Sexuality and the variety of feelings

I got talking to a friend of my girlfriend today and each time I talk to her I just think she's absolutely lovely. It's not a 'tear her clothes off and have sex with her' feeling, though she is attractive, quite sexy and well-dressed. It's more of an emotional attraction. She's elegant, intriguing, strong but delicate in a delectable and mysterious way. And it made me reflect upon the sheer variety of feelings I have for different females.

How does this tie in with paraphilias? It upsets me that people try and stamp on other people's sexualities and tell them that there's a right and a wrong to attraction. Sexuality is beautiful. I won't sleep with or go on a date with 99.9999999999999999999999999% of all the women I'll ever be attracted to, but that doesn't stop me enjoying all the different feelings. I think we should celebrate all these. What kinds of feelings have you had towards the object(s) of your affections? I'm interested to hear what kind of variety of feelings you have, and I don't mean some simplistic binary opposition between lust and love - I mean everything (yes, a very female topic perhaps!).

That's a really nice and interesting idea for a thread GinaSmith. Personally I get a bit tired of all this talk of "sexuality " this and "consent to sex " that etc. All of which continues to ignore how it actually feels which seems to be what many are in the dark about. However I'm a little confused as to what your asking for with this thread because the description / example that you've given still seems to be aspects of her that you like I.e. strong, elegant, mysterious etc and not necessarily words that express how you actually feel.

So to have a go myself, there was a boy at the train station that I used to see on a weekly basis and after a long time I plucked up the couurage to speak to him. I was so surprised at how intelligent, funny and humble he was that he knocked me for six! Before I was thinking "he's attractive " but afterwards I was more like "he's amazing!! ". So to sum up in a word I guess I would say that I felt sheer "Awe ". But that's infinitely too simplistic and that was just after one conversation. I would've loved to have got to know him better but, alas, I couldn't allow myself to get too involved.

Is that kinda what you mean?

tlkproxy wrote:Is that kinda what you mean?

It's a great start. I meant to keep the topic as open as possible, so it doesn't matter whether people describe characteristics, features or emotions experienced.

One example from my own life is when I was staying in a camp set up over an abandoned parking lot after a natural disaster. A group of us (a rather large one) were helping with relief efforts. It was a pretty interesting lifestyle for the week or so I was there - port-a-potties, segregated tents, the worst meals I’ve ever had in my life.

But man, was it worth it. Also staying at the camp was a boy I’ll leave unnamed. When I first saw him, I was confused and shocked at what I was feeling. I felt like an archeologist that had managed to stumble upon an entire forgotten underground temple after excavating for years and years...

This had to be the first time I truly realized that I was attracted to boys much younger than me on both physical and emotional levels.

At first, I felt drawn to this boy emotionally. He carried so much humble vibrancy with him everywhere he went. I found myself looking to anything or anyone that resembled him in hopes that it would be him. It made me feel so alive inside to see him skip around and to hear him laugh and to see him do just the most mundane daily activities with the little spark he put into them. When he’d happen to look my way and we’d have eye contact for maybe a tenth of a second, I’d melt like thin ice on a frying pan, then I’d evaporate into my only recourse - my mind.

But I was so scared. I was afraid others would see me, but for some reason I felt comfortable expressing these feelings to my closest friend there. She was kind of bothered by it, so I didn’t really talk to her about it in detail, but she at least didn’t make a scene out of it when I told her, “He’s just so cute! I wanna just hug him and take care of him every day!”

Of course, this wasn’t the whole story. Like I said before, I felt attracted to him on a physical level as well. It was similar to feeling sexually attracted to a guy my age or older, yet it was tied with a sense of worry, guilt, stress and more positive emotions like wonder, curiosity, desire and appreciation. This was possibly the most shocking of my discoveries pertaining to that boy. Of course I knew any kind of relationship besides friendship wasn’t possible because of our age difference, but my feelings were so immediate that I found myself tuning in to him whenever I could. Never once did I talk to him out of fear of being found out. It felt like others knew why I looked at him sometimes. This could have been the case, but nobody ever approached me about it.

Of course, I was practically a child at the time. However, the age difference between us in addition to my mental age made the gap feel so much wider. In other words, I’ve always felt much older than I am, and it didn’t help being attracted to such a young boy.

I felt old. I felt inadequate. I felt guilty. I felt envious.

And I felt so alive. Every time I saw him or heard his voice, it was like I was some mummy lifting myself from my coffin, the wrappings all falling off to reveal a whole new, revived self.

There’s more I could write about this, but I don’t want to turn this into some freakish biography. There are so many emotions and feelings that come along with all the different people we meet. I agree that these should be celebrated and that everyone could learn from hearing a story about a sexuality different or the similar to theirs.

Hopefully we can hear some more interesting responses!

It is an interesting topic – thanks Gina.

I once was sexually obsessed with the idea of a man I was e-mailing on the internet, but had never met. It sounds silly, but it was one of the most intense sexual experiences I've had. We talked very openly about our sexual desires and fantasies. Sex was our primary topic of discussion. We would write pages to each other each day, and I would literally be wet with anticipation to read his responses. I couldn't concentrate at work, because all I could think about was sex and him. This went on for a couple of months.

Before we got a chance to meet, I went away on a pre-arranged holiday trekking in the Himalayas. Some days were tough, as I got terribly sick with the flu but had to keep on walking. At one point I needed to be taken to a little hospital in the middle of nowhere. Throughout it all, I had these delicious secret sexual fantasies, which in a way sustained me.

Unfortunately I've never had such intense feelings for a real life lover. Perhaps the unattainability and my imagination made it juicier than it could ever be once we met.

What an epic story, Platypus! I've experienced situations where my sexual lust and desire for another have gotten me through difficult times, such as illnesses and mental breakdowns. I've been known to counter stomach aches and nausea with sexual fantasies. For some reason, the stimulation subdues mild to moderate stomach pains for me.

There was once a pharmacist I had the pleasure of meeting when dropping off/picking up a prescription. It took about fifteen minutes for them to process it, so I sat in the lobby doing none other than fantasizing about the handsome pharmacist.

He was a kind looking man with a lean, athletic body and a unique, cheerful face. Dark hair and bright eyes. I almost immediately began thinking about the two of us being in a relationship. This fantasy of a relationship escalated into living together, buying a house together, raising a child together and having a lot of intimate moments and, yes, a large amount of fervent lovemaking. I think imagining the two of us in a realistic situation with our own problems and even arguments and fights made it that much more enjoyable.

So, in short, I've found my feelings of affection for others to be intensify when I'm considering the "bad" things, too, or those parts of life that are maybe better described as undesirable yet necessary and appropriate to the wavering fabric of human life. The good and the bad contrast, weave and combine in a way that create a whole that is sometimes more enjoyable and significant as the whole it is than the parts that make it up when examined separately. This isn't always true, though, as lust and only lust or admiration and only admiration and many others can be completely unique and enjoyable experiences alone. In fact, I find it's these stronger emotions and feelings that come out on their own that influence me more easily than combinations. Combinations can confuse me or take me longer to process sometimes. Anyway...

When that pharmacist called me to grab my prescription he had prepared, it felt like a large amount of time had passed, yet it was only about twenty minutes or so. His face lingered and I felt kind of intoxicated by my fantasy of a life with him. In a way I experienced something similar to what you did, Platypus. The unattainability and the creativity going on in my mind made it so delightful, yet it probably wouldn't have turned out like I imagined it if we were to live a life together, even considering the flaws I calculated in.

Those are lovely descriptions, Platypus and Encephalo. Hopefully the prescription wasn't for anything embarassing, Encephalo! Wouldn't want to put him off!

I went to a party today where there were adults, teens and children. There was a girl there who must have been about twelve. She was very beautiful and had rich parents. She had an ultra-confident aura about her, probably the product of privilege. That gave her an aloof presence, which I found unattractive, probably because I naturally go for submissive females. That said, she was super sexy, very well-dressed and just had me in a spin every time she passed me.

Despite the veneer of precocious sexuality (just effortlessly exuding sex appeal purely by being a diminutive replica of 'adult' supermodels - many of whom probably aren't more than four or five years older than her), I suspect she wasn't into boys or girls in a big way yet... or if she was she wasn't showing it. Still, she had me distracted, and a little flustered. I would have liked to have held her by the hair and ordered her to her knees, not in a violent way, but just to break through some of that unassailable confidence and find a more vulnerable side to her.

So, a very different feeling to the one I described in my first post above. Sexuality is multifaceted!