I have been undergoing therapy for two years now. Initially therapy was really helping my feelings of depression, but this year as I have gotten more to the core of my issues I have felt an incredible amount of pain and anxiety and to be honest I feel terrible.

The anxiety was triggered by me making efforts to start dating. I am a woman in my mid twenties and I have never had a relationship and have always felt confused about the social culture around me that was all around hook ups and one night stands. I didn’t understand it so didn’t engage in it as I never felt desire to. Looking back I was too depressed and lacking in confidence to explore my sexuality. As well my family come from an Immigrant culture whereby sex is very taboo especially in relation to women and so I have always felt a little out of place with how the West views sexuality and truth be told until 19 I thought I would be a virgin until marriage. However I still maintain that hook ups aren’t for me and I need a certain amount of trust/ emotional intimacy before I can have sex with a person.

My desire to date came about because I fell in love with a very good friend, lets call him JJ. The thing is JJ had a girlfriend once I realised I had a lot of tender feelings for him that were beneath the surface at my constant irritation of him (we had a rocky friendship). After we graduated from university I told him I didn’t want to be friends anymore and he pleaded we remain friends. I eventually agreed to see him and we made amends, but then I started realising that I felt intense love for him. I eventually told him my feelings after a year of struggling with them, and he said he didn’t feel that way about me, this is despite his and I flirting with one another for a while. He said he was so surprised that I felt that way for him, and I am not convinced because to me it was so obvious and so mutual, our little flirtations with each other were even spotted by a mutual friend of ours!

I stopped talking to JJ after telling him my feelings and he understood telling me to take all the time I needed and that he loved me but these feelings were only platonic. That he doesn’t find me unattractive or deny that he have chemistry but that it is strictly platonic. The thing is the first thing he said when I admitted my feelings for him, he asked me who else knew about these feelings. Even my counsellor at the time found it strange that he say that as a first response. I was confused because he seemed so protective of me and I felt so seen and loved by him. I had been vulnerable with him in a way that I never had been with any man and I didn’t understand why he seemed so loving with me if he didn’t feel that way.. I realised that I had cravings of wanting to be closer to him and wanting to see him more and more. It was like something just switched.  

Looking back there had been inklings of attraction for JJ that I supressed. One most obvious example was  one night during college we were in his room and ( I might have been on MDMA,I cant remember) and JJ consoled me as I was crying about my house-mates and hugged me. I felt a flutter sensation in my stomach, feelings of love as he was consoling me. I just pushed those feelings aside and thought nothing of them until months later when I realised that I had feelings for him.

After the JJ incident I realised that I wasn’t dead inside and actually did need/ want to feel attraction/ love. I had always managed to maintain friendships in my life but just seem to fail when it comes to relationships so I guess I give up before they even start. I realised after JJ that I had a habit of being drawn to unavailable men and that I didn’t want to keep doing that because it’s not fair to the women who are with these men and also to myself.

So I started dating and it’s been a rollercoaster. I have a lot of trust issues with men and hard time allowing them to get close to me and this affects my desire to have sex with these men. As well, I have only had oral sex with a few of the men I have dated and though I enjoyed the experiences at the time I would feel this overwhelming experiences of guilt and shame and convince myself that I caught an STD. This started a few months of increasing health anxiety, which originated in fears about STDs and then gradually progressed to all kinds of fears such as cancers etc. My counsellor at the time suggested I was looking for outside reassurance to tell me that I’m okay and yeah I guess that’s what it was. But as well I think sex in general triggers a lot of overwhelming anxiety for me.

This health anxiety has now been replaced by my anxieties about my sexuality. You see, when I speak to my counsellor I get the feeling that she thinks that I am gay. That all my issues with men are because I am gay. And typing that out seems so funny to me because to be honest she might not be thinking that. However she did ask me a question which sparked all this anxiety about my sexuality. She asked me what I felt the first time I kissed the guy who I had my first kiss with at 19. I never thought about how I felt when kissing men it’s just something I did. And then I realised I didn’t feel anything with my first kiss, really. I felt a little uncomfortable and awkward, but also curious. But that was it. I then went on to google and searched what people felt when they kissed and I saw all these things about fireworks and sparks and I looked back on all  the guys I had kissed and didn’t remember fireworks or sparks. And it made me question, what if I thought I had a crush on my first kiss but I actually didn’t have any feelings for him and that made me panic. I thought about all the kisses I have had, and there were a few that made me feel good and one kiss where there was this sensation of me and him being perfectly in sync for a minute, almost like the physical went away for a moment and our kiss fit, but I have never felt overcome with desire from kissing. And then I thought oh God maybe there is something wrong with me.

A few counselling sessions after my therapist asked me where all this shame about being sexual came from and I told her that I had a crush on a girl around 9-10 ( I don’t really remember the age that well but about that age) and that might have something to do with it. But I also told her that I wasn’t sure whether the crush was a romantic crush or whether it was a identity crush as the girl resembled a lot of aspects of my mother (Long red hair and long earings). And that I went to an all girls secondary school and I never had any feelings for any of the girls there and only had crushes to men during my teenage years. There were no sexual feelings for this girl only I guess feelings of awe. My most memorable time of feeling sexual attraction was when I was 17 when I got the opportunity to go to a mixed college and I met this boy in my media class. I remember feeling intense sexual attraction to him and really giddy and overwhelmed with excitement and suddenly becoming really flirtatious but that then became really anxiety inducing for me so I pushed him away despite all these overwhelming feelings for him because I was convinced he would reject me. I think that was my first experience of falling in love and though pleasant at first it became so scary to me. I had crushes on boys during my teen years and so I kind of forgot about the crush on the girl until I brought it up in counselling. As well what I had failed to tell my counsellor and what I realise now is that I also had a sex dream with a women when I was 13 and she was the lady from desperate housewives, a show about mothers and housewives and she had red hair. I woke up so confused because I didn’t fancy her at all and if I was going to choose a member of the cast I wouldn’t choose her. Nonetheless I just forgot about these feelings. I also later on realised that when I was 5 I was caught by my mother kissing two children and she beat me heavily for this. I think this is where the real shame over my sexuality comes from rather than the crush on that girl and I later told my therapist about this.

I could write so much more but I wont because it will be too long and I am conscious of this post getting longer. Basically I have been crying everyday nearly because I do not know who I am, what my sexuality is. I feel this overwhelming pressure to define it and it doesn’t help that I feel so confused. I have never felt sexual attraction to women but have only felt sexual and physical attraction to men in real life but these occasions are rare. Looking back this sexual attraction has come after some established emotional trust has been formed. However in my dreams I have had sexual fantasies of women, and men and this is confusing me. As well with the men, the fantasies are more sensual/ loving as well as erotic. The fantasies with women seem to represent me and my experiencing pleasure without the pressures of a connection, but I don’t know, maybe I am just in denial? When I masturbate it is easier for me to feel aroused when thinking of another women than a man, but I will feel no attraction to the woman in real life? I feel so sad because with men I am dating I will feel attraction and then the attraction goes away in an instant and it confuses me. For example, I will kiss a guy in a bar surrounded with people and feel desire and attraction but once we are alone the desire is gone. This confuses me because I feel like it is simply me being afraid of intimacy but I now am starting to panic and think what if I am just simply not attracted to men, despite what all my earliest feelings for men have been.

• This topic was modified 6 years ago by afeels.