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Does anyone feel like they've experienced compulsive heterosexuality


snapesonalane

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snapesonalane

Okay, so for a while now I've seen myself as asexual panromantic. I saw myself as someone who could fall in love with anyone but didn't experience sexual attraction to anyone at all. I was okay with that label. But recently I came across a post talking about something I had never heard before, compulsive heterosexuality. And it got me thinking about my romantic attraction to men. And my overall attraction to women. I've had crushes on guys, ever since I was a child. I never felt like I had any crushes on girls though, but this may be because of the aforementioned compulsive heterosexuality. 

 

I remember when I was younger I would have fantasies involving women, never men. I've been trying to understand if this means I'm simply gay, if I'm gray-ace because I rarely experience sexual attraction, but homoromantic? I recall a very limited amount of times when I've fantasized about men, I could probably count them on one hand. And I've only ever experienced a very faint sexual attraction to one guy, ever. 

 

Does anybody that's attracted to the same gender have any experience with compulsive heterosexuality? If so, how did you recognize you were? 

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Redshirt Jim

Hello :) Call me Vernon. I identify as Panromantic Asexual. When I was younger, I had fantasies of opposite sex, but at the same time found myself admiring the same sex. 

The odd thing is, I actually never thought them as different genders. Just that they are people that have different genitals. That is why I found panromantic asexual as a great way to describe my orientation.  I am still disinterested in sex, but would love to pursue a romantic relationship. 

 

Maybe that will help. 

 

LLAP :)

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AVEN #1 fan

I never had fantasies with gender conforming people as a child. I always wanted to find somebody who was gender variant like me but from the opposite biological sex bc I thought it would feel less alone and guilty for being me bc of my issues with the shitty western society... that was how I was raised/ "programmed" (I kinda wanted a free relationship but one which society wouldn't hate so much)

 

Anyway, I'm the third pancake  (pan-ro ace) here, what a coincidence.  oh lol I was just talking about it in the murals.

 

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Oh! I felt this too! When I was little, I thought I could only like and look at boys. If I found a smile cute or eyes beautiful, I instantly thought I liked them in a romantic way, but compared with my friends, I was different. They wanted to date them, kiss them and so on, while I... I just wanted to look at them from afar, admiring the eyes or smile. However, in my mind I would always have fantasies or thoughts (not sexual, nor romantic. Sensual ones) with girls. 

 

I would feel self-conscious and try to forget or stop them, thinking something was wrong with me. (back then, I only know heterosexuality, so this was weird) 

 

When I would talk with people I would always say I didn't care about if they were girls or boys, what mattered was if I liked them, enough to want a relationship with them. (never did, I never fell in love even once) 

 

Then later, I noticed that has I got to know other sexual orientations, I started to accept my attraction to girls as something normal and it shifted so much, that I almost don't even look at guys anymore. 

 

But still no desire/interest in romance or sex... Just plain weird! 

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swirl_of_blue

I've learnt to think that people of the same sex can be friends, and people of the opposite sex can be partners. It's what society teaches all the way from kindergarten, or at least that's the way it's been for me. Even kids as young as four would see it as natural to be friends with those of the same sex, but if the friend was of the opposite sex there would be giggling, kisses on cheeks etc. And as I got older this assumption got stronger. At school it was impossible to have friends of the opposite sex anymore, and anything romantic/sexual would always have to be directed against the opposite sex. In the sex ed classes we were taught that it was natural to have dreams also about persons of same sex, but that didn't have to mean you really were attracted to your own sex. We were taught that being attracted to the same sex was perfectly acceptable, but it was still at the same time glossed over as youthful curiosity and experimentation. So that's what I too considered it when I noticed I wasn't exclusively attracted to males. It's been a very slow process to unlearn the heteronormative world view! I still haven't had any crushes on women, but several squishes and I can never know when one of those squishes might evolve in to a crush. Sensually I can be attracted to any gender, though that also has taken me some time to realise.

 

Really, society can take its heteronormativity and shove it up its collective behind. All it does is cause confusion and problems for those who are not exclusively attracted to their own gender!

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crazypimpernelfan

I'd like to pipe in this thread. I did feel like I was in a state of mind where I had to conform to heterosexual expectations. Weirdly, though, when I was going through the sexual explorations stage as a kid, I was with girls around my age. Of course, that died out eventually. It wasn't till I was around 11 that I was told "being gay is wrong". When I hit the age of 12, I thought I was lesbian, and then the rest is history. My first crush was on a guy at age 13, and I didn't have a crush on a gal till I was 17.

 

Point made: I think a lot of us felt forced to conform to heterosexual expectations. Even today I feel this way, because most people (even those who are supposedly pro-LGBT+) still insist that I get into a relationship with a guy. I don't dare tell them I'm in the gray-ace spectrum because I know they'd probably come up with all kinds of crap, so I just tell most people that I'm bisexual and leave it at that.

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I mostly only fantasized with the opposite sex when I was little. Also, I'm another pancake! I still feel like the label fits though because I think I would be able to love a woman as much as a man, and love non-binaries as well. Gender just isn't that important to me. So far, the two possible times I've experienced a crush have been for a guy, but that doesn't mean it always will be, or that they're even crushes.

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Guest Deus Ex Infinity

No. Just had to pretend being straight while living with my folks and relatives for some years. Worse time of my life.

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The greatest conflict that led me to discover my ace-ness was society's hetero expectations. I actually believed that "straight fairy tale love" nonsense for a while. I always thought "I might meet a guy someday, for now I'll enjoy being young and single" despite having a natural sense of "I don't care about mushy icky sexy feelings, ew" throughout my entire life. I expected myself to have crushes in middle school. People still expect me to have a "waiting for the one" mindset, ughh. 

But I think it's better to just accept who I am and be happy with friendship and live in the moment, rather than expect that "someone may happen."

I like my life how it is. Don't need no smoochy horny partner, I love life and all I have is the now. Possible my sexuality might change, if it does it does. I don't think it will, though.

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Definitely! The process of discovering how I identify can basically be simplified to me learning that I don't have to be/do/like the things/people society tells me I should aka learning to defy compulsive heterosexuality, cisnormativity, and amatonormativity. First I learned that not being sexually attracted to anyone was ok, but I still identified as a biromantic ace girl. Then I figured out that now, I wasn't actually attracted to boys in any vaguely romantically-coded way, so I dentified as homoromantic ace. Then I got around to the nonbinary thing, so hey! not a girl! The most recent development is figuring out that sensual attraction =/= romantic attraction, so now I'm triple-A (lol)--agender aromantic asexual.

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Im not sure if this is exactly the same, but when i was younger i used to think i had to have a crush on my best friend, I always was afraid of ruining our friendship, but nonetheless i pretended and believed that i liked him, i acted kinda boy crazy, looking back i see it for what it was, an act. 

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1 hour ago, StormySky said:

The greatest conflict that led me to discover my ace-ness was society's hetero expectations. I actually believed that "straight fairy tale love" nonsense for a while. I always thought "I might meet a guy someday, for now I'll enjoy being young and single" despite having a natural sense of "I don't care about mushy icky sexy feelings, ew" throughout my entire life. I expected myself to have crushes in middle school. People still expect me to have a "waiting for the one" mindset, ughh. 

I thought that when I was younger too. I even forced myself to have fantasies.

33 minutes ago, LettaceShoes said:

Im not sure if this is exactly the same, but when i was younger i used to think i had to have a crush on my best friend, I always was afraid of ruining our friendship, but nonetheless i pretended and believed that i liked him, i acted kinda boy crazy, looking back i see it for what it was, an act. 

I did this as well. I thought the people I wanted to be friends with I had a crush on. I wish I had known sooner.

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snapesonalane

It helps a lot with my confusion to see that not everyone has their sexuality into clean and neat labels. I understood on a rational level that I didn't have to define myself 100%, but part of me still wanted to. For now, I just think I'll go on as I am. I'm completely fine with being single and not dating anyone of any gender so I'll just give myself time to figure out where my romantic attraction lies (and now sensual attraction as well, because I didn't know it was different from romantic attraction). 

 

I think panromantic isn't the right label for me because even though I feel like I could fall in love with any gender I do see them as different genders unlike Vernon Dunkin. So right now I just feel like I could be biromantic with a preference towards women? Maybe. But also, it doesn't matter much at the moment, and I'm fine with that. 

 

I definitely feel like I forced crushes on guys when I was younger, just to fit in with the rest of the girls. But I also never really had any crushes, on anyone. But I found everyone, of any gender, pretty. So yeah, basically, compulsive heterosexuality is weird and it'll take a while for me to figure it out hehe 

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words are futile devices

I definitely feel like I experienced this. I was raised in a very Christian, conservative environment. Attended private Christian school until halfway through 10th grade. I had never been taught or told that any sexual orientation or attraction existed besides that involving two members of opposite sexes... and honestly, can't quite remember when or how I discovered that there were alternatives. 

 

Maybe it's because of this naivety that I never dared to think of a girl in any way beyond purely platonic friendship, but crushed on boys constantly. In high school I dated a few different guys and usually ended things before they really even began, because it didn't feel "right" or my feelings would mysteriously vanish like a mist after a couple of days. I dealt with this frustrating cycle for years, before discovering asexuality at 21. Unfortunately, around that time I still considered myself a Christian and had the warped mindset that anything that wasn't heterosexuality must be a sin. I even worried that being asexual was "wrong." Shortly thereafter, though, with the help of this site and and doing more research and soul-searching, I came to understand and wholeheartedly accept a wide variety of sexualities, romantic orientations, and lifestyles.

 

And in the last couple of months I've realized I could see myself with a man or a woman or a non-binary person, though lately I've actually been thinking about women exclusively. How nice it would be to meet one who would maybe like to share life with me in an affectionate yet mostly platonic sense.

 

It's unbelievable how much happier I've been since discovering all of this. Screw heteronormativity. :D

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8 hours ago, snapesonalane said:

It helps a lot with my confusion to see that not everyone has their sexuality into clean and neat labels. I understood on a rational level that I didn't have to define myself 100%, but part of me still wanted to. For now, I just think I'll go on as I am. I'm completely fine with being single and not dating anyone of any gender so I'll just give myself time to figure out where my romantic attraction lies (and now sensual attraction as well, because I didn't know it was different from romantic attraction). 

 

I think panromantic isn't the right label for me because even though I feel like I could fall in love with any gender I do see them as different genders unlike Vernon Dunkin. So right now I just feel like I could be biromantic with a preference towards women? Maybe. But also, it doesn't matter much at the moment, and I'm fine with that. 

 

I definitely feel like I forced crushes on guys when I was younger, just to fit in with the rest of the girls. But I also never really had any crushes, on anyone. But I found everyone, of any gender, pretty. So yeah, basically, compulsive heterosexuality is weird and it'll take a while for me to figure it out hehe 

I'm glad you've decided to just go through life and try not to mind the labels too much. A couple things I wanted to tell you though is 

 

A) Romantic attraction is different from sensual attraction, but for some people they come together all the time and can sometimes mean the same thing. Therefore, it really just depends on you whether or not they are the same or different.

B) Panromantics don't need to disregard everyone's gender to be pan, they just need to be able to love anyone of any gender. You can still see people with different genders and be panromantic.

 

I just wanted to clear these two things up a little in the hopes that they will help you out.

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On ‎7‎/‎30‎/‎2017 at 10:58 PM, snapesonalane said:

Okay, so for a while now I've seen myself as asexual panromantic. I saw myself as someone who could fall in love with anyone but didn't experience sexual attraction to anyone at all. I was okay with that label. But recently I came across a post talking about something I had never heard before, compulsive heterosexuality. And it got me thinking about my romantic attraction to men. And my overall attraction to women. I've had crushes on guys, ever since I was a child. I never felt like I had any crushes on girls though, but this may be because of the aforementioned compulsive heterosexuality. 

 

I remember when I was younger I would have fantasies involving women, never men. I've been trying to understand if this means I'm simply gay, if I'm gray-ace because I rarely experience sexual attraction, but homoromantic? I recall a very limited amount of times when I've fantasized about men, I could probably count them on one hand. And I've only ever experienced a very faint sexual attraction to one guy, ever. 

 

Does anybody that's attracted to the same gender have any experience with compulsive heterosexuality? If so, how did you recognize you were? 

This post does not explain what the term "Compulsive Heterosexuality" is suppose to be. Further I not sure what a term like that can mean because sounds like one is stating that you become straight because you are suppose to be straight and I think if sexuality was really that easy to change, there would be no debate about gay rights in the world.

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words are futile devices
3 hours ago, Sherlocks said:

This post does not explain what the term "Compulsive Heterosexuality" is suppose to be. Further I not sure what a term like that can mean because sounds like one is stating that you become straight because you are suppose to be straight and I think if sexuality was really that easy to change, there would be no debate about gay rights in the world.

I think the OP might have been referring to compulsory heterosexuality.

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_heterosexuality

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I don't think I really experienced this, no.  If anything, it was mainly enforced that "thinking gays are abhorrent" IS abhorrent.

 

That all being said, the growing alienation toward my own sex that started in intermediate school and peaked in high school kinda ensured that I didn't turn out as anything but hetero-something.  I'm not sure I would call that a case of compulsive hetero-something, though.

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I personally think the asexual community encourages compulsive heterosexuality. It encourages relationships with people you aren't even attracted to, most of which appear straight. And I think that's the biggest problem with our community. If you don't go along with it you are an outcast. 

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I used to think I had crushes on boys when I was younger because I genuinely thought that if you wanted to be friends or best friends with them it meant you loved them. I never wanted to actually kiss or date these boys, just hang out with them and be their friend (I even remember deliberately acting romantically interested in them by mimicking how I'd seen girls act on tv and in my school, fully aware that I was putting it on). This confused me later when I realised I felt the same thing for girls and for a while I would wonder if I was in love with my best female friend. It was only after I started seeing people who actually had romantic (and later, sexual) feelings for each other that I realised I wasn't experience anything like that. I had just assumed I was straight because everyone I knew at the time was.

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I can totally relate! I'm closeted and the thought of coming out to my super conservative family terrifies me. So whenever I think of being in a romantic relationship, I usually think of guys even though I kind of prefer girls. I also didn't tell people my "first kiss story" for a long time because it was with a girl, and one of my friends who is bi said that if 'you're m-pec your first kiss should be with a guy." Ugh, I wish I didn't have to keep living my life based on other people's idea of what it should be. 

 

 

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On 7/31/2017 at 1:40 AM, JusTopi said:

Oh! I felt this too! When I was little, I thought I could only like and look at boys. If I found a smile cute or eyes beautiful, I instantly thought I liked them in a romantic way, but compared with my friends, I was different. They wanted to date them, kiss them and so on, while I... I just wanted to look at them from afar, admiring the eyes or smile.

I've totally had this!! It's actually kind of sad because many relationships in which I developed a squish that I mistook for a crush went in a direction that ranged from diminishing to acquaintance to nonexistence. Now that I look back, I think--thought-- that many girls looked attractive but I never thought twice because I assumed that it couldn't possibly be a crush because I was straight... haha... 

 

On 8/2/2017 at 4:40 AM, Emanresu Yllisa said:

I used to think I had crushes on boys when I was younger because I genuinely thought that if you wanted to be friends or best friends with them it meant you loved them. I never wanted to actually kiss or date these boys, just hang out with them and be their friend (I even remember deliberately acting romantically interested in them by mimicking how I'd seen girls act on tv and in my school, fully aware that I was putting it on). This confused me later when I realised I felt the same thing for girls and for a while I would wonder if I was in love with my best female friend. It was only after I started seeing people who actually had romantic (and later, sexual) feelings for each other that I realised I wasn't experience anything like that. I had just assumed I was straight because everyone I knew at the time was.

Yep, me too!! I remember doing the acting thing towards my best male friend that I had a squish on for a few years, as well as a few small squishes I had later. It never ended well XD I wish I understood what I was feeling earlier

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I dunno. I pretended to be a straight woman for years, but I don't think that's quite the same thing. :P

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On 7/31/2017 at 2:40 PM, QuirkyGeek said:

 I thought the people I wanted to be friends with I had a crush on. I wish I had known sooner.

Yes! Me. In elementary school I just wanted to be friends with a boy and I got shit for it. They all said I like liked him and it was pretty annoying. At the time I was able to convince myself that I had a crush on him, but I realized later that it's different. The same thing happened in middle school, but with my best friend... And in high school with the same friend.... And then there was this one person... It was friendship but my heart ached when I saw of her and couldn't be with her... But the most I ever wanted to do was sometimes hold hands and maybe hug... I still don't know what that was.... The closest I've come to feeling that way again was when I found someone to geek out with me about the fluid piano... Also her conducting is beautifully done....I think this is a squish? Is the giddiness I get from conversing with her the difference between a friend and a squish?

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  • 3 weeks later...
snapesonalane
On 8/7/2017 at 4:24 PM, AlexATL said:

I can totally relate! I'm closeted and the thought of coming out to my super conservative family terrifies me. So whenever I think of being in a romantic relationship, I usually think of guys even though I kind of prefer girls. I also didn't tell people my "first kiss story" for a long time because it was with a girl, and one of my friends who is bi said that if 'you're m-pec your first kiss should be with a guy." Ugh, I wish I didn't have to keep living my life based on other people's idea of what it should be. 

 

 

I have this same exact experience! I'm afraid of coming out to my family in part because my sexuality is so hard to explain to people who aren't part of the LGBT community (and furthermore, part of the ace community within the LGBT community). I hate thinking about having to explain my sexuality. Part of me also just figures they're all going to just assume I'm gay, which I'm fine with, except my family has a tolerance that ranges from homophobic all the way to tolerant-as-long-as-you-aren't-gay. So I totally get the thing about thinking only about guys when I think of a long term relationship despite probably preferring girls. 

 

(Also, my first kiss was also with my bi friend lol)

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scarletlatitude
On 7/31/2017 at 1:58 AM, snapesonalane said:

compulsive heterosexuality

Hmm, never heard of it but I do agree with the idea. I'm ace romantic, and I do sometimes experience heterosexuality. 

 

On 8/29/2017 at 1:55 AM, snapesonalane said:

I'm afraid of coming out to my family in part because my sexuality is so hard to explain to people who aren't part of the LGBT community (and furthermore, part of the ace community within the LGBT community).

^ This

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nanogretchen4

I'm a bisexual and demisexual woman. When I was in my teens I definitely started with the assumption that whatever I was feeling for women must be platonic. I also tried to conjure up whatever feelings I was supposed to be having for men. When it just wasn't happening I assumed I was just a late bloomer and would fall in love with a man eventually. Well, technically I did fall in love with a man years later, but in the meantime I was totally in love with my female best friend and none of the males I knew in high school did anything for me.

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  • 2 months later...
PixleyDust✨

I am a sexually-averse, aromantic asexual female (albeit a genderfluid one), and yet I have experienced moments of very fleeting, but intense attraction to the opposite sex. Being the socially phobic, overly self-aware type however, I never really felt the need to pursue it or anything like that when I knew it would be gone by the next day, if not in the next five minutes.

So maybe you could call it compulsive heterosexuality, but for me, I like to think of it as being "hetero-curious".

That way, I'm not tempted to think that I'm not really asexual, or that I'm betraying my identity or whatever just because I OCCASIONALLY find the idea of sex just slightly less disgusting than I usually do. Rather, it's just normal to be curious about the unfamiliar sometimes. 

Otherwise, MOST OF THE TIME (like 99% of my free time) I know I'm a sex-averse, aromantic asexual. And that's what I go off of.  
 

Food for thought. :)

 

 

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I think I've always known that I wasn't straight but before I figured out I was asexual and biromantic I never really let myself like someone of the same gender as me. I basically repressed that part of myself and its still something I'm working on. Once I accepted that I was asexual I automatically knew that  I was biromantic too but its only recently that I have been able to fully be myself. So until recently I've been compulsively  heterosexual for a long time. I think the biggest reason behind this is that I live in the South and anyone who isn't white, christian, conservitive, straight, and cis is treated if not badly then like they're not normal (and also going to hell, which kid!me was terrifyed of). 

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  • 2 weeks later...
Lonemathsytoothbrushthief

I did. I'm autistic and aro-spec, so to be honest I really tried to distance myself from the fact that other people were having relationships and stuff growing up, plus had no sexual attraction to anyone and only unclear romantic thoughts. I say I'm lithro, but it's still unclear to me because just before starting university I started to think I should be dating and going out with people, and had a series(about one each year during my bachelor's degree) of boyfriends. I wasn't consistently romantically attracted to any of them and I awkwardly tried to throw myself into sexual relationships with them as well, which eventually developed into feelings of compulsion around anything sexual and not-good mental health, and now I just connect all of that with physical dysphoria as well. Unfortunately at a certain point I felt like I couldn't figure out whether what I was feeling was sexual or romantic attraction, or just sexual intrusive thoughts about people I wasn't interested in at all. I'm pretty sure I've had romantic attraction, and definitely intrusive thoughts, but not sexual attraction, it's just that period of my life I was freaking out internally a lot.

 

 

 

 

 

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