Question:
I am struggling a great deal. I’m 21. I am female and watched videos online of other females. I’ve also watched heterosexual stuff too and I like both. I once was fantasizing and had a fantasy to do with a female friend. Ever since then I have been obessessing over what it means and if it means I actually want to be with a girl. It has given me much anxiety and I sometimes wake up with my heart beating so fast and I feel like I can’t breathe. I even have tried to make myself just accept that maybe I’m a lesbian and it just makes me sad and want to cry and I get a lot of anxiety. Also, being around this friend, I now feel so uncomfortable about thoughts in my head that I tell myself it’s because I really like her but I don’t feel like I do. I even told my mom maybe I am gay. I thought that would help relieve the anxiety and it didn’t. These thoughts never leave and I just want tp go out on a date with this nice guy but I’m afraid I’ll always be thinking the thoughts and ruin everything.
I just need help, please
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Answer:
At age 21, the fact that you have powerful sexual urges, including towards women, does not mean that you are a lesbian. Many young people have bisexual urges and that is nothing to be upset about. Sigmund Freud, the great psychoanalyst, coined the term “polymorphous perverse” for the fact that young people are attracted to both sexes. We now know that it is indeed true. As people mature and grow in sexual experience, their real sexual experiences take hold and they become oriented to being heterosexual or homosexual, at least this is true for a great many children and adolescents.
In point of fact, if people are going to be honest, they would admit that they have these bisexual urges into and including their adulthood. Both men and women enjoy looking at attractive people from their own gender. That does not make them homosexual.
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There is also the issue of the difference between fantasy and reality. Driven by powerful sexual urges, men and women experience all kinds of sexual fantasies. That is one reason why pornography is so popular. Pornography can be thought of as a visual sexual fantasy. None of this means that people would do any of the things they see in pornography or that they imagine in their fantasies. It’s one thing to have sexual fantasies about your female friend but it’s another thing to do anything about it. The fact is that fantasy is often better than reality when it comes to sexuality.
At the same time, sexual frustration can fuel all kinds of thoughts and fantasies that become uncomfortable. In other words, whether or not you have had sexual intercourse, including having a boyfriend with whom you are sexually active, is very relevant to what you are experiencing. In other words, you are correct. You need to date men and find the right one for you.
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If you continue to obsess and worry about this issue then I urge you to find a good psychotherapist and work out what is really going on with you so that you can resolve this issue for yourself.
Best of Luck
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