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I'm questioning my sexuality AGAIN! Please help I cant do this much longer

Discussion in 'Sexual Orientation' started by xvigil5, Sep 20, 2015.

  1. xvigil5

    Regular Member

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    Location:
    Vermont
    Gender:
    Male
    Sexual Orientation:
    Bisexual
    So for about two month I've identifed (to myself) as bisexual. However, I don't know why, but a wave of fear fit me and I was worrying about being gay. I tried using porn as a test, but when I was watching straight porn, I lost ,y erection, but I put on gay porn, and my erection came back. I'm confused because I have watched porn regularly ever since I realized that I was bi. I've never had any problems with erections and usually orgasmed quickly to straight and sometimes, lesbian porn. I have only lost my erection when watching straight porn when I was worrying about my sexuality or using porn to try and indicate my sexuality. Could this be why I lost my erection? I just became comfortable with myself being a heteroromantic bisexual. And I have questioned my sexuality like this before. And both times I concluded that I was bi. Please help me I feel so depressed because I'm not comfortable with being gay because my family will disown me. My dad even said before that he would disown me and my siblings if we were gay. Ughhhh why is my family full of conservitives?!
     
  2. Chip

    Board Member Admin Team Advisor Full Member

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    Location:
    northern CA
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    Gender Pronoun:
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    Sexual Orientation:
    Gay
    Out Status:
    Out to everyone
    Hi, and a belated welcome.

    I think the key to your dilemma may lie in this part of your post:

    The problem you face is if, indeed, you are gay and not bi... you are afraid your family won't accept you. So that, in turn, makes it really difficult to open up to the possibility that you may actually be gay rather than bi. And that makes it difficult to figure out where your actual orientation lies.

    Here are some thoughts:

    First, I would suggest tossing the idea of a separation between romantic and sexual orientation. Outside of a tiny community of people who have perpetrated this idea, there's zero evidence to support it and among the community of professionals who work with sexual orientation (therapists and sexologists), there's near-universal agreement that there's no support for this idea.

    Thenk if you look at your sexual attraction and orientation, my strongest advice is to take some time away from porn -- lots of reasons why porn isn't a great idea at your age -- and instead masturbate using your own fantasies. Try fantasizing about guys, and then, in a separate session, try fantasizing about girls. Then, masturbate and let your mind wander and see what fantasies it comes up with. Doing that will help you get a much clearer picture of where your authentic sexual orientation lies. (It's usually pretty obvious once you've gone through this process.)

    Also, keep in mind that, particularly at your age where puberty and sexual feelings are arising, it would not be uncommon to see your perceptions and sexual arousal change as you become more self-aware of attraction to guys. Basically, as you open the door to that possibility, your unconscious and conscious start letting more of the authentic feelings (attraction to guys) come to the surface. So it's not uncommon, for example, for gay guys to start out thinking they're bi, and as they allow themselves to feel the attraction to guys, to find that in reality, their attraction is much stronger to guys than girls, and in fact, many may not really have any attraction to girls at all.

    I know that none of this is what you want to hear, and will likely be terrifying. It's important to understand that many, many of us have been exactly where you are. And it's also important to know that, very commonly, parents will make threats, like disowning, that are statements out of their own fear rather than what they really believe.

    Sometimes parents have an intuition that their child might be gay, and in an effort to push away that thought, they say angry things. Remember that both parents and their gay (or bi) children go through stages of loss in processing the loss of identity as straight, and the stages are denial-anger-bargaining-grief-acceptance. So if your dad already has some suspicion (consciously or unconsciouly) that you might be gay, he's already pushing past the denial stage and into the anger stage, from which the "I'll disown any child of mine who is gay" comes from. In a very large percentage of cases, even among staunchly conservative parents, the parents eventually come around to accepting and embracing their gay children.

    No one can tell you whether you're straight or gay. And no one (including you) can change your orientation, whatever it is. But what you can do is start the process of understanding that no matter what you are, gay or straight, you are worthy of love, you'll find someone to love you, and it's overwhelmingly likely your parents will support and love you as well, once they process their own feelings.

    Feel free to talk more about what you're thinking and feeling. The more you talk about it, the easier it is for you to accept yourself, believe in yourself, and love yourself.
     
  3. Invidia

    Invidia Guest

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    One thing to remember is that bisexuality is a spectrum. It could be that you prefer guys, who knows, or prefer girls, or don't have a preference.

    Certainty can be hard to arrive at. Time and patience are great in helping one gain certainty, in my experience.