r/HOCD

I’m 24M and have been dealing with what I was diagnosed with as hocd for almost 5 years. Before this started around 19, I was completely convinced I was straight. I had crushes on girls, got nervous and excited around attractive women, had sexual thoughts and wet dreams about women, wanted a wife and kids, and never questioned my sexuality. I also remember being attracted to small things like a woman’s expressions, perfume, mannerisms, etc. I had basically never considered that I could be attracted to men.
Then around 19, I suddenly became terrified that I might be gay. I started checking myself constantly and eventually started watching gay porn specifically to see if I would react. Over time, I began experiencing strong physical and emotional reactions toward men, and eventually those reactions started feeling very natural rather than just anxiety. At the same time, my attraction toward women seemed to disappear almost completely. I can talk to women normally, but when I try to see if I’m attracted to them, I often feel nothing or even repulsion. I don’t understand how I went from being so naturally attracted to women to feeling this way.
The hardest part is that I don’t just have groinal responses I feel genuine attraction toward men, including fantasies, emotional feelings and wanting physical closeness. Sometimes I even feel relief when I think “maybe I really am gay,” which then makes me question whether the OCD is even involved anymore. Then the doubt comes back and I start analyzing everything again.
My therapist believes I have OCD and recently told me to stop checking women, stop using porn as a test, stop putting pressure on myself to feel attraction, and let the whole subject breathe for a long time. She also pointed out that I didn’t start watching gay porn because I naturally wanted to explore being gay I started it specifically because I was afraid I might be gay and wanted to check. She thinks I need to stop trying to solve the question.
I’m struggling because I understand the OCD explanation intellectually, but emotionally I keep thinking, “How could OCD make me feel this different for almost 5 years?” I’m not looking for someone to simply tell me I’m straight. I genuinely want to hear from people who experienced a major change in how attraction felt, especially people who had strong attraction to women before hocd and later felt strong attraction toward men. Did anyone else experience this kind of dramatic before and after and eventually understand what was happening?

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I never get an urge to masturbate to men abd only men. The only urges I get are with men on the background but women at the front and to masturbate regardless with the thoughts of women in my head. This just happened: I thought of a same gender friend then I had the thought are you looking at her vagina and I fejt like I wanted to masturbate to it and i felt so pre hocd then anxiety flooded by body. It’s at the time of the thought it’s real, i only know it’s intrusive when I’m anxious. Again this afternoon, I was thinking if an old sane gender work colleague and thought of her vagina (never saw her like this before and not seen her for like 7yrs) then Had the the thoogjt vaginas are sexy then I fejt turned on thinking about gets. My body went clammy and cold but I still continued to feel turned on and didn’t understand why I was panicking. It didn’t feel intrusive or unwanted

Edit: . On the back of this I went to meet a friend. she told me the bathroom had a glass door, she’s just come back from holiday. I they felt really aroused at the time of the thought to her naked as well as the feeling of being with men and this provoked a strong urge to masturbate to men. what was causing the arousal

so for the past few days ive been convinced i like masc women because of a myriad of reasons.

i recently figured out one of my compulsions is trying to make the thought or feeling go away, this then made me kind of realise that i’ve potentially probably been compulsively been suppressing my attraction and desire. which coincides with a lot of people who figured out they were bi later on (w hocd).

i have been spiralling over this one masculine girl on tiktok that’s pretty popular and pretty good looking. i feel like i have to like her because she looks exactly like a guy and looks really good too. everytime i look at her i feel like this ”wave” of “attraction” which i don’t know if it’s attraction or not but still. and i always tried to look for flaws that can either make the feeling go away or justify why i shouldn’t like her.

i feel like i do like her because this attraction feeling feels pretty real and everytime i argue with the thought it feels like i’m convincing myself i don’t like her when i probably do. it feels like i’m suppressing my attraction because i’m scared which i hate. i have this kind of knowing kind of feeling which idk if its ocd or not but it feels like ik i like masc women because its what i would’ve thought or done if i didnt have ocd

and the worst part, my thoughts dont feel intrusive at all. in fact they feel impar with my identity and it seems like what i would probably think. i just feel so desperate and hope this is wrong but that’s probably denial. i hate this so much. i think i’m actually attracted to masc women and i think i actually do find them hot because a lot of them do look hot and they look like men. for a year i just thought this was fake attraction. should’ve known better