I'm so deeply confused. I'm miserable and obsessive.

WARNING: very long description coming ahead so I'm putting the TLDR at the beginning. But please try to read as much of the long description as possible, this has been fucking with me for too long


**TLDR:**
* I have always had obsessive crushes on guys. I have always been really obsessed with the idea of being in a relationship, hooking up with people and generally anything to do with love, attraction and sexuality. I never went through the "boys/girls are icky/have cooties" phase.
* I struggled with HOCD when I was 8-12, decided I was bicurious age 15
* I feel bored when I hook up with guys unless I'm drunk. The one exceptions is a boy who I was WILDLY attracted to and felt exactly the way I always imagined I was supposed to
* I can't tell if I'm straight/bisexual/asexual/demisexual/biromantic/gay, I just don't know and I've become obsessed with thinking about what I am and what I want.I just want to be satisfied and happy


Some facts...
* I have loving, Eastern European parents who I always thought were kind and accepting towards others until I noticed, increasingly, their homophobic comments as I got older. I also have a really supportive brother with whom I am very close who is not homophobic at all.
* I have an anxiety disorder, problems with derealisation and, potentially (diagnosed by my Psych major brother, but not by my therapist), depression.
* I have no known history of emotional or physical trauma, or a traumatising childhood. I was a sickly child due to a minor immunoglobulin deficiency and I was a really lonely, anxious child but that's about it

**THE LONG STORY**

Ever since I was young I was always obsessed with the idea of having a boyfriend, getting my first kiss (when I was 8 years old I would search on the internet "why haven't I gotten my first kiss"), and for as long as I remember I would always have these really intense, obsessive crushes on the boys in my life. However, when I was 9 I also first found out that lesbians existed (by watching Friends) and it SHOCKED me. I couldn't stop thinking about it and I would regularly go to my mother crying saying, "What if I wake up and figure out I'm a lesbian?" and my mother would reply, having witnessed my numerous crushes, "Tani you do not BECOME a lesbian. You will not become anything you aren't. Don't worry."


However I couldn't stop thinking of some of my friendships with girls in my past that I thought could be counted as more than friendship (one potent example being my very Christian friend who I would play "lion cub and mommy" with, and who's parents made me go to Church club with her every Friday and when I refused forced her to end our friendship), and found myself imagining kissing all of my friends to see if I wanted to. I fell into these kind of "HOCD" rituals of testing myself, and then performing rituals to assure that I am not a lesbian.


Two notable occasions that really shook me and left me a ritual binge are 1) one day in the 3rd grade a girl I really disliked and I were waiting in the bus line and decided to amuse everyone by walking around with our eyes closed and somehow or other ended up bumping faces. We both FREAKED out and I went home and washed my mouth with mouthwash for a half hour 2) when I was in the 7th grade I played "chicken" with my best friends (seeing who chickens out first before kissing - we never actually kissed) and took a picture that looked like I was kissing one of my friends of 4 years. The next day I woke up and felt incredibly guilty and proceeded to break off my friendship with that friend


I finally had my first kiss in the 8th grade with a boy I had liked and been friends with for 6th months. We were planning to continue hooking up. A couple of days after we kissed all of his friends made endless fun of him for hooking up with me, and endless fun of me in general, and he broke of our "thing" and our friendship. I lost almost all of my friends (not that I had many), hooked up with two boys over the summer (both of which I had awful experiences with - one really liked me but I found incredibly unattractive and I really hurt him and I felt terrible about it, one told me I was lucky he wasn't making me have sex with him) and went into the 9th grade deeply alone, with incredibly low self esteem and feeling suicidal for the first time in my life. I had dreams about killing myself. I also went into the 9th grade questioning myself. I had hooked up with three boys at this point and although I had been really happy when I hooked up with the first (because I had liked him for so long) after I hooked up with him all I could think was, "Oh god, THAT'S what all the hype was about?!". Despite thinking that, I became increasingly obsessed with hooking up with someone else, moreso than I had been about getting my first kiss.


Anyway, I finally made some friends after the first two months of school and by winter break was starting to feel somewhat better about myself, but still very low. My next significant experience happened during my winter break.


I was 14 at the time (almost 15) and met the first person who ever truly stopped me in my tracks. Every other person I had had a crush on had been someone I developed feelings for after getting to know them. When I saw this boy, let's call him X, and almost stopped breathing. We talked and he was flirty and everything was more perfect than I could have ever imagined, especially given my incredibly low self esteem at that point. He was 18, and when he found out my age he was much less flirty and more just friendly for a bit before... succumbing for lack of a better word. We hooked up and I was very happy during the break and very... addicted to X, for lack of a better word. For the first time I felt with him the way I had always thought I was supposed to feel with someone, and we acted quite couple-y. After a really great last night/day together, and after all the things he said, I was pretty shocked we didn't talk at all after.


After him I had a dry streak for a couple of months. February of that year (after X) I began questioning my sexuality in a non-hateful way for the first time ever. It all culminated in one long night during with I stayed up all night watching "coming out" videos on YouTube, and decided I was bisexual, or at the very least bicurious.


Then, during the summer, I went to a camp where I met a boy, let's call him D, and a girl who quickly came out to me as gay and bisexual, respectively. Upon first meeting the girl, let's call her Y, I thought she wasn't very pretty (and I am a very aesthetically oriented person, not only with people but with everything - I love art, photography, make up artistry etc and generally really appreciate classically beautiful things) but as I got to know Y I found myself developing feelings for her, which D picked up on. I broke off my friendship with both of them within a day or two of admitting I thought I might be having feelings for Y, and finding out she had feelings for me. I then proceeded to have 4 consistently boring hookups during the summer with boys ranging from semi-attractive to VERY attractive (every girl I knew was obsessed with the last boy I hooked up with, and I recognised he was very attractive and I pursued him but I just didn't feel it when we hooked up).


When I started school again I found myself in a better social position than I had ever been, cementing my friendship with my two current best friends and being invited to all of the parties. I found myself liking my school, which I had previously tried to transfer out of 4 or 5 times (unsuccessfully - my parents always ended up refusing to let me go). I hooked up with a boy I had liked on and off since I was 11 and always found really attractive, and to my great disappointment, I was bored when I hooked up with him. I was feeling increasingly broken. I became more and more obsessed with my confusing sexuality and came out as bicurious to one of my best friends.


I then, due to being paired up together consistently with him during a school trip, got to know one of my friend's ex-boyfriends, B. I developed feelings for B and he did for me, but despite going on a semi-date (due to a weird set of circumstances, we went walking through the park for 4 hours one day telling each other really, really personal things... it was completely unplanned) and talking for hours each day, we never hooked up because I didn't want to hurt my friend. After a month he ran out of patience and we slowly stopped talking. He made moves on me at future parties but I always turned him down, because of my friend and because I was always confused about how he had actually felt about me.


At this point I hooked up with more and more boys and consistently I was bored unless I was solidly drunk. So that became my crutch. Then winter break was coming up and I realised I would be seeing X again (we both go to the same place each winter). Despite not talking to him for the entire year since I'd last seen him I became more and more obsessed with the idea of seeing him again and feeling the way I had when I had been with him. I CRAVED with my whole body that feeling of WANTING someone. I didn't even care how much he wanted me as long as I could feel that again. When I got to my winter break destination, X wasn't there. I messaged him and he said something about how he'd be there next year, how I'd better be there and how he was sad he wasn't seeing me. I hooked up with a boy, W, and it was as always a depressing hookup. He pursued me for the rest of the holiday and I spent a lot of time with him, but didn't hook up with him again despite his attempts.


When I went back home I hooked up with one of my friends. I had fun with him when I was so drunk I kept falling over but when we hooked up and I was only tipsy neither of us were into it (he was in love with one of my friends, but I didn't know that). After it came out that he was in love with my friend and was pursuing her, I confided in him I was worried about my sexuality (I said I was worried I wasn't attracted to guys, but claimed I had never been attracted to a girl) because I consistently found it really boring to hook up with people. He said what I was explaining didn't sound that strange, and that I probably wanted a relationship and needed to feel a connection with someone to have fun during a hookup. He said he was in the same place. I resolved to try things with my friend, G.


G had been very into me all year. He was one of my closest male friends, and we got along insanely well. Everybody wanted us to be together. What I felt for him was more than friendship for sure, but I wasn't attracted to him. My feelings for him began to grow and I knew that if I were to hook up with him it would be serious from the get-go. I decided to give it a try. However once it came out that I was into him too I began avoiding him. I was so petrified it wouldn't work out between us. One night I got very drunk and we had a very long conversation. I told him EVERYTHING (except questioning my sexuality...), talked for two hours, cried three times within that time. We talked about where we were at, and I was completely candid with him. I explained that what I had been feeling for him all year was more than friendship, but that I had never pursued it because I realised there was a good chance it wouldn't work out between us and that I could not risk losing him as a friend under any circumstance. He promised me that no matter what we would stay friends, and that it couldn't hurt to try. He assured me trying was all he was asking for, and that if I didn't feel it we would go back to being friends. We spent a lot of time together for the next couple of weeks, and I loved being alone with him, and talking to him and cuddling... but I didn't like hooking up. We hooked up a couple of times and it was awkward and boring for me each time except for the last, when I got the drunkest I have ever been (and with how much I drink, it was A LOT. I left his house shoeless on a freezing cold night and didn't feel a thing). I broke it off with him not long after. We had a really long conversation and I apologised a million times for the confusion I must have caused him, but I explained that as much as I had desperately wanted us to work out I just didn't feel it when we kissed.


After that I went on spring break. During spring break I had sex for the first time, with the boy from my most recent winter break (W). He invited me over, I got very drunk and we had sex. I noticed that even with everything we were doing I couldn't


(**WARNING: TMI**)

get wet, and so we had to use lube and even then it just hurt so much because I wasn't nearly turned on enough.

(**TMI OVER**)


When I got back to school I went to a party and got the drunkest I have ever been (first night I actually lost most of my memories from the night and passed out) and I told some of my friends that I had sex. The boy who really liked me, G, heard because I was being louder than I thought and he was nearby, and became very angry and won't speak to me. Before that night, I had been considering opening up to him about my struggles with my sexuality because he's the one of my friends who knows the most about me, and I figured it might help him make sense of why we didn't work out, but I ended up losing one of my closest friends because of my problems with drinking too much, too often.


And through all of this, I've done a lot of reflection on everyone I've been into. All of my obsessive crushes that I actually hooked up with
(I've hooked up with 3 of them) ended up being a letdown. Despite being so happy I had hooked up with someone I had been so into, I found I wasn't into the actual kissing. Most of my random hook ups have been a letdown, unless I was drunk. I've only been properly attracted to one person, X. And I keep wondering if my crushes have been a deep appreciation for the person and aesthetic appreciation, maybe even romantic, but never anything sexual. I've always had trouble discerning between crushes and friends I really care about.


My therapist has suggested I might feel this way because of my problems with derealisation. I generally feel quite desensitised to life, unless I 1) have a burst of really intense emotion or 2) randomly become intolerant to pain (I usually have pretty numb skin but sometimes I feel a lot of pain). I don't find joy in much. But my therapist also says I'm not depressed - so I don't know what to do or think.


And that's where I'm at. My drinking is getting worse, I've lost one of my closest friends, and I have no idea what to do with my trainwreck of a sexuality. I'm scared and I'm still desperate for a relationship, more so than before. I want someone to want me, and I want to want someone but I just... I don't understand myself at all. What's going on with me?

 

I haven't been diagnosed with OCD, actually! I'll bring it up with my therapist, but I'm unsure. I obsess a lot, but I don't have any compulsive self-soothing rituals so I'm assuming the tendance to be obsessive is just a part of my high anxiety.

I have been attracted to girls before but the closest I've gotten to a crush is the girl I mentioned I developed feelings for over the summer. However I always have trouble distinguishing between really liking someone as a friend and wanting to be with someone, because I am VERY affectionate and lovey with my close friends. When I connect with someone platonically it's hard to distinguish that from romantic love.

I don't want to label myself in a limiting way, but I want to know what I want, and I want to know I'm capable of romantic love and sexual attraction, because sex and love are two things I have always idolised so much and wanted to experience so much (I mean the societal obsession with both suggests there's nothing better, and that love completes you, and I feel so incomplete), and I don't want something I've wanted for as long as I've been conscious (being in a relationship) to be ripped away from me because I'm not capable of enjoying it...