I've made an account on this website after years of deliberation. I don't want any answers that try to label me with a sexual orientation; I just need advice. I'm a nineteen-year-old college student who feels lonely and isolated. I don't have any real friends or love interests. As a result, I really want someone to help me through my confusion. Here's (in brief) my problem: There are hot guys and hot girls at my school. Sometimes, when I'm close to falling asleep, I imagine everyday scenarios in which one of them is my good friend or lover-- like grabbing lunch, talking in my room, or playing video games. I don't know anything about these people of course, so I make up their personalities, voices, movements, and motives in my head. I won't deny that some scenarios go beyond platonic love. I handle my occassional lust with what can be found online: mostly TV clips off YouTube but otherwise risque stuff (18+ only). I should mention that the risque stuff is almost always gay in some fashion because I don't have the same reaction to the female body. But whenever I'm "finished," I feel so ashamed: not for the fact it's gay but because I need the passion of other "lovers" to satisfy my libido. It's not to say that I don't find females at all attractive, even though breasts do nothing to me. I can get turned on by them (sorry if this is not appropriate for the readers) and have my own preferences for women. I'm wondering if "all that" is typical for someone my age. I don't identify as gay, straight, or bisexual because I've never been in love (and until that happens, how would I know anyway?). I think it's possible that because I'm not close to anyone of either sex, I'm replacing friendship, which I don't have, with lust, which is readily satisfied by the Internet. That really worries me. Sure, I want to find love, but I don't want to be a sex machine. Also, a question for those of you experienced in dating. Do looks matter equally for the gay and straight communities? From online clips I've watched, it seems gay dating focuses a lot on physical appearance first and emotional understanding second... (Of course, the web is almost never an accurate representation of life) Thank you for listening, AloneAsian
In case any of you readers are unsure of what you can say to help me-- In your opinion, are my desires driven by my sexual orientation or by my need to have closeness and inclusion? I hope it's the second, although part of me wants to explain it with the first just because "being LGBT" is such a modern "solution." Also, anyone have advice on how to get friends in college? x.x
sounds like your sex drive/libido at work pure and simple, to me, which is not related to one's sexual orientation at all. there is nothing wrong with having a particularly active sex drive. such things vary from person to person, irregardless of sexual orientation. you asked whether or not looks matter equally to the LGBT and hetero communities. looks, ie aesthetic attraction, varies from person to person and like sex drives is completely unrelated to one's sexual orientation. you will find as much diversity on the subject among the LGBT community as you will find anywhere else.
OK, thanks for your input And sorry that I fell into the trap of using stereotypes from social media to define reality (about the aesthetics).
Based on what you've written here, I think your loneliness and isolation is a bigger issue for you than what your orientation might be. I think if you can address these issues, the orientation issue may either take care of itself or at least be easier to focus on without all the extra 'noise' from these two issues. What do you like to do for fun and are there any group or social activities at your university that you might become involved in that would give you the opportunity to make friends and have a more active social life? It's actually pretty normal for sexual fantasies to involve 'lovers', that is to say other human beings. Humans are pretty social creatures after all. Or am I misunderstanding what you're saying here? Please help me to better understand your meaning in this passage. Speaking just for myself, I identified as gay long before I ever fell in love. Lust worked just fine for me in that dept. (and the internet barely existed at that point. I would say that there is quite a broad range of options between 'love' and 'sex machine'. It's not so binary a choice IMHO. I think that the gay community focuses on looks to about the same degree as the straight community in the sense that there is the 'fantasy' of people who look like greek gods and goddesses (gay or straight - look at the people who inhabit beer commercials or underwear models). Gay porn tends to focus more on physical appearance while straight porn seems to present more 'average looking' guys. And there is certainly a very appearance focused sub-culture within the overall gay community. That all said, at the end of the day, most people don't look like underwear models and different people have different standards of what they consider attractive. This site here: http://fuckyeahgaycouples.tumblr.com/page/62 displays submitted pictures of gay couples with tumblr accounts. Looking through the images you will see a wide range of physical types and looks (allowing for the demographics of people who are most likely to use tumblr I suppose). Some you might consider attractive, some you might not, but apparently their other half did/does find them attractive. It should also be noted that actually dating someone (as opposed to just hooking up with them) is in part intended to get to know them better and add additional potential points of attraction beyond the purely physical. Hope this helps, Todd
Thanks so much for your answer! This community is much better than I thought in providing helpful responses. I suppose it makes sense to focus on finding friends before I move onto anything more serious. I've joined a couple of organizations that have me pretty interested. The people I've met have been polite to me and invited me places outside of our organization meetings, but I don't have that "I know you as a friend"-kind of feeling I had with my best friends from grade school or high school. By lovers, I meant those stereotypical romances that come from Hollywood and social media (i.e. good looking people with flaws that are really strengths in disguise). Their love can be defined as overly dramatic and crafted by directors to get better audience ratings. I don't want that kind of relationship in real life (I think I'd pull out my hair in most of those situations), but it's all I have to compare to actual love.
