HOCD or something else?

So I think I have been suffering from hocd for 11 yrs off and on. It started when I was 16 and my sister announced that she liked women. That was when I started questioning myself what if I'm gay? I started noticing that other women were attractive and that freaked me out. I would do research into what being turned on by the same sex meant and didn't have any of those "symptoms" for lack of a better term. Then i would develop them as my fear grew. Meanwhile, I still wanted sex with my then bf/now husband. Over time though I started getting scared that I wasn't actually enjoying heterosexual sex so I stopped having sex with my husband, which made everything worse cuz since I didn't want sex with him I must be gay. I would start checking myself when looking at men and women where when I was calm. I get obsessed about male celebrities but my brain would question if I was lying to myself. Then I would get groinal responses to women and freak out. Any gay dreams I would have would freak me out, especially if I woke up feeling like I had an orgasm. This has happened when I would have straight dreams as well and it would make me feel on top of the world. My mind won't let me stop being anxious though. I do know that I find the male back abs and arms sexy and it doesn't freak me out or gross me out but if I think the same thing about women I get groinal responses more easily and it makes me sick to my stomach. I can't see being with anyone but my husband be but my brain keeps saying that I'm lying to myself. It has even come to the point that I'm starting to enjoy the groinal responses cuz they are the only ones I ever get now that I have been dealing with this for 11 yrs off and on even though they bring me great distress and make me sick to my stomach. I only recently discovered HOCD a yr ago. So my question is, does anyone else feel this way, that they sometimes enjoy the groinal response even though what brought it on makes you anxious/sick to your stomach?

If we're talking about actual arousal, think about sex long enough and there will be arousal sometimes, whether it's something you'd really be into or not. Lots of sexual fantasy people would not really engage in, and there's even straight men who are sometimes so addicted to porn they will look at gay porn, even though they'd never want to get it on with a dude.

If we're talking about a... strange groinal feeling, well, I can attest that I can do something that causes an anxiety spike, say I'm working on an engine or a machine and I have my hand somewhere where I know it's very dangerous unless I remove it very quickly. I can feel this momentary feeling between my legs that is clearly caused by an intense fearful situation, and has absolutely nothing to do with sex, and yet is not at all an unpleasant sensation, in and of itself were I to feel that sensation outside of anxiety. It's a very pleasurable sensation and if there were a way to recreate it without anxiety or stressful situations being involved, I'd be all up for it.

Thanks! That helps a lot. Battling this is exhausting cuz it's just a constant roller coaster of what ifs, doubts, periods of relief, and relapses. Thankfully I have a husband who is patient with me. I have had ocd like tendencies in the past such as end of the world ocd. It helps that I remind myself of that. Is it common for hocd to come out more when you are stressed about other things and it becomes a way for your mind to not have to deal for the actually stressful things I your life? I'm studying for licensing exams and last week I was so stressed out about them and then this week my hocd decided to rear its ugly head so now I'm not concerned about my tests.

I don't know. I'm not an expert.

Sometimes I'm just tempted to say it's all demonic in nature- ofc sticking to that dogmatically, I'd have to *mod edit* then eventually ban myself.....

But, just as it's sometimes handy to treat light/electricity as waves, and sometimes it's handy to treat is as particles, it's sometimes handy to see OCD as being something fundamentally wrong with your brain, it's wired wrong, it gets stuck in these loops, blah blah blah. And sometimes it's really, really handy to think of it as an outside force, a living thing that's got squatting rights in your head. An imp.

So.... yeah sure why not? Wolves target the weakest elk, right? So why not jump your ass when your resistance is lowered? Best time to do it. OCD for me is an imp that feeds on fear. It will do anything, ANYTHING, to create more fear.

And since the imp is you.... a real-world version of Doctor Morbius and his "Monsters from the Id". It knows all your weaknesses. It knows how to get under your skin, it knows where to twist the knife.