I see advice on this site a lot to allow yourself to fantasize as part of figuring out what your sexuality is. But I have trouble fantasizing these days. I have fantasies about a few male celebrities (basically the guys in my favorite band, not that you probably wanted to know), and even those are much less frequent than they used to be. I do often think of sex with women when I masturbate but I also for a long time used to masturbate watching lesbian porn and maybe it messed with my head. I try to fantasize that I meet some nice man or woman, not even necessarily an explicit fantasy, but it never goes anywhere. I do have a female friend (online friend) I really like, and sometimes I wish I were married to her, but it's probably more that I think she's awesome. I try to avoid fantasizing about her because she does not feel that way about me at all and I really don't need to encourage myself. Sometimes I picture theoretically asking out women who I meet and I feel like maybe I'm attracted to them but I keep second-guessing myself and telling myself I'm just being stupid and it's only that I want to be attracted to them. (I know that doesn't make much sense but my brain is weird.) Long story short I feel like I don't even know what I fantasize about anymore which is kind of ridiculous.
Same here. I've been watching porn every time I masturbate for quite a while now. That doesn't help my abilities, but I've never really been good at seeing things in my mind's eye, and that translates to fantasy. I can picture things for a few seconds but they're sorta blurry and static. I'm just terrible at it. Maybe you're like me and you've never really been able to do it.
Long-term use of porn can, essentially, make the brain lazy. Porn is a powerful stimulus, so it isn't uncommon that when you start masturbating without it, it can take a while to reconnect to your own fantasy. Another factor that can affect this is how connected you are to your emotional/vulnerable self. If you can't feel emotions in general very strongly, then sexual fantasy is going to be similarly constrained. The sex therapists who write about this issue have generally found that after a few weeks of practice, usually the ability to access fantasy starts to return. If it's difficult to feel emotion in general, then it may take some more work to get in touch with your emotional self and as you do that, you should find access to fantasy returning. If none of that is helpful, message back again and there are perhaps some other things to look at.
I used to be able to fantasize but for some reason it just isn't easy for me now at all. I have been staying away from the porn and will continue at least for the time being. It's not like I enjoyed it a lot anyway. Thank you1
