I’ve had thoughts of kissing my same sex friends. It is very distressing to me as a guy. I used to always know myself as straight. Now I have never ending anxiety about being gay. These thoughts developed recently in my year long struggle with HOCD (if I even have it)
Did yall experience this and how did you recover if you did?
I feel like I’ve lost all attraction to women. I’ve stopped porn and it feels like it’s gotten worse. Now it feels like I actually might be attracted to guys and it’s scaring the shit out of me. I don’t know what thoughts are produced by OCD and what is produced by my own head. I am having trouble using EMR because of that.
Have any of yall experienced this before? If you have experienced this and recovered, what did you do to get past this?
I am a 21M and I have been struggling with the anxiety aspect of HOCD for the past 3 months. Frankly probably longer, but I just didn't notice it. I have no idea what to do and there are so many factors that affect my thoughts. I am just going to type them out. This is going to be a little all over the place but Ill try to organize it.
When it started
The first thought I remember is that I was driving in a car with one of my roommates and I was thinking in that moment that I liked spending time with him. It felt feminine for some reason, almost romantic. I had never felt it before. I didn't want to have sex with him, I didn't want to kiss him, but that thought scared me. Over the course of the next couple of months there were other events. These girls that I knew showed me the first 20 minutes of heated rivalry and I was extremely uncomfortable. But at that point i was worried that I was uncomfortable because of the fact that it was gay or because i am secretly gay. Then a more recent thing is I was hanging out celebrating a friends birthday at a bar. I was drunk and me and a different roommate tried to get these two girls (who are our friends) to kiss. So they said if we did then they would. So we kissed eachother on the cheek. It still bothers me, and I think about how much I care about him. I have thought about kissing him but I don't know if it is intrusive thougths or what. I now struggle daily with thoughts from the moment I wake up to when I go to sleep.
Opinions of people I am close to
My mom doesn't think I am gay at all, and she has told me that she will be totally accepting of me even if I am. I haven't told my dad about this, and he and I don't get along very well. But I feel that If i was gay he would also be accepting. My therapist of almost 10 years says I am not gay. She says she can see signs from a very early age. She is also very accepting of LGBTQ+ and she goes to political rallies all the time in support of it. I recognize this is a compulsion, but again, I just want to know.
I've had about 4 crushs on girls since high school (going into senior year of college now). Only one of the crushes was in college. I didn't want the crush so I told her and the crush went away, only for her to tell me a week later that she liked me. In highschool, I was pretty much an incel in mindset. I wanted girls to like me and I wanted to look better. The girls that I had crushes on didn't like me and that made me upset. The idea of me not being good enough has been very promenent in my life and will show up in other areas. I had a bunch of very not fun sexual experiences with women too. All of which I had trouble getting it up and the last one I finished too quickly. All of these were with girls I was not in a relationship with. Speaking of, I've never been in a relationship. Then everytime a girl was interested in me, I would start talking to them but would eventually get an ick (even saying that makes me worry i am gay). Now I am talking to a girl who is alright. I tried to face my fear of sex by taking a viagra before and it kind of worked. I was able to have sex the day after taking a little bite of it, but I definitly didn't have raging boner. So because I wasn't hard enough it worries me.
I've had depression for probably about 8 years with it varrying in intensity here and there. As of late I feel like it has been bad. I don't eat more than a meal a day if that. I am on an antidepressant and was just perscribed a mood stabalizer as well by my psychiatrist.
All my attraction to women feels like its gone, I have no desire to masturbate, and frankly I am slightly scared to out of what I might find.
I have had low self-esteem for a long time now, and right now I feel as though my masculinity is low. Most guys that I know like to make fun of each other a lot, but I always seem to get hurt by this stuff and always have. I wish I didn't. My dad told me "you are not a fighter and thats okay", which hurt me because thats what a man is supposed to be in his eyes. I work out and can't lift the weights I want to lift, I cant run the speed and distance I want to run. I don't know what I want to do in school and I am starting to get worse at completeting class work and studying, It feels like my life is kind of falling apart.
I am too tired to type anymore. I just needed to vent a little bit about my issues. I am sorry.
I just want to know who i am. I don't want to be gay. I don't want to be homophobic. I Just wish I could feel better, and be straight like I think i used to be. But I dont know anymore. It feels like my memories are being rewritten and that I was gay the whole time.
Hi. Im a 21 year old male. I think I recently developed HOCD around 6 months ago. I apologize in advance, but it’s going to be long and I don’t know if all the information will make sense.
Base info: I have been suffering from depression for years and anxiety became diagnosed more recently. Have been on antidepressants for a while and I switched to a new one somewhat recently (within the last year.)
But it really picked up around 2 months ago. Right now I feel somewhat numb, but I’m sure this will change. So for now I want to get this out without thoughts being emotionally charged. As long as I could remember, I’ve been going after girls. From elementary school where I didn’t know why I was doing it, to middle school, and in high school I believe I wanted girls too. That’s where I had some problems start. I had a crush on probably 4 girls throughout my life and 3 were in high school. All 3 of them didn’t want me. I started becoming extremely insecure about my physical looks. I also used porn pretty frequently. Probably once a day on average. I believe to straight porn and to the girl aspect of it. Then I started worrying about the size of my dick, then how long I could last in bed, then if I could even get it up. It really ate me up, and I was terrified to get into a relationship. But I wouldn’t even get there because before I could get into a relationship, I would always find some “ick” about a girl (makes me feel gay even using that word). The two that I remember was one being not intelligent enough and another girl had hair on her neck. It wasn’t until 6 months ago that I had a thought around one of my roommates. It was “I like being around this guy”. For some reason it felt really feminine. I thought at that second that I wanted to be around him more. The thought “am I gay” began to pop up more. My libido felt low, but I was still using porn a lot. I wouldn’t get horny to anything. Except for porn. One thing that made me insecure was hearing my roommate was always horny and had 15 bodies.
Now to the HOCD stuff. It started picking up in intensity around 3 months ago. I began asking my therapist of 8 years and my mom if they thought I was gay. They would tell me I’m not. I began asking more and more because it began worrying me more and more. Until one day I had almost a panic attack. I was asked what if I am gay, and my heart started pounding and it was really hard to breathe. I wanted to pass out and die. It scared the fuck out of me. Since then I’ve been talking to CHATgpt all the time. I feed it all the information from my past and the present. I feel like I am unable to type everything out. I began to question everything from my past. Every friendship with a guy, the times I used porn, when I thought guys looked attractive. All this stuff. And I still worry. Then I question everything. For example. I had sex with a girl a month ago. I started to have more intrusive thoughts that I didn’t use to have. I thought “what if we kissed” or “what if we held hands”, I even tried to imagine what sex would be like with them (my close guy friends). I had to use Viagra because of how nervous I was, but I still did it. I don’t really know if it felt good or not I feel like I can’t remember. And just 2 nights ago I masturbated while FaceTiming the same girl and was eventually able to cum. But I got an erection, why am I not convinced. Why do I have this doubt. Everything seems contradictory, I’m worried that HOCD is just here to help me find a reason for it to not be denial because if it was denial then it would be true. What if the info I am giving isn’t enough or entirely true and I am just typing this to get reassurance. The thoughts never stop, the what ifs don’t stop, and the contradictions don’t stop.
Right now I am not getting hard to women like I used to. I’m don’t feel attracted to women and I get anxious when seeing attractive men.
Not sure what to do, not even sure why I typed it. I just feel numb and lost. I don’t feel like a man (not in the I want to change genders, but in the I don’t feel masculine enough)
Let me know your thoughts if you have the time.