What’s everyone’s experience with false attraction

@salemexistss I completely understand, I’ve respond my experience at the bottom of these comments.

@Cat-Mom Sorry you are going through this. It’s awful. I’ve posted my experience below these comments. You’re not alone.

@anca I really do understand and hope it doesn’t last long for you. It’s the worst experience I think I’ve ever gone through. My experience is below, you’re not alone.

@What is happening to me I’m so sorry, I feel the exact same way. It really makes you feel like you know nothing yet everything about yourself. I’m starting to go up in medication which I think helps the panic, but not the thoughts themselves. Like I’m neutral/annoyed by them now. I just want to be with my boyfriend without these thoughts. Interesting yours started with a video. Mine started similarly suddenly, however I was having concerns with my relationship for a bit around desire/attraction, but I attributed it to being on SSRIs since I was a kid and for a while, at the highest dose. I was trying a taper for years, and got down to 50 when I read an article on compulsive heterosexuality and completely broke down. I also met two gay women in a local club and thought they were cool/naturally pretty and that contributed too. Before I got to a higher dose on Zoloft I got uncomfortable talking to them for it I think. So many of my feeling felt validated but in a bad way. I couldn’t eat, sleep, or go more than a day without sobbing. My boyfriend and I had already signed a lease to move in together, so the guilt I was feeling around making him uproot his life for me to throw this wrench in it was terrible. Especially because I’ve always been slow in the relationship milestone front. We’ve been together close to 5 years, and I have been content not really moving things to the next step quickly because I met him at 22. I think he’d move faster on things if I gave him the go-ahead. The icing on the cake is I QUESTIONED my sexuality last year before all this, when I was feeling weird about attraction/desire. I thought about it, watched some erotica and decided, “nah, I think I prefer men in this context”, and hung it up! But of course now my brain is using that as a proof point, even though it can equally use the point that I landed on preferring men in a sexual context and put it to bed. I want to go up on Zoloft again and will definitely be asking my psychiatrist to. I’d frankly feel blunted with my partner than have these thoughts.

I have the exact same experience. I also really try to go with it and it still doesn't work, "maybe" and "whatever" is not enough for my brain. For me it started more gradually. I had some brief moments of questioning as a teenager because I had never had a crush on any boy (but also never had one on a girl either) and I was thinking that's not normal but I didn't give it much thought. Then in 2020 I was watching a show and there was a sex scene and I was looking at the girl and my mind just went "why are you looking at her" and I got scared and that's when my obsession really started and it was distressing for a few months, I was doing compulsions and experiencing false attraction but not to this level and then somehow it faded. And up until last year it was always in the back of my mind but I never revisited the thoughts, I never analyzed them again until last year when I was trying a dating app and barely liked any of the men and even though it's a known thing that the majoiry of women swipe left on the apps, my mind kept asking me if I'm swiping left because I actually want to be with a woman. I started seeing one of the guys on there and it was so confusing because I kept asking myself if I'm attracted to him and I kept thinking that if I don't know for sure that I am then that means I'm not and after that I started to experience a bit of false attraction and tried to ignore it, until december when I started to check my attraction to men and that's when it all went really bad. Then in january I was watching bridgerton and there is this plotline of this girl who is married to a man and she loves him but she s attracted to his female cousin and it scared me so bad because I never took in consideration that you could love a man and be married to him and not be attracted to him and I started to obsess over the fact that maybe I'll end up like that and my mind kept playing these scenarios where I realize I'm a lesbian while married. And there was so much discourse on the internet back in january about comp het because of this show and I was watching so much content about it and I felt like it applied to me. I also couldnt eat for months, it was terrible. Now my anxiety doesn't kill me anymore but I still can't stop thinking about it and no matter what I do and how much I practice acceptance it's still here and I can't feel attracted to men at all if I ever was and I have so many confusing feelings when it comes to women, my brain keeps telling me that even if I will fall in love with a man it won't matter because it won't be real

@anca I’m so sorry. I see so much I relate to here and I know it’s just heartbreaking. If it’s of any consolation, plenty of people don’t experience crushes growing up (though my OCD grabbed onto the same thing) I had some infatuations with TV characters or celebrities, but that was it. But I distinctly remember pretending to like a boy in class that “all” the other girls liked. I put all in quotations because who’s to say more didn’t feel the same way. Additionally, my mom shared she had no crushes in school, and questioned what it meant for her when she was in high school. She wondered if she was gay or would become a nun😮‍💨 I’m not saying this to reassure, rather show you experiences regarding attraction/crushes/etc. can vary. My current boyfriend did not win me over on looks. I’d say it was more his personality, humor, and intelligence that really interested me. He has the deepest blue kind eyes, and a cute dimple when he smiles, but I can’t say from looking at him that I experience any animal like instinct (unless I’ve had a couple margaritas… lol). But I love him, who he is, how he loves me. But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have the same aching feeling that me staying is denial of something. Or that I’m staying to make those around me happy even though I grew up in a home with parents who are very much allies of the LGBTQIA+ community. It’s more to say them and my friends just really don’t see it. And if I did leave to pursue women, who’s to say I wouldn’t end right back where I was dating men? Which is frankly my mom’s theory, lol. It’s important to add though that the “lesbian” masterdoc was written by a 19 year old who later came out as bisexual. The points can prompt questions for curious people, but they can also be vague, and not accepted as anything more than a teenager’s reflections on their experiences with attraction and intimacy. I’m not sure if you have WhatsApp or something, but I’d love to chat with you more about all this if you ever need someone who gets it.