluntarily for her even if she was almost begging him to do so (like cuddling for a bit), only if he wanted sexual activities. He always got annoyed and ignored her; he had sex with another woman but lying about it; all kinds of shits that a fucked up guy does, he did it. Now my friend has no clues why she even fell in love with him at that time, though with numerous things happened in her life, she doesn't see herself changing her sexuality since she could only feel the strong attraction to guys. She thought about girls when I asked her, and she said it's tooooooooo hard to imagine because she loves every single part about a man (muscles, masculinity, aggressiveness, sexual things...) I should have asked her if she has ever watched gay porn as well, so I could tell you more about her thoughts on it with sexuality. She always have good insights when comes to every topic~ Sorry if my gramma is weird. I am from Asia and studying in the US. Hope these stories won't get you more lost on the path. Hope it can help you out a bit!
Your stream of consciousness includes paragraph breaks, so far so good . Welcome to EC. 1- To be blunt, as much as it doesn't sound like that relationship was enjoyable for you I doubt she "turned" you gay 2- see #1 It's possible for people who already have attraction to both to have their "preference" steered away from the one that was abusive, but I don't think it will come out of nowhere Look up "demi-sexual" on this site and elsewhere, essentially it's people who don't feel an attraction until they have known the other person for a while (you can have demi-sexuals in all "flavors" i.e. str8 gay bi pan etc...), see if that matches your personal experience so far (based on your post I'd say you're bi-demi-sexual, if you're looking for some form of label)
You sound like me. Personally, I always rationalised my attractions to guys away, and because I liked the idea of straight sex and found girls somewhat attractive, managed to convince myself I was straight. But also - I don't know if this is true in your case - because I was only attracted to a fraction of men on the street, I thought it did not suggest my true orientation. It did, I just had a type. Be careful about denial. It sounds that you're at least bisexual, to me, and very possibly gay. Best of luck. Don't make any rash judgements, take it easy and try to be as compassionate with yourself as possible...
To answer 1) and 2): 1. I don't think an abusive relationship is particularly important here. However, I do not think porn is a good litmus test in any case. I'm not hugely into gay porn, and have heard too many tales of straight guys who are into all kinds of stuff. 2) Can't speak from experience on this, but I don't think it's possible.
