I'll cut straight to the point - I'm nearly 18, and I've had romantic inclinations towards girls throughout my time as a teenager. However, I've made use of pornography *heavily* to cope with loneliness and anxiety ever since I was 13, and I believe my sexual attraction to women is skewed to such extent that I'm no longer aroused by them - essentially what I'm asking is that is it possible I've turned myself gay? I want to preface by saying I'm perfectly comfortable with the possibility of being bi/homosexual, I just want some external opinion on my sexual attractions / behaviour. When I was much much younger (~7 years old), I remember having sexual encounters with boys my age, and at the time I knew it was "wrong" somehow and the novelty of breaking convention etc etc was exhilarating. When I first discovered pornography, I used to spend the entire night consuming heterosexual material, and it was amazing - of course I've never seen anything like that before! After 2/3 months however of essentially daily viewing, I began to become curious. I browsed through gay sections of porn websites and found that it didn't do anything for me, but after a few more months I became more and more intrigued again and decided to revisit homosexual pornography. I was sort of kinda playing with myself at the time, and one piece of "content" must have appealed to me, because I ejaculated for the first time by complete accident. I didn't actually know what happened, and it didn't necessarily feel good, but it recreated that same experience of discovering porn for the first time and was the "fix" I was looking for. Since, the only wet dreams I've had has been around homosexual behaviour, and have also "explored" further (if you catch my drift) with homosexual acts with my own body, also to some extent recreating the same experience. I've never had sex, male or female, but I've only ever had crushes/feelings for girls, and it's incredibly frustrating that I don't have the same basal sexual desire for women. I've had (and still have) issues with OCD, surrounding religiosity, numbers and HOCD - repeating phrases such as "I kiss women, I kiss women, I kiss women...." etc etc throughout my mind the entire day (as if to somehow convince myself I wasn't gay), and through therapy and medication I've been able to gain some control of my OCD. I'm in real need for some sexual advice. My "perfect scenario" is to be able to express my romantic feelings for women sexually, and discern whether in actuality I have an attraction to men, or it's some weird sexual kink I've worked up over years of abusing my mind with pornography. Thank you very very much for your time.
This is tough to call. I'm sure your sexual occurrences with the same sex at a very young age has shaped your sexuality or even warped it in some way or another. It's up to you decide whether you're gay or not and what you can live with. Many straight men acquire transgender fetishes or even gay fetishes as a result of pornographic abuse. Even if said men do not believe anything to be wrong with homosexuals, they simply cant live with it being within themselves. When you see men do you get attracted to them or only imagining men in your head? That's HOCD but if you watch gay/trans pornography then that's a gay fetish. The way to cope with HOCD is acknowledgment. You simply say to the thoughts, "I recognize you're there but you're incongruent to my sexual orientation." You never suppress them but never enable them; purely acknowledging the presence. This takes away the sense of mischief and scandalousness towards it. On the other hand if you find yourself with a gay fetish then this result is from escalation and conditioning. You need harder and harder porn to get off to but also your viewing of straight pornography over the years has conditioned you into liking penis i.e. Pavlonian Conditioning. If escalation and conditioning is the case then you need to remove the conditioned stimulus from your porn use (penis). Watching women only porn whether that be solo masturbation or lesbian pornography is to be watched whenever you're horny. That may be once a week or twice a day whenever the homosexual thoughts pop in your head. Then immediately after orgasm (post-nut clarity) view the thumbnails of gay pornography for further eradication and disgust of the conditioned stimulus. Whatever you choose is up to you. Just dont keep your indecisiveness from postponing your life.
It's normal for many men to be curious or confused at that age, however the dangers of heavy pornography use is also well documented. I would stay clear of porn and focus on your goals, if it is porn induced the longer you stay clearer of it, the clearer things should become.
