Heterosexual shame
It seems I’m getting in touch with some deep stuff here...
I’m starting to realize how deeply my heterosexual feelings and urges have been shamed.
It started with my mother who feminized me and emasculated me, thus shaming my masculinity. My older sisters took part in this as well, as it was all supposed to be playful teasing, a game, never mind that I didn’t want any of it.
Then I underwent systemic constant bullying by kids in school, the bullying was focused on the fact that I was feeling attracted to a girl, for which I was mocked and humiliated mercilessly.
I was molested by another boy around that time, thus adding a lot of confusion, and I couldn’t reconcile being heterosexual with having been molested, because it happened several times and I got to the point of looking for it.
This is in the cultural context of women asserting themselves and voicing their hurts around men, and I got the message “men are pigs”
Then on to counselors that could not see past the “gay” label and didn’t take my early heterosexual feelings seriously enough to affirm them. They couldn’t understand the terror I felt around asserting myself when it comes to heterosexuality.
I did get a chance in my 30s but I had no clue on relationships, so I failed 3 of them, and the last girlfriend broke up with me and got married to somebody else that she had just met a month before, thus reinforcing the message that I was unworthy and undesirable and inadequate.
Today, after grieving my partner’s death from cancer, I’m becoming aware of emerging heterosexual feelings. I started noticing women walking around in the park and thinking “I would like to...her”. It’s interesting that I can’t even say it or write it, because I feel so horrified, because having such specific sexual thoughts means that I’m objectifying women.
It doesn’t help that I’m getting my counseling at a center focused on sexual assault survivors and victms, so it feels extremely inappropriate to me to even discussing these heterosexual feelings when there are women clients that have been hurt by men. It feels like if I was one of them, which I’m not.
I wish I could muster the courage to talk to my T about explicit sexual matters. For example (POSSIBLE TRIGGER WARNING), normally I feel repelled by the sight of bare female breasts, but lately, I’m finding a small subset of breasts that seem very beautiful and I want to grab them. I feel like a pervert even mentioning this. I think the degree of terror I feel about mentioning stuff like this is quite telling. Somewhere I got the message that “I’ll get in trouble” for talking like this.
It burns me that something so natural like having sexual desires for women have been so thoroughly, systematically humiliated, belittled and discounted that I feel extremely ashamed for even thinking these thoughts. But I can always have a man use me sexually and that’s perfectly OK and encouraged, never mind that’s not congruent with my identity. My identity is not gay. It is not bi. It is not “fluid”. No. Hell no. Nothing wrong with that, but I can’t identify with any of that. Sadly, there was so much shaming around heterosexuality that getting in touch and reclaiming that part of myself is terrifying and almost re-traumatizing.
And yes, my apologies if this offends anybody. Which goes to reinforce my belief that heterosexuality is shameful and terrifying and will get me in trouble.
No wonder I’m so messed up!
I’m starting to realize how deeply my heterosexual feelings and urges have been shamed.
It started with my mother who feminized me and emasculated me, thus shaming my masculinity. My older sisters took part in this as well, as it was all supposed to be playful teasing, a game, never mind that I didn’t want any of it.
Then I underwent systemic constant bullying by kids in school, the bullying was focused on the fact that I was feeling attracted to a girl, for which I was mocked and humiliated mercilessly.
I was molested by another boy around that time, thus adding a lot of confusion, and I couldn’t reconcile being heterosexual with having been molested, because it happened several times and I got to the point of looking for it.
This is in the cultural context of women asserting themselves and voicing their hurts around men, and I got the message “men are pigs”
Then on to counselors that could not see past the “gay” label and didn’t take my early heterosexual feelings seriously enough to affirm them. They couldn’t understand the terror I felt around asserting myself when it comes to heterosexuality.
I did get a chance in my 30s but I had no clue on relationships, so I failed 3 of them, and the last girlfriend broke up with me and got married to somebody else that she had just met a month before, thus reinforcing the message that I was unworthy and undesirable and inadequate.
Today, after grieving my partner’s death from cancer, I’m becoming aware of emerging heterosexual feelings. I started noticing women walking around in the park and thinking “I would like to...her”. It’s interesting that I can’t even say it or write it, because I feel so horrified, because having such specific sexual thoughts means that I’m objectifying women.
It doesn’t help that I’m getting my counseling at a center focused on sexual assault survivors and victms, so it feels extremely inappropriate to me to even discussing these heterosexual feelings when there are women clients that have been hurt by men. It feels like if I was one of them, which I’m not.
I wish I could muster the courage to talk to my T about explicit sexual matters. For example (POSSIBLE TRIGGER WARNING), normally I feel repelled by the sight of bare female breasts, but lately, I’m finding a small subset of breasts that seem very beautiful and I want to grab them. I feel like a pervert even mentioning this. I think the degree of terror I feel about mentioning stuff like this is quite telling. Somewhere I got the message that “I’ll get in trouble” for talking like this.
It burns me that something so natural like having sexual desires for women have been so thoroughly, systematically humiliated, belittled and discounted that I feel extremely ashamed for even thinking these thoughts. But I can always have a man use me sexually and that’s perfectly OK and encouraged, never mind that’s not congruent with my identity. My identity is not gay. It is not bi. It is not “fluid”. No. Hell no. Nothing wrong with that, but I can’t identify with any of that. Sadly, there was so much shaming around heterosexuality that getting in touch and reclaiming that part of myself is terrifying and almost re-traumatizing.
And yes, my apologies if this offends anybody. Which goes to reinforce my belief that heterosexuality is shameful and terrifying and will get me in trouble.
No wonder I’m so messed up!