Dear forum, this is my first post here and I hope that I am doing it right this way. I am experiencing confusion about my sexual orientation since quite a long time. My first sexual encounters as a very young teenager where with males, but they can be barely accepted as experimentations and might not count as real sexual experiments. However they stick in my memory as a very pleasant experience! Later, when I was 14,15 and started to watch pornography, I began with straight porn but soon switched to gay, watching almost exclusively gay porn for most of my life. From time to time I would watch a straight porn, but I was never seriously attracted to vaginas. They are just not my cup of tea. Not that women never played a role in my sexual thoughts, but they never have been very important.. On the relationship-level it looks however different. I have never been in a relationship with a man and have been in some with woman. But they all turned out to be sexually not very well working. I had my experiences, but none of them was really convincing. Either I was too nervous and coming to soon or I wasn't horny at all - there just was not a really good experience with sex in my life yet. For most of my life this didn't matter much since I focus on buddhist meditation and try to live without sex. This worked well in the time when I was still single, but since 1,5 years I am in a stable relationship with a girl. I do like her a lot as a human and we had some sex in the beginning, yet we stopped soon after that. SInce about one year I think there was no attempt for that. But I see a return of my 'gayness' since the relationship started, as sexual thoughts are now more present and forceful than they used to be when I was still a single. This also puts pressure on my meditation. I was quite happy when I was still single, yet at the moment the relationship feels like a lot of pressure for me. This makes me feel confused about my sexual orientation. The crucial point is, that I never percieved myself to be totally gay outside of sexual context. So when I walk on the streets or talk to strangers I never think 'that seems to be nice/sexy one, lets meet him' - but I get this regularly with women. Happens with men too but that's not so often. I fell in love with a man in my life one or two times, and maybe 5 or six times with women. And also I never dreamed of a future with together with a man, this is why I am engaged in this relationship with a woman at the moment. Contrarely to that I alwas knew that I do not really want to have sex with a woman, but with a man. It is a strange situation, yet I want to share this with you as an attempt to find out wether other people went through a similar experience and I wish to know how it turned out for them. I have basicly two explanations for the situation: 1. I am really gay, yet I didn't take this thought serious enough in my life and ended up in a complicated situation 2. I project my problems and difficulties in my relationship on my sexuality and the return of my 'gayness' is just a subconscious symptom of the fact that I have issues with my girlfriend that should be made clear. I assume that no one can answer these questions and that I should better try and sort it out by myself, yet I believe sharing this with some strangers and listening to other oppinions could be a fruitfull exercise.
I relate a lot to this. Not sure I have the best answer but I will try. I knew looking back about 4 I felt attraction to male and female. My first experiences were with male friends. Some curious, some a little more, one very all and everything wonderful. I've had relationships and marriage with two women and enjoyed the same. The marriage failures weren't because of sexuality. My own bad choices. My biggest problem with same sex attraction was always cultural bullshit. Those relationships were wonderful but quietly under radar. I had attractions to someone cute with either sex but was faithful to who I was with. I'll be quiet now. Please ask anything if I was confusing or helpful. Glad to share
Hey ! Sexual orientation occurs on a spectrum. Meaning, we have the capacity to be sexually attracted to both sexes, or just one. A lot of people have it with both sexes, one being predominant over the other. I'm sure you are aware of the Kinsey scale ? From what you've written, you seem predominantly gay. You have attractions towards women, which may have been socially influenced, but nevertheless it's still there. I say you're mostly gay also because you said you watch gay porn much more than straight, and you also want to be sexual really with a man more than with woman. You said your gayness doesn't translate culturally/socially. You tend to appreciate and talk more to women because that's how we were raised. It's a heteronormative society. Growing up, our minds learn that boys look at girls and vice versa. So I wouldn't be surprised if I feel like I want to flirt with a girl out in the street. Of course in the end, only you know yourself best. Only you can understand what's in your mind best. I'm more or less in your situation. I know I like guys more but I can get impressed by a girl and if sufficiently motivated, I can enjoy sex with her good enough. I haven't yet tried it but I think it will be mentally exhausting because I think I need to be in a particular state of mind, like I will need to feel that I'm with a girl like every boy is expected to be with a girl, subconsciously recalling all I know about a guy & girl having sex, how my friends talk about girls being sexy, and feeling masculine while doing fu**ing her which inturn reinforces the guy-girl sex in my mind. I imagine that it may work sometimes but later on I will grow tired of it. Do give your thoughts on this
Thank you two a lot for the answers! Writing here and talking (at least online) about my situation helps me a lot to clarify things. Actually the more I think of the whole situation, the more I feel that I underestimated the role that the social environment played so far in my approach to dating and relationships. If being gay and having relationship with men was widely accepted, I might have tried this earlier. But i was raised in the very conservative countryside of Germany and I think that this is part of why the thought of being more gay than straight never came through to me on a serious level. Also I never wanted to disappoint my family, as I feel that they would be unhappy, this is why I always thought that 'I should at least try'. I do remember when I was a teenager and used to smoke weed or do other mind-enhancing drugs I would turn 'gay' quite frequently. Meaning that while my thoughts of homosexual behavior while sober where quite 'controllable', while being high on pot there where just overwhelming. Due to my regular meditation practice, I never felt much of a pressure to deal with my sexual orientation. In the buddhist teaching, we tend to neglet sexuality as something which is good to avoid if you can, so in the past six or seven years I thought "even if I'm gay it doesn't matter much since my aim is to be a good meditator and not to raise children". So I just skipped the question and as a single I was quite happy with the situation. But deciding to enter a relationship brought the issue back in a way that makes it difficult to avoid. Maybe it just my observation, but sex is something that I can do without much easier when I am NOT in a relationship. That is paradox. But my drive to sleep with my girlfriend is close to none at the same time.
