K-selected homosexual in an r world :0

[Heavydirtysoul]

Hello,

I'm a long time listener of the podcast and I'm really needing some advice. I'm a 30 year old homosexual white male, I've never liked my sexuality as it is a very difficult lifestyle. The common theme among the gay community is that homosexuality is natural and should be embraced, however I have always viewed it as a defect, something that is a hindrance to a happy life. My understanding is that homosexuality has existed throughout human history and has maintained a standard  of ~5% of the population, this figure varies among sources. Regardless,  the homosexuals that I have met throughout my life generally are not happy people. Most are impulsive, self medicate, and are unable to maintain stable relationships. I am also not attracted to the femininity found in the gay male community, I have never understood why gay men seem to all act the same, it seems insincere, as if they have altered their demeanor to advertise for the D. I am not sexually attracted to feminine men, the kissing and holding hands romantic aspect weirds me out. I have been with around 15 guys throughout my life, it has always been short term, I have tried relationships but I just have never been that into it. From what I can figure out,  my attraction to males is purely sexual and not romantic I believe. I have been with one girl sexually, which happened when I was young and drunk. I do not have a sexual attraction to females. However, I do enjoy being in a romantic relationship with women, which has been limited (3) as well due to my fear of being able to perform sexually. I have always remained distant to potential female spouses in fear of hurting them if they get attached. I am a masculine male, and I am not out. I felt that I would come out when I found the right guy, but years just keep passing and it is not happening. I really want to have kids, I want to have a family, but I fear that I won't be able to maintain a healthy relationship with a female, I fear that I would end up hurting a potential spouse and wasting both of our time. I am pretty fucked up. I have my life together in all other aspects but I am starting to panic as I am getting older, and my apartment is empty when I come home. Any advice on how I can begin to fix this? Thank you for listening, this is an awesome community  

[DaVinci]

I think the desire to want to be part of a tribe is something that no human can completely escape, which is why I think you have noticed that gay people act in a similar manner to each other. It probably doesn't help that there are so few gay people which creates a certain amount of ostracism which probably makes the pressure to conform to a standard within the gay community worse. This probably also plays into the instability you mentioned. It's difficult for anyone to be "stable" as a partner when they are seeking acceptance from a group of people. 

 

 

[Pod]

This has always been a huge issue for me.  I posted a while back about the challenges of being a gay guy when you wanted to have a family.  Who's DNA will be used to have the child?  Will lack of breastfeeding be an issue?  Will the female carrier get attached to the child?  If we both had our own sons/daughters would we both fall into favoritism with our own kids?  Would the lack of a female be detrimental to our kids?  Hetero relationships are what nature intended because both parents share genes with their kids and both a mother and father provide the balance a kid needs to comfortably grow fond of the two sexes. 

It's a messy topic that I have no conclusions on.  That should certainly be a show some day. 

[Dylan Lawrence Moore]

How's your diet?

What's your ACE score/how traumatic was your upbringing?

How perceptive are you to sensations in your body?

[Heavydirtysoul]

On 4/20/2017 at 6:50 PM, Pod said:

This has always been a huge issue for me.  I posted a while back about the challenges of being a gay guy when you wanted to have a family.  Who's DNA will be used to have the child?  Will lack of breastfeeding be an issue?  Will the female carrier get attached to the child?  If we both had our own sons/daughters would we both fall into favoritism with our own kids?  Would the lack of a female be detrimental to our kids?  Hetero relationships are what nature intended because both parents share genes with their kids and both a mother and father provide the balance a kid needs to comfortably grow fond of the two sexes. 

It's a messy topic that I have no conclusions on.  That should certainly be a show some day. 

Hi Pod, I think It may be unfair to the children to not be raised by a man and a woman. Just as it is detrimental for children to be raised without a father, I think the same rings true to for those raised without a mother. The lack of proper nutrition at birth, the lack of an emotionally and physically protective female and the general lack of a maternal leader in the family would cause issues in both boys and especially girls.

Since I feel that my attraction to males is purely sexual of nature, I am curious if it would be possible to be happy with a female partner. Since the lustful attractiveness is of lesser importance and often short-term in a long-term relationship, would a strong emotional relationship with a woman allow the both of us to have a happy and sustainable relationship? My relationship experience with women is almost purely speculative, so this is a question that I struggle with.

[Heavydirtysoul]

On 4/18/2017 at 3:48 PM, DaVinci said:

I think the desire to want to be part of a tribe is something that no human can completely escape, which is why I think you have noticed that gay people act in a similar manner to each other. It probably doesn't help that there are so few gay people which creates a certain amount of ostracism which probably makes the pressure to conform to a standard within the gay community worse. This probably also plays into the instability you mentioned. It's difficult for anyone to be "stable" as a partner when they are seeking acceptance from a group of people. 

 

 

 

I definitely think that being involved in the gay clique does cause you to conform to the common behaviors of the group, perhaps the reason I feel I am different than the common gay is that I have always been repulsed by this cliche. There are certainly other gays that feel the same as me, and it puts us into a sort of limbo between wanting to live our lives with a woman and chasing our lustful attractions to men. I think another aspect may be that homosexual sex is pretty much pointless, the biological purpose of intercourse is to procreate, so when you remove that goal you are seeking sex only for pleasure.

[Heavydirtysoul]

On 4/21/2017 at 2:33 AM, Dylan Lawrence Moore said:

How's your diet?

What's your ACE score/how traumatic was your upbringing?

How perceptive are you to sensations in your body?

My diet is clean, I eat whole foods strictly and exercise 3-6 hours a week.

I have a score of 1, divorce.

I think I am very perceptive and pay close attention to my emotional and physical states. In my past, not so much.

I like to think I have my shit together besides the relationship part.

[Dylan Lawrence Moore]

15 hours ago, Heavydirtysoul said:

My diet is clean, I eat whole foods strictly and exercise 3-6 hours a week.

I have a score of 1, divorce.

I think I am very perceptive and pay close attention to my emotional and physical states. In my past, not so much.

I like to think I have my shit together besides the relationship part.

I'm not any sort of expert at what I'm suggesting here, I just found it curious how you described a sexual attraction to men but a romantic attraction to women. 

The reason I asked about diet was mainly to know about hormones. What do you mean by clean and whole foods? Are you eating a lot of grains and fruits, or fats, vegetables, and high-quality meat (i.e. grassfed beef)? Again, I'm going out on a limb here, but if you're eating a lot of things with endocrine disruptors which mimic estrogen (like soy), while simultaneously foods that supply the body with what it needs to make testosterone, your hormones may be out of whack. Other examples of endocrine disruptors are sodium lauryl sulfate (very common in soaps and shampoos) and BPA (common in plastics and sales receipts).

Regarding exercise, what kind are you doing? Have you heard of HIIT? I don't mean to patronize you if you already know this stuff, but there are ways to exercise than actually put more strain on your system then help. If you haven't looked into formulating a proper plan, I recommend checking it out.

Divorce sucks, but I'm glad you're on the lower end of the spectrum on the ACE score. Again, I don't know what this might have to do with it, but dealing with the trauma you experienced as a child may help. I know everyone talks about therapy around here, but I want to recommend TRE - traumatic release exercises. I've been doing it now for nearly a year and it's incredible. I'll let the website do the explaining: http://traumaprevention.com/

List of providers all over the world here: http://traumaprevention.com/tre-provider-list/

Regarding sensations in your body, have you done any training that actively looks at those sensations and works with them? Soft style martial arts like Tai Chi or Systema, yoga, Wim Hof breathing method, Reichian therapy, bioenergetics, etc.? Many years ago I read some of the works of Wilhelm Reich (one of the students of Sigmund Freud) who was researching the affects of sex and the "flow of energy", for lack of a better term, through the body. Essentially, our bodies can get locked up in different places due to trauma (Reich called these "armor rings" and he identified seven of them), and there are exercises that can be done to free these things up. In one of his clinical examples, he had a man who came to him who believed he was a homosexual because of his lack of attraction to women, but after some sessions with Reich he very quickly began a sexual relationship with a woman. I couldn't help but remember that when I read your sexual vs. romantic attraction comment in your original post.

If you found any of that interesting or useful, let me know and I can tell you more.

[Heavydirtysoul]

7 hours ago, Dylan Lawrence Moore said:

I'm not any sort of expert at what I'm suggesting here, I just found it curious how you described a sexual attraction to men but a romantic attraction to women. 

The reason I asked about diet was mainly to know about hormones. What do you mean by clean and whole foods? Are you eating a lot of grains and fruits, or fats, vegetables, and high-quality meat (i.e. grassfed beef)? Again, I'm going out on a limb here, but if you're eating a lot of things with endocrine disruptors which mimic estrogen (like soy), while simultaneously foods that supply the body with what it needs to make testosterone, your hormones may be out of whack. Other examples of endocrine disruptors are sodium lauryl sulfate (very common in soaps and shampoos) and BPA (common in plastics and sales receipts).

Regarding exercise, what kind are you doing? Have you heard of HIIT? I don't mean to patronize you if you already know this stuff, but there are ways to exercise than actually put more strain on your system then help. If you haven't looked into formulating a proper plan, I recommend checking it out.

Divorce sucks, but I'm glad you're on the lower end of the spectrum on the ACE score. Again, I don't know what this might have to do with it, but dealing with the trauma you experienced as a child may help. I know everyone talks about therapy around here, but I want to recommend TRE - traumatic release exercises. I've been doing it now for nearly a year and it's incredible. I'll let the website do the explaining: http://traumaprevention.com/

List of providers all over the world here: http://traumaprevention.com/tre-provider-list/

Regarding sensations in your body, have you done any training that actively looks at those sensations and works with them? Soft style martial arts like Tai Chi or Systema, yoga, Wim Hof breathing method, Reichian therapy, bioenergetics, etc.? Many years ago I read some of the works of Wilhelm Reich (one of the students of Sigmund Freud) who was researching the affects of sex and the "flow of energy", for lack of a better term, through the body. Essentially, our bodies can get locked up in different places due to trauma (Reich called these "armor rings" and he identified seven of them), and there are exercises that can be done to free these things up. In one of his clinical examples, he had a man who came to him who believed he was a homosexual because of his lack of attraction to women, but after some sessions with Reich he very quickly began a sexual relationship with a woman. I couldn't help but remember that when I read your sexual vs. romantic attraction comment in your original post.

If you found any of that interesting or useful, let me know and I can tell you more.

Thank you for taking the time to chat, that is very kind of you

 

My diet is defined as primal/paleo with my macro ratios leaning towards ketogenic. I think my dietary change 1.5 years ago certainly affected my T levels, more lean muscle mass, less body fat. It has helped with confidence and anxiety as well, and certainly may be playing a role in my questioning of my sexuality and the possibility of even changing it. I haven't looked at my soaps and shampoos, this may be the next step for me. Do you have suggestions on good products to use? Looking back, I could definitely see that there may have been an imbalance in my hormones. I always stored a lot of lower body fat, and my diet was atrocious. I am 6' and generally always kept my weight around 185 pounds, so I was never obese but always had a belly and a big booty, but now my weight is the same but I have a six pack for the first time in my life  . 

Exercise: 

my hiit usually around 3 times a week, but varies, I like to do full sprints or the jacobs ladder.

Weightlifting, try to do around 4 times a week, which varies as well but I make sure I do the basic free weight exercises and can bench around 225. Squats I can do around 250. This is an area that's somewhat new to me, Ive always been a cardio guy, but I am focusing on increasing my weightlifting and pushing myself more in this area.

I always supplement my workouts with basic pull ups, pushups, and ab exercises.

Stretching, breathing, and basic yoga poses I started doing at my lunch last week, I am going to try and keep that up. Ive never taken a yoga class but have learned some basic poses on youtube. I want to try taking a class though.

Low intensity cardio, I'm a Fedex driver, so I do this all day.

I also plan to start taking jiu jitsu classes, I think it will help a lot with confidence.

I have never been the type to plan out a stringent workout plan, I just try to increase weight by 5 pounds every other week, and just workout muscles that aren't sore. This seems to be working well, but if I stop making progress, I might try something more structured.

TRE seems very interesting, I am going to try it out after my workout tomorrow, it seems like a good way to relax post-workout. I found it interesting that animals use this method to calm their nervous system after they escape from a predator. I have always had a fear of therapy which I know isn't good, so I will consider reaching out to a provider. I have always felt that therapists would just have the generic answer to the homosexual conundrum, which is to accept it as who you are. I just have a hard time accepting it, maybe this is a fault but i'm not yet convinced that it is an unchangeable attribute.

 

Wilhelm Reich is my homework, i'll do some reading and report back on this, thank you so much for all the suggestions. I was listening to a speaker recently, I forget the the name at the moment, but he was talking about the roots of homosexuality which seemed to be spot on. He said that homosexual males are always drawn to the mother figure, often using her as a shield to protect him against masculinity. He said that homosexuals often have a weak father figure and an overprotective mother, and that homosexuality is brought upon by an envy of the other boys, a longing to be one of them. It really resonated with my situation growing up. I was quite the mamas boy looking back. Oddly, I have never really looked into alternative views of homosexuality, I have just avoided the topic. Which is strange since it is something that has such an impact in my life.

 

Anyways, thank you again for your suggestions, it is very kind of you to take the time to offer guidance to a stranger.

 

[Dylan Lawrence Moore]

Couple of things in response:

1. Diet/Chemicals -  Sounds like you're doing well with your diet. If you're already doing that, switching your soaps and shampoos probably won't do much. However, you will probably like it better. I've been using Grampa's Pine Tar Soap for awhile now and I love it.

Supplementing may be an important step for you, then. Are you doing vitamin D every day? I take between 5000 and 10000 IUs every day. The FDA recommendations are a joke. Fermented cod liver oil, grassfed beef, grassfed butter (Kerrygold!!), selenium supplements, cold showers, and pastured eggs will really help with the testosterone boosting. The fermented cod liver oil in that recipe I found to be the secret ingredient.

Useful resource: https://blog.bulletproof.com/optimize-your-supplements/

2. Workouts: Make sure you're getting enough sleep to balance your workouts.

3. Martial Arts/Yoga: I have yet to find a way to accurately describe this in written form, but I want to emphasize that when I bring up martial arts, yoga, or anything similar, I'm NOT simply speaking of the movements themselves. In order to get the effects I'm referring to (body awareness), you must have a teacher help you identify them. And not all teachers are created equal. In fact, in a random selection, you will probably find a shitty teacher than not. You will know you're moving in the right direction when a teacher heavily focuses on mindset, emotional state, and intention, and when you start having powerful emotions reactions to the movements.

I also want to emphasize my reason for bringing this up: I haven't got the slightest clue if this can help with your sexual attractions. I mention it because I wondered if you're awareness to differentiate between sexual attraction and romantic attraction would also allow you to identify the causal functions within your own body. When you get better at training in something that works on body awareness, I thought you might be able to identify physical causes and begin to adjust them yourself.

4. TRE: Start with a provider. Don't play around with it by yourself first.

5. Reich: A word of warning. Nothing but conspiracy and extreme tinfoilness surround the story of Wilhelm Reich and anyone who followed him afterward. He himself was paranoid, possibly for good reason, as his demise was a result of his arrest and death in prison. He was found guilty of practicing medicine across state lines without a license (which he didn't), and a judge ordered his books burned and his compound destroyed where he did his research.

After reading his books, I was fascinated by his work. He was very scientific about recording his results and his experiments could be easily replicated from his descriptions. I began to search the internet for people who followed his work and continued his experiments--I found mostly bickering idiots, new age spiritualists, con artists, and die hards. The one man I found who seemed to have his act together, Jack Willis, died several years ago. He wrote a book on how to apply Reichian therapy to yourself. If you're interested and I can find it I can provide it for you. However, I want to warn you: if you go searching for a "proper" Reichian therapist, you probably aren't going to find one. Don't let that stop your search, just be wary. (Note: anyone talking about "orgonite" can be dismissed at hand.)

[wyattstorch]

Heavydirtysoul, I'm of a similar mindset, in that I'm homosexual, but not a fan of the "gay community", the adoptive feminine characteristics, or the hedonistic lifestyle. I don't know if I'd consider homosexuality a defect, but I've felt the difficulty of being such, of course. And I've had those feelings of coming home to an empty apartment, thinking that something was missing. To that, all I can offer is that when I get like that, I remind myself of my philosophical take on things, to not focus on what I can't or don't have, and to focus on what I can or do have. In other words, "crisis=opportunity." I hope you can find something in that.
All the best to you.