HOCD or Denial?

[snowbear]

6 minutes ago, Eric Dave said:

I think I must have been born gay and never consciously realised.

If that was true why not embrace 'being gay' and stop being anxious about it?

[Eric Dave]

1 minute ago, snowbear said:

If that was true why not embrace 'being gay' and stop being anxious about it?

What are you implying?

[snowbear]

I'm not implying anything. I'm saying if you're so convinced you're gay then wouldn't you want to embrace that instead of being anxious about it? The fact you're anxious about it should be all the proof you need that you're not gay.

[Tamagochi]

You keep making compulsions hardly and the more compulsions you make the deeper you go into your obsession =the more you kill your normal sex drive for women and the more groinal responses you get from men.

Do you really think that a gay man would get any kind of arousal if he sees someone in ICU hospital bed?. I do not think so. This is obviously your obsessed brain finding triggers to explain himself in his functioning (malfunctioning in OCD mode). This example you gave shows perfectly how much fake and psychosomatic are groinal responses.

Do you really think that if you do not get “hard” in the peace of your privacy with gay porn or gay imagined scenarios to test yourself (compulsion) you could be gay?. 

Do you really think that a gay man who lives in western society and XXI century is going to stand in denial and debating himself from year 2007 (for 14 years!!!) and still he is doubting his true sexual orientation, feeling anxious and depressed about it whenever he feels/thinks that He could be gay?.

Such a long time in such torture only shows how much egodistonic is for you homosexuality. 
 

Having said all this… this will only reassure you for short time, your doubts will come back. You know how it works after 14 years, right?. 
 

IDENTIFY ALL YOUR COMPULSIONS AND STOP THEM because they will never help you to find yourself but they will only confuse you more and put you deeper into the OCD hole.

KISS = Keep it simply stupid. Just do whatever makes you feel well and leave behind what does not make you feel well. 
In other words, do your life and ignore all about your obsession to make it weaker and weaker and weaker…until it is gone. The day will be gone, you will not even noticed is gone because you will be occupied in your head with other issues, probably other obsessions…hopefully less disturbing ones.

In health.

[Eric Dave]

Ok I feel you should know this information because I feel like this is not OCD.

I have a girlfriend.  When I used to kiss girls or fool around it used to excite me and I would get aroused.  same with seeing boobs on tv  or porn etc..

 

Now its totally different.  When I kiss girls i feel nothing.  Fooling around is no longer exciting and barely arousing.  Porn does nothing.

I am getting groinal arousals to men constantly and having almost nightly dreams involving some sort of gay theme.

This morning just before I woke up I was seeing two gay guys in my dream and I was kind of looking at them and then they were naked and one of them had an erection and then this caused me to get aroused and got a semi and woke up panicked.

I think I have prejudice from my upbringing maybe and I just cant accept who I am. 

 

 

[Tamagochi]

I think that all you have now is consequence of your strong obsession. 
How come that your sexual orientation has changed if you were previously straight according to your statement here?. Answer: your sexual orientation did not change but your OCD has finally convinced you, at least temporarily.
 

“ think I have prejudice from my upbringing maybe and I just cant accept who I am. ” I do not think so but if you are sure…do not waste more your time here and jump into the gay world… and do not feel scared or anxious anymore after your gay dreams, that anxiety makes absolutely no sense if you have changed your sexual orientation.

[Eric Dave]

Just now, Tamagochi said:

I think that all you have now is consequence of your strong obsession. 
How come that your sexual orientation has changed if you were previously straight according to your statement here?. Answer: your sexual orientation did not change but your OCD has finally convinced you, at least temporarily.
 

“ think I have prejudice from my upbringing maybe and I just cant accept who I am. ” I do not think so but if you are sure…do not waste more your time here and jump into the gay world… and do not feel scared or anxious anymore after your gay dreams, that anxiety makes absolutely no sense if you have changed your sexual orientation.

I have two theories.  I was gay to begin with but due to societal norms and heteronormative society expected to be straight growing up and copied and mimicked my mates behaviours as my own.  That I was full of hormones and girls could turn me on and so I assumed I was straight.  I was a bit naive and led a sheltered teenage life so maybe never even explored the possibility of being gay and so it went undiscovered.  I then wonder if my hormone levels leveled off as aI got older and no longer could get turned on by anythign and maybe my arousal to women disappeared as a result and now only my true orientation can cause arousal/groinals.

 

I grew up in a time when being gay was bad and would result in bullying in school.  Maybe I subconsciously knew to never think about gay things in case I found out I liked it.

 

My 2nd theory is my erectile dysfunction trained my mind to associate women with not getting hard and so my mind needed new stimulation to kick it into life. 

 

I just feel stuck.  I dont want to be gay yet dont believe I am straight.

 

 

[Tamagochi]

Then according to your 1st theory most or many men around 30-45 should change their sexual orientation due to testosterone decline levels. 

But statistics and psychology says that sexual orientation in defined before birth and developed from teenagers. There are almost no cases of people who changed sexual orientation in midlife and if it happens is something extraordinary rare specially in men.
There are some cases documented of sexual orientation change in women but still extraordinary rare. Actually I read somewhere that cases of sexual orientation change was restricted to people who are in the middle of the sexual orientation spectrum (which means people who had several real sexual and emotional love experiences before in their lives with same sex, in other words people who are a bit bisexual before).

”My 2nd theory is my erectile dysfunction trained my mind to associate women with not getting hard and so my mind needed new stimulation to kick it into life. ” Another good exercise of rumination. It is obvious that you are only looking for “red” colour but there are many other colours that you are intentionally disregarding. In other words, you only look for the possibility that bring you to catastrophe or bad being, but there are many other possibilities and scenarios that would put your mind in peace…but you are not interested in your well being, you need drama.

My theory is that your erectile dysfunction is another symptom of your OCD. It is well documented and well known by urologists: first cause of erectile dysfunction between young and healthy population. It is called psychogenic erectile dysfunction.

I would do an effort to stop your rumination: It is a compulsion, it will not fix your doubts, it only will give you more and more supposed theories and will only put you deeper into your obsession.

[Eric Dave]

Had another night of gay dreams and got aroused by them.

 

There is no way this can be ocd.    I get groinal arousals during the day to men and nothing to women.  Not even a tingle.

Kill me.

[snowbear]

No need for us to kill you, Dave. You're managing that all  by yourself.

This is OCD. But you refuse to believe that. Why?

OK then, so you're gay. So what? Why is that so bad in your eyes? If you insist on believing it then embrace it and be happy to be gay.   Can't do that?   No, of course you can't because you're not gay. You have OCD.

Time to get off the fence you've been straddling all this time. Which do you want to believe? That you're gay (and happy about it) or that you have OCD and need to recognise how your OCD works, how it makes you think and feel and learn what to do to get better from it.

[Eric Dave]

3 hours ago, snowbear said:

No need for us to kill you, Dave. You're managing that all  by yourself.

This is OCD. But you refuse to believe that. Why?

OK then, so you're gay. So what? Why is that so bad in your eyes? If you insist on believing it then embrace it and be happy to be gay.   Can't do that?   No, of course you can't because you're not gay. You have OCD.

Time to get off the fence you've been straddling all this time. Which do you want to believe? That you're gay (and happy about it) or that you have OCD and need to recognise how your OCD works, how it makes you think and feel and learn what to do to get better from it.

I just dont see it as ocd now.  The dreams, groinal arousals to men and no longer reacting to women for years now.

I read about ego dystonic gays or people struggling to accept who they are.  I dont want to do gay things but I dont think that doesnt make me gay. 

I was also born with the gay finger ratio which I cant shake the belief this proves I was born gay.

[snowbear]

Just now, Eric Dave said:

I was also born with the gay finger ratio which I cant shake the belief this proves I was born gay.

Somebody get me a voodoo doll so I can stick pins in you and make you see sense. There's a word for that kind of nonsense - 'codswallop'.

[discuccsant]

I think the whole concept of “gay” and “straight” is completely nonsense anyway, the way it is understood. Instead, you should maybe just accept, that you can also find men sometimes to be attractive. At least with your body. It doesn't matter really or says anything about you, nor does it mean, that you have “go through” with, just because your body reacted to something. Everything it tells you, is that you basically can do “gay” things, even if you don't like to do these things. You can, it doesn't mean you're supposed to, now. If you would like to have sexual relationship with women, you can do so, even if you identify as heterosexual woman. Just because your body won't say no, it doesn't mean you, with your mind, have to do it now. Don't take your physical reaction as some kind of proof for what you prefer. It's seriously the modern approach to give everything thing a category or some kind of pattern, when there in fact is not really anything regarding our physical sexuality.

In the end of the day, it really doesn't matter what your body might react to, because all that matters, is what you want: And it's very clear, that you don't want to be gay, nor live the gay lifestyle. So what so hard saying about all of this: Who cares?! Everybody can be gay, if they want to be gay. It doesn't matter! I don't want to be gay. I like women. Period.

If there is anything we can say for sure, then that human being have “preferences”. That's what people ACTUALLY mean by saying, that they are “straight” or “gay”. It doesn't mean their body is immune to everything else. It just means, that they like this or that and doesn't like this or that.

Every human being is able to masturbate. Does this mean now that we are attracted towards ourselves, just because WE CAN get erections by some movements with our very own hands or thighs, whatever? No, it just means, that we can be physically aroused by some random movements with our very own body. Literally everything can be used for sexual pleasure. People use whatever they wanna use for masturbation. Don't you get this?

It's the same as eating something you hate: You could eat it anyway and your stomach would be satisfied with it, but it doesn't mean you want to eat it at the end of the day. The same goes with your sexuality. You could be aroused by men, but this doesn't automatically mean, that you want to have sex with them. 

You just have a big misconception here. Not only that, but you think your body represents your preference. And this is simply wrong. This is scientifically established, by the way. There is no “gay” or “straight” gen. There is just socialization and with that preference. The same goes with food. What you like the most isn't determined by some random DNA structure, it's determined by your socialization. That's why former Jewish and former Muslim friends of mine still throw up, whenever they smell pork. It's just because they learned it that way.  

Edited January 17, 2022 by discuccsant

[Caramoole]

1 hour ago, snowbear said:

Somebody get me a voodoo doll so I can stick pins in you and make you see sense. There's a word for that kind of nonsense - 'codswallop'.

Can I have one too?

 

2 hours ago, Eric Dave said:

I was also born with the gay finger ratio which I cant shake the belief this proves I was born gay.

I have this as well but the opposite to you, that mine denotes I have more masculine attributes.  So, am I gay and in denial Dave? What should I be doing?

[discuccsant]

Gay finger ratio?

Sounds like silly “tests” we did to each other at school, to make fun of them if they didn't “passed” the test. Ahh, good old times

[Tamagochi]

The gay finger ratio is nothing else that an old theory that has little scientific support. 

In my opinion discuccsant has some valid points but the situation goes further than this. The supposed arousals are not real arousals but híper attention on the genital when exposed to the gay thoughts. Once Eric Dave reports here wet dreams with gay things… then I will believe is arousal but some feelings and not even full erections?, this is not real arousal.

[discuccsant]

I never heard of stuff like that. Guess I learned a new way how to troll my friends the next time I meet them. Anyway.

Yeah, I do agree with that. I'm pretty sure the term “groinal response” does hold some truth, as this correctly implicates, that not every single form of feeling “down there” is because of some kind of sexual arousal. I never questioned that. I just wanted to weaken it a layer above, if you know what I mean, so that he doesn't even need to question the stuff “down there” at all.  Basically making it much easier for him to see how sexuality really works, instead of letting him this false perception continue ruining his life.

Take me: I, discuccsant, would be 100% able to have sex with a potato. And anybody else here could do that as well. Even though we could have sex with a potato – don't ask me how that works, lol – nobody here is in fact a potatosexual. That's my point here. Our physical reactions are completely unrelated to our actual sexual preferences or sexual desires. Hell, I'm pretty sure I saw an amazing woman here and then but didn't even feel an “inch of movement” down there. Like dead meat. But who cares about my body here? I'm actually glad my body doesn't always reflect my inner mind, whenever I see a really sexy woman. That would be embarrassing. Cringy puberty vibes incoming, haha.

I just hope Eric gets the point here. He really needs to stop using “oh my body this, oh my body that” as reasoning for his fear, as this doesn't say a thing.

Edited January 17, 2022 by discuccsant

[Tamagochi]

Exactly, Discuccsant!. I would not have said it better. I totally agreed.

Unfortunately, I have gone through that hell for several years.
Same symptoms described here, mine went even further and I started to have sensations in the anal area as well, was terrible and really disgusting. What the hell I had to feel in my anal zone when I never in my life did anything with my anal area except feces!. It was just another form of groinal response, another psychosomatic symptom of my deep obsession of those terrible years…

Once I realised that I could not keep ruling my life in misery because of “oh my body this, oh my body that”…then I stopped paying attention to my body and as consequence I started to get away from my obsession. Then I started to find myself, the one I was always before the obsession: I recovered fully my attraction for women and those groinal response faded away and disappeared completely.
It is all about getting away from the obsession and for this the most important is realising exactly of all Discuccsant has written down above to stop paying attention to those stupid feelings that we created ourselves with our obsessed mind.

[Eric Dave]

I get gay dreams though and a couple of times thought I was going to get a wet dream from them and woke up with an erection (well as good an erection as I am physically capable of which is a softish erection).

I used to have have straight dreams until this started in 2007.

I used to be able to get a tingle just looking at a pic of a sexy woman or get aroused by a sex scene on tv.  Now nothing.  Maybe this is normal as I am 40 or is it because I have turned gay?

I get groinal response to men.  Instagram or tv spike me the most. If I see something I usually get a horrible groinal and feel anxious and depressed and feel like my testicles are full and need to get rid of it.

Nothing seems to get me going anymore.  My penis is not sensitive to touch at all. 

Looking at women seems like looking at a brick wall now.

I just dont see how I can be straight experiencing this.

[Tamagochi]

You got some gay dreams or gay nightmares?, because I guess that if you woke up from them anxious and depressed…they can be qualified like gay nightmares more than gay dreams…

You are getting dreams or nightmares because it is your obsession subject now, your brain is focus on this…100% normal to dream with whatever our heads are occupied with, as you perfectly know.

”You thought you were going to get wet from them”. This is what you THOUGHT but reality is that you did not get wet from them but got anxious and depressed. Let’s try to get objective and not subjectively catastrophic.

And you think that all these things are happening to you because at 40 you have turned gay due to your testosterone decline… I did not know that testosterone levels are related with sexual orientation…I think you should write a book about it and get some testosterone exogenous to recover your straightness…

Ok, you are gay… then you are cooler than any bored straight, nowdays in our society and times is even better to be gay than straight!. Go for it and enjoy and be happy!!!!

I am sure that you will never go for it.

Why?, why you do not go for it if there is no moral or legal obstacles anymore for this in our society and times? Why after so long suffering with this you still did not get out of the closet?, what kind of closet do you have that you do not even dare to go out of it even with yourself?

Internal denial or egodystonic sexual orientation ???.

There is not such internal denial, you have would have masturbated millions of times already with all the material one click available on the internet, you would have fallen in love at least with one guy, you would have fantasied with guys in emotional and sexual ways and you would have recognised it to yourself and others with the gay proud.

I would say the reason is egodystonic sexual orientation and exactly because this sexual orientation is so egodystonic for you, exactly because of this you have obsessed about it.

Unfortunately OCDers have the tendency to obsess with whatever is more awful and terrible for them.
 

If you are scared of spiders is because you do not like them and not because you secretly love them. What kind of secret love is this that you are not even aware that you really love them…

 

[Caramoole]

4 hours ago, Eric Dave said:

I used to be able to get a tingle just looking at a pic of a sexy woman or get aroused by a sex scene on tv.  Now nothing.  Maybe this is normal as I am 40 or is it because I have turned gay?

 I'm not surprised!!  The whole issue of sex is such a boiling pot of anxiety & fear for you that it's unlikely you'll experience a happy, spontaneous sex life with anyone in the state you are.  You can't be relaxed and spontaneous because your focus isn't natural, it is one of permanent checking and rumination.

You've (again) got some helpful replies above but sadly, they won't help at all.  They won't even offer much reassurance but they do offer you the opportunity to discuss and ruminate over an obsession that's been going on for many years.

As I've suggested many times, have you sought any proper, professional help yet?  Have you been back to your GP? Because you really need to.  You've not been able to manage the Self-Help route so maybe it's time to think again about working with someone who could help you.

[Eric Dave]

18 minutes ago, Caramoole said:

 I'm not surprised!!  The whole issue of sex is such a boiling pot of anxiety & fear for you that it's unlikely you'll experience a happy, spontaneous sex life with anyone in the state you are.  You can't be relaxed and spontaneous because your focus isn't natural, it is one of permanent checking and rumination.

You've (again) got some helpful replies above but sadly, they won't help at all.  They won't even offer much reassurance but they do offer you the opportunity to discuss and ruminate over an obsession that's been going on for many years.

As I've suggested many times, have you sought any proper, professional help yet?  Have you been back to your GP? Because you really need to.  You've not been able to manage the Self-Help route so maybe it's time to think again about working with someone who could help you.

I haven't no because of what they would tell me.

I have a friend who has the same issue and she is goign to therapy with an ocd specialist and she is doing far worse because of it.

[Caramoole]

You have no idea what a good therapist would tell you.  You more likely have a fear of this, a fear that they'd confirm your worst fears.  This is just fear.

I can't comment on your friend but it may be that she's just finding it difficult, as many do when they have to face obsessions in a way that goes against the way they normally try to deal with them.

I strongly believe you need a professional to help you change your approach.....otherwise you just spend even more years surfing around internet forums in the vain attempt of finding an answer that will suddenly make this stop.  It's 99% certain it won't because your life is an endless circuit of compulsions.  I feel for you and recommend you get help so that you can start to live the rest of your life in a way that brings some peace

 

[Eric Dave]

I have a relatively new girlfriend.  I feel guilty that I am a fraud and should break up with her.  What should I do?  I dont want to be getting married down the line only to break it off dramatically on the eve of the wedding for example or end up coming out like Philip Schofield after years of marriage.

I have to take viagra because of my problem and also just got another groinal to a photo of a guy on facebook and my heart just sank

[Caramoole]

I'm not sure discussing Philip Schofield is helpful to you, out of the billions on the planet you'll always find an example somewhere!  What's clear with him is that he had a very happy marriage & family life for 30 years.  Whether he is gay or whether he was always Bi-sexual and wanted to experience gay relationships openly/publicly, who knows......but despite his high-profile life, it just shows how his coming out barely caused a ripple for more than a week or so.  

What is your aversion to being gay?  The vast majority of people couldn't care less about someone's sexual orientation these days.  Your aversion is because it's abhorrent to you.....but enough on that, we've discussed this many times.

Do the brave and sensible thing and seek professional advice & help, you literally have nothing to lose and everything to gain