Dave321

I don't know. Too depressed to care at this stage.

In 2007 when this started I thought there was a good chance I had ocd about being gay. I got therapy on skype from Steven Phillipson. He said I had ocd. I never fully believed him tbh. I had therapy for 1 year almost weekly. Now I feel sure it was a misdiagnosis and its left me feeling utterly hopeless. Today I am as low as I have been in years. I think its slowly dawning on me that this is reality and not an ocd invention of my imagination. My symptoms have changed and evolved and I am reacting in new and ever arousing ways to men. This whole thing started because of erection problems and my sex drive being rock bottom in 2006-2007. It never crossed my mind being gay was the cause as I had aways masturbated only about girls in my teens and early 20's. Anyway I dont get intrusive thoughts, I get intrusive groinal responses constantly every day. I also masturbate about men as a form of checking my arousal and hoping I dont get aroused. I would also masturbate about women to make sure I can still be aroused by thoughts of them. In the last year or two the thoughts of women are not very arousing but the thoughts of men have gone from not very arousing to quite arousing. In the last few days I got arousal like I havent done in ages and they were to fantasies of men. Also when I see men on tv I get groinals but its like an uncomfortable tightness in my perineum. Today that changed. I was sitting behind a guy today who is gay and I just glanced at him and I got this arousal tingling in my testicles and penis. It was 100% arousal. I couldn't keep looking because it would be obvious but this is the 1st time in my life it was definitely arousal looking at a guy. My heart literally sank in my chest as this happned. I feel so so depressed. I seriously just want to disappear and never speak to anyone again. My sex drive for women has plummeted. I have an on-off girlfriend who I just want to avoid as I dont feel I am genuinely straight and I have struggled to get aroused the last time I met her. I honestly dont know what to do. I feel stuck in limbo. Being gay makes me feel utterly depressed and unhappy. Yet I feel like I am now definitely gay and there's nothing I can do about it. Keeping hoping its ocd gives me that lifeline of hope that keeps me going but I really do wonder if its causing me more harm to keep believing its ocd because its making me not face reality. I don;t even know why I post on ocd boards anymore. I did join Empty Closets years back and posted there for a while asking questions but it was too scary and made me very anxious. Nothing works for me. Its like I have a horror film playing in my head 24/7. People saying you dont have to do anything about being gay is not helping because even if I never go near a guy I still have these scary groinals every day making me want to just crawl up in a ball and hide under a duvet from the world. I dont want them. I seriously worry for myself down the road. I can see things ending badly for me.

I am sorry to everyone here. I realise I am gay. I think I have known on some level since birth but never acknowledged it or properly realised. I had such a sheltered life that I wasn't really exposed to guys or girls in my teenage years in terms of sex and had I been I might have figured it out sooner. I have had erection issues since age 19 and could never really perform in bed with girls unless I took viagra. I have never tried to kiss a guy or do anything sexual but I am convinced it would work. When I was having erection issues I dont know why I never put 2 +2 together. I guess I am a bit slow. I don't think I ever had genuine sexual desire for women. Not the way other guys do. I These things I label as groinals are arousal. There's no doubt about that. I think because of being brought up in a school back int he mid 90's where being gay was something to be bullied and laughed at caused some sort of aversion and trauma and didnt want to be gay. I wanted to be 'normal'. I think its very easy for someone to misdiagnose me as ocd when I was just having anxiety about being aroused by the same sex. This is due to being brought up in a homophobic and hate filled environment in school. I think when the anxiety around being aroused by guy fades I will probably start moving forwards as a gay man.

I was in work today and had to sit next to a guy. I had to lean over his lap to see something and I wasn't even thinking about it and I got this instant sexual tension sensation in my groin. My heart sank. When these occur I get the same sinking heart feeling as if you just discovered a lump under your armpit that might be cancer. This sensation doesn't happen with women so I am convinced I am gay. I was bullied in school age 12 and was called gay for a year when I went to a new school so I have always been consciously and subconsciously insecure about being gay growing up as a teenager and in my 20s. I never remember getting aroused by men in my teens or 20's until I started one day age 25 freaking out about being gay. I used to be able to see say pics of women in lingerie in a magazine and just looking at it would get me aroused. Now ZERO response. I'm not even stressed about it. It's like my attraction to women wore off over the years and the arousal to men started growing. Is this anxiety about being gay due to hocd or is it an abnormal response to my own natural attraction? What if I started embracing it and encouraging it. Would I be gay then? I really think that people have been telling me from the start what I wanted to hear rather than just telling me straight that this is late gay realisation and that you need to get on with it now. I am a fraud. I just think this was ego dystonic sexual attraction. I think back to my youth and think it all makes sense that I'm gay. The crying on my first day of school because my best friend wasnt there. The kids bullying me. The finger ratio I have. Not developing interest in girls until age 14. Erection issues in bed with women. The HOCD being just an anxiety response to discovering youre gay. I am the ultimate fraud.

Hi. Have been worried I have early onset dementia. I am 37. I keep forgetting peoples names. People I interact with semi regularly I will forget their names and it wont come to me until maybe a couple of hours later. Also I have trouble explaining myself and struggle to remember things I just studied. My mind feels like a sieve. I see ads on tv talking about dementia and I am now worried I have it. My granny got it. I am scared I have so many things wrong with me lately. HIV, skin cancer, diabetes are some of my current worries along with HOCD.

Honestly every gay person I have ever seen and every straight person I know conforms to the digit ratio of their orientation. There are universities all ove rthe world studying it and linking digit ratio to lots of things and the papers are in respected scientific literature. I think I am just prejudiced and a coward and cant admit to myself I was born gay and that these groinals are attraction and arousal. I think it might be internalised homophobia. I hope its ocd. As for the hiv I havent slept properly the last 4 nights and have a very bad throat, slight temperature and now the lymph nodes left of my groin hurt. I am doomed.

I am feeling anxious because I just flicked through the channels and the gay rugby player with hiv is doing a documentary and its making me uncomfortable with regards 2 things I am worried about. Firstly he has the gay finger ratio the same as me so I must be born gay. I am the same as him. Everyone tells me this finger ratio thing is nonsense yet EVERY gay man I see has it and EVERY lesbian I see has the male ratio. How can it be nonsense?? Secondly talking about hiv is scaring me right now as I am worried I may have it even though logically its probably unlikely. I have a bad cold at the moment with very sore throat and swollen lymph nodes in my neck and that can be a symptom 2 to 6 weeks after infection. I am calm but anxious if that makes sense.

I am really worried about HIV now as well as being gay. I slept with a girl 28 days ago and now I have developed the flu. I have a really bad sore throat and this might be a sign of acute HIV infection which occurs 2-6 weeks after infection. Acute HIV infection symptoms are flu like symptoms and cant be differentiated from flu. Also I had 2 groinal responses since my last post. I got a youtube video recommendation when I logged into youtube and it was some topless guy and I got a nervous tingling and tightening arousal type feeling in my groin. Then yesterday I had to sit beside a gay guy I know for 30 mins and I kept getting tingling sensation scrotum and groin. My life is turning out 180 degrees the opposite of what I want. Nothing good happens to me. All my hopes and dreams for life are shattered. I have to live out this horrible life.

@Ashley: Well it is something that crosses my mind immediately afterwards ever since I started sleeping/fooling around with women. Age 20 I thought I had gotten hiv from a girl who was a virgin. I waited 3 months and had a test. Same thing age 21. This latest girl is foreign so I am scared she has hiv. I have always beeen a bit of a hypochondriac. The rugby players case scares em because I am scared I am like him. Living a straight life as a fraud then having to admit to yourself you are gay and then getting hiv. I dont wan this to be my life script but its all out of my hands as DSKEA says if I'm gay I'm gay and cant change it. I dont care if I never do anything gay I just dont want to live with the thoughts and groinals. I also hate the fact I might be a fraud and have mislead people. I dont see a point in going to therapy if this is what they will do. ie get me to accept it.

Thanks DKSEA and Angst for contributing. @Ashley it was because you mentioned accepting it and learning to calm down before you explaining what it means and why its happening. I am scared that therapists would get me to calm down by not analysing it etc. and then tell me I'm gay when I can take the news better. I am currently quite anxious at the moment. I was watching the news and the gay rugby player Gareth Thomas has announced he is HIV positive. Now I'm scared I am HIV positive from some sexual activity I have had with my last 2 girlfriends. 6 yrs ago I had unprotected sex with her. And my latest girlfriend I am worried I touched my penis with her vaginal fluid on my hand when putting on a condom. This was only last month.

Is this some method to get me to accept I'm gay??

I realise I will probably have them for life Ashley but when they happen they freak me out. They freak me out less than they did say 10 years ago but they still freak me out and they ruin the rest of the day as I am convinced Im gay. I do feel a bit better the next morning like its a clean slate again until the next groinal. I have groinals whenever I see something like a topless man, good looking guy or something that reminds me of homosexuality. This response happens 90% of the time when I see something like that. This means they happen once a day (or more) or I might go a number of days without one depending if nothing pops up on tv, facebook, in real life etc. The last time I had therapy 8-10 yrs ago I had to carry around a picture of a topless man and look at it 10 times a day. It didnt work. I developed tolerance to that picture only but would still get groinals to other things in real life or different pics, guys on tv etc.. And having no libido for women is really disturbing. I wonder ''it cant just be a coincidence''

I never want to do anything with a guy. I'm scared I will choose to in future or scared I will at some point. I dont want groinals even if I never act on it.

I don't understand your post. Are you saying I might be gay and homophobic? I wonder if I am gay and homophobic myself. I feel nervous and get groinals consistently around men tespecially gay guys or good looking guys and have no libido for women anymore (if I even had libido for women in the 1st place. I am so confused ) Kids can tell if someone is ''different''. I think they spotted that in me and then I grew up affected by the bullying and didnt want to be gay and so wanted to be straighter than straight. I did masturbate about girls only and found it really nice. Did I just have strong hormones as a teen and could get off to anything back then as a result?? Maybe I just didnt know who I was back then?? Maybe I masturbated to women out of heteronormative society and didnt know any better? Maybe I did it out of choice instead of nature?? I think it was natural but maybe it wasn't and I hadn't ''found myself''? Gay marriage is legal here but I am in my late 30's now and grew up in the 90's and schools and society was much more homophobic then. Maybe I am a product of that society and I have internalised homophobia? I dont know how to convice myself it is ocd if it is. It just doesnt seem like it is. I feel like I am a fraud and lying to myself and will be laughed at if I do come out later in life as gay for being a liar and misleading everyone. There are nitty gritty details of my groinals/arousals that I could go into but suffice to say they feel like I am genuinely highly aroused and then this awful shame/depression/anxiety comes over me and shuts it down. I dont even know if its a groinal or not.

Thanks Ashley. I really think I am a fraud though. I feel like my gut instinct is telling me I am gay and that I was born gay and never copped on until my 20's and that I only found thoughts of women arousing as a teenager because my hormones were going crazy. Is it ocd if I get a groinal response only in specific scenarios though? Like seeing a topless man who has a good body or standing next to a good looking guy?? I had two very strong groinal responses the last few days standing next to a good looking guy and also going on facebook and seeing some pic of a tanned topless man. I feel like I am hoping its ocd and trying to fool myself and others its ocd by saying things that make it sound like ocd. Maybe I should be saying when I see topless men I get aroused rather than saying its a groinal response. Maybe I should be saying I used to find women arousing but now only find men arousing. Maybe thats the truth? :(