It’s genuinely crazy how real these false attractions feel. I’m 20 years old and I’ve never thought abut dating a woman, and I could acknowledge an attractive woman when I saw one but nothing in me ever wanted to think of anything else, maybe friendship at best. In the course of 6 months I’ve gone from physical sensations like tingling in my lips after talking to a friend and intrusive images of me introducing her to my family and getting married to her, worrying about whether or not I’m in love with my best friends romantically, worrying about if I have to marry a woman/date one, worrying I’m going to be living in denial my entire life bc I also realized I’m aroace, being unable to fantasize about men in general, being afraid of my best friends (which kills me because they’re my everything), being unable to think about my future which made me so happy before (single, adopting kids), and SO MUCH. I feel like I’ve lost my drive for life lol

Yeah. I know I’m not attracted to men romantically, but I haven’t been attracted to women romantically either. Granted, I’ve fantasized about men pretty comfortably but now it’s a constant ‘am I really or am I just doing this so I don’t have to acknowledge romantic and sexual attraction towards women?’. It’s definitely overwhelming and I’m sorry you’re going through it as well. I want to be happy too, which makes me want to analyze further bc I don’t want to ... idk... deny myself? But the thought of being attracted to women in that way seems... bad. And it makes me feel so guilty because up until now I’ve just strongly appreciated the platonic connection they’ve given to me and I’ve made so much progress (even before I began questioning if I was aroace), in accepting that I don’t want to get married at all. Idk why but imagining myself falling in love with women, now or in the future, is just heart breaking djdjdjkd. Thank you for your support, it means a lot. I support you as well! And if you don’t mind me asking, are you aro/ace by any chance?

@aurokoi I’m on the ace spectrum I think. I don’t feel a lot of sexual attraction towards people but I don’t want to label it as anything specific because I don’t really fit into any of those categories. I’m a huge romantic tho and I really only have romantic feelings for guys, but idk sometimes OCD gets me tripped up like “do you have romantic feelings for girls” “do you have sexual feelings for girls” At it’s core it doesn’t feel right to me and I know it doesn’t. I know I really just want to date guys but then I just end up doubting myself when the false attraction or the groinals or intrusive thoughts happen because they can feel so real.

@stop. Gosh I know exactly where you’re coming from. I was questioning whether or not I was demisexual last year but I was just like idk I haven’t gotten to know anyone like that so who knows. I’m not 100% if I’m aroace or if I’m just kidding myself, esp with OCD, but I line up with a lot of the experiences people talk about. I thought I was bi for the longest time lol and idek why I thought that, but I’ve never felt a romantic attraction towards women either. For the most part I just think they’re pretty lol. It’s really confusing like you said tho, because the split attraction model and it’s constantly ‘sexually attracted to men and romantically attracted to women’ which freak me out bc I know I’m not. The thought just makes me feel so uncomfortable at my core, even with the groinals and false attraction.

@stop. Also ace is an umbrella term I think! If you’re comfortable, you can just ID with that for now :)

@aurokoi Yeah I think it’s an umbrella term. I use it sometimes but not all the time especially since I’m still figuring things out because with the OCD it is harder. It doesn’t cause any problems for me though. It’s not like questioning attraction with girls where it causes me so much anxiety with the OCD. Questioning being ace feels okay but maybe it’s not totally right. It would help a lot once I recover from this.

@stop. I know how you feel 🥺 I don’t get that same kind of anxiety. Like I do, it’s more so of a ‘how is this going to change my future?’ but it’s more like me realizing what’s been happening and making sense of it and not fear at the POTENTIAL of it happening ... I find that it makes sense for me but yeah OCD complicates it so much. I really hope this gets easier for the both of us...

@aurokoi Yeah I hope so too