i find it hard to imagine having sex with someone

[jepu]

Hello,

i've been questioning whether or not i might be asexual recently and one thing has been making it tricky – the fact that i have trouble visualizing having sex with people. i do feel sexual attraction sometimes, but i am not sure if i want to or would be able to engage in any sexual activities with other people. i've had some vague sexual fantasies about celebrities in the past, but when it comes to people i know in real life, my brain quite literally does not allow me to picture having sex with someone i know personally.

for example, i've been talking to someone for a while, and there is a slight possibility we could start dating, which would most likely include having sex. but i cannot decide if i'd be comfortable with that happening, because whenever i try think about what that would be like, i immediately start feeling bad and my brain reflexively represses the thought. it just feels wrong to imagine someone that i'm close to in a sexual setting without their consent (even if it's just in my mind and they'll never know about it). it makes me feel guilty and a bit disgusting.

i think it might be because i don't have a lot of self-confidence, so the idea of this person wanting to have sex with me seems very unlikely. also, it is very improbable we actually will ever start dating, so in my mind it feels like i'm going too far, as if beyond the boundaries of the relationship (friendship) we have now.

another reason i feel like this is probably the fact that the last time i was dating someone, they would tell me that they were thinking about what it would be like if we had sex, and just being thought about in a sexual way made me really uncomfortable. i also had a problem visualizing having sex with this person, but for the opposite reason – we were dating and i knew at some it was expected of me to have sex with him, and i was really scared of that and not really fond of that idea (also i was not certain if i'm even attracted to men).

it's also relevant that this person is a girl, and even though i know she's queer, i probably still have that "predatory lesbian" stereotype ingrained in my mind, which makes it hard for me to even compliment women without feeling scared they'll think i'm coming on to them too strongly. i also i struggle with anxiety and OCD.

so, my question is, how to stop feeling guilty about having sexual fantasies about people i know, and what to do when my brain literally doesn't let me have them?

[Heather]

Hey there, jepu. Welcome to the boards.

Before I say anything else, can you fill me in a lot on any sexual trauma you might have in your history? If there isn’t any of that, can you say a little about what your upbringing was like when it came to sex and sexuality? Would you describe it as positive, negative, neutral? As supportive and open, as shameful or repressive, or…?

[jepu]

hi,

my family has always been pretty open about things that might sometimes be considered 'taboo', like periods and other 'body stuff'. despite this openness, i have a problem talking about personal things (f.e. i was scared to tell my mum about my first period even though i've definitely seen her use sanitary products at some point as a small child). sex was never really discussed that much, i've not been given 'the talk' by my mum, but that's probably because i used to never tell her about my crushes (most of which were on girls), therefore she thought i didn't fancy anyone. also i had access to the internet, so i found most info about sex there (thankfully from good and reputable sources), and i'm still learning... : ) overall, i would say my upbringing was pretty neutral when it came to sex, definitely not shameful at all.

now while i have always been very open minded, when it comes to discussing sex-related stuff, i find myself to be a bit... repressed? rationally, i know sex-positivity is good, but internally i find talking about sex too much, or in too much detail, uncomfortable and unnecessary. that might be caused by the fact that not only did i spend most of my teen years not discussing sex and relationships with my family, i also never talked about these topics with my friends, as most of them were either late bloomers, aroace, or just very private people. i guess because of this i have always viewed being attracted to someone as something really private and even a bit embarrassing?

i definitely don't have any sexual trauma, but when i was very little (like 5 or 6), i would have sexual intrusive thoughts about some cartoon characters. i would involuntarily imagine them naked, which could bring me to tears, and i felt like i couldn't tell anyone (at this point i knew how a naked human looked because in the first year of kindergarten we had a bathroom without stalls). it went away after some time, but i began struggling with intrusive thoughts again around the age of 12. once more, sexual images or thoughts (now involving real people) would pop into my head at unwanted times, which was frustrating. i've since learned to manage them pretty well, but i'm not completely free of them.

i feel like this makes my situation even weirder. i've always struggled with not being able to not think about stuff i didn't want to think about, and now i have the exact opposite problem of not being able to think about stuff i want* to think about...

(*though this is debatable, i guess–if my brain isn't letting me, maybe i don't?)

[Latha]

Hi Jepu! Thanks for answering Heather’s questions!

I might be wrong, but I wonder if this weirdness can be explained by the moral weight sexual thoughts have in your mind.

Consider the example of the intrusive thoughts you mentioned. I don’t mean to diminish your struggle here - I fully believe having these thoughts was difficult. But I think incidentally imagining characters or other people naked might happen to lots of people. After all, we don’t consciously direct all of our thoughts. In a way, our minds sometimes act a bit like random generators, showing us things that are possible to imagine, even if it is not what we actually want. This isn’t really a problem, because thoughts in your mind can’t affect real people. What is notable is that this experience was really distressing for you. Even as a child, you must have felt like you were doing something wrong, or that there was something wrong with you for thinking these things.

I think this seems similar to how you describe your feelings about trying to think sexually about other people now - you’ve mentioned that it feels wrong to think like this, even though you are not hurting anyone, and you’ve worried about being predatory or harming someone by expressing your interest.

Thoughts that have a lot of negative emotions attached to them can become harder to manage - this may be what made these thoughts intrusive.

What do you think of this?