For the longest time, I thought I was a gay man. I experienced (seemingly) romantic and sexual attraction to men. I had no problems finishing to images of naked men or sexual thoughts regarding another man and I. During puberty, I watched gay porn multiple times a day at my most libid.
I was publicly out and was not ashamed of my sexuality. I will qualify that I was never “out and proud”, in the sense that I did not see my sexuality as a part of my identity; rather I saw it as a behavior I did, which did not need to be explained or acknowledged except when it was relevant.
I have been like this since I was 11. I am now 18.
I was having a conversation with a friend of mine recently regarding my attraction to men and it progressively dawned on both of us that I may not actually be attracted to men; I have had multiple male sexual partners, and I have never finished while we were in bed together. I have given and received; I have felt and been felt, and there was never a burning sexual desire within me when I was having sex with my past boyfriends. When we would cuddle, I (always the shorter and skinnier of us) would lay my head on his chest; be the little spoon; be the one cuddling up to this big strong man. And all along, I was uncomfortable being relegated to the passive role because I was a man too.
At first I was able to chock this all up to nervousness at being intimate with beautiful men, but I think there was more going on.
I have always had crushes on girls, a fact which I did not remember until after this conversation had ended. I don’t know the mechanism for this, but I seem to have disregarded those and replaced them by compensating on my gay crushes. I had an epiphany last night: I intentionally made myself obsess over men and ignored women almost entirely.
This conversation had only furthered my need to prove to myself that I liked what I thought I liked, and so I had a hookup. The man’s flesh actively repulsed me; I wasn’t able to stay erect. We finally gave up on sex and decided to cuddle instead, where I shivered uncontrollably from my nerves. I finally left.
On the way back to my place, I was near tears. I had to keep telling myself that I never had to let a man touch me like that again. I felt disgusting and ashamed of myself. I had snuck out early in the morning while my roommate was still asleep, and I dreaded returning to our room to him awake.
Since then, I haven’t been able to finish at all, let alone become sexually excited. There have been times before this when I was able to finish to images of naked women, but I don’t even get hard anymore.
I want a family one day. I pretty clearly can’t do that if I can’t even have sex. I don’t even know if I’m attracted to women; I know I don’t like men. I’m scared to experiment with a woman because what if I can’t perform as was the case with men? I don’t want to be asexual. I do not mean to be prejudiced against those that are; this is a fear which derives from the possibility of not having the future that I want for myself.
I feel lost. My future looks bleak.
3 comments
>I’m scared to experiment with a woman because what if I can’t perform as was the case with men?
What if you can?
Also, it might look bleak to you, but take it from someone older, there is time to sort your feelings out.
I obviously can’t comment on your sexuality. But it sounds like what you went through was fairly traumatic, and it’s not at all uncommon for people to have trouble getting aroused after events like that. Give it some more time, and I would suggest potentially talking about it with a therapist.
A few things here.
First off, you sound bisexual. I don’t know if you are actually bisexual, but I am, and the “throwing yourself at a hookup to prove a point to yourself, only to realize you didn’t actually want to do this” is a classic move from our camp.
Secondly, whatever you are, you can have a family. There are options, we live in the future.
Third, regardless of your sexuality, it seems like you’re having issues with your own masculinity and how it relates to that sexuality. From your description, it sounds like you did gay things without ever thinking of yourself as gay, possibly because you didn’t want to have to reconcile homosexuality with a form of masculinity that was built by those who would have seen you killed for what you like. And I hate to say it, but you can’t actually square that circle. The idea of What A Man Is is fundamentally wrong, and wrong in a way that is directly opposed to you and me. It’s a miserable fucking brain worm that exists largely to provide grist for the great mills of industry and war, disposable bodies for those in power to spend like coin, and it’s been that way for millennia.
That’s not to say there’s no joy to be found in masculinity, but you need to cut the good bits out of the cancerous mass they’re buried in and build a new masculinity for yourself. It’s work, and I’m sorry, but the instruction manual for Being A Man was written by your enemies, so it’s up to you to rip out the pages that make you happy and throw the rest in the trash where they belong.