Did porn mess my head up

Hello. I'm here because I'm wondering if my porn addiction could've screwed with my sexuality. Last year, I had an addiction to porn that I did not even realize. I had been masturbating to hetero porn since before my freshmen year of high school and loved it. I had two relationships with women, one of them I still love very much. After a long time of watching the same thing, I got into homosexual porn after becoming desensitized to regular porn. I had no problems with my sexuality at all,until my senior year in high school. I've never had sex before. Anyway, I thought I was just getting anxious over nothing and that I would eventually become comfortable again. However, these very intrusive thoughts have continued and I haven't tried to date a girl since. I don't get aroused by men in real life. When I go to parties or public spaces, I mostly check for women. I've accepted that I could be bisexual, but never fully gay. Can somebody please help me it is hurting me a lot and I've become very angry because of it.

Hey! Here’s my opinion after going through similar stuff. You didn’t mess your head up. Getting interested in new things that we didn’t expect is natural and normal - porn is just a tool we use to explore. Our sexualities connect us to lots of different things in different ways - sometimes it can connect us to things we are afraid of.

These experiences have you facing fears of losing/changing sexuality, messing your head up by accident, being confused about the truth of who you are, etc. As you face the fears and find confidence where you thought you never could, you’ll feel better than ever. Women will notice and appreciate it, too!

If you want, let the intrusive thoughts come into your head, and know that you’ll be fine no matter how scary or frustrating things get. That process can take years, and can lead to very deep anger inside (also normal), so be patient with yourself.

You won’t lose the feelings you’ve always had for women, but you can grow and learn more about homosexuality and bisexuality in yourself, even if attraction to men isn’t the primary sexuality you want to express.

BTW, if you haven’t researched it yet, the intrusive thoughts part sounds like HOCD - Homosexual OCD. Looking that up might lead you to others who are going through the same thing. That’s not a professional diagnosis from me, but it might be helpful.

Feel free to ask me anything!
Cheers,
Brian

Thank you so much! I’ll surely keep in touch!

Hi,
I am curious to know how your progress has been so far. I have gone through the same struggle a little while ago, and I directly linked it to porn. I have been addicted for years to porn but only recently realized the toll its taken on my life. It completely replaced what sexuality is, should be, and could be in my head with sex on a screen. It makes sex not real, and in turn thats what turned me on and thats what I interpreted as sex, when really sex is this amazing, all around beautiful act of connecting. It gives us the idea that sex is just for the orgasm, when really the whole process should be slow and beautiful. I am getting off track, the point is that watching porn gives us a false sense of what sex and sexuality is, and makes it very hard to connect to a human sexually.
Also, one more thought - in reality, there is so much build up to sex. See the girl, want her, first kiss, first date, theres a whole emotional buildup thats completely blocked out when watching porn. It goes straight to the end, and naturally you want and crave more of that, its the quick easy pleasure, but killing the long term pleasure. Ok Im done. I hope this helped someone.

steven1995 wrote:Hi,
I am curious to know how your progress has been so far. I have gone through the same struggle a little while ago, and I directly linked it to porn. I have been addicted for years to porn but only recently realized the toll its taken on my life. It completely replaced what sexuality is, should be, and could be in my head with sex on a screen. It makes sex not real, and in turn thats what turned me on and thats what I interpreted as sex, when really sex is this amazing, all around beautiful act of connecting. It gives us the idea that sex is just for the orgasm, when really the whole process should be slow and beautiful. I am getting off track, the point is that watching porn gives us a false sense of what sex and sexuality is, and makes it very hard to connect to a human sexually.
Also, one more thought - in reality, there is so much build up to sex. See the girl, want her, first kiss, first date, theres a whole emotional buildup thats completely blocked out when watching porn. It goes straight to the end, and naturally you want and crave more of that, its the quick easy pleasure, but killing the long term pleasure. Ok Im done. I hope this helped someone.

Hello, my progress has been up and down. The thoughts feel ever more real and I’m going to be seeing a therapist soon. I stopped watching porn for a while and I felt like I’d gained some sort of control back, but I relapsed and I’m going to have to stop watching for good for my own benefit. I found that when I would watch and masturbate, I would feel terrible overall after, especially the next day. My mood would swing, but when not masturbating to porn, I feel a lot better.