Hey everyone. New member here. I'm sorry that this is such a long post, but if anyone has the time to read it I would really appreciate it.
I'm not really sure how to go about finally tackling my past head on. I've avoided it for so long that I don't know if it's too late to fix or not.
I'm male, in my mid-thirties, and I did not have the healthiest of sexual development as a child. Memories of my childhood up until graduation from high school are spotty at best. There are huge gaps which makes it tough for me to remember exactly how events unfolded.
Firstly, I remember that my family (especially my father) was fairly liberal with nudity. I remember my older brother and I were naked a lot of the time around the house, which I assume is normal up to a certain point. I do however remember that if I was wearing pajamas or underwear when I was sitting on my dads lap (watching TV) he would stick his hand down underneath my waistband and "tickle me". I used to bathe with my father a lot (even past the point where I had started puberty. At the time I thought it was normal but being older now I find it a little odd). I remember that he always used to wash me, even when I was older. After we bathed we would cuddle naked on my parents bed while watching TV.
Growing up in the late 1980's, knowledge and access to sexual material was not readily available at that age. There was no internet, just schoolyard jabber with kids who thought they knew what sex was. The lifeskills and experiences of most Elementary schoolchildren in that time period were highly sheltered and hidden from things like sex and drugs so there wasn't much mention of it. I knew that Moms and Dads loved each other, but I wasn't aware of the concept of sexual orientation at that point in time. Any contact with my genitals from someone other than me simply felt like it was generally fine because it had become so commonplace, and being naive I found nothing wrong with it at the time.
I recall starting to masturbate heavily at the age of 9, but I don't remember how I learned to.
I had a good friend that was in my class when I was in elementary school. He lived a few blocks away from me so we hung out a lot and became best of friends. We would sleepover at each others house frequently and that's where the experimentation started. At this point i believe we had just started grade 5.
I won't go into detail because I'm sure it's not relevant or permitted by forum rules but needless to say we discovered how good mutual activities felt and we did it often. It wasn't really a sexual attraction thing, I think, but rather we found an activity that made each other feel good, and somehow it made me feel like I had a stronger emotional bond with my friend. I kind of knew in the back of my head at the time that it wasn't normal, but thought that if it made us feel good then it couldn't be all that bad, so I avoided thinking about it.
This went on for a couple of years and it was getting so frequent that we almost got caught a few times. Eventually he moved a few towns away and we didn't really see each other that often after that - but when we did it usually led to bedtime mischief (even up to about age 17).
At this point I started high school and that's when I learned everything about sex and drugs within 3 months. I was horrified of what I had been doing with my friend and thought that I was a disgusting freak. I thought this because of how often it happened, because it was with another boy, and because I realized I liked it.
I was extremely confused about my feelings and whether or not I was gay or just maladjusted.
When I was 19 I caught my dad looking at a boylover website and he hastily tried to hide it but I had definitely saw the content. I acted like I didn't see it but from then on I acted a little differently around him (even though I didn't want to - I couldn't help it).
Ever since I entered high school my life has been horrible. I fell into a depression and no longer displayed any emotion - especially any time of happiness. My self confidence seemed to vanish overnight and I started to withdraw socially. I went out with a handful of girls throughout high school - mostly to uphold the image that I was straight. There were a few that got serious but eventually fizzled for one reason or another - always because of me.
I found girls attractive but whenever it got to sex I was get extremely anxious. During sex my mind would rewind back to same-sex experimentation, causing me to freak out and lose my erection. This furthered my fear that I was gay and because of the anxiety in those situations I stopped trying to have any relationships with possible sexual encounters involved because I thought I would be "found out". I started getting Cialis prescribed to me thinking that it would help - and for the most part it did but the anxiety was so debilitating that I ceased craving for sexual partners altogether.
In one of my longer heterosexual relationships, I started hanging out with my girlfriends little brother. He was about 4 years younger than me (I was 17 at the time). We bonded and were extremely close. Eventually my girlfriend and I broke up, and from that point forward I hung out with her little brother every day. We would smoke weed and drink all the time. We would get extremely intoxicated and we would masturbate together while watching straight porn. We never touched each other but it was such an exhilarating experience - it was like it felt right. It was exciting for me to watch him be horny and masturbate beside me. We never went any further than that but we always bathed and showered together which seemed weird for two teenaged boys to be doing together. Eventually he got a girlfriend and I freaked and ended our friendship for no good reason - an act I still heavily regret to this day.
The weird thing is, I find girls sexually attractive but I can't seem to connect with them on an emotional level. For the most part I'm not attracted sexually to males, but for some reason I heavily yearn for sexual contact with them. I think that it's more of a "bromance" friendship and male-bonding feeling that I'm trying to re-create. I can tell when a man is attractive, but usually they don't make me aroused.
The result of all of these actions is that I haven't had an intimate relationship in almost 15 years (either homosexual or heterosexual). I've never had homosexual penetrative sex (that I know of) and the thought of it makes me queasy. My self-esteem is gone, I've neglected my appearance, sheltered myself from the outside world and don't care if I live or die.
The worst part is that I'm not heavily abusing drugs. From the age of 15 I started smoking marijuana daily. Over the past 5 years I've gotten myself dangerously addicted to cocaine. I use it every day and it's making everything so much worse. When I do cocaine, it accelerates my sexual libido to an intense level and I change into a completely different person. I become a exhibitionist/voyeur and if I'm crashing at a friends house or have someone spent the night, I try to sleep in the same room as them and sometimes masturbate when I think they're sleeping. If I'm extremely drunk as well then I'll sometimes do it openly and act like I think they're asleep. I know a few friends have noticed it but only 1 person has actually said something. Even worse, If they sleep in their own room I sneak up to their doors and listen to see if I can hear them masturbating. It's sickening.
When I'm by myself (on cocaine), all the memories I have of experimenting as a child come back and the worse part is that it excites me. Sometimes I think of my male friends and what it would feel like to "play around" with them. I recreate the experiences in my head and masturbate to them. I constantly watch gay porn with young looking guys. Now that I've been doing cocaine for an extended period of time I find myself fantasizing about being penetrated by them. Once I ejaculate I immediately have a large wave of dread, guilt, and self-loathing come over me and it disgusts me.
When I'm not on cocaine I don't think about sex as often but these thoughts are always there - I can't turn them off!! Even though I'm 34 I still don't know whether I'm gay/bi/straight or somewhere in between. It got so bad that I even had to spend 2 weeks in a psych ward because I became suicidal. I've done so many drunks and been drunk so much just to numb my brain and not have to deal with sober thoughts.
I'm so terrified of my past that I've avoided going to therapists to discuss anything. I am so afraid that when I tell him/her what I did that they will think I'm a freak. I don't trust people and I feel I'd rather kill myself than give away any of my true secrets.
I don't know what to do!!!
Did I have all of these experiences because of sexual play within my family as a young child, or did I just learn about sex and force it on my friends?? I just want to be normal and start a family of my own but I'm getting old and it feels like I'm losing my grip on reality and my future.
Does anyone have any similar experiences or advice to help me??