Dear Anne
I have always been attracted to girls.� I have never fantasized, had a crush on or dreamt about being with a man.� I first kissed a girl when I was 12.� I had my first real girlfriend at about 14, had a couple of longish relationships with girls and thereafter did some casual dating with sex.� Sometimes when I was drunk I would have difficulty getting an erection. Then I met my current girlfriend.� I was attracted to her immediately and for the past 2 years have been completely devoted to her.� I am now 23.� Just before Christmas a couple of things happened to me.� First I found a lump on one of my testicles and had to go to the doctor's.� I felt quite uncomfortable with the doctor examining me but realized that it had to be done.� Secondly, I was coming home from town, drunk, and a young lad asked me if I was gay.� When I said no he asked if I had ever thought about it.� I replied no and laughed it off.� I was certainly not tempted or curious to receive his offer and go back to his house.� Thirdly, a friend and former house-mate 'came out' and told me that he was gay.� I was shocked but didn't mind, as I have never been homophobic.� Mutual friends and I discussed his 'coming out' on Christmas Eve. Then, I woke up on Christmas morning, my heart beating rapidly and I was shaking.� For some reason I was questioning my sexuality.� Why, I have no idea because I had never thought of this before and I was not, am not nor ever have been attracted towards a man (including my friend).� Since then, this has been on my mind.� I have continued to see my girlfriend and have enjoyed sex when we have had it.� I have been performing badly at work and have been spending most of my time at home alone in my bedroom.� My parents are starting to worry about me, though I still fancy other girls and make love with my girlfriend.� Since then my problem has re-emerged.� I have never been turned on by men but I am scared that I might be. If my friend changed, why wouldn't I?� Until Christmas I was masturbating regularly over female porn.� Since then I have not masturbated at all as I have not felt in the mood.� I have not tried to look at male porn as I really don't fancy it and cannot bring myself to do it. I have worked with gay men and women, and have a lot of male friends who are good looking, sometimes been propositioned by gay men but I have never even thought about it before.� As I sit here I am shaking and my heart is racing.� I am not eating properly and am tired all the time.� I am really worried about my state of mind and feel I can't talk to anyone.� I would hate to tell my friends this - and then snap out of it - as with my parents, who I must admit would be very understanding and I'm sure would not be bothered at all if I were gay.� Please can you advise me what you think my problem is? Even if I am not gay, which I believe I am not - I obviously have paranoia and hypochondriac issues.� Is there anyone I can talk to which will not cost me an arm and a leg? Do you have any other advice?���Ian
Dear Ian
Poor you! I do understand how disconcerting it is when you had spent your life believing you had one sexual orientation and have now started to question whether you may turn out to have another. It's almost as if your life were like a jig-saw map that you felt you'd completed so that you knew where you were on it, but now someone's thrown all the pieces up in the air and you don't know how they'll come down so you have no map any more to tell you who you are or where you are. These feelings of doubt and bewilderment and fear can be pretty potent and leave you feeling lost. You've been so desperate to put your jig-saw back how it was that you've trawled through past and recent events to put bits of the picture back together and make sense of it all. Your need %u2013 anyone's need to make sense of their position in their life is a very powerful one, hence spending so much time trying to work out what's going on. But you have no need to worry. It doesn't mean you're hypchondriac, paranoid, or suffering from any other psychiatric disorder.
Let me repeat that. You have no need to worry. You are who you always have been, a heterosexual male. I doubt you'll just take my word for it, but here's some information which may help you to calm down and reclaim your habitual thought-patterns. Statistics show that around 80% of women perfectly ordinary, everyday, heterosexual women have admited to having at least one moment of lesbian fantasy or have been aroused by a lesbian dream. And that's just the women who can (a) remember their dreams and (b) will admit to this. It doesn't make them lesbian. It makes them normal. They don't act on it. They continue to fantasise about sex with men, have boyfriends or a husband. It might freak them out for a bit that they've had the odd moment of wondering what it might be like with a same-sex partner, but these moments have to be put into perspective. It's just a relatively short time out of a long life. It's interesting that I've never come across any similar statistics for men. I think that's more to do with men's willingness to admit to thoughts which seem almost heretical when set against the traditional macho attitude. I kow that various of my straight, partnered or happy bachelor male friends admit to having at least had the idea of a same-sex encounter. They say it shook them up a little for a time but didn't overall affect their lives, behaviours or sexual orientation. They've also said that they wouldn't admit such thoughts to most of their straight male friends. In any case, during the teens and twenties a lot of people (men and women) go through a phase of wanting to experiment with different sexual behaviours and orientations. So hopefully you can see that what you're going through is normal and doesn't mean you're a closet homosexual.
Now what about your friend who came out? Did he just wake up one day and think, "Right, that's it, I'm not straight any more, I'm gay"? I doubt it. Homosexuality is more often than not a life-long urge, even if it's one the guy has spent a lot of time trying to fight, largely for reasons of wanting to fit in with mainstream society in a traditional way. In a small number of cases a guy might make a decision to adopt a gay sexual orientation in response to some traumatic abuse, probably but not necessarily at the hands of an older female. You're not reporting any life-long urge, nor any traumatic abuse. And by the way, alcoholic excess is often called "brewer's droop" because it frequently spoils a man's chances of orgasm. You're still normal!
So how come you've had little sexual desire of late? Fear is a real passion-killer, and if you're scared you might not get off on female porn because of that fear, and very scared you might secretly be turned on by male porn, it's hardly surprising you've gone off sex altogether for a bit.
Intimate touch is mostly associated with sex. To have a doctor of whatever sex palpating your genitals does infringe some societal taboos around sex at the same time as conforming with intelligent enquiry into unusual phenomena. Much better to have lumps investigated than to fall victim to an unacknowledged potential tumour! At genito-urinary clincs some treatments cannot be carried out unless the guy has an erection so the usual procedure is to stimulate the sex-glands via a glove-clad finger into the rectum. This doesn't mean the patient fancies the doctor, male or female! Some guys can find it pretty confrontational until they realise that's just one factor in how male bodies work. And on top of that, if you'll pardon the expression, you also had been offered two situations where the thought of homosexuality was raised. Aren't you adding 2 and 2 and getting 5?
Your symptoms of anxiety appear (to me at any rate) to be a temporary reaction to all this. They're your reactions, though you'll see from the above that they're normal, and because they're yours, I hope you can now see that you don't need to get them out of proportion. If you want to discuss them with anyone else, make sure you pick someone who's sympathetic, non-judgmental, and not scared they might "catch" a different sexual orientation from the discussion. Parents, and most friends, may have their own particular axe to grind so you might do better to ring round a few counsellors in Yellow Pages (listed under Counselling & Advice) and find one you feel comfortable talking to. Good practitioners will be happy to discuss their training and approach, and to negotiate fees. Depending on where you live you're probably looking at around �30 an hour.
But do you really need to pursue this? Can't you just accept that like a lot of us, you've had a bit of a shock to your world-view, and that the sooner you go back to doing your usual stuff, the sooner you'll get this into perspective? You might choose to have a night out with the lads or take your girlfriend dancing, get over your hangover and then start building up your enthusiasm for your work and other pursuits. Once you stop worrying you'll sleep better and feel less need to withdraw to brood. Whatever, there seems to be no need to over-react or to panic any more. Good luck! Back to Ask Anne
