Abnormal Attraction

[trenton]

In my experience, it seems to be repeatedly confirmed to me that I am an unusual man. The way in which men generally behave and think when seeking a sexual does partner does not compute with me. This is likely due to a combination of autism, trauma, OCD, and PTSD which seems to have shaped how attraction works for me starting from a young age. I would like to share how attraction works in my experience.

Originally, I was like every other boy. If nothing had changed, then I likely would have grown up to be a normal man who would try to get laid at every opportunity, hitting on girls because he likes their breasts or butt. Due to my experience, I became appalled by what appears to be natural and normal masculine sexuality. I wanted to distance myself from this behavior, reasoning that it could be the case that a girl was sexually abused. In my experience after a traumatic event, it made me far more uncomfortable with this kind of behavior, and I thought that there were others who might actually feel the same way. A girl who was sexually abused probably wouldn't like it if I walked up to her and told her that I wanted to do some x rated sexual fantasy to her after meeting her five seconds ago. I also didn't like it when I was sexually harassed and assaulted, which appears to be ridiculously common. As I went through school, I saw this behavior constantly from both boys and girls. My experiences caused me to develop a strong negative judgment toward sexuality.

First of all, I developed OCD behaviors around intrusive sexual fantasies which made me afraid. Secondly, there seems to have been a fundamental change in how I perceive beauty. Rather than primarily being attracted to a woman's physical appearance, mainly her face, eyes, and smile, I would instead prioritize evaluating humans by their character. I instantly lost interest in nearly everybody because I saw a lot of people as low quality human beings. I distanced myself from the normal boys who would sneak up behind girls and start dry humping them, and instead became very isolated. My family was crap, the schools were crap, and I had little interest in meeting new people. It would be a very long time before I experienced sexual attraction toward any other human in my life.

One of the challenges with OCD which changes how attraction works is that I am afraid of women with big breasts rather than being attracted to them. The reason I am afraid of them is because when I am speaking to them, I experience this really strong urge to briefly stop making eye contact with them and glance at their breasts. I try to resist because I don't want to make them uncomfortable, but I sometimes I just can't help but glance at their breasts. This creates a situation of intense anxiety and it makes it very difficult to connect with her as a human being because I want to get away from her as quickly as possible. Deep down, maybe I feel that large breasts are nice like a normal man would, but this makes me hate myself because it seems wrong. It makes me feel like I am connecting to a woman as a physical object like a normal man rather than as a complex human being who has a unique personality, history, and values. The fact that I am triggered by large breasts therefore prevents me from accurately evaluating her character which is necessary for me to develop genuine love for her rather than being like a man who would hit on any girl with large breasts. This is part of how I am conflicted about my sexuality because normal masculinity seems wrong and disgusting, but it still exists within me despite past trauma, thus creating an aspect of myself which I hate, causing me to avoid people and self isolate. To be clear, the reason I think this behavior is wrong is because if I don't account for this woman's unique situation by reducing her to an object, then I might make her feel uncomfortable sexually due to her past trauma, but also this rationalization did not occur to me until after my own trauma which made me uncomfortable with people flirting with me. This is a sign of projection in which I may be overestimating the discomfort of others. Even so, I need to know them more deeply before making a proper evaluation in terms of how they would react to such things.

Therefore, in my experience, I seem to have an easier time connecting with women with small breasts as I don't get extreme anxiety. It then becomes easier to look them in the eye and have a normal conversation. When this happens, I then discover ways in which we can relate to each other and we might even have similar interests. This leads to deeper and deeper discussions as we enjoy each other's presence. As I learn more about them, I might start to see them as a nice person in terms of how they behave and how they treat others. They might even do an act of kindness for me like offering me a ride when I am stuck in the rain. When their behavior appears to be consistent and they appear to be a decent human being, I start to like them more and more. I then continue talking with her, and this is when I start to notice details more and more. I begin to see her as physically beautiful, mostly her eyes, face, and smile. The opposite would occur if I encountered a woman who sexually assaulted me. When that happens, it causes me to feel like her face looks like dog shit. Therefore, if I evaluate a person as a good person, then I am more likely to be attracted to them, whereas if I think you are a horrible person, then I will quickly lose all attraction for you.

Assuming this person was consistently kind and I now see them as beautiful, I now suddenly start getting thoughts about having sex with this woman I like, mainly as a human being. This then triggers anxiety, so I sit alone and try to carefully plan describing these feelings to her without making her uncomfortable. In this particular case, when I was talking to this woman I discovered that she was raped by her cousin when she was young. I eventually came up with a method for expressing these kinds of feelings to a woman safely and properly. First of all, I should avoid any explicit references to sex, or sexual feelings. Originally, I was thinking that I could frame it simply as a report of my feelings without any intent to actually hit on her provided she was uncomfortable and would rather go slowly, but I see some problems with that. Here is what I believe to be the proper way to handle this situation.

I think I should explain to her why I like her. It would go something along the following lines. "Rylee, there is something I want to tell you. As I have spent time with you, I have found that I enjoy your presence. I see you as a kind and beautiful person. I like who you are and I would like to have a closer relationship with you. Is that okay with you?" I understand that this might seem a little romantic, but this kind of approach computes with me more than the normal male approach.

If you compare this to things like Pick Up and how men typically think of women, I am left with the impression that I am supposed to evaluate a woman based on her appearance on a scale of 1 to 10 and then decide right then and there if I want to have sex with her. This kind of masculine mindset does not compute with me at all. That entire mindset seems like a red flag to me that indicates a problem with character. It reduces sexual attraction to appearance without prioritizing who the person is on a deeper level. Attempting to adopt that kind of approach would make me feel horrible about myself. I know this is normal for most men, but I can't see myself walking up to a woman  because I glanced at her for half a second and now I immediately want to fuck her up the ass.

This is why judgments like "hot" never really computed with me. It is as if the appearance of a woman is such that it causes me to want to have sex with her even though I could end up impregnating a psychopath who will cut off my penis and murder me which actually happens in some cases. I would prefer to know who somebody is prior to determining whether or not I want to have sex with her. The only time appearance triggers sexual feelings, given the proper context, is when I see a naked woman. Perhaps that is what is considered "hot" by my standards because the appearance is such that it causes me to want to have sex, but context is still important beyond mere appearance. For example, it could be my sister getting undressed in the living room or a naked woman running terrified or screaming "rape." This would be bad context in which appearance alone is not enough to make it sexy because it could be something horrible. Hotness is therefore more than appearance in my opinion. Therefore in my opinion something hot would be me being with a woman in a relationship of mutual attraction in which we enjoy each other enough to now have sex. This would involve being completely naked and saying things like "I love you."

Similarly, I have doubts when I see overly flirtatious women. It makes me question their character, likely due to trauma just like with Pick Up. When a woman walks up to me and tells me she wants to have sex with me, it makes me very uncomfortable. I had previous women do that to me and they ended up sexually assaulting me. They are likely making assumptions about my character purely based on the fact that I am a man and it would be normal for me to immediately want to rip off her clothes and have sex with her. I am actually turned off by this behavior because I don't want to be made to feel slutty. I also have doubts about women who posts pictures of their naked bodies online. Although such images do illicit sexual feelings in me, the situation causes me to doubt the person's character and what a potential relationship would be like. Such a woman is probably expecting me to be a normal man, and she probably would not be a good match for somebody like me. Therefore, I avoid such women as they are probably expecting me to be a slut, resulting in an incompatible relationship.

So far I have never made to the point of actually being on a date with a woman I like. If ever it does come to that point, I have a strategy in mind, granted this mindset will likely need to be refined. It shows signs of a deep seated fear caused by past trauma from other horrible relationships. My primary concern in such a situation would be to ensure that we can avoid a toxic, dysfunctional relationship. This would involve a lot of intellectual discussions about things like abuse patterns to avoid or dysfunctional relationship patterns. In this case if a woman were sexually abused, then she likely has significant trauma, leaving her prone to emotional codependence. One thing that would need to be made clear is that attempting to heal together creates a trauma bond, which in turn is an early sign of a dysfunctional relationship as healing would require professional help. My instinct is to approach this situation somewhat seriously as we can create a situation in which we love each other, but it would be dysfunctional to use each other as a psychological crutch. This kind of situation or dynamic would demand my full attention as we seek a way to navigate this potential pitfall in such a relationship. Of course, these are just my initial thoughts of what would be important to me, but there is probably something wrong with this mindset. Maybe I am showing signs of trust issues, which is also a sign of potentially dysfunctional relationships. I am genuinely curious as to how somebody should go about striking such a balance in this case. This could be a complex and fascinating discussion. Maybe my seriousness itself could be problematic if it creates excessive pressure.

Unfortunately, I never got to the point of making it to a date with somebody I like. There is kind of a catch 22 with finding potential partners. Attraction seems to happen most naturally for me, when it isn't the goal. If I set the conscious goal to find a woman to fall in love with, then something immediately feels off about it. I feel like this kind of mindset positions me to look at a potential partner with rose colored glasses because I am actively looking for the outcome I would want. At the same time, it doesn't make sense to go to some kind of club of my interest with conscious intent to be sexually attracted to somebody. In fact a club of my interest might be a spiritual retreat where dating might seem incompatible, or at a chess club in which I am so focused on the chess board position that I am not having deep conversations about a woman's history and character. Meanwhile, sexual attraction in the workplace is problematic. I actually did find myself attracted to somebody at work, but I never told her because she was the manager and I thought it was inappropriate. Her name was Hunter.

It is interesting to note that Hunter and Rylee had a lot of similarities in terms of their appearance. They both had a tan skin tone, were shorter than me, had brown eyes, dark hair, a white smile, seemed thin and lightweight, and had small enough breast and butt sizes that it did not trigger extreme anxiety and OCD, allowing me to comfortably hold a conversation with them without the instinct to overly sexualize them causing me to feel slutty, dirty, improper, and ashamed of myself. They both had a similar tone of voice which I would describe as caring and compassionate. They both were kind to me, causing me to evaluate their character positively and in turn causing me to see them as more physically beautiful. One of my doubts is that such women seem kind of young. They were both about 20. I am 26, and I see the young age a likely sign of lower development and maturity. The human brain does not fully develop until the ages of 25-27. There are also a lot of women at the age of 21 who become incredibly immature due to their newfound opportunities to drink. In order to evaluate a woman's character, I would need to understand her relationship to alcohol. If a woman I like becomes old enough to drink and she decides she likes getting drunk, then I don't like her. The situation becomes too unpredictable with a lot of possible danger. I don't want my girlfriend to be an alcoholic.

Aside from these two women, there were other women who I saw as physically attractive, but I never got to know them. These were athletic women, and I never managed to successfully approach them because they were jogging with their headphones in and I would have to chase after them yelling at them to get their attention. That doesn't seem right to me. This is why I have a hard time approaching athletic women. I recall that this particular woman was white, blonde, had a somewhat muscular build but nothing extreme, had blue eyes, a white shirt, and blue shorts. I noticed slightly larger breasts than with Hunter and Rylee and that triggered anxiety. I guess that would be one of the exceptions in which I saw a woman as beautiful prior to knowing her character, kind of like with Alice. Alice was another complicated character, but I felt like I wanted to be with her. I thought that she was beautiful the moment I saw her, so I started talking to her. This however, was prior to some of the traumatic experiences which caused me strongly focus on character when looking for humans that I should have a relationship with. Anyway, Alice was white, had short black hair, brown eyes, was taller than me, had a white smile, and also small breasts that would not have triggered OCD. I don't know what happened to Alice, but I wanted to be with her and I enjoyed her presence. I recall that her voice was significantly different from those of Rylee or Hunter. Rylee had a consistently cute sounding voice, Hunter alternated between the compassionate and intentional tone of voice obviously because we are at work and she is the manager, and Alice had a somewhat deeper tone with a slight crack. I was young at the time and maybe she was going through puberty. I remember a higher celebratory voice from Alice when she said "I'm a pro!" after beating a computer game called Midnight and a higher happier voice when she told me "goodbye" only to never return. It made me think that actually she didn't like me. Now that I think about it, if she was going through puberty and I was about five, then it makes sense that she wouldn't want to be with me. I used to hate myself because I thought it was my fault, but this would explain it too. The traumatic event happened when I was six which changed my entire approach to attraction.

What are your thoughts on this abnormal attraction? What kind of advice would you give to somebody like me? Part of me wants to have a deep loving connection with somebody, but I am afraid that my depression, suicidal thoughts, and other mental health problems might harm any relationship with a potential partner. I was recommended dating by multiple therapists, but my situation is complicated and I hesitate to go out intentionally looking for somebody to love. I was planning on trying dating, but instead I ended up hospitalized with severe depression which made me doubt the idea again. At the same time I have not had a deep connection with many human beings and the therapists think that I am lonely. Following the trauma I started prioritizing intellectual ideals over love and relationships, resulting in a situation in which I have a lot of barriers to intimacy. This kind of mindset and disposition is what ultimately attracted me to Actualized.org. I wanted to seek higher intelligence because I believed my ignorance was the cause of my trauma and that knowledge and wisdom could protect me from doing something stupid. I now understand that actually a lot of people develop this kind of personality in response to trauma. It is a system of compensatory values which cloud my authentic values. That is another complex subject that I could discuss some other time.

I hope somebody finds this helpful or is able to offer good perspective.

Thank you.

[Natasha Tori Maru]

First off this is a lot to share - thank you. 

A lot of vulnerability and personal truths.

While I cannot address all you have spoken about - I can add on some my thoughts to add to your thought soup.

• I do not think your method of 'vetting' a women is dysfunctional at all, it is a sign of seeking a deeper & more conscious connection with another person.
• You may want to look into the term 'demisexual' as a helpful descriptor for your particular type of sexual drive & desire that steers you away from any pathologizing of it.
• I, myself, and many women, experience sexual desire and attraction in the way you describe. In the absence of some feeling & connection, there isn't a lot of charged sexual energy present. Certainly not as much as the general population, who are typically charged up by visual stimulus & innuendo/flirting.
• OCD is very difficult - I wonder if this stems from a need to 'control' your desire? You seem to have some resistance, or 'friction' toward typical masculine sexual desire. This could be resulting in some intrusive thoughts. OCD can be compulsive thoughts in an attempt to relieve the stressor, not just a compulsive action. But I am sure you are aware of this!
• I think it is healthy and natural to be attracted to someone based on pure physicality. You are just different
• You come across as very gentle, thoughtful and empathetic. Most especially, your consideration of women's perspective and sexual trauma/assault. It is a rare women indeed who has not had this sort of experience. It is incomprehensible to some men, how powerless this can make women feel.

Just my thoughts - I do not know if this helps you - I hope it does!

I can tell you with 100% certainty there will be someone out there for you <3

[trenton]

18 hours ago, Natasha Tori Maru said:

OCD is very difficult - I wonder if this stems from a need to 'control' your desire? You seem to have some resistance, or 'friction' toward typical masculine sexual desire. This could be resulting in some intrusive thoughts. OCD can be compulsive thoughts in an attempt to relieve the stressor, not just a compulsive action. But I am sure you are aware of this!

You are right about a lot of these things. The OCD behaviors are what I believe to be resulting from trauma. This is why I am trying to get a trauma therapist rather than an OCD therapist.

Actually now that I think about it again, I see that many of my trauma responses are wrong. I will explain.

I was exposed to a lot of terrible versions of masculine sexuality as a child. Firstly, my father had sex with my mother when she was underage and fled the state to avoid paying child support. He went on to have children by other women as well as my mom struggled to raise her kids. For the most part I grew up as the only boy with two sisters, my mom, and my grandma. No positive male role model existed. In fact I became isolated and fearful after my mother yelled that she went to easy on me for being the only boy which made me feel like I deserved harsher treatment. Mom doesn't remember this but this was the reason I started staying in my room so much and not talking to the family.

The situation was even worse than that. My father was also a gangster who sex trafficker minors with his gang who were child predators. One night he took me to his gang leader. He was called "fat ass" and he offered my father 600 dollars to have me spend the night with the gang in exchange for sexual favors. In this particular instance my father declined the deal. I haven't told the rest of the family about this.

As a six year old I had a disturbing dream in which my uncle molested me. I don't have any memory of actually being sexually abused, and that's why I was recommended to get emdr for repressed memories. I am in a weird position in which I don't know if I was sexually abused or not because I don't have much memory from when I was 2 or 3. I didn't tell my family about this either.

Because of everything I was exposed when I was six, I went on to repeat the behavior on my four year old sister. When I realized I didn't like it I started experiencing intense anxiety, fear, and a sense of violation. We thought we were just playing, but then discovered that something was horribly wrong. My sister then told my mom about it so my mom accused me of sexually abusing her daughter. She attributed adult motivations to a six year old and it led to a lot of trauma responses.

I became hypervigilant, I had a harder time sleeping, I was extremely self conscious, I started distancing myself from masculine sexuality, I started acting very serious rather than playful, I had intrusive memories and nightmares, I had intrusive thoughts of sexual violence, I was afraid of becoming a sexual predator, I started avoiding closer relationships in favor of being isolated, I felt incapable of loving myself, I had a crippled sense of reality, I judged myself harshly, and I started adopting compensatory values which clouded my authentic values in an effort to rebuild a sense of self worth. This ultimately ties into a sense of nihilism and a lack of purpose and meaning which in turn leads to depression and suicidal thoughts. This behavior of taking issues like purpose very seriously to justify my existence started with the childhood incident. Some of what I described are OCD like behaviors.

The fear of being sexually abusive is part of my fear of losing control and doing something stupid. The thing is that this has never happened before. None of my trauma was caused by a lack of self control. It was caused by ignorance and a lack of guidance. However my experiences has indeed created intense friction between what I believe a good person to be and my sexual desires. Sometimes it leads to muscle spasms.

This kind of experience led me to thinking that I needed to prioritize intellectual ideals over things like love and sex. I looked for a higher purpose and started behaving as if lust were an objective sin even though I don't believe in the Bible. I felt tainted and ashamed and unable to restore a sense of peace in my own body. The outcome is that i end up with a lot of barriers to intimacy and i hope a trauma therapist can help.

I genuinely have a hard time seeing how typical masculine sexuality is healthy. This leads to me hating myself when I see these desires in myself. I want to make sure I am not merely using a woman for her body even though I am also curious about sex which I see as inherently problematic.

Can you explain how on earth is typical masculine sexuality healthy? Why is it good to rate women on a scale of 1 to 10 and objectify them even though the women may carry sexual trauma and often don't like being overly sexualized? From my point of view healthy sexuality should account for the imbalance in the masculine and feminine perspective and create a dynamic balance. Otherwise the relationship seems incongruous in terms values. I feel like I am doing something wrong when I start thinking of women in a way that sexually objectifies them because it is my understanding that they dont want to be treated this way by men who think like pigs.

It might help to see a steel man or accurate version of what masculine sexuality is to make sure my trauma is not distorting the picture. However, it is my understanding that it seems to involve interest in breasts, butts, and vagina.

My theory is that this is a psychological pattern rooted in biology and evolution. Back then men used the size of breasts and butts as a sign of fertility. Back then normal masculine sexuality made sense because life expectancy was short and women often died from complications due to pregnancy. Men also needed to be more aggressive and violent, explaining the discrepancy between male and female violence in terms of statistics. Therefore in my opinion, society has transformed such that the primal instincts of men are no longer compatible with what is needed for a healthy society. It made sense in ancient cultures, but now there are many more complications concerning sexual propriety and morality. Religion has been baked into various cultures which fundamentally condemn these base instincts. Trauma leads to similar condemnation. In order to have a healthy society we can't have men acting on these instincts. This seems to be the fundamental tension in terms of my sense of morality and trauma and my sexual desires and instincts.

In my opinion normal masculine sexuality is not healthy, but it exists because it was necessary. It is impossible to simply discipline sex away. This is the bind that I believe men are in as a consequence of how we evolved. Maybe this explains why hate myself. What do you think? I know there are exceptions like porn stars who love being viewed as objects, so in some contexts normal masculinty is okay if certain women are in to that. This just seems like a bad assumption to make when approaching women in general if not all women want to be porn stars.

[Yimpa]

20 hours ago, Natasha Tori Maru said:

I can tell you with 100% certainty there will be someone out there for you <3

Such a stunning paradox!

 

[Emerald]

I know that OCD is involved, so this might not be that reassuring.

But there is nothing wrong with being attracted to breasts and at the initial appearance of a woman.

All heterosexual men have that as a part of their sexuality, and it's just a normal neutral thing. It's not inherently negative, gross, or bad.

And women generally like the fact that men have this component of their sexuality as it makes the sexual dynamic fun because men get really excited about the woman and the woman feels desired. And sex wouldn't really be that exciting for women if men didn't have this component of their sexuality.

The problem arises when a man only values women that way... and if he has a paradigm and behaviors that are objectifying... and he directs that tendency towards women who aren't interested in him.

There are plenty of men who relate to these components of their sexuality in a gross way. But that's not about their sexuality itself.... it's about their relationship to their sexuality.

But I have a friend of mine who had a similar aversion to these components of his own sexuality. And before I met him, he was with a really controlling jealous partner who would always accuse him of ogling other women in public when he wasn't... so that exacerbated the dynamic. 

She even made him look at the ground when they'd go out grocery shopping together so he wouldn't look at women. And he was so self-conscious about simply noticing when a woman is physically attractive that he would oblige her. He even stopped watching movies with attractive women in them at her request (when most movies have attractive women in them).

So, needless to say, this relationship made him feel even more negatively about his maleness and his sexuality.

And he was always trying to think of himself as "not like the other guys"... and to try to get rid of his tendency to notice and be attracted to women's' appearances.

He was thinking it was a problem that he even noticed when a woman is attractive and he was trying to train himself to not recognize attractiveness in women. But of course, even the straightest of straight girls can notice when a woman is attractive. So, it didn't work.

But he eventually came to a point of acceptance and appreciation of this element of his sexuality... and he was glad to have that component of his sexuality. He realized that he'd rather have it than not have it.

That's what will likely have to happen for you to come to a sense of peace with your sexuality and maleness.

Edited May 7 by Emerald

[trenton]

@Emerald thank you for sharing that story. I can relate to your friend a ton. I actually did start training myself to not recognize attractiveness. I started doing that after the traumatic events because I wanted to distance myself from that behavior, but in fact attractiveness had nothing to do with those events. The reason I have a hard time relating to other men is because I forced myself to be different due to seeing myself as inherently broken otherwise.

I remember that in this process I also got worse at remembering names and faces which I used to be really good at. I didn't see much value in others and I didn't see value in myself either.

I also started thinking of how my insecurities could he used against me and lead to bad relationships. I see a lot of parallels between myself and your friend.

If it is okay to value a woman physically in addition to everything else, then how do I make sure I don't over do it? Maybe it would help to examine a hypothetical scenario in which I find a woman's breasts attractive. I would then examine how in theory the situation should be handled should I speak to such a woman. It would help to know the woman's complete appearance in case there is anything else I find physically attractive. It might be the case that I trained myself to be repulsed by large breasts due to seeing the instinct to glance at breasts during conversation as improper. The thought of explicitly mentioning attraction to breasts or butt occurred to me, but I need to remember that she might be traumatized.

[trenton]

23 hours ago, Natasha Tori Maru said:

I can tell you with 100% certainty there will be someone out there for you <3

Thank you for this. It feels nice.

[trenton]

@Yimpa i can definitely relate to that video. Part of me wants certainty yet spirituality taught me not knowing. The of OCD as the doubting disorder should be helpful.