Questioning - 31 With No Identity, No Experience

I mean, it's what it says on the lid. Except more. I totally understand that labels aren't necessary and given the likelihood of where my life is heading (ALONE), aren't particularly pertinent, but I've been getting strangely frustrated in the past year or so in a way I haven't been before as pertains to my sexuality. Basically, I don't know what I am and I wish I did. I don't know how to explain everything without writing a whole essay, so I'll try to set out some background and where I am now and hopefully that helps! Any advice or thoughts are appreciated...

I grew up in a very conservative, Christian family. Very homophobic to the point that even suggesting my mother watch Queer Eye brings her to tears because she's so uncomfortable, and I was warned, when I made an online friend in my early twenties, to make sure she was aware I didn't 'condone her lifestyle' (she identified as bisexual and was in a relationship with a woman). I have a very vivid memory of being maybe eleven or twelve and going to church one evening and there was a guest speaker, the daughter of a member of the congregation, who talked about her past life, one where she lived out her attraction to the same-sex and slept with both men and women. The 'happy ending' was that she'd found a path away from that and no longer lived in sin but with a man and now had a happy little family.

I was never able to answer the 'who do you have a crush on?' question as a pre-teen or even as a teenager. I went to a very small Christian school and so I always assumed there just wasn't a big enough pond of boys for me to find someone crush-able. I never felt butterflies, never felt like I wanted to kiss anybody, etc. I did have what I categorised as 'obsessions' however, and only very recently have thought about whether they were maybe just crushes. My first was when I was ten on a girl in the grade above mine. A few years later, it was a girl several years older at a church camp. My very first email password was literally her name and her boyfriend's smushed together. I also became obsessed with my English teacher to the point that I would watch where she parked in the morning (my Dad was also a teacher so we arrived for a staff meeting at the same time) and then make sure I was sitting by the path she'd have to pass to go back to her car at the end of the day. I'd sit casually reading a book or the newspaper in the hope she'd nod in acknowledge or smile at me or something, lol.

The reason why I've never, before this past year, thought of them as 'crushes' is the lack of sexual attraction or so I assumed. I thought they were just aesthetically pleasing or I thought I wanted them to be my friend or approve of me or occasionally I'd feel the desire to be physically close (literally just in terms of proximity). There are complicating factors, see. I'm very reticent when it comes to physical affection. I never really received any and I certainly never offered any. I'm very anxious, shy and depressed and have been for as long as I can remember. I never had any real close friendships after the age of ten (when my best friend 'dumped' me for someone else in our friend circle) and after I graduated high school, I no longer had any friendships IRL at all. That has been the case for what is now over thirteen years. And so while I will hug my mother if she goes away on a trip or hug my grandmother at a family gathering, that has literally been the extent of physical touch in my life since childhood.

Further, I've got no experience. Oftentimes when sexuality is discussed, there's this question raised of, 'Well, do you want to kiss somebody? How does it feel to kiss them? Hold hands?' And so forth. I've never been on a date. I've never had any sexual intimacy of any kind. I've never kissed anybody. I've never held hands with anybody. I've never had a single person express any interest whatsoever in friendship with me let alone something romantic or sexual. I don't know if I want to kiss someone because I don't know what it feels like and also because physical touch of any kind of strange and abnormal to my existence, you know? And so for some time in my twenties, I actually wondered if I was even asexual perhaps. I can get physically aroused (thanks porn) but I certainly have never walked past a person and felt some kind of overwhelming urge to get sexual with them.

And when I consider sexuality outside of that, I've never figured myself out. In real life, I've never had any kind of crush/obsession on a boy or man (though I have had obsessions with male musicians, characters and actors before), but I absolutely appreciate and am attracted to the aesthetic - whether it have to do with a guy's forearms, back muscles, jawline, the way the hair flops, his voice, whatever. I have that same attraction when it comes to women I interact with or know in passing (or on my TikTok for you page, let's be real...), but in the past, I HAVE gotten to the point of obsessive behaviour and thoughts about their physical features as well as on an emotional level, if that makes sense. When I went to university, it was the first time my horizons were expanded, literally the first time I ever really even NOTICED LGBTQ+ persons, mostly because of the proximity of the community's room for meetings to where I went for lectures. I would find myself trying to peek in without being noticed, and it would send a frisson of interest up my spine. At the same time, I was still trying to be who my parents wanted me to be, and literally sat out one tutorial in English Literature because it was a book of WLW poetry. Even though, in my spare time at home, I was secretly reading and writing same-sex fanfiction and shipping those couples alongside het ones... A mess.

Anyway. I'm now thirty-one. I'm feeling very behind and lost and formless. I can't really even figure out sexual attraction or whether I experience it, let alone to whom it is directed towards in terms of gender, if that makes sense. I've had desperate needs to get a person's attention, to have their approval. But I don't know if the latter is because of my mental health issues, let's say. I've had butterflies and a desire for someone to hug me. But I don't know if it's because I've been starved of that. So I don't know where I stand. And I don't know if anyone has any ideas or advice. But I'm just very, very tired of existing in a perpetual state of not knowing ANYTHING and not having ANY kind of label for myself at this age...

x

 

First a very long soft hug with a whisper - deep breath in and relax, slowly let out your breath. Then look in your eyes as see a wonderful person.

You are in a safe and wonderful place. We will listen and will not be judged.

Please know that religion does and GOD does not hate. Men use religion to control.

As my Angel reminded me, God Loves me for who I am. I just need to see I am wonderful as ME and Love & accept myself.

Trust me, the acceptance and loving yourself is hard and took me month and I did it at 62.

I now have people who I can call friends.

You kind person, are worthy of Love and respect, no matter what you are.

Here for questions but know this, the hard work is yours but it is worth it.

Peace kind person - Jo

PS, I came out to my parents at 62 and my mother told me she loves me and my father told me I belong in hell. I said thank you. I could do this because I had a strong foundation of acceptance of who I was under me and the understanding God Loves us.