Hi guys. :icon_bigg I've had my sexual/romantic orientation on this site down as "it's complicated" for a while, because, well, I didn't really know how to describe what was up with me. I like sex and I can get aroused, but human bodies don't turn me on. I mean literally at all. I can look at the "sexiest" male celebrity naked and the "sexiest" female celebrity naked, I can flip through a Playboy or a hooters calendar or a sports illustrated, I could watch porn of people fucking inches away from the camera and I would just feel nothing down there. I called myself asexual for a while, but that was confusing because "asexual" has a lot of connotations of just not wanting sex at all, which is absolutely not me. The thing is, I can get aroused. I've got fetishes. I'm into some BDSM stuff, and thinking about that can always consistently get me in the mood. The only time I enjoy sex is when fetish stuff is involved, and it's the only way I can masturbate. And that was always really confusing for me, because if I just didn't get aroused, I'd be properly asexual, and if I did get aroused shouldn't I get aroused by bodies and stuff? Hence just saying "It's complicated". And then today I finally found some other people who are like this, and it turns out there's a term for it! It's called "exclusive paraphilia". Paraphilia is fetishes, anything that people are attracted to that isn't related to physical attractiveness; anything from "looking at a chair" to "being tied up" to "hanging upside down while someone feeds me a banana" or what have you. And there's different levels. Most people who have a paraphilia have an "optional" or "preferred" paraphilia, where they get aroused by their fetish in addition to getting aroused by "normal" things. But I have an "exclusive" paraphilia, which means that I can only get turned on by stuff related to it. One thing that does bring me down a little is that pretty much all the information I can find on it is about people with exclusive paraphilias needing therapy and how it can destroy all chance of a normal relationship and I think that's pretty bunk. I have a really happy relationship with my SO. We've been together 3 years and we have a lot of the same fetishes and it's worked out fine. It's apparently considered a mental disorder, but except in very specific situations (pedophilia etc) I don't think it should be. Just because something is different doesn't mean it's bad. Homosexuality was considered a mental disorder for a long time. This is my normal, and it makes me happy. Nothing wrong with that. But anyway. I've never heard about this before so it was a huge deal for me, realizing that there's a name for it. I just feel really good about this and I wanted to share it with you guys.
