I’ve discovered a very interesting thing about this addiction and the HOCD thoughts I get regarding my sexual orientation. I believe this is the answer many people are looking for – whose addiction escalates beyond their sexual orientation.
In a nutshell, I worry about being bi-sexual, and deeply fear losing my attraction to women. It doesn’t make sense, does it? I actively seek out women in my social life. ( I’m now in a relationship with a beautiful woman.) I view women in porn. It feels ‘Natural’ and ‘Right.’ I’ve never had a homosexual encounter. I’ve been come-on to by homosexuals before, and felt neither disgust nor arousal; I felt nothing. Yet, even as I type this now, the facts laid out clearly before my very eyes, there is still a part of me, in the back of my head, that makes me obsess over my sexual orientation.
It’s due to the genre of porn I’ve gradually become addicted to: transexual porn. It forces this worry onto me. When I was around 14/15 I encountered transexual porn while surfing the internet looking for porn. It was an ad. I still remember the graphic nature of the advert I saw, and how something just snapped in my pubescent brain. All the straight and lesbian porn I’d watched before seemed to be ordinary now. This new exciting genre started my heart racing, my head was thumping, combined with the fear of getting caught not just watching porn, but watching what some could consider not exactly 100% straight porn, made it all the more memorable. I remember crying after I finished. I didn’t know what came over me. I wanted to curl up into a ball in my bedroom.
But I didn’t stop watching it. I was, I strongly believe, addicted to porn even then, perhaps before then. I was exposed to regular porn at a young age and started masturbating excessively to porn at a young age.
I never lost my attraction to women in porn, but with the transexual porn, I could orgasm quicker. It produced fear, which made it more arousing.
I strongly believe that the fear of “Is this gay?” back then, etched the transexual porn into my mind as intensely arousing. It’s the fear/excitement that drives this addiction. When I abstain from porn, the fear (in my case, of being bisexual/gay comes up). Yet when I actually look at porn (of any genre), and give myself that big old shot of dopamine, the worries totally disappear. The rush destroys the anxiety about my sexual orientation and I laugh at the idea of ever thinking I could be bi-sexual or gay.
So here’s the Answer. I believe my primitive brain and the addiction have tapped into the fear of me losing my attraction for women and its MAKING me view porn, to get the dopamine. My brain wants its fix, and it knows those thoughts will produce the anxiety that leads me back, ultimately, to the dopamine blast of anxiety-producing porn.
The symptoms I exhibit are classic HOCD, but the thing is, when I view porn, I KNOW 110% I’m straight. Yet when I don’t view porn, I gradually grow terrified I could be bis-exual/gay. I can ease my anxiety for a while by orgasming to porn, but eventually, I’ll start worrying about being bisexual/gay again and I have to view it again. This cycle constantly repeats itself and has done for 5 awful years.
I’m by no means homophobic. I think people are born bisexual or gay. It’s not down to them. But because I’m straight, I can’t accept the fact that I might be either. It doesn’t feel ‘”right.” Gay people want romantic and sexual relationships with people of the same sex. I absolutely don’t want that, but why am I aroused by the transexual porn? Because I’m a porn addict, plain and simple. I escalated to that as a teen. It gives me a buzz.
Every single time I’ve viewed transexual porn, as I am about to ejaculate, I always instantly think of a woman, I can’t orgasm looking at or thinking of transexuals. That’s the way it has always been.
I could never love or be in a romantic relationship with a transexual, because its the novelty and the kink that arouse me about them. Basically, the porn side of me wants to watch them in porn, but “I” don’t.
I had a conversation with a gay friend of mine once about attraction to transexuals and he said he isn’t attracted to them in the slightest. He said liking them definitely cannot make you gay because they are feminine, but it doesn’t exactly make you 100% straight either. That conversation should have probably never happened.
It turns out that in my case, my withdrawal symptoms (increased anxiety) shows up as simply worry regarding my sexual orientation. It has taken me a long time to realize this. I thought it was strange I wasn’t getting the strong and major withdrawal symptoms a lot of people say they get, but it turns out the anxiety is my withdrawal symptom.
I think that now I’ve finally figured this out, I’ll be able to stay away from porn forever. I can’t be drawn back into it, because I’ve figured out how it’s keeping me hooked. The human brain is absolutely fascinating, isn’t it?
I would love to hear others thoughts on this, perhaps other people who have escalated to porn content like this as well. I hope this may help you.