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declangwb1997

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  1. Hi again, man. Thank you again for your help, and your continued patience with me, I really appreciate your help.
  2. Hi, all. Okay, so here goes. I'm a 23 year-old man with Asperger's Syndrome, and I've been experimenting with my sexuality since being 18, having had no prior contact in any way. Initially, after my first sexual encounter, I explored 'sexting' through the 'kinky' communities on the Amino app, through 'role-playing' with young adults like myself. I watched the tamest pornography from the age of 13 1/2 onwards till being 23, yet always had moral issues with it - I'd never fail to get emotional over recognising the humanity of the women and men in these videos - ".....This is somebody's daughter/son!", is how I'd think, even though everybody was a consenting adult. I'd feel irrationally guilty every time I watched a clip, feeling as though I wasn't a 'real feminist'. This would lead me to clean obsessively around me, to feel better. This is tied into - and emblematic of - my lifelong OCD, and specifically, the pure-'O' that I've experienced since mid-2019 - I'd see only moral absolutes, no nuance. So, in my later teens/early twenties, I went on a few dates and enjoyed the company of the women I'd been with, yet consistently felt as if I'd prefer just being their friend, as a new friend was really what I was searching for, having not made one since the end of high-school (aged 16, in 2014). Also, due to my special interests being somewhat obscure, I always found myself having no kinship with my peers, and so I found it hard to sustain even an acquaintanceship. This was in spite of me trying as much as possible to ingratiate myself into the interests of my peers, so as to better understand them. I later made a new friend in 2019 who lives close to me, and formally abandoned dating apps then. Later on, after an online relationship that failed due to a lack of emotional reciprocity, I began to feel what little semblance of a labido I once had fail, to the point where I felt no longer sexually attracted to anybody. Now, I'm pretty certain that I'm asexual. This conveniently fits in with my life-plans of not having children or a long-term relationship (both of which seem very stressful). All of this said, I've been endlessly ruminating on what constitutes sexual harrassment since the 17th June 2021, after being mentally reminded of awkward attempts at flirting that I'd participated in. Since then, I've read so much about MeToo & Time's Up (as I have done since 2017), made a list of sexual misconduct behaviours to 'check-off', and looked at a dozen + forums online about sexual harrassment. The instance I'm worried about specifically is a time in the summer of 2020 (before I realised that I was asexual), where I found a woman's blog on Tumblr who had been asked sexual questions by men, and had responded somewhat positively. I thought, "Maybe she'll respond to me, if I send a question!", and because I wasn't as confident as the other men, I asked a three-letter double entendre/innuendo, followed by a question mark. Here, I was trying to mirror the confident sexuality that women have shown me in person and online. A lady recently said to me on Reddit that it was the equivalent of making an awkward attempt at flirting in a bar/tavern, and as long as I backed off immediately whenever I noticed their lack of interest (as I did here, and have done prior, always), then it's not harrassment. Maybe she's correct, in the sense that in a real-life situation, elements that were absent on the Internet would be present, such as prosody/intonation, body language, facial expressions, etc. Her reply made me feel a bit better, but I still feel like a bad person who is akin to Harvey Weinstein or Bill Cosby. I feel awful that I might have hurt a lady, but I also wonder if this is just my OCD 'making a mountain out of a molehill'. I'm not trying to gain help on courtship, since after this long journey of self-discovery, I've unsurprisingly realised that I'm not at all 'kinky' or interested in sexual relations or romantic relationships etc. I'd just like to reflect on my past actions and be able to walk into the future with a clear conscience, so I can still call myself a feminist and be an ally to women and a good human being. My mother agreed with my suggestion I have an 'overactive conscience' (a line from Frasier), so I don't know if I'm just worrying about literally nothing, or if I'm a dreadful human. I don't want to kill myself, but I feel compelled to if I'm a terrible harrasser.
  3. In December 2020, aged 23, I met a woman (26) on 'Kik' in a sexting group who wanted to see my private parts. At the time, I was going through a lot of OCD-related stress and irrational worries about touching myself, so I initially refused, because I was so nervous, yet still interested in being flirty. At the same time, I've always felt conflicted about being sexual because I worry about doing something morally wrong/aberrant. I've been exploring my sexuality as a man since I was 18, having had no prior experience. I have Asperger's Syndrome, so this entire world has been such an interesting space to explore. So, I asked if we could use Snapchat, because I felt (for some strange, OCD reason) better using that. She said, ''I can't, in case my boyfriend sees''. I was hesitant to, but then I very nervously sent a video and beforehand, I did my usual thing of over-reaffirming consent that she wished to receive it. I sent a video, and she said (I'm paraphrasing), ''.....If I wanted to see a guy who's not big, I'd stay with my boyfriend''. I felt absolutely fine with that comment, I've never internalised any of the toxic-masculinity value-systems that other boys and men internalize over their lifetime, so I wasn't defensive or insecure about what she said. I was very nervous, my 'friend' wasn't wholly erect, and she wasn't satisfied, which is totally okay. I'm in no way offended. Therefore, in typical 'me' fashion, I said, ''Oh, sorry about that, lol''. So, months later, and while coming to the end end of a grueling 24 month experience with pure-'O' (an unfortunately misunderstood subsection of OCD), I've had intrusive thoughts that amount to, I think, a pathological, irrational focus on my own past actions from the standpoint of ethics and morals. I remembered this event, and felt somewhat guilty. While women have flirted with me before online when they're in a relationship or married, I never considered myself to be doing anything wrong engaging in awkward, clunky flirting. In my mind, if they were in a happy, healthy relationship, they wouldn't be seeking companionship elsewhere. I assumed that these folks would've tried to internally amend things with their partner, and that being online was a total last resort. I then thought, in this case specifically, that maybe ''.....her boyfriend was possessive because otherwise how would he have known who I was, unless he was checking her phone?''. In my mind, I thought, ''.....No truly happy person would do this, there must be dysfunction there that hasn't been resolved''. However, I'm thinking that that's my somewhat naive view, particularly as someone who has never been in a social relationship that has a romantic orientation. Now, I'm worried that perhaps actually I'm a horrible person for doing this, and that I've maybe betrayed the man's humanity by doing this. At the same time, I used to believe that I was a ''.....Disrespectful to all women, everywhere'' when I occasionally indulged in (unapologetically tame, adult) pornography very, very, very occasionally from the age of 13 1/2 onwards. So, I'm not sure if I'm just being over-dramatic and morally absolutist. My mother also once agreed that I have an ''.....Overactive conscience'' (a line of dialogue from 'Frasier'). Lastly, interestingly enough, a lady in London later offered me intercourse to 'get back' at her boyfriend for ignoring her for months, but I felt as if I couldn't and I encouraged her to try and mend things with him, because not only did I not want the dissolution of someone's relationship on my hands (he was the father of her children, I think), but I knew I didn't actually desire intercourse, I just liked the excitement of flirting with somebody. Also, I'm unashamed to say I am terrible 'in bed', and didn't want to put her through an awkward experience. I couldn't find any posts similar to this on Reddit, and I think it might be because 'most' guys wouldn't care, because both boys and men are socially-conditioned to view women and girls as sexual 'conquests' and for some, it's emotionally gratifying to engage in conjugal relations with another person's partner, irrespective of whether they're aware or not. For me, this was never something that I resonated with; I just saw the flirting as harmless, and the fact that the person might have a shaky relationship was, in my mind, a coincidence. I don't know what else to say, I feel somewhat guilty, but I'm not sure if I should; in my mind, 'crossing the line' would be physical intercourse, but from what I've gathered from other people, it's a total couple-specific issue. I.e., different couples will have certain gradations of what constitutes 'cheating'. Therefore, I feel like I am socially unqualified to say this. At the end of this whole journey since I was 18, I've realised that, due to a now totally-absent libido, that I'm asexual. This helps a lot personally, and cleanly fits into my personal social and emotional preference to avoid the stress of sex, 'sexting', flirting, and romance. I never intend to have a romantic relationship, get married, or have children - I've no desire. That said, I believe I might've violated this gentleman's humanity by being an 'accessory' to a crime, and I feel awful. Thank you for reading, friends.
  4. I appreciate your help massively, your history with worrying about hurting women is exactly what I've worried about for two years, and it's never-ending. I really appreciate your response.
  5. I appreciate that. I've had OCD since I was 10, and I've only recently clocked that the overarching theme has always been about morals; the specific worry about having done something wrong to/with a woman is just a manifestation of the moral scrupulosity undercurrent of my OCD. As you can imagine, since 2017, I've been increasingly reflective of my behaviour due to the MeToo movement, and that has only strengthened my worry that I might be a bad person.
  6. I really appreciate both of your responses; I know you didn't mean anything bad, you were trying to help. The worry is still there, but hopefully will fade soon.
  7. Hey man, I really appreciate your response. No, don't worry - I appreciate your candidness and wish to help me out by being honest. And as for the second replier, I thank you for your help as well. You're right, I know I've nothing to worry about, it's indicative of my hyper-fixation with morality, and it shows I'm a good person. I just have worried a lot because I don't want to upset any woman or to do the wrong thing. Hopefully, this worry will disappear too.
  8. Hi, guys. I'm a 23 year-old man with Asperger's Syndrome, and one of the two themes of my pure-'O' OCD over the last two years has been a fear of doing something sexist - this is a manifestation of the moral scrupulosity element of OCD. For the first time ever last summer, I sent a flirty/provocative text to a woman via the 'Ask' feature on Tumblr, while non-anonymous. The message was an abbreviation followed by a question mark. I remember the post I found her through specifically saying that she was open to receiving these types of messages, yet my brain is trying to convince me that this is false, and obviously because it's been so long now, I can't remember what her blog is called and have felt a compulsive need to find her, but can't. I want to die, because I don't want to live with the shame and guilt associated with having potentially sexually harassed somebody, but I'm so very certain that she was soliciting these messages, as well as answering similar messages from men on her blog and being receptive to them. This is what my recollection was last September when I first reflected on it. I wasn't trying to be strange at all, I was trying to be more confident than I had usually been in this circumstance. Please, help me.
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