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Loss of attraction due to OCD ?


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Hello everyone.

At the beginning of the year, my OCD was getting better (I'm a sufferer for two years, never diagnosed, sometimes afraid it's not OCD). Sexual attraction returned, intrusive thoughts became a little rarer, in short, my situation improved. I understood that I was not and would never be attracted to men (except because of the false attractions due to OCD which seemed to be attractions)From one day to the next, a feeling / an impression invades me. The feeling of not finding girls attractive anymore. So I started looking at pictures of girls every day. And obviously, the more I tested myself, the less attractive I found them. The anxiety being always there, I continue. Again and again. I was afraid it never would have been OCD or it wouldn't be anymore, but you don't lose your attraction overnight, right? It's been like this for almost six months now. These last few days my attraction for girls has returned very slightly, but it's gone again. I have almost no intrusive thoughts at all. Moreover, intrusive thoughts... It is becoming increasingly difficult for me to know if some of my intrusive thoughts are. They look so natural. I'm still afraid of them.

Anxiety has always been there for several months, every day.

I'm afraid it's an OCD sequel, that my physical attraction that I've always felt for women never comes back, or never fully.

Will my attraction return entirely? Should I consider this feeling of loss of physical attraction as an intrusive thought? How do I get it back? 

I've been scared for six months, almost every day. Two or three days ago my attraction returned very slightly, the anxiety was calmed, but it starts again. I spend some evenings crying about my attraction. Fearing that it will never be there again, never the way she was before. I've been thinking about everything since the beginning of OCD, even wondering if I have it. It's pretty obvious at the beginning, but from the period of loss of attraction, it's more blurry, more frightening.  
I'm afraid I'll never get out, afraid my physical attraction to women will never come back, afraid it'll be an OCD sequel. Please, help me. Please. 

*What I mean by loss of physical attraction: 

Feeling that I no longer find women beautiful, I find flaws where there were none, I doubt my attractions, I sometimes have the impression of forcing them. It's as if the feelings I had for women had become those I have for men (non-existent). Some women I found very attractive no longer seem so. I'm afraid.

I want to apologize for my English, it's not my first language. I hope I didn't make too many mistakes.

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I forgot to mention that I have a kind of blockage to imagine girls since I have this loss of attraction. I feel like all the progress I've made since I got OCD has evaporated and I've returned to the starting point. I think about it and chew it up very often during the day. This fear of never finding women beautiful again is horrible. I wonder if it's still OCD. I've had so many different fears (fear of becoming gay in the future, of being in denial, of being in denial, of realizing that I have always been gay and so many other fears...) from the beginning, but this is the worst.

 

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Hi 7zurg.

Firstly don't apologise for your English as it's perfectly fine!

Secondly, it sounds like textbook OCD to me. I have almost exactly the same problem as you except for me it's men not women. I also worry about my levels of attraction for my partner as well and this often has a negative effect on our relationship, even though I love him dearly.

I've been working really hard lately at identifying any compulsions I'm doing and trying to stop them. I've stopped doing pretty much all of them except for ruminating, as that is the hardest one to stop doing as I often don't realise I'm actually doing it.

Do you have a therapist at the moment or are you taking any medication?

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Hi 7zurg, sorry to hear about your problems.

I think it is very normal to not be as interested in other things, like girls, when you are dealing with anxiety.  When people have bigger problems the brain will prioritize those over smaller ones.  For example if you have no food and no water for many days you would probably not worry about your favorite TV show.  I think the best thing you can do is focus on recovering from your OCD.  Then you will be more ready to solve any other problems.  Good luck!

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Hi, thanks for your support. 

I think my biggest problem is not the lack of interest, it's the lack of attraction to what I've always loved, appreciated. Not being sure it's OCD doesn't help either.
 

As time goes by, I lose my "sense of attraction" more and more. I am increasingly unable to remember what attracted me to women before OCD. I'm afraid to expect something that won't come back, most of the time I feel depressed, anxious, when I'm none of that, I just feel sad and empty. I wonder if I've really been attracted to girls. I have been in love, rejected by girls, felt sad because of it (besides, the pain I get from OCD is the same as when I was in love and I was rejected, except that this time it doesn't last a few weeks, it has lasted for several years). As time goes by, I start doubting again. At the beginning of the year everything had become very simple, it had to be OCD, the compulsions stopped little by little... Since I lost my attraction little by little, everything is back to the way it was before January. I'm afraid it's never the same as it was before OCD.
If I am logical, knowing that I have always noticed girls, never men, that I have fallen exclusively in love with girls, that I have fantasized about them, that I have dreamed of being in a relationship with them, that I was looking for them, that before OCD I never noticed a man's physique, I must be straight. Except a straight man, who would often cry if he wasn't attracted to women anymore? Who would feel so bad about that?
All that's happening is like someone ripped out a part of me. When I first started having OCD, I wondered how I knew I was attracted to girls, and for a very long time, I only had logic. Now I realize that it was just so natural that I didn't notice it in a way. I mean... I was seeing a pretty girl, I thought "she's beautiful", and something so natural was going on that I didn't put words on it, it was there, it was normal, a little like breathing. Now there's nothing left. 
I think that if the OCD has been able to "add" attraction, it must be able to remove it, but it's hard to think like that when you don't feel like you used to. Last year, the attraction helped me to get better. It was probably hope and compulsion but I could imagine myself with a girl I liked, feeling a feeling, it made me think that it would eventually work, after all, I was attracted to girls, never to men (confusing attraction and anxiety it happened but I could manage even if I doubted very much). I spent a lot of time doing research, trying to think logically, to understand, even if I was in trouble and very often it really wasn't going to happen (no longer feeling straight, groinals responses, feeling attracted to all men, intrusive thoughts almost constant). It was the attraction to girls that kept me going. 
I am also afraid of not expressing my ideas correctly in English, of translating too literally from French into English, and even if I use a rather powerful dictionary and translator to really be sure, I am afraid of misinterpreting what I feel in English. 
If only my attraction could come back... Something would take over but it would already be so much better. I can handle a lot of things, but the loss of attraction, no longer seeing the girls as before, they that I saw so beautiful, and that I now see as lambdas beings, less attractive, not to say more attractive at all sometimes.... 

I don't know what to do to make it come back, today I mainly felt empty, without anxiety or almost. I almost didn't go to see pictures of girls, but when I went... Still nothing. I was wondering if I found them attractive and... Again, it wasn't like before. A lot more no's, and a different feeling than before OCD.

The most obvious way to feel better would be to cut off any compulsion, I cut about what I can, but the girls' check is... Complicated. I mean, it's like taking a child away from you, telling you that maybe you'll get it back and telling you it'll be at an address. Any parent would go to the address given as much as possible. I feel exactly the same way. Rumination is almost as much but in a different register.

If you have, in addition to this solution other advice, I am a taker. My life is becoming more and more unbearable because of OCD.

 

 

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Here's the thing. Trying to make it come back isn't going to make it come back. That's not how the brain works.

Sit and close your eyes for 60 seconds and try not to picture a pink elephant. Then try again. I'm guessing, it's not gonna work. And the harder you try, the less it's going to work.

All of the checking and all of the testing and all of the ruminating, it's only making things harder.

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At the moment I test myself much less and I don't see any improvement. It scares me.
If I stop, I feel like I'm abandoning women, like I'm doing this, everything is lost. That said, even when I test myself, when I see that girls who attracted me no longer attract me... It's almost the same horrible feeling that gives me the impression/that makes me believe that it will never come back. It's stupid, I know it's OCD (if I really have OCD, which I hope I do). It gives me a false sense of control, it makes it less unpleasant in a way. I can't believe it's just OCD, and if I stop it, it'll get better. It's like I'm abandoning women and I don't want to abandon them. I feel stuck, in a dead end, writing this.

How did people who overcame OCD stop checking the opposite sex ? 

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2 hours ago, 7zurg said:

It gives me a false sense of control, it makes it less unpleasant in a way. I can't believe it's just OCD, and if I stop it, it'll get better. It's like I'm abandoning women and I don't want to abandon them. I feel stuck, in a dead end, writing this.

That all sounds very OCD to me.  You have an anxiety/worry and you keep compulsively responding to it, through checking, through analyzing, spending lots of time worrying about "what ifs".

 

2 hours ago, 7zurg said:

It's like I'm abandoning women and I don't want to abandon them. I feel stuck, in a dead end, writing this.

If you were injured, say a back injury, and because of that you had to take time off from work to recover, you'd probably feel frustrated too.  You'd probably wonder if you'd ever get back to the way you were.  Maybe, maybe not.  Same with your anxieties and whatever you are feeling.  You are frustrated by what its doing to your life, you want to go back to the way things were. However no one can guarantee the future.  But what we can say is that if you don't do something to address the OCD its almost certainly not going to get better, and neither will your other problems.

You've caught yourself in a self-fulfilling loop.  You won't stop feeling anxious until you find yourself attracted to women the same way you were again, but the reason you are probably not feeling much in the way of attraction is the anxiety.  You need to tackle the primary problem first, learning how to deal with the anxiety.

To use your analogy.  If a parent has their child taken away, say for poorly caring for them, in order to get the child back they need to demonstrate they can improve their behavior.  Constantly going to try and see the child is not going to do that, its not going to help them.  Of course its understandable they want to do that.  It is normal to want to check our anxieties.  But it is also not the right thing to do to help yourself.  It is difficult to stop the checking.  However, it is necessary to stop the checking in order to improve.  It may take time, but if you keep checking you are probably making things worse, not better.  You have to choose which path you will take.  One is the path recommended by professionals and fellow OCD sufferers, the path of recovery.  Its a hard and slow path, but its the one that works.  The other path is to continue doing the same things and hope things will just suddenly change.  It is a circular path, always leading back to the same place.  It doesn't help you get better.  Choose the better path.

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I find it harder and harder to believe that it's OCD. I try not to check my attraction to girls, not to ruminate, but it's too complicated. My libido is falling more and more, as for my attraction to girls... Very few are still attractive to me and I have the impression it's decrease more. I try to tell myself that it's OCD, but every time I see a girl, I don't see beauty anymore, I see defects, I don't feel anything anymore. I always found qualities, pretty things in girls. It's horrible not to see anything as before, not to feel anything. When I was in great pain, the only thing that kept me from thinking about death was my attraction to girls. I could have all the intrusive thoughts in the world, be mentally tortured, be afraid to become attracted to men, I still had an attraction for women, and even if nothing was going well, it kept me going. Not having this ability to see beauty in girls anymore, only seeing flaws now is the worst thing that has happened to me.  The more time goes by, the more I think it will never come back. My attraction to girls is becoming like the one I have for men: non-existent. I don't see the point in living if it's to live without my attraction to women, sometimes I hope to fall asleep and not wake up.
 

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My existence is not only based on that, but girls are an important thing to me. It is a whole and attraction is part of that whole. If I don't have any more attraction for girls, everything falls apart. I always wanted to find a girlfriend, wake up next to her, make her happy so I could be happy. You will understand that if my attraction disappears, all this disappears too. And considering how real my loss of attraction looks... I'm in distress

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Hi 7zurg,

Sorry to hear of your struggles.  And do not worry about your English, it is excellent.

I've been suffering from similar things to you, I believe if we continue to do the same checking and rumination we will not make any progress.

Perhaps you would like to read the post I made and the replies I got to help you also:

 

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On 08/10/2018 at 13:24, 7zurg said:

I think it's a translation problem (I'm not a native-english speaker). By "everything", I mean the entirety of the whole. 

I don't think its a translation issue.  The concern Polar Bear mentioned (and I agree) is that it seems you are saying that the only thing that matters in your life is attraction to women.  Is there no other thing in the world that you enjoy?  Hobbies? Activities? Books? Food?

I understand that it would be unfortunate and frustrating to lose the ability to enjoy something like they used to.  If one were to become blind after a lifetime of sight they would understandably be upset, but that happens and people adjust and continue to live fulfilling and rewarding lives.  If, for whatever reason, you really do lose the ability to be attracted to women, you can adjust, you can still lead a very fulfilling life.

But I think the odds are that your lack of obvious attraction right now is a factor of your anxiety and your intense focus on whether or not you can be attracted to women.  You need to tackle the OCD, you need to deal with the real cause of the anxiety and THEN if there is still a lack of attraction consider that.  Its not unusual for a person under stress to lose the ability to enjoy other things as much, your mind prioritizes.  Focus on taking care of yourself and learning how to respond to OCD probably first.  Everything else will follow.

 

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5 hours ago, dksea said:

I don't think its a translation issue.  The concern Polar Bear mentioned (and I agree) is that it seems you are saying that the only thing that matters in your life is attraction to women.  Is there no other thing in the world that you enjoy?  Hobbies? Activities? Books? Food?

 

I just realized that I forgot some words in the post about the whole. Of course I have hobbies and many other things, but they are less important to me than girls.

5 hours ago, dksea said:

 If, for whatever reason, you really do lose the ability to be attracted to women, you can adjust, you can still lead a very fulfilling life.

I'd rather kill myself, to be honest. 

5 hours ago, dksea said:

But I think the odds are that your lack of obvious attraction right now is a factor of your anxiety and your intense focus on whether or not you can be attracted to women.  You need to tackle the OCD, you need to deal with the real cause of the anxiety and THEN if there is still a lack of attraction consider that.  Its not unusual for a person under stress to lose the ability to enjoy other things as much, your mind prioritizes.  Focus on taking care of yourself and learning how to respond to OCD probably first.  Everything else will follow.

I hope the attraction will return. Last night, I have the impression that the attraction had slightly returned. She left again, but I think if it varies, it's because it's OCD.  
 

What kills me the most I think is the confusion between the meaning of attraction in English and French. In English you make a difference between physical/esthetic attraction and sexual attraction. What we do not do in French. I've read so much about loss of attraction without knowing if people were talking about aesthetic attraction or not. I think that if I knew it had happened to others, it would help me to have this little impulse, to say to myself "it's okay, you're not the only one, it's HOCD, stop the compulsions, the attraction will return".

Thank you all for your answers.

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