Questioning if I'm a lesbian, pansensual with a strong preference for the female gender spectrum (or maybe neither?)

[AutisticQueer]

[my pronouns: they/them, he/him]

(It’s a very long text. I’m Brazilian, so sorry if there are spelling and grammar mistakes)

(CW, TW: sex with men, mention of homophobia, sexual harassment and having sex without wanting to do it)

Okay, I really need help with this because I can't stop questioning myself and I can't come to a conclusion. And I apologize in advance if anything I say might be offensive or an emotional trigger, so if it doesn't do you any good to read about it, please don't read on.

Hi! I’m 22 years old, nonbinary, afab, asexual (strict), aromantic (probably strict too), but I feel sensual attraction (means desire for non-sexual intimate physical contact with someone, such as kissing, caressing, holding hands. Strict asexual and aromantic people may identify as “[insert some orientation like pan, bi, gay, lesbian, etc] oriented aroace” because they feel a non-romantic and non-sexual attraction, like sensual attraction) and I also have sex (in case you don't know and are confused, asexuality is about lack of sexual attraction to other people, it has nothing to do with not enjoying sex or not having libido, although it’s common for asexuals to dislike sex). My current question is whether I am pan(sensual) with a strong preference for the female gender spectrum or lesbian, in relation to sensual attraction. I also wanted to let you know that I already read the masterdoc, and despite identifying myself with several things, I felt certain difficulties with it due to the fact that I'm on the asexual and aromantic spectrum, and even now I feel a certain repulsion for dating.

HISTORY:
To give a better context: I’m an extremely submissive person with a high need to please others by being what they want, expect or need me to be, which makes me someone very vulnerable, manipulable and with a very weakened ego to a level that I don't even know who I am and what I like in many ways, like I'm a puppet (I've been trying to get better at this in therapy, and I've made good strides over the years, although I'm still a pretty submissive person and with a lot of difficulty to impose myself). It's very difficult for me to distinguish what I genuinely like from what I've forced and conditioned myself to tolerate and think I like, because it's extremely easy for me to just ignore and nullify my likes and desires, and accept what others want from me, being at the complete disposal of others, doing things I don't like because I don't even realize I don't like it. It often takes me a long time to realize that something I'm doing actually makes me uncomfortable and I never really wanted it. It's a totally automatic behavior that I have, before I realize it I'm already doing it without noticing that it makes me feel bad or that I simply don't want it for me. It’s very difficult to separate what I like from what others want me to like because my goal has always been, even if unconsciously, to obey, to be exactly the way people want me to be, so that they like me and I be accepted and validated, so I can’t say “no” (saying “no” is one of the hardest things for me, it always takes a lot of effort for me to be able to say it). So all the doubt I've had about my sexuality comes from this, from my great submission and the fact that I bury what I want so deep that I can barely see, “reach” and understand what I really want, what i really like. I have also always had a very strong influence from the traditionally Christian and repressive upbringing I received from my family, which made me think that the option of liking women and/or not liking men didn’t even exist. It wasn't even possible to cogitate it, it wasn't a possibility, I “had” to be straight and being gay was “wrong” and “sick”.

Another information that may be relevant is that I have a lot of daddy issues, and this could explain a probable need for male approval, validation and attention, even if it means accepting to receive this attention in a sexual way... I feel the need for approval in general (I also have a bit of mommy issues) but I feel it's stronger with men.

I've had 4 romantic relationships in my life, all with cis men:

1. The first relationship (2013) was the result of compulsory heterosexuality added to my fanciful desire to date, which I nurtured for a long time because I grew up surrounded by influences that reinforced the idea that dating, getting married and having sex were wonderful things, so my goal was look for it.
   As a kid (6/7 years old), I really hated the stupid jokes people made at school that my childhood best friend and I were a couple, to a degree that I even walked away from him just to get them to stop talking about us (today I think I may have been a little insensitive when I did that because despite everything he was my friend, and I ended up treating our separation with a certain indifference, so strong was my hatred for others to say we were dating. Maybe I felt a little angry at him for treating me in an affectionate way that actually felt a little romantic, even though it wasn't, and “gave reason” for others to talk). Then, at the age of 12, we met again, got back in touch and went back to study at the same school and people started saying those stupid things about us again. However, my mind was changed and now I saw romance as something very desirable. I confused my feelings and came to believe that I really liked him romantically because everyone around us constantly repeated that we liked each other that way, and I started to think that it must be true, after all, “I’m a girl, he’s a boy, and we get along very well. Therefore, there must be no explanation other than romantic love. Everyone around us sees it, so this must be what we feel for each other and we're just shy”, that was the reasoning I followed and only realized years later. Asking him to be my boyfriend was extremely difficult because I’m autistic and have a lot of social anxiety, and I even literally got sick for 1 week after asking and he accepted, so high was my anxiety level with this situation. It was a bad relationship for both me and him because it was a friendship forcing itself to be a romantic relationship, which was spoiling and cooling the friendship itself. I broke up with him, but he actually wanted to break up with me for a long time and was afraid of hurting my feelings. He also eventually found out he was gay, so it was a very frustrating experience for me and an unpleasant experience for him, who was clearly uncomfortable with my attempts to have a more intimate contact, even just to kiss;
2. The second one (2017) was the most toxic I've ever had. I was dying to date and only accepted the first guy who showed up with romantic interest in me, and I “magically” responded to his feelings, even though we didn’t have much in common and I didn't even find him interesting or physically attractive. As I had the goal of dating, and at the time I thought I was a straight girl, just being a cis man interested in me was enough to fulfill my “mission”, the rest didn't matter, now I just needed to do everything to make that relationship work and stay at any cost (and it was my mental health that paid the price because he was terribly possessive, gaslighted me a lot and cheated on me more than once);
3. The third one (2018) was also terrible. Once again I accepted the first guy who showed up with romantic interest in me and I once again “magically” responded to his feelings, even though we didn't have much in common and I didn't even find him interesting or attractive. This time it was even worse because I was completely psychologically destroyed from my breakup that had been very recent, I was even more vulnerable and emotionally broken, and this guy was extremely insistent and disrespectful, he went over my “no’s”, he decided everything about us without my consent (he didn't even ask me to be his girlfriend, he just decided by himself that I was his girlfriend), which pressured and cornered me even more to accept, and I even convinced myself that that relationship was going to be “good” for me and help me recover from the breakup, perhaps as a way of not accepting and admitting to myself that he was actually harassing me, especially sexually. I got a huge disgust from this guy because our personalities were completely incompatible and he was so arrogant and annoying. He was unbearable and pathetic to a degree that even though I was a very submissive and patient person, I ran out my patience with him (it took several months before I realized how unhappy and angry I was, of course, and he constantly put himself in the role of a helpless and inferior victim, which may have made it easier for me to stand up for myself without fear), not least because I had already gone through a past experience of a toxic relationship and was already more familiar with what it was like to go through it and what the red flags were. He had a very high level of sexual need and was very pushy about it, and this was extremely exhausting and uncomfortable for me, as I sometimes found myself having sex with him without really wanting to. I broke up with him, but it was a pretty hard break up because even though I hated him, he built the relationship in a way that made me feel so responsible for his happiness and life that I didn't even realize how much pressure I was feeling, so when I went to break up with him, I broke down in tears for feeling that I was destroying his life, I didn't even foresee that there was the possibility of me crying;
4. The fourth and final relationship (2019) was a curious experience because it was quite the opposite of the toxic relationships I had. Because of two terrifying and traumatic experiences in a row, I wanted to stay away from dating. However, a guy appeared, not pushy at all and not even with romantic intentions initially, but with a desire to simply get to know me better and try to form a friendship (he was a bit lonely). He was very respectful, polite, kind, made me feel very comfortable, as well as having a look and personality that matched my “type” for guys, and that was enough to make me start to “like” him quickly. He did what anyone should do, which was treat me with decency, but since I hadn't received that before, that minimum already made him seem like an amazing and wonderful guy, being a perfect “candidate” to finally fill the “vacancy” in my mission to find someone to date. I had a stereotypical behavior typical of someone who has a crush on someone, like a teen romance, I was kind of “shy”, “silly” and excited thinking about him, stuff like that, it even seemed a little “forced” in a way (I also ended up getting hyperfocused on him, which can easily be mistaken for a crush). Even though we got along well and were good friends to this day, we ended up not working out as a couple either, and looking back I feel like I never really loved him in a romantic way as I thought I did. There were even some moments during the relationship where I felt as if all that feeling of excitement and passion I had for him had just evaporated out of nowhere and for no reason, leaving only indifference towards him, as if I no longer care about him in a romantic way. As soon as I identified this, I soon activated my usual automatic behavior, which was to “bury” this feeling and ignore that it had even happened until everything went back to “normal” and I felt like I like him again, or in this case, maybe deceive and manipulate my own mind making me think I like him, because I “should” like him, everything indicated that, “it didn't make sense” not to like him, let alone “stop” liking him out of nowhere...

Well, in 2018 I discovered I was asexual, and until the end of 2019 I thought I was straight (because of the influence of my Christian upbringing) and since then I've come to understand myself as pan. I also started to think I was in the gray area of aromanticity, and I now believe that I’m a strict aromantic indeed. I’ve had sex in my last 3 romantic relationships, not least because sex was on my list of things I overrated and thought were fantastic and I really wanted to do it to finally experience it. (Remembering that until today I only had sex with men). I guess I can't say that I dislike sex, but I can't say that I'm totally comfortable doing it either. I mean, never in my entire life have I taken sexual initiative, every time I had sex it was on the other person's initiative, I just continued their initiative. My libido is considerably low, but it’s not nonexistent, and I experience sexual pleasure with stimulation in the right places, specifically my private parts (but I'm also pretty picky about how that stimulation should be, and I need to focus heavily on the sensation in order to enjoy it and feel it right, usually by closing my eyes. It's not easy to please my body in a sexual sense). However, I think that my biggest goal when I have sex is really to please the other person, and not so much to obtain sexual pleasure and reach orgasm, because whenever I have sexual contact it is very conscious and with a very determined step-by-step, and never something instinctive. I feel like I need to please and give pleasure to the other person, leaving my pleasure aside, as if it weren't important. If the person doesn't touch and stimulate me in the erogenous zones, I'll probably never feel that strong sexual desire that makes you deepily want to have sex (libido), I'm actually quite indifferent to sex. And a curious fact is that, although I’m a person with a fantastic memory (due to autism), my sexual memories are practically all quite vague, opaque and “distant”, like a dream I had a long time ago (when I just had the dream, I remember it, but as time goes by it becomes more and more vague until it partially or completely disappears from my memories), almost as if it hadn't happened and the details had been practically erased from my memory. Like, I know that I had sex with them, I know that the sex happened, but I don't remember the moment of sex clearly, the details of the act, maybe almost as if during it I went into an automatic mode, of doing it because I “have to”, even if I’m very conscious at the time. Since I don’t feel sexual attraction, people's appearance has no influence on my sexual desire. In fact, whenever I watched porn the focus was 100% on the act, on what people were doing, and never on how they were physically because that was always totally expendable. I had and still have fetishes, but they were never with specific people, I even forced myself to fantasize about specific people because it was the “normal” thing to do, but it’s just not natural and instinctive for me to do that. I can fantasize about someone in particular, but not because they make me horny, but out of convenience and custom, because that's who I have sex with or like and feel comfortable enough to have sex with, so it makes sense to imagine the fantasy with them. But as I said, it's not motivated by sexual desire, so I imagine the person in the fantasy intentionally, not instinctively and naturally. I really dislike putting into practice the idea of having sex with people I don't have an affective bond with, maybe even because of my autism and my social anxiety, which also make it very difficult for me to get to know new people and develop close enough relationships to get to the possibility of that happening. Currently, my crazy mission of dating and getting married is over, and I don't feel like any of that anymore, and I already intend to live with my “best friend” (it's a queerplatonic relationship, but I don't know what else to call him) in the future. In fact, the idea of dating anyone no longer pleases me. Now I feel that my need to please men is all centered on my “best friend”, who’s the most important person in my life and a possible father figure for me, we have known each other for over 10 years, and I have always had a rather submissive demeanor with him and a great need to please him, even because he’s a very depressed person with a very difficult life. I used to like it when men desired me and found me attractive, I liked to pleasure them (not exactly in a positive way. I'll get to that in a moment), and currently it seems I only feel that way with my “best friend” now.

MORE RELATED TO THE TOPIC:
Finally, story told. Now getting more straight to the point:

• As I mentioned before, I've always had a “type” for boys. I tend to find attractive boys who are more... I wouldn't say “feminine”, but with a lower level of traits considered masculine, which would be boys without beard, with little muscle/strength, with a more youthful appearance and a more gentle and delicate manner, without “aggressiveness” and “brutality”. I also tend to have a “crush” and a great obsession for male characters with a manner and personality that breaks with the stereotype of “masculinity”, without fragile masculinity, being more delicate, gentle, polite and cute. However, with girls, the story is different. Although I have a few minor preferences, I wouldn't say I have a “type” for girls. I will generally find girls attractive in general, both in appearance and personality, even those who have a look and manner that doesn’t match the stereotype of femininity. I don't know how to explain it properly, but girls give me a very sweet, pleasant and comfortable energy and feeling in general. Girls have always captured my attention a lot more, while boys had to be that specific type to capture my attention (I've always defined as aesthetic attraction the fact that girls attract my attention a lot, but I started to think it goes beyond that);
• Talking more about the sexual part (warning if you are sensitive to reading something like this involving men), in sexual relations I have always adopted and still adopt a totally submissive role (even my fetishes have always involved a lot of submission. I always had the fetish of consensual non-consent when it comes to men), submitting myself totally to the other person's will so that he can do what he wants with me and I do what he tells me to do. I really feel uncomfortable with playing a more active role when I think about sex with men, usually I literally just lie in bed letting the person “handle” me, put me in the position he want, or when I already know that the person likes a certain thing, I do. I have a very strong feeling that with a man it has to be this dynamic where I’m submissive and he dominates and controls me, I do everything he wants and I have no wills of my own, my desires don’t exist. In short, the feeling I have is that I have to be totally objectified when I have sex with men... However, again with girls it’s different. Although I've never had the opportunity to bond intimately with a girl, not even kiss, it's a desire I have. When I think about sex with girls, it's quite different from what I've described with boys. The idea that comes to me is very soft, light, delicate, sweet... It's something much more loving, affectionate and comfortable, and with a more joint and balanced dynamic, with both parties having an active role and their own desires, and the desire to give mutual pleasure. When I think about relating to a girl, I imagine myself touching her body, being curious, wanting to explore and actively caress, kiss, and also a pure desire to take care of her, to protect her.

Some questions I've been asking myself:

• Why did it always seem to make more sense for me to label me as sapphic than as achillean if I was supposed to be attracted to all genders?
• (Even though I don't really like Tinder) why do I always have the urge to pass 99% of the boys? And I do it just to see that it's a boy.
• Why do I currently avoid and reject flirtations that come from boys? Why do I seem to find it boring/annoying boys wanting to hook up with me?
• Why do I have a curious “obsession” with sapphic/lesbian content, stories and characters (always accompanied by a positive feeling of great comfort, enthusiasm, and somehow a strange feeling of freedom) and a strange need to fight for the lesbian cause accompanied by a great deal of empathy towards it, almost as if it somehow affects me directly/on a personal level?

So, I feel like I'm not repulsed by boys (although generally I might find them boring and uninteresting when it comes to flirting and being sexually interested in me), and not even by having sex with them (as I said before, it's very easy for me to please others by doing things I don't want to, thinking I want or don't mind doing, and unfortunately that includes sexual contact), but I think it's an indifference I feel for them (talking about attraction, and not about feeling repulsed or indifference to men as people), and (about my “best friend”) the desire to please at all costs maybe because of daddy issues and because I really want to help him and see him happy. I don't dislike men, but usually I'm not really interested in them and it's not that pleasurable and lusty feeling I get with women.

I don't know if to be a lesbian you need to feel repulsed, or if just indifference counts. There are also many things that are difficult to decipher because of my asexuality and aromanticity. What if actually being with a girl for real (not just imagine it) is unpleasant for me and I just idealized it would be pleasant?

Anyway, I know I wrote too much, I gave a lot of details, but I'm really lost and I wanted more opinions, and not exactly “answers”, because in the end only I can get the answer. I want to know if the things I said make sense and I’m really sorry if I offended anyone in any way.

Thanks for reading.

[Heather]

Welcome to the boards, and no worries about the length. I'm awfully wordy myself. Thanks for trusting us to share all of that here.

Since there is a lot here, I'm going to start from the bottom, with something I think is most central to these kinds of questions. I feel like starting with just one aspect of this is going to make navigating it a lot easier for us both than trying to tackle it all at once.

Orientation frameworks are generally based in to whom we feel drawn or interested in (aka "attraction") in sexual or affectional ways. (You can also toss "romantic" ways in there, but I'm never the best person to talk about that arena with because that framework feels very mired in history to me, and also very tied up with sex historically, so it just confuses me and others when I try and talk about it.) They do NOT tend to involve who we are NOT drawn to or interested in in these ways.

In other words: let's say someone felt repulsion for or disinterest in cisgender and trans men, and nonbinary people. That would NOT mean they are then necessarily attracted to cisgender and trans women, because those feelings about other groups don't actually give us any information about a group they are not about. Rather, if someone is trying to figure out if they are lesbian, what they want to be focused on is how they feel about women, not how they feel about people who aren't women. Make sense?

I also want to add that having one's sexuality focused on a partner's pleasure doesn't mean you don't have your own sexuality, so much as that IS part -- or, for someone for whom this was the case, even all -- of your sexuality. I think that so often, as you've expressed here, frameworks and terms built on or with very binary, neurotypical, heterocentric ideas can tend to really fall apart the further away from those ways of being and thinking someone and their sexuality is. It may well be that what serves you best here is to throw away ideas about "shoulds" with any of these frameworks, or maybe even any of these frameworks, period, if they make all this feel more cumbersome to you than affirming and illumintating. You, like anyone, absolutely have the option of just creating or inventing your own frameworks, or hacking something that already exists so that it works for you.

It might be that the best place to start is to try and set aside both all the shoulds and all of what you know you do NOT like or want, and singularly focus on what you know about what you DO like, want, about who you are interested in and what that interest looks like, and once that feels more clear, then you can decide what you want to call it/yourself in this regard.

How does any of this sound to you?

[AutisticQueer]

Welcome to the boards, and no worries about the length. I'm awfully wordy myself. Thanks for trusting us to share all of that here.

Since there is a lot here, I'm going to start from the bottom, with something I think is most central to these kinds of questions. I feel like starting with just one aspect of this is going to make navigating it a lot easier for us both than trying to tackle it all at once.

Orientation frameworks are generally based in to whom we feel drawn or interested in (aka "attraction") in sexual or affectional ways. (You can also toss "romantic" ways in there, but I'm never the best person to talk about that arena with because that framework feels very mired in history to me, and also very tied up with sex historically, so it just confuses me and others when I try and talk about it.) They do NOT tend to involve who we are NOT drawn to or interested in in these ways.

In other words: let's say someone felt repulsion for or disinterest in cisgender and trans men, and nonbinary people. That would NOT mean they are then necessarily attracted to cisgender and trans women, because those feelings about other groups don't actually give us any information about a group they are not about. Rather, if someone is trying to figure out if they are lesbian, what they want to be focused on is how they feel about women, not how they feel about people who aren't women. Make sense?

I also want to add that having one's sexuality focused on a partner's pleasure doesn't mean you don't have your own sexuality, so much as that IS part -- or, for someone for whom this was the case, even all -- of your sexuality. I think that so often, as you've expressed here, frameworks and terms built on or with very binary, neurotypical, heterocentric ideas can tend to really fall apart the further away from those ways of being and thinking someone and their sexuality is. It may well be that what serves you best here is to throw away ideas about "shoulds" with any of these frameworks, or maybe even any of these frameworks, period, if they make all this feel more cumbersome to you than affirming and illumintating. You, like anyone, absolutely have the option of just creating or inventing your own frameworks, or hacking something that already exists so that it works for you.

It might be that the best place to start is to try and set aside both all the shoulds and all of what you know you do NOT like or want, and singularly focus on what you know about what you DO like, want, about who you are interested in and what that interest looks like, and once that feels more clear, then you can decide what you want to call it/yourself in this regard.

How does any of this sound to you?

Thanks for answering! I'm still in this process of figuring out if I'm a lesbian or not, so I'm trying to deeply analyze my feelings and my life.

I think what you said about trying to focus on how I feel about women makes sense. I'll try that, it seems like a good place to start.

About the other part, I know wanting to give pleasure to the other person is part of the sexual experience, but in my specific case, it doesn't come in a positive way for me. The feeling I have is that I'm a simple object, a piece of meat, and not a person with my own desires and feelings like the man I'm having sex with. Giving sexual pleasure to the other person isn't something that gives me sexual pleasure in return, it's something I do out of my need to please others (especially men) in general so that I feel my existence validated, as if it makes me useful, as if I would serve something in this world. As I said, I never took the sexual initiative (and honestly, I feel that I could spend the rest of my life without sex), I just accept and continue what the other started because I know HE wants to (which means I must satisfy his will , I must please him, give him what he wants regardless of how I feel about it). Even though in my imagination the idea of being used seems exciting, in practice it's not the same. One day I got pretty sad realizing that I actually don't feel good having sex like that, even though I always convince myself and act like it doesn't affect me. I don't feel happy being used as an object. I want to feel pleasure too, but it's like I can't have that with men, it's like I have to be there for the sole purpose of being there for them and nothing else. Since I've never been involved with women, I also don't know what it would be like in practice with a woman, if it would really be different (just like it is in my imagination when I think about sex with women) or if it would also be kinda uncomfortable and forced.

[Elise]

Hi AutisticQueer, it sounds like you have some clear ideas on how you feel about having sex with men, which are completely valid and I can see you've thought about these deeply. I'm glad to hear that you like Heather's idea of focusing on what you find pleasurable on the time being, and see where that takes you, it is easy to (in my experience) to get stuck in the hypothetical "what if", and focusing on following what you enjoy can be a great antidote to that.

This article of ours might be a good place to start: I Feel Good: Pleasure and Fulfillment