Scarleteen

I have so many negative feelings I have bottled up pertaining to this topic that I don't know what to do anymore and I wanted to just write. Last time I tried this on reddit my post got removed for whatever reason. If the same occurs here, well, ill take it as a marker that my feelings are invalid or unacceptable, and its best I repress them further.

Why do I hate my sexuality and all things relating to it? Because it is the single greatest source of frustration, anger, and especially emotional pain. Why? Lemme make an outline that attempts to cover the breadth of my feelings. My thoughts/feelings are extremely shameful and might even make some angry, but what can I do, I can't wish them away.

I am a 21(M) and I have never felt sexual pleasure. At some point this started to concern me after I began observing people's experiences, reading forums, posts, and thus stepping back and analyzing the situation. Clearly what I felt(or lack thereof) did not match up with the picture I was being presented. As such I decided to abstain completely from porn and masturbation for the next three months, with intent to solve the issue. After that, I was to create new sexual habits and not succumb back to my old ones.

Months had passed, but alas, it wasn't meant to be, as nothing I did yielded any results whatsoever. I felt like I was missing out on some apparently heavenly human experience, which resulted in developing a"knife to the heart" emotional(and physical) response to any reminder of it. Whether this is porn, a movie scene, talk of it, sometime just a short reminder of it. As such I began to hate sexuality as a h since it gave no pleasure and only pain.

I particularly began to hate my own male sexuality. Why male sexuality specifically? Firstly, because it ensures I cannot escape these triggers of pain. Male sex drive and testosterone ensures I am constantly flooded with sexual thoughts/feelings that must be acted on. So, I am more or less in a constant state of being conscious of my dysfunction, and thus pain. This is then made far worse when I must release. The second reason, and perhaps the far more significant one, is that male sexuality appears to be extremely limited.

The biggest reason I developed such a negative emotional response to sex, is from watching other people. This was dawned on me that my problem was not fixable, and I had given up all hope. I would sit and just watch porn or read forums, becoming extremely envious and jealous. I would ponder and fantasize what it is they feel,what it's like, and what it meant for them, for all of this was a concept I did not comprehend. Eventually however it began creeping on me, that there appeared to be massive disparity, between what men and women experience.

Observing men I began seeing one thing, them being blinded and controlled by the drive, compelled out of need to repeat it, not unlike how we must breathe. This is referring to the first reason I mentioned. Maybe my own experience was influencing this perception, but from reading many posts on this and on porn/masturbaiton addiciton, I felt like many men are trapped by their drive. The most common motivation being solely to get rid of the annoyance, rather then a true desire to experience something. Its clear, straight to the point, and over with.

Observing women on the other hand, well, it seemed entirely different. It's like they would enter a trance. It wasn't the drive that death gripped them, but the physical and psychological pleasure. I would think to myself how amazing it must be, to be so lost in this “pleasure”, as it is called. To have it be so intense you need to stop. To not be in control, but instead have it control you. It just doesn't seem like the male anatomy, or maybe sexuality allows any of this to happen. I could never find a similar example of a man, or hardly past a quarter of all these expressions compared to women. Seems like a uniquely female experience. As for me? I have never even uttered a sound, vocal, facial expression,or involuntary movement from orgasm, let alone ordinarily stimulation. Well I have, when I would try faking it in hopes that it would trick my brain into something. It would usually end up in me crying.

The point is I think it's clear to anyone observing/comparing, that the potential(keyword?) for female sexual pleasure and orgasm, seems to be far greater in almost every possible way, then to male. Certainty it seemed that way to me, to an outsider looking in without any true experience of the concept. I studied a lot of anatomy and read other peoples opinions after that, and it only solidified this hypothesis. You can see then, how this caused those terrible emotional triggers, to become a lot worse when I already was so devastated that I lacked this apparently magical ability. I already hated my body due to that, but came to hate it even more, as I told myself it was utterly useless for the purposes of creating pleasure. The prospect of sex was horrifying. How could I handle being so intensely reminded of what I lack right in front of me? Like a stab to an open wound. Id rather not risk dealing with more pain.

There are so many more ways I can express my feelings, but I think this is way more than enough. I ended up making the choice to become a sexless being by eliminating my sex drive and sexuality completely, for the sake of my own sanity. I have been semi successful at. If I ever attain a relationship, the women would probably need to be asexual, for I have locked this part of my life away and i don't know if I want to deal with it again.

Hi SadGuy123x,

So, there are a few different things going on here, but I want to start by addressing what seems to be one of the biggest ones: the assumptions about gender.

Here's the thing: human sexuality is so, incredibly diverse that saying things like "all women experience it this way" or "all men experience it that way" is both reductive and inaccurate. At the same time, there's far more overlap between genders in terms of sexual experiences, desire, and even hormones than lots of people assume (for instance, everyone, regardless of gender, has testosterone). There are women who masturbate because they're aroused and need to deal with that feeling so they can focus on the other things they have to do that day. There are men who set aside whole afternoons to masturbate and really make it an intense, all encompassing experience. There are women who aren't that vocal during sex and men who are. Really, sex and masturbation can be utilitarian or very emotional, intense experiences for anyone, and the things that make them one way or another. I really like how this article breaks all those elements down: Sexuality: WTF Is It, Anyway?. Do you kind of see what I'm getting at?

Now, there are assumptions or ideas about gendered experiences of sex that are common, but those generally stem from media representations, cultural messages, and plain old stereotypes (like the idea that men are hormone driven creatures that just HAVE to act on their desires; no ones hormones can make them do anything, not in that sense anyway). When you really look at human sexuality--and that includes the actual research that's been done on it--you find that that binary view of things just doesn't reflect reality.

That brings me to the second thing that jumped out at me about your post: a lot of it is about other people's experiences, or your perception of them, rather than your own. Unless we're sitting in room with the people while they're having it, our perception of other people's sex lives is always going to be mediated by what they choose to share. Or, in the case of movies or porn, what people think will sell or what fits the narrative of the story. In other words, it ends up offering a pretty limited view of all the ways sexuality can play out.

When you think back to when you were first exploring your sexuality--it sounds like mainly through masturbation--what were those experiences like? Did you enjoy them? Were you excited to try them? Why did they feel like they didn't measure up to what you saw described elsewhere?