Hey everyone! My situation is a little bit confusing. Maybe I should start from the beginning. I appreciate anyone who took the time to read this and give advice/opinions or anything I'm a 21 year old male, and my whole life I have identified myself as straight. My childhood with other peers and such wasn't so great, because I was constantly bullied. A lot of kids called me gay, before I even knew what that was, and I got that harassment until I started to go through puberty. When I look back on it now, I may have acted a bit feminine when I was younger... But I think the reason for that may have been because I grew up with a sister, and my only neighbor was a girl that I was best friends with, from then on I seemed to be comfortable with hanging out with more girls, even though I did still have some male friends. After puberty, I really didn't act feminine or anything. I grew up to be more manly, less sensitive and the bullying stopped. I have was very happy after this point, since all of the bullying stopped, no one questioned my sexuality. I had male friend and went to parties, kissed many girls and really fell for one girl at the age of 17, having an on and off relationship for a couple years. I usually didn't fall for a girl, or lust for any girl until I really got to know her, and I really had a genuine interest for one. I saw many of my friends, from what is seemed like, Lust over girls... and I never really did. I appreciated a girl for how they looked, but I always had to get to know a girl for me to lust over her. This really was my stance up until a year ago. At the age of 20, I got a job that was very stressful, my parents and I were fighting, and everything seemed to be falling into pieces. The person that was always happy was no more, and I started to fall into depression. Then one day, I saw watching something on TV and a gay couple popped up. I was instantly disgusted (horrible to say that, because I don't feel that way now), I got this tight feeling in my stomach (which I think I always got that feeling even before this moment when I heard the world 'gay', or saw a gay couple. Wasn't the same case for a lesbian couple). It was this tightness in my stomach that I believed was a sign I was getting aroused, and I tried to throw that thought away out of my head. After this moment, I literally became to obsess over this thought of being gay. I got horrible anxiety, the tightness in my stomach every time I heard the word gay became stronger and stronger. It started to get to a point, where I looked at straight men, and started to get this feeling in my stomach. And that same question kept flowing through my head, "am I gay?". And I just worried, and worried. After months of suffering, I ended up calming my anxiety, and just tried my hardest to work through everything. I got it to the point when I stopped getting anxiety, and accepted that if I was gay, then I'm gay. But every time I just admitted I was gay, to see if I could just move one with my life, It would be ok for maybe a few hours or the rest of the day. But that question would pop back up in my head "am I gay"? It never really felt right to call myself gay, and it still doesn't to this day. I kept working thorough it saying that maybe I'm just physically attracted to men, but emotionally to women. When I said this, I feel like I developed an emotional and physical attraction to one of my male friends. Everything felt so wrong, but I did felt like I might have actually liked him. I felt like it wasn't me though, and it wasn't the person who I was before all of this happened. I always felt I wanted a girlfriend to nurture, care for, and share the same interests as me. But my body and emotions were saying something different. Now, I feel like a lot of symptoms of feeling gay have resided. I learned that my ego was playing in a role with the question with the "am I gay?" question. And I don't know if all of this is happening from my childhood, from when kids always told me i'm gay, and it was just bubbled up inside of me, and burst out when I was depressed. It still leaves me confused, because I don't feel 100% myself, and I still have these feelings. Like I still get aroused my males, and that tight feeling in my stomach is still there whenever I hear the word gay. I've been trying to get myself out there, and I made gay friends.. this helped me not be afraid of them, they really are good people. But that feeling is still there, and I don't understand it. I still feel like I belong with a woman, because that's what the person behind all of the physical symptoms wants. But I am still not sure. Sorry if this wasn't so coherent... but it sums up what I have been going through. Just complete confusion:eusa_doh: Thanks for reading, if you did, and I'll be happy to read any comments!
