I feel nervous and ashamed of my new sexual journey. Trying to make sense of it.

So, not sure if this is the right space to vent about this, but it’s been bothering me for a while. I’m a Black 30M who’s started his journey into sex super late and I’m not sure how to handle it.

Growing up, I. a man, was very shy about relationships and sex. I wasn’t raised by religious conservative parents, but I was always taught to focus on my studies, be a gentleman, and the right girl will come along… Eventually. Now, that was bullshit. I spent all of my youth studying and working on my career. I was always taught that sex as something sacred and forbidden unless you were super serrious so I didn’t even bring it up. It took a lot for me to fess up my genuine feelings to women and I got disrespected for expressing my feelings in some way just about every time. It killed my enthusiasm for dating and I just retreated into my work. I had various community positions of responsibility, which made it hard to date. People (women especially) either trusted me way too much as a pure pillar of virtue or thought the one big black guy was a threat, so it was hard to approach certain people as a student and early in my career. The few times I did, it was a rejection that didn’t end well and/or they were offended by being asked out by a Black man.

I always said to myself that online dating was for losers, but considering I had nothing going on, I said on the first day of 2020, I’d get into the apps and start dating seriously… Then, well, the rest of 2020 happened. I did date on the apps, but I was raised as a serious relationship man with pure intentions… This did not mesh well at all with the world of Online Dating, as I painfully learned… Dating in the pandemic has been hard. People I match with are some of the most boring people I’ve ever met who can no form of conversation or they ghost before ever meeting, even when they push for it. I’ve had several dates of people I was interested in who kept saying they want to casually date… But don’t want sex, even though I didn’t ask, and then it goes nowhere. It’s harder for me because I haven’t caught COVID, but have to take COVID precautions for immunocompromised reasons.

Fast forward to current times, I’m a super busy and very successful in my career and love what I do… But I can’t get a woman for the life of me. I took a serious look at my life and decided that I’m way too busy to actually hold down a relationship even if I wanted to. So, in 2022, after 30 years of virginity I got super horny all the time and, said, fuck it, everyone uses these apps for casual dating and casual sex, so I said I will too… And I found that I’m not sure that’s entirely within me. I keep holding myself back from seeking casual sex even when I actually try. I stopped being shy in dating years ago and have been very unfront with people a long time ago, except in that aspect. That being said, it didn’t help that I couldn’t even score anything on the hookup apps no matter how hard I tried on them. I just don’t know how to approach things like this. It’s demoralizing.

Then I met someone on CMB who I gelled with, but not as dating material, and we decided to be friends after our first date. This lasted a few months… Until she said she wanted to try dating me for real last summer. We went on a date. Had fun… But neither of us were feeling it… And then somehow we ended up fucking and she took my v-card. It was fun and I was glad that I was no longer a virgin… But I felt weird about it after. We ended up being FWB and fucking a few times before she wanted to find something else more serious elsewhere. I did feel bad that I didn’t have the time to see her as much as I wanted do to my career, especially since she was the first woman who seemed to actively match my energy to spend time together. We stopped fucking this past November, but ever since, I’ve just been super horny since she awakened the represses sexual side of myself I had kept to myself for so long.

Since then, I’ve been of two minds of this. I’m not really one to just hook up with a random person, no questions asked (especially because of my health), but I really, really want to fuck. I’m ashamed of this urge and I’m too nervous to really try to do much about it besides try (and fail) the hookup apps again. The FWB I had understood I was a virgin and was super patient with me, which I appreciated, but also I had known her for a while at that point so I felt comfortable with her. I don’t feel comfortable with complete strangers and I’m so worried about STIs and getting extorted with a Pregnancy, but I am so much hornier than I know what to do with. It took me a while to get comfortable having sex with my FWB, even with her IUD and clean test results, and when I finally got comfortable, she ended it. It’s constantly racing in the back of my mind, but I don’t want to be some horny fuck boy; that isn’t me and it’s annoying to have it spike in my mind while I work. Part of me has wanted to reach out to single female friends in my circle to see if they’re interested, but my common sense yanks me back and tells me no, as it should. I have thought about hiring an escort, but I have to save every penny I can for something important right now and, as a sapiosexual, I can’t imagine any attraction to someone I have no rapport with.

I have tried r4r a bit with no success. However, I seem be talking with a slightly older single mother I could be interested in hooking up with? She looks okay and we’re building rapport of interests, but I wouldn’t say I’d be attracted to her physically under normal circumstances; I usually don’t want people with children… But she seems willing to bang. It makes me both incredibly excited and extremely nervous, but part of me is ashamed of myself for needing to find a rando to have sex with who I’m not even attracted to. It feels like I’m breaking my own rules, but my rules have been breaking for years due to my dating experiences (even pre-COVID) and how horny I’ve been lately. I was not raised with any way of handling sexual urges besides completely repressing them or masturbating in private and that’s not enough for me anymore. I’d never dream of assaulting anyone, but I am struggling to handle or make sense of the sexual urges I’ve been feeling.

Am I going about this all wrong? It feels like everyone does casual so carelessly and I feel like I can’t, yet I’ve been too burned out of trying seriously to keep going as I was. I was honorable and chivalrous for so long. Now I just want to fuck, but it feels so wrong.