I (29M) recently got out of a dead bedroom relationship and realized I have a lot of pent up shame and self-loathing around my sexuality as a straight man.
Part of this is for personal reasons. As I said, I was in a dead bedroom relationship for years where my partner even admitted at one point that, though she loved me, she wasn’t sexually attracted to me. She also said she didn’t experience visual attraction at all and that most women don’t. When we did have sex, it always felt like it was more to keep me happy than a mutual experience, and it was usually a quickie. I tried everything to please her, make her enjoy sex more and be sexier for her, but nothing worked. Before that relationship, I was a socially anxious nerd, and I’ve rarely been flirted with or otherwise had women express interest in me. The dating apps make this work, as I get few matches and even the rare matches I’m excited about usually stop responding before we can meet up. This has made me feel undesirable and like my sexuality repulses women, or at least is of no interest to them.
On top of that, I feel like society hates my sexuality. On the one side you have traditionalist religious people who see men as pigs and male sexuality as something animalistic that needs to be constrained by monogamous marriage. On the other side there’s the mainstream/feminist people who, at best, see male sexuality as a joke (see all the dick jokes, jokes about men being bad in bed, comedies where male attraction is depicted as buffoonish and child-like). At worst they see it as selfish and even damaging. When I go on Reddit or other social media I see so many posts from straight women complaining about male sexuality, complaining about being hit on, complaining about their partners asking for sex too much, or complaining about men not being attractive enough or good enough in bed.
I see men and women praising women for being sexy and beautiful and urging them to feel empowered in their sexuality all the time, but I rarely see that for straight men.
I feel like I’m in a spiral of shame and self-loathing about this, and I don’t know what to do. I work out and try to wear nice clothes and style my hair, but that doesn’t make me feel better. At some level I know these feelings probably aren’t accurate, but they feel so real and I don’t know how to break out of them. Has anyone else dealt with this? How do you overcome it?
6 comments
I strongly recommend that you seek therapy. You have admitted self loathing. You also have some really toxic, unrealistic views on how male sexuality is perceived, which you are then projecting further internal guilt about.
Stop caring so much what others think. And yes get some therapy. Go to betterhelp.com and put in promo code “some guy from Reddit”
Society doesn’t hate your sexuality, you do. You’re projecting your feelings and that’s understandable, your confidence has been absolutely crushed. That’s what you need to work on , not styling your hair, being confident in yourself is the sexiest trait. Not all women are like your ex, and not all relationships are the same. And trust me she is completely wrong about ‘most women’ forget everything she has said like that it’s bullshit. I’ve faced the struggle of being the high libido partner and I know how crushing it can be to your confidence it’s fucking brutal. Focus on positive things, and focus on yourself for a while. Good luck
Yep, this is deeper than your sexuality. Her assertion that “most” women aren’t visually stimulated is false. It maybe doesn’t produce the same affect as it does in men, but it’s there. Every person I have ever been with has been physically attracted to me and that’s 11 to 1 women.
“Most women don’t” – this is total bollocks and it’s not right for her to project her asexuality onto the rest of us. It helps nobody.
Your self esteem has been completely crushed which is why you feel so shit. Being with someone with a low sex drive makes you feel like a creep for wanting sex and that really messes things up. There is nothing wrong with you.
You need to stop trawling through Reddit which is just full of extreme cases of everything, take up some hobbies or activities where you can meet new people, get your confidence back. Most women aren’t asexual, you will find someone.