NEED HELP ! how do i stop meself from thinking im bi?

I can relate. I've been doing porn for over 50 years. I am an old dog. I can remember when the best porn I could get was Playboy magazine. I can still remember the first Penthouse magazine that showed pubic hair. (Funny that pubic hair is almost a rarity now) Anyway I fell further and further down the rabbit hole, trying to find new things that would get me off as "regular" porn lost its impact. I started looking at transwoman porn in the late 70's before men could become surgically altered to actually look like women. About 30 years ago I hooked up a couple of times with transwoman escorts. Just like female escorts they were only after my money. I have nothing against gays or trans but I consider myself heterosexual. As I continue on my journey of abstaining from porn and masturbation my transwoman fetish attraction is diminishing.

May God bless you and aid you on your journey.

 

Gotta stop PMO man. The P has messed up your head and your wanting something more and more freaky everytime. Focus on your success in life and put PMO away. Challenge yourself life the 90 day or something long and don't give in.

 

Everybody on here will tell you the exact same thing, quit the PMO for an extended period. I've installed a porn blocker (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.safesurfer) on my phone which I've found to be quite helpful. If there's somebody you'd be comfortable enough to involve, they could set the password and you'd not be able to get onto porn even if you wanted to.
And I would add that if you feel like you absolutely must fap, definitely don't fap to the genres that have been troubling and best if it's not to porn at all. It's better to take a couple of steps backwards rather than go right back to where you began.

 

Well done on expressing your concerns 19m. As a total noob to this site, I wanted to share my admiration for your confession. Within the course of one evening of signing up I have received more support than I thought possible. You have already taken the toughest step by sharing. We are all carrying our own crosses here. Yours is as heavy as ours. How can we be of service?

 

Hi, @19m . I would consider researching something called HOCD. It stands for Homosexual Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Just to be clear, HOCD is not a diagnosis. Rather, it is a specific set of symptoms that many men experience (it seems to be common among porn users). I think you may be experiencing some of those symptoms. I have gone through it before as well.

Before I describe HOCD, I'd like to ease your mind a bit. Treatment is possible. HOCD is awful, it's overwhelming, and it's frustrating, but it is treatable. Judging from your username, you are 19 years old. This means you have already gone through puberty. You know you are heterosexual (you said all your life you have loved women and women only), and I want you to relax about that because it's extremely unlikely that that's going to change after going through puberty. If you remember being straight during your formative, pubescent years, then you are probably going to remain so for the rest of your life. I hope that helps. Now, here's some more information about HOCD:

There are two parts to HOCD. The first is obsessive, intrusive thoughts. For someone who has OCD, these thoughts might be something like "this countertop is not clean enough" or "I might have left my house unlocked". For someone who has HOCD, these thoughts might sound like "I might be attracted to men" or "Am I turning gay?" I call these thoughts intrusive because they are unwelcome. They are false thoughts, they make you feel uneasy or upset, and often times it feels like they're coming from outside you rather than from within.

The second component of HOCD is the compulsive behavior that responds to the obsessive, intrusive thoughts. These include, but are not limited to, reminiscing about a previous heterosexual experience you had to confirm whether or not women arouse you, "checking out" both men and women in public to verify your sexuality (if you see a woman, you think "yup. She's attractive to me, so I'm not gay". If you see a man, you think "nope. He's not attractive to me, so I'm not gay"), and, in extreme cases, watching and/or masturbating to gay porn to test whether or not you find such material arousing. Regardless of what the compulsive behavior is, the purpose is always the same: to respond to (or sometimes, to silence) the corresponding obsessive, intrusive thought.

At this point, hopefully you can see that it becomes a rather torturous cycle: you have an intrusive thought about being gay, so you compulsively respond to the thought, which welcomes in more thoughts. I can imagine that sometimes you feel so overwhelmed with these thoughts that you feel like you can't focus on anything else. That's how things were for me when I was going through this shit.

So, you know what HOCD is. Now, the question is, what can I do about it? Well, I think the most powerful tool you have at your disposal is simple awareness. Notice that I say simple, but that doesn't mean easy. How do you employ this tool? I think the best way is to start verbally acknowledging and identifying your intrusive thoughts and compulsive behaviors. If you have an intrusive thought, verbally identify it for what it is (say "I just had an intrusive thought" out loud if it helps), and acknowledge its' existence in your mind. If you find yourself compulsively responding to the thought (maybe by checking out another man in public, for example), take note of it and verbally identify it as a compulsive response to the thought.

What simple awareness will do for you is that it will separate the thoughts and compulsive behaviors from yourself. They are not your true self. Think of them like wild animals that pass through your mind. You didn't create them, and you can't get rid of them all, but you can tame them, and you can learn to live a healthy, heterosexual lifestyle without them. Don't underestimate the power of simple awareness in the face of HOCD. It will help you greatly.

If you're still struggling after giving that a try, consider talking with a therapist. I talked with my therapist about HOCD and he was super helpful with it.

I also agree with everyone else in these comments about quitting PMO. If you have been using gay porn, just recognize that this is a compulsive behavior that serves one purpose: to silence or to confirm the intrusive thoughts about your sexuality. It gives those thoughts more power over you. Instead, focus on separating them from yourself. You can do it!

Feel free to PM me if you're still struggling with HOCD. I'm happy to talk.

 

Wonderful advice Rildey. It's reading posts like yours that have won me over on the incredible power of this inclusive site.

 

Starting porn while still in puberty is a very tricky situation, and it certainly complicates things. I'll just reiterate again: you know who you are, and you know what you want from a real sexual relationship. The more you distance yourself from invasive thoughts, compulsive behaviors, and porn, the more clear things will become to you. It's going to take some time, but you can get through this.

 

I think only you can answer that question. However, in order to get a clear view of who you really are, you have to separate these compulsive behaviors from yourself. It will help you see who you really are. However, if you do not remember being bisexual when you were going through puberty and you started to notice women in a sexual way, you are probably not bisexual. It's very uncommon for one's sexuality to change after puberty. I think it's very unlikely that you are bisexual. I think you are dealing with HOCD.

This is what suggests to me that you're not bisexual, but are dealing with HOCD. Imagining yourself having sex with someone of the same sex to test whether or not you find it arousing is a very HOCD thing to do. It's a compulsive behavior, and I think the best thing you can do it to simply notice it when it happens. Label it in your mind as a compulsive behavior. The only reason you're doing it is to satisfy the nagging, intrusive thoughts in your head surrounding your sexuality. Every time you entertain those thoughts via compulsive behavior (such as watching transgender porn or imagining yourself in a sex act with a crossdresser), you give those thoughts more power. That doesn't mean you're turning yourself into a bisexual, it just means you're tormenting yourself. If you can tame these intrusive thoughts and limit your compulsive behavior, things will become more clear to you and you will feel more certain about who you really are.

If you're a rational / logical person like I am, then maybe this will help you: if you were bisexual, would you really have to give yourself all these little "tests" to prove it? When you were going through puberty at the ages of 11-14 or so, did you have to give yourself a "test" to find out whether you were straight or not? I seriously doubt things went down that way. If your life was anything like mine, you never asked the question of what your sexual orientation was when you were going through puberty, you simply discovered that you were attracted to women. You never had to ask yourself "do I find women's bodies attractive?", you just knew that you did. If you were bisexual, I think you would have simply discovered that you were attracted to both men and women at that time. Don't you agree?