I wanted to add this as I just pondering on this angle about the forming of my fractured sexuality, it's a biggie that I'm sure effected others here too. Sorry it's long but it's pretty thorough.
I remember being in third grade (8) and liking a popular girl in my class, I thought she was pretty, very nice and knew she was popular. I had hoped that she would like me too. being 8 and prepubescent & pre-abuse there was nothing stirring in me about this like of her. I liked other girls too, just not as much as her, again nothing sexual as I didn't know anything about sex, couldn't even comprehend it if told about it. I was already shy & introverted by this time due to feeling like a freak because of my mother dying and our family situation & not measuring up to other boys and hated school, being in school having to be around all these kids mirroring back to me everything I wasn't, happy, content, self assured & confident... I was none of those.
By the time fourth grade comes around, I loose my step mom (of two years) as my father's drinking and staying gone out carousing drives her away. The sexual abuse is in full swing for months now and that heavy cloak of shame has consumed all that I am. Once puberty kicked in by 11 and my now out of control sexual drive with all it's faulty coping mechanisms (jealousy, power/control & ss imprinting) steering it I was a total mess.
That shame had me hiding in plain sight, I had a very small world of friends and could only stand being friends and around other hurting kids from broken homes and such, normal well adjusted kids I was too jealous to be friends with.
Girls as far as I knew were sugar and spice and everything nice, where as boys, especially bad boys like me were dirty dogs to be used and dominated to make me feel better about my broken self. I felt that no girl would ever want anything to do with me, that they would easily smell or see the shame and filth on me so I paid them no attention. I pursued no girls although two girls did come after me at 13 & 14, both times I was excited and got to fumble around, kiss & feel up their tits but nothing further, it was just a one time thing with both of them. It was a very brief sense at feeling "normal", but all I knew was going all the way with guys (daily, some times twice a day), it was so frustrating when sex with my act out friend was a phone call away and a quick walk up the street. That shame kept me locked up from reaching out or doing anything with any other girls or even risking any contact with other boys beside the arrangement I had with that one boy.
I had a gay uncle & his partner (we called uncle too) and was aware of this as a boy by age 7, I knew this before my abuse, I didn't comprehend all that being gay meant being so young but they were both loved & accepted and involved in my extended family, this was back in the mid 70's NYC. So it's not like I didn't know or had some instilled hate or fear of gays.
Feeling like such an outsider and a freak, my biggest hope and dream from early childhood on was to one day to be in a normal happy, healthy family with a wife and children, I even dreamed as a kid to be rescued by my death mother's family as I hated my own messed up family situation but they left me/us for dead too. I wanted a wife and family of my own someday and for all this craziness in my head that was driving me to have shameful sex with guys to stop. I hoped that finding love and marriage would someday fix me. I knew that I wasn't gay (my ss sex drive was not romantic) and knew that I could never have all that I craved by being gay so that was never an issue but still I was locked in the abuse cycle with the ss acting out, fantasy & thoughts.
Thanks to that shame I was locked up in I never dated girls girls in or out of high school and by the end of high school my act out friend stopped coming around for fear that he was doing gay stuff.
There was one girl who I happened to know from childhood who I respected and used to play with from time to time as kids, only a few houses away. She had a normal family and yet she still liked me as a friend, she was so incredibly nice and someone I could *trust*, as much as someone like I could trust. Years later after loosing contact out of the blue she asked me to the prom, I was taken by surprise, I had already stopped going to school, kind of dropped out already due to still hating school. I never got back to her about the prom and left her hanging, like the asshole I was/am... This was the first hint that I got that she still liked me somehow... A few years later she reached out to me through letter after I moved across the county, she was in college and I was stuck in the very blue collar world. She wanted to get together as friends and I relented so we met and had a nice time catching up but my feelings of shame and inferiority killed her hopes of getting together again after assuring her that we'd go out again soon. Months later she'd send funny ransom type cut up magazine letters to me wondering what happened to me... this coaxed me to call her finally and we picked up our friendship despite my inner demons of shame & inferiority trying to sabotage me/us. It was almost two years before we fooled around, due to my hangups about not being worthy and her being so pure and virginal, I was still acting out once in a while, but hoped that marriage would fix that (yeah i know, cliche). We ended up getting married by 22, still acting out once in a while and still suffered with the ss fantasy, thoughts & memories of abuse till it all came to a head at 31 when I stumbled onto healing once my denial of the abuse crumbled. Thankfully we did start having kids to after I was well underway with my healing from the abuse. I finally had my forever hopes and dreams of a healthy, happy family come to pass and it's been very healing in its self to be a Husband & Father being heavily involved with my kids growing up, I actually felt at times that I had a chance of regrowing up with them at times.
If it wasn't for my wife pursuing me that shame would've probably would've kept me single and locked in the secret abuse cycle of acting out or perhaps convinced myself that I was gay and risked aids at the time or lived out my life unfulfilled with not having that happy healthy family and children I craved since forever. Had we had kids early on in our marriage before dealing with my abuse issues I would've been either a very distant unattached husband & father with all my issues or worse yet, I might've even abused them with the way my mind got wired with power/control issues and masculinity hangups.
What a tangled mess the evils of sexual abuse does to our young minds and our futures, to our sexuality, to life its self sometimes.