Hey guys, Just want to try this again, because my last post was just a graphic description of my ED and experience with women. I have for the past few days have read A LOT of posts here and found some that really resonated with me (which is good), however for the most part the confusion is piling on super quick. On one hand there seems to be a distinction between romantic attraction and sexual. On the other, people like Chip believe that this is just a bargaining stage. \ On one hand there appear to be bisexual people here with a pretty "equal" preference to both genders and those break down along the "can I have a connection" line. I can go on and on...but really I can describe myself as the following: 1) According to the Kinsey scale, I am a 2. 2) I have had strong crushes on girls, been in love with girls and am romantically/physically and emotionally connected to them. 3) I have no problem hanging out with dudes, can objectively and have often though "that is a good looking guy", but never am compelled to hug them/kiss them/etc. 4) My sexual fantasies are wide, but the ones that are most exciting involve being dominated by a male/shemale. One thread I found suggested that some straight guys simply like anal play or have a "gay fetish" whatever that means. I am 34, never been with a guy, but the idea of being dominated seems exciting. I'd like to preface that being dominated by a female in bed is equally exciting. 5) The way my fantasies came to light was not from anyone in real life as I never had guy crushes and never had any connection with a guy, but rather through porn. When I saw gay porn it was a novelty and so I used it, I was young back then (14?). Most of my life however I just lesbian/shemale. 6) If I am just sitting there and think about "sex", the idea of penetrating a woman does not do anything for me. It is not bad, it just does not create any tingling. The idea of being penetrated by a male does seem to create a sensation. 7) Because of #6 i am finding myself looking at guys now and wondering...but generally am overrun by fear/anxiety/etc. Chip has written extensively about the loss of identity and how scary that is. I can say for a fact that giving up my straight identity is unthinkable to me. I would have zero problems having sexual relations with either sex, but I have always known and believed myself to be straight. I just don't know what is going on right now and was hoping someone could relate. Anyone really.
Well, as they say, there is nothing to fear but fear itself. So let that be my first hought: if you are always paralysed by anxiety or fear, it is harder to come to any conclusions. Instead, the important thing to realise is that there is no race, that there is no right or wrong time to figure out yourself, and that, even if it might not be feling like it right now, you are making progress by finding more opinions and talking to more people! So: deep breaths. You're not too late, you don't need to figure this out this very instant, and you are among friends here, who won't judge you. In fact, the true trick to solving the issue might lie in removing the anxiety in the bedroom as well. I can imagine that the first time you failed to get an erection was scary and felt a bit humiliating or whether you're inadequate (while it does, in fact, happen. Sometimes the situation really isn't perfect and ou fail to get hard. Not that unusual, really). And that the second time, you were focusing on it almost as much as on the person you're with. And that by now, you're amost more concerned with the erection than with the person you're actually having sex with. Until, at the end, you default to the last thing that worked. A very specific set of fantasies and positions that, even if you don't necessarily like defaulting to it, still feels like it's a controlled environment to get off in. Th one way you at least don't hae to feel anxiety about whether you can get hard. It might be worth actually taking one step further back. Sex isn't about rushing to orgasm every time. It isn't about proving yourself. It really is about having fun. Orgasms are fun, to be sure, but they're not the only road to pleasure. So how about this: instead of going for the "someone gets penetrated" step, limit your fantasies for a bit. Pretend you're back in your early teens and the idea of light petting through clothes is already as far as you're ever planning to go. Make the fantasies more about having fun with kissing and touching. If you go further than that, focus on what you'd do to make the other feel good (without penetration). And stop at that! If you don't get off, so what? You can repeat that a couple of times. You could even try it with a fantasy guy instead of a fantasy girl. Added benefit of not making this about penetration is that you're forced to focus on what the person behind the genitals might be like. And about what you like, instead of performing. That way, it might be a good way to engage in fantasy, but without the pressue of performance anxiety. It might also be worth noting that there isn't a strict identity to take in these fantasies. The traditional straight male identity often involves taking charge and initiating stuff and being the one who decides what gets done in the relationship and in the bedroom. But... there's nothing saying that you need to do that. If you like the oher one (be that a girl or a guy) to take charge and tell you wht to do, and if that's more pleasant or arousing, there's nothing wrong with that! You might not come across as a macho that way, but if you're having fun, who cares? (As an aside here: is this something you actually had IRL? Did the girls you were with generally take charge? Or were you expected to call the shots? If you're not the take-charge guy and you were expected to anyway, that might not exactly have helped matters). I know, the above is just a set of thoughts, and not a hard-and-fast solution. But it might be worth pondering/trying. The real important take-home message is not to panic. You will find this out. And we're hre to talk to and bounce ideas back and forth with!
Thanks for that insight and you hit the nail on the head. ED is often a vicious circle of negative thoughts and the surest way to prevent an erection is worrying about getting one. It has been 12 years of this curse now and perhaps if I sought help earlier I would have nipped it in the bud, but alas, it is now controlling me. You are also right, the first time was scary and shameful. Still remember that night very clearly, not fun! Well I suppose that is the truth I must discover. Having those fantasies does not define me, but I suppose they sure are strange to me. I am generally macho in real life and quite assertive, however I prefer the girl to be dominant. As you can guess most girls are NOT and rather prefer the guy to be dominant. Getting on top and humping away is just not my thing apparently and in fact missionary is the most difficult for ED. In real life I have not had too many girls take control, even upon request. There is a common theme in my fantasies and that is that of being submissive. I don't really understand it at the moment and chalk it up to my abusive mom who dished out plenty of yelling, verbal abuse and hitting as I was growing up but that is just a working theory at the moment. I guess I am here to simply find out what these fantasies mean, but perhaps they may mean a wide variety of things and no one can really answer that for me. I am now finding myself in a weird situation where I catch myself freaking out over why I think a guy is good looking. All my life I would fixate on girls and stare at them while acknowledging that yes, there are also good looking guys. Now however there is something more to the guys. Still plenty attracted to women, just have anxiety/concern over my recognition of a good looking male. Perhaps some kind of anxiety, perhaps some kind of bisexual tendency. *shrug* Just breathing and relaxing about it all....if I can shake the ED would happily accept the bisexual label as long as I can get over the idea of being romantically involved with a guy - which I currently cannot.
nothing to be ashamed about. It's important that you be honest with yourself and no matter how old/young you are, its important to really question what it is that you want/like. From reading your post it seems to me that you might actually be more than a 2 on the Kinsey Scale. I/m not saying your are or aren't but rather the more intimate details about men from your point of view seems to be more bisexual/homosexual. The thing about ED is that a lot of it has to do because of psychological reasons, followed by medical reasons. I'm 23 and I've even had a couple instances of ED. Looking back at these times it was usually fairly early on in the relationship, where I had broken up with a past gf and the intimacy/connection was just not there yet. However, I have had certain fantasies throughout my life with the same sex. It was never of penetration but more about discovering male genitalia. I remember when I was much younger and being intrigued with some of my friend's penises. We would measure and compare, and even one time sleeping over at my buddy's house there was a homoerotic experience. I had woken up to find my friend jerking off. We were probably 15-16, and for his age he was well-endowed. He made my 6.5' dick look relatively small lol. When he realized I was awake he was quite embarrassed. However I reassured him it was fine and then we both looked at each other's hard dicks, until he finally left the room to jerk off and I stayed in his room and also jerked off. Anyways point is certain past experiences made me question who I was, especially when I got ED those few times. I thought maybe I was gay or bi or whatever else. But as I experienced more I realized that I care deeply about the connection I have with whomever it is I'm intimate with, and when its not there it can be hard for me to become aroused. As I read your post over the fact that female penetration does not do anything for you should be some kind of sign. Whether it is the fact that you haven't found that certain woman or maybe it's time for you to have a sexual experience with a man is something for you to figure out truthfully. When I took the Kinsey test I scored a 0-1. I know I am attracted to women and the thought of vaginal penetration is definitely exciting to me. But I have also always wondered about certain gay/homoerotic situations, never anal penetration but more soft core things/exhibitionism. Most important is that I don't believe someone can be categorized as a certain sexual orientation for the span of their whole life. We all go through different life experiences and as time progresses we may find ourselves wanting/needing new things. Goodluck and all the best
Thanks man, you may be right. I think it is common and probably rarely admitted that plenty of people fantasize about same sex experiences. I think my main struggle now is the separation of denial vs acceptance of what I am. There are all these fears of losing my identity and giving up the image of myself that I have lived with all my life. You are right about one thing, all my relationships have failed for a reason. I lost that intimate connection at some point with everyone. They were either mean or apathetic or crazy. The closest was my ex of 1.5 years that I thought i would marry. I remember having sex with her and thinking "this is probably my future wife" and was hard as a rock the whole time. Few days after we broke up we tried to sleep together and my ED was raging, could barely get it up. So I could be one of those guys that needs that emotional stability from my woman in order to perform. Or I am just simply bisexual with a slight preference for males and I am speculating on the males based on how strong I react to fantasies of giving some dude oral. However fantasies do not make for orientation and there is a chance if i try to do that I might dislike it very much. I know that eating girls out, having sex with them and being in relationships with them feels right, makes me happy and excites me. The question is, can I get even more from a guy?
I will echo Filip's thoughts. Basically, you aren't going to get an answer just by thinking about it and analyzing it, otherwise you'd have had an answer years ago. I think the bigger issue is dealing with these two statements: So there's a strong fear/phobia there that's getting in the way of actually being able to go into and explore that idea. If you've already said, in effect, "I'm willing to explore, but exploring that is completely off limits", then you're going to have a really hard time doing any objective exploration. Could you get even more out of a relationship with a guy than you do with a girl? Maybe. Maybe not. But as long as you have this visceral rejection of that possibility, you''re not going to get an honest answer. I can tell you that, in general, straight men don't have that sort of vehement fear. When you talk to them about it, it's more just "Meh, that doesn't even slightly excite me", so it is possible (though we can't say how likely) that the phobic feelings you have are rooted in an unconscious awareness that, in fact, you have a really strong attraction to guys and may, in fact, be closer to gay than straight. But there's too much getting in the way of any emotional openness (with men or women) to be able to objectively answer that question, which is why Filip's suggestions make a lot of sense. And therapy is a really good idea. Exploring the difficulties with emotional intimacy will help to bring that wall down, and when you do, then the underlying attraction (whether to men, women, or both) will likely be a lot more clear.
Chip, I would not call my second sentence a phobia at all, I do not have a fear. I am simply saying that I *currently* cannot imagine that happening. I think it is important that I clarify that. For example I got some co-workers (male) at work and they are fine looking guys. I just tried to fantasize about being in a relationship with them or being romantic with them and just cannot see that. It does not excite me. The reason I cannot imagine giving up my straight identity is that I am still very attracted to women on both physical/romantic level. I have spent my last three therapy sessions discussions this very subject and basically I am at this point in my life: - If I am gay, so be it. Nothing really changes in my life whatsoever. - If I am bisexual, so be it, even better - the more the merrier - If I have these fantasies about being with a guy then accept the fantasy and stop running away from it. Running away just simply turns the fantasy into some crazy monster instead of what it is, just a good 'ol fantasy. - I watched a bunch of "pride" movies on HBO GO and I was surprisingly OK with it all. Can't really imagine myself in that situation, but am just being very accepting.
