any advice/feedback appreciated

Hey everybody, I just joined EC and this is my first post. I have been reading a lot of threads on here which interest me. I've been going through some stuff for a while, but recently started to become a little more conflicting. A lot of members on here seem to be really helpful and offer good advice/feedback, so I figured why not try posting for myself. I apologize ahead of time is this gets really long.

I've always considered myself to be a straight male. My first crush was a girl, I started doing sexual things with girls at a young age and always enjoyed it, always enjoyed heterosexual porn, found women attractive, etc. When I think back (this may be a false memory), I kind of remember getting an erection while watching wrestling (WWF or something, which I've never been into but it was on TV at the time I guess) when I was really young, maybe like 8 or 9. This was around the time I got erections all of the time though so I don't really know what to make of this (maybe just the fact that I remember this says something though...).

Anyhow, I happen to be a recovering addict as well, done just about every drug and have gratefully been clean for over 5 years after a long road with addiction. While I was getting pretty heavily into hallucinogens in high school, I would notice that while I was tripping I would have gay thoughts. They really confused me and spun me into a bad trip on a number of occasions. I never really felt that much of a physical attraction to men or any real desire to go and have sex with a man or anything like that, so these thoughts kind of drove me crazy so to speak. I should also mention that I don't consider myself homophobic at all, I see absolutely nothing wrong with homosexuality, support gay rights, have had gay friends, etc.

I've never felt any strong attraction to men, even while I was tripping and getting these thoughts. Maybe at most I would admire or see a guy and think that he was good looking or something, but not anything to the extent where I would think that I want to have sex with a man in real life. These thoughts would drive me nuts because they would just confuse me (and still do), to the extent where I would obsess about what they mean, why am I questioning this stuff, am I really gay deep down, am I bisexual, etc. What's even more odd is that even when I've tried accepting that maybe I'm bisexual, these thoughts still seem to just say "no you're not, your whole life is a lie, you are really 100% gay, you think you like women and even though you clearly are physically aroused by them - that is just your way of overcompensating for your repressed homosexuality."

I've always dated girls, had lots of sex with girls, even bought female prostitutes at times, obsessed over girls, fell in love with girls, watched a lot of porn, the whole nine. Recently I've even tried looking at gay porn, and it doesn't turn me on at all. I actually find it kind of gross, not in the judgmental/moral sense, but just the same way as if I was watching a video of someone getting surgery, like it just kind of makes me say "yuck." That being said, I consider myself pretty open-minded, and wouldn't be opposed to experimenting with being with a guy if the opportunity fell right into my lap. I've never felt any real desire to go out and make that happen... Right not that's not really plausible either since i have a long-term gf who I don't want to cheat on. Sh*t this is getting really long.

To make the rest of the long story as short as possible... as i said this stuff used to happen while i was tripping, but always left a little residue even in my clean life. it wasn't just gay thoughts, it was weird stuff like thinking of the word "gay" everytime I heard a word that rhymed with "gay," thinking of the letter G (for "gay") every time I would hear a word that starts with G, even thinking of the letter G when I would hear or read the number "7" (7th letter of the alphabet), if I was reading the letters G, A, and Y would kind of pop out at me, thinking hidden messages in everyday tv/books/radio were telling me that i'm a homosexual, weird stuff like that going on.

I recently came across a bunch of sites that talks about "HOCD," which i can identify with 100% If HOCD is an actual thing, I definitely have it. But then I think, "what if everyone who claims to have 'HOCD' is actually just a repressed homosexual?" (sorry if that spikes anyone's "HOCD"...) I'm in Gestalt Therapy now trying to figure some stuff out. Especially because I'm thinking of getting married soon and DEFINITELY do not want to be having gay thoughts up at the altar... that would be really strange. Speaking of OCD, I should mention that I am naturally a VERY obsessive-compulsive person, I was highly obsessive/compulsive with drugs for a long time (still am a little), and since I got clean it has kind of transferred to other areas of my life, whether it be germs, being a hypochondriac, over-analyzing trivial stuff to the 100th degree, and more. I think I'll end here sorry for the long rant. any advice/feedback will be much appreciated.

 

Haha thanks Anthemic, I like cheesegrits too. Chip, thanks for the reply and thanks for the congrats on my sobriety. I find that my obsessions and thoughts about "gayness" is kind of similar to cravings with drugs in a way. For instance there's a part of me that thinks "in order to be who you REALLY are, you need to start doing drugs again and be high all the time. in a strange way i felt more like myself when i was high, even when i was on the types of drugs that gave me the homosexual interpretations and obsessions. Although I never felt that there was anything wrong with being gay per se, the obsessive thoughts always bothered me and confused me, giving me a lot of anxiety. I think that's why after a long bout with hallucinogens that probably twisted up my mind a lot (or brought out my homosexual subconscious if I am in fact some sort of repressed homosexual), I just wanted to feel better. That is when I got really heavy into xanax and opiates. When I was on those drugs I didn't worry too much about being gay and the strange interpretations would cease for the most part.

It's a never-ending argument in my head though, for instance I can convince myself that I'm not gay, but then I think about how the very fact that I am even questioning my sexuality means that I probably am gay... I've even tried accepting that maybe I'm just bisexual, but those obsessional thoughts don't seem to be cool with that either. They tell me (I tell myself) that "deep down" I'm gay and I've just conditioned myself to want to be with women and enjoy heterosexual sex and find naked females extremely arousing. That being said, sometimes when I'm watching porn, sometimes I admire a guy's penis. Not necessarily in the sense where I'll think "Boy I really wish that guy's penis could be in my mouth" or something, but more in the way of jealousy and admiration I guess? This could be because I've also struggled with pretty extreme sexual insecurity my whole life due to having a really small penis. Maybe I'm exaggerating, and I've never gotten any complaints, but I'm pretty sure it's smaller than average and I've always been insecure about it.

For the most part, when I think about all the crazy things I do with literally relating ANYTHING to "gayness" in my head at times, I feel like that is something that people with OCD or thought disorders do, not necessarily things that gay people do. For instance the adding up numbers of letters that may equal the numerical total of the word "gay," or finding some kind of connection between any word or phrase with gayness. I can even take my username, "cheese grits" and think of it in the sense where "cheese" can be part of the word "dickcheese" and grits starts with the letter G, just like "gay." I just thought of this, but this is stuff I do all the time.

One of the reasons I went to therapy was to try to resolve this issue once and for all before getting married. I'm actually in grad school now to become a mental health counselor (kinda scary considering my unstable past and present!), and have become really fascinated with Gestalt therapy, which is why I went to a therapist whose primary orientation is with Gestalt. I'm a little worried though because everything I seem to read on OCD says that CBT is really the go-to source of effective treatment for it. Maybe I should tell her I'm gonna take a break and try to find someone who specializes in CBT and/or ERP? Idk, I should probably just take this one step at a time. Any little decision I have to make can literally turn into a sh*tstorm of obsession, mental debating, and up-all-night-google-searching.

I just started with this therapist, but today she told me that there is really nothing in my history that would suggest that I'm gay, and that most likely it's an obsession that we are going to have to work on accepting and detaching from through mindfulness and other practices. Maybe I can even use some of the same tools I used to surrender my addition/obsession/compulsion to drugs with this. That being said, a part of me wants to just go out and have sex with another man just to see what happens. If I wasn't in a serious relationship I probably would. I can't help but think that maybe I've been bisexual my whole life, and since I have never experienced sex with a male, that part of me has gotten so repressed that it's practically screaming for attention in my head. Or maybe that's just my "HOCD" talking... lol Oh man.