Hi everyone! My name is Joey, I'm a male and I'm 19 years old. I was sure I was 100% gay my whole life, until recently. This past couple of months have been really weird regarding my sexuality. I'm currently in a relationship with a 22 year old guy who is amazing and wonderful and I think this would freak him out if I said anything. Anyways, over the past couple of months, I got a new job with a pretty hectic schedule. I've been on the depressed side, and I've been forgetting to take my medication everyday (I have clinical depression and generalized anxiety & I take Wellbutrin & celexa). The first month of my job, I started to lose my sex drive... I thought it was just because I was stressed. I found myself not wanting anything to do with sex. Then something odd happened. Out of curiosity, I logged on to a lesbian porn website, and for some damn reason I got really turned on, to the point of masturbation and ejaculation... I felt so frustrated and confused afterwards. I find myself no longer checking out hot guys, and gay porn doesn't make me hard anymore. I'm so depressed and confused about this... Do you guys think it's because I've been lax on my meds and I'm just going through something, or do I actually desire women now? Please respond. I'm so sad. I don't want to be attracted to women. I want be just gay, and only gay. I know that sounds close-minded but I've already been through the process of coming out as gay, I don't want to have to go through that all over again. I just want my old self back.
Hi, Joey. Welcome to EC. You're in the right place. My first thought is that the medications themselves, and certainly the inconsistency in taking them, could be messing with your sex drive. Wellbutrin acts on dopamine (among other things) which tends to be calming, while Celexa is an SSRI, acting more on serotonin... which also means it very commonly kills sex drive. If you add the stress to that, which throws adrenalin and cortisol in the mix, and then inconsistent dosing of the medications... you basically have a hormone cocktail that can cause all sorts of crazy things. So my first thought is what you're feeling (with the momentary attraction to lesbian porn) is most likely a byproduct of the imbalance. Secondarily, porn is a notoriously shitty predictor of sexual attraction/orientation; it is designed to arouse, and for some people -- particularly those with a cocktail of random doses of various hormones floating around -- any new stimuli, especially a strong one such as porn can be, at least temporarily, pretty arousing. It might also be helpful to know a bit about your coming out process. You're 19, how long have you known you were gay, and what was the process like coming to terms with that? Knowing that will add to the clarity of the situation.
Thank you so so so much for your reply. I've been crazy obsessive about this lately and you have made me feel a little better. Coming out was an absolute breeze for me. I came out around age 14, and I've known since I was very young, around age 7-8. My mom & step-father and family/friends are so so loving and accepting. My real dad however, shunned me for it. But I was never really that close to my dad since my parents got divorced when I was 4, so it didn't bother me at all really, and still doesn't today. So in a nutshell, I was blessed as fuck when it comes to that situation, and I'm so thankful every day for it. However all throughout adolescence I was an extremely anxious/depressed child behind closed doors. I obsessed about asinine things and had terrible panic attacks, so I've been on meds since I was 14. The inconsistency in my pill-taking would probably explain my sudden case of Hetero-OCD.
I think you should consider talking with your doctor about your medications. perhaps he/she can explain if this is a common side-effect. for a lot of anti-depressants, it is. also, depression itself can effect your desires and make you feel quite apathetic. in terms of being attracted to females, perhaps it's worth more consideration. it isn't necessarily a case of sexuality changing, but maybe this is something which has been overlooked. it's very complex given you have a mental health problem and are taking medications. I wouldn't be afraid of your feelings, but I can see how you would be. I hope you will soon feel better.
Hi JoeyD95 I would be very careful to base your understanding if your own sexuality on porn. I can give you two reasons why responding to a particular kind of porn is not relevant to sexual orientation. 1) What makes porn exciting is often the taboo aspect of it: we can secretly get aroused by ideas which we would actually not want to act out ourselves and which would not make us happy in real life. Sex is about transgressing boundaries between people in a way which feels comfortable. When alone we might want to watch things which transgress our own boundaries, sometimes in ways which would NOT make us comfortable in real life. This can be a test in itself, to see where our boundaries lie and to get a kick out of that transgression. 2) Even if the motivation was not transgression, the fact that you have watched lesbian porn could be telling in other ways: many lesbians watch gay male porn, because what appeals, is the depiction of same-sex experience. It could be that you've found that aspect appealing? What is passed as 'lesbian porn' is often itself seen as not particularly authentic because it is presenting a very tame version of sex: it is usually women just caressing each other etc. Maybe you are simply attracted to this idea of 'feminine' way of being sensual with each other because it feels more safe and delicate? Because if you have depression/anxiety the resulting low libido might make you not particularly desiring of intense/full on sex, and the way lesbian sex is portrayed is usually as less intense than straight/gay sex. (Not that it actually is like that, but the porn fantasy represents it that way.) So my guess with regards to the porn is that you could be responding to it because it depicts same sex experiences but in a less threatening way, which suits you due to low libido. You might also be attracted to femininity itself, rather than women. Now when it comes to sexuality: I wonder why you feel the need to worry that you are straight, rather than bi? Do you actually get physically attracted to women? There is a long way from being gay and discovering that you might have some capacity for being bi, to being 'straight' & really I don't think it is very likely that such a drastic change could occur. If you don't get physically attracted to women, but suddenly lost attraction to men, to me that just says that you are a gay man who has low libido due to depression/hormones. If you are discovering that you can get somehow physically attracted to women to some degree this still does not mean that you are 'straight', it could mean you are bisexual, but even this is not necessarily true, because that actually entails wanting to sleep with women and being sexually fully attracted to them. Even wanting to experiment with women will not necessarily make you bi if you are not sexually attracted to them. You make your own identity and decide which feels right to you, finding that you have some capacity for opposite sex attraction does not, and should not invalidate your sexual identity as a man who has relationships with men. Many people have a one-off exception outside of their usual sexual orientation who turns their head on the street, but it would not be significant enough for them to suddenly start changing their sexual identity over it. You are still gay if you feel that this is right for you and don't want to have sex/relationships with the opposite sex. Sometimes for me it helps to forget the labels and technicalities which lead to feeling that your sexuality is invalidated through one instance of outside-of the usual label attraction, and which can lead to endless doubt of 'what if I am not gay, but straight? I liked the way that opposite person looked, it must mean I am straight, no?' To give a silly metaphor which helps me to deal with the 'purist'/ocd part of my mind : A bowl with 300 cherries is still a bowl full of cherries if you add one or 2, or 3 hazelnuts to it. Now, if you suddenly replaced 30% of the cherries with hazelnuts, you would need to call it a 'bowl cherries and nuts'. But if the only thing that happened was the addition of 2 hazelnuts and you suddenly start wondering if you should call your bowl of cherries 'a bowl of nuts', then your thinking is loosing its sense of proportion.
