Ugh. Existence. Coffee. Feces.

[Paratrakl]

I am 26 years old, a gay man. I have a pretty jarring type of cognitive dissonance.

I hate my own body, and don't even really identify with it. It seems like a weird appendage. Even with four years of age, I asked my mother once what it would be like to be a stomach. Now, of course, I know that the only logical extension of this insanity is: What would it be like to be a brain? Still: I am neither a stomach nor a brain; I possess a stomach and a brain, if this makes sense.

Years of isolation have led to a wholesale aversion to touching people. I hate even hugging relatives.

I have had a number of unhappy experiences falling for men who were, erm, straight. I've met many gay men, and have liked some--just as I only like some straight men--I honestly dislike most people--but gay men have never done it for me. I'm not saying I only can find straight men attractive: that would be absurd. Obviously, I haven't met every gay man in the world and never will. But I've never met an openly gay man I found attractive.

When I was younger and less self-conscious about all this, I would befriend the straight men I liked. In a couple of instances, it led to quite intense friendships. For all my flaws, I must admit I have a certain charisma, and can generally make friends if it suits me. In the most notable instance, a friendship that lasted, with a hiatus, for years, and ended with my refusal to answer his calls, without saying why, the man did, for hours each day, things that made me swoon: he called me a faggot constantly, and generally degraded me--which is, of course, exactly what I wanted. He destroyed property in a playfully malicious way, a heady tonic. I would act demure. He stopped seeing me first, when I admitted my infatuation, citing general straightness, then got back with me, then during a period of depression--it comes and goes--I abruptly cut it off. I don't really regret it; this is all for background.

Now, I'm so paralyzed with anxiety I can't even tell new people I meet that I'm gay, or ask new people I meet if they'd like to do anything--not even to go for a walk, or see a movie, or something I would have done before to cement the friendship first in earlier days. A couple of people have asked me if I'm asexual, unprompted, whereas a certain effeminacy used to raise the much-hated question whether I'm gay. Women occasionally find me attractive, apparently. I think of myself as about the least-erotic creature on earth, even though conventional aesthetics would suggest I'm relatively good-looking. What's erotic is not only, or even chiefly, about looks, after all. I'm thin, and I have, I gather, a face more or less free of deformity or asymmetry.

I feel so cold--void--and apart from the very most perfunctory familial embrace, or a hand shaken solely for the sake of "politeness" (and for me, politeness is actually an expression of the utmost disdain), or accidental, fleeting contact with a stranger in a public place, I haven't touched anyone in years; on the other hand, the thought of actually touching anyone, or trying to make them like me, fills me with a very special revulsion/exhaustion. It's completely irrational: If I can touch a couch, or a coffee cup, or a cigarette, why can't I touch a human?

I'm not on drugs, prescription or otherwise (the former I would refuse if they were suggested). I'm too narcissistic to commit suicide, but this whole thing--life--seems totally pointless. These nihilistic episodes come and go, and eventually I'll be sort of hypomanic for a while, and then more or less normal. Should I give up and smoke myself into a too-late grave, then go over to euthanasia-friendly Switzerland at the first whiff of cancer, or do something else? Is human life worthwhile? Or can it be?

Not sure why I wrote all that, just sort of wanted to vent.

[DreamMaker]

You have no idea how much I relate to it. I might have a different perspective, but I'm similar to you. Attracted to unavailable men; afraid of hugging; anxious; depressed; self-consciousness.
Feel free to talk with me, I feel like we'd can help each other.

[spilovn]

I can relate to the early friendships you had and the feeling of hating your body, the reason it seems like a weird appendage is because it is but the good thing is so is everybody else and i dont think we are our stomach or our brain i think there is something else, whatever, we only get this weird appendage once unless you believe in reincarnation in which case you might come back as an even weirder appendage like a blow fish.

[palbert]

to GS!

Feel free to vent. I hope that someone here can help in some fashion.

[Bowyn Aerrow]

Hi and Welcome to Gayspeak.

[MikeW]

Welcome to the forum Paratrakl.

To say that human psychology is complicated is an understatement. I was just posting yesterday to DreamMaker, also knew here, how we humans often like to get ourselves all tied up into knots. For me it took years of therapy (beginning about your age) to untangle and begin the process of uniting them.

I think at base we all want to be happy and loved. However, for various reasons having to do with a lot of things going all the way back to our beginnings, we get first twisted and then tangled and then knotted up mentally and emotionally to the point where we no longer know our essence -- our own personal truth. Once we've lost any connection with some intrinsic, experiential knowledge of that (not something in thought, something we 'sense' or 'feel') we're pretty much "lost". Confused, misdirected, unhappy, unsure of who we are, where we are, how we got here, etc (all more or less metaphorical). We begin to believe that we ARE the various aspects of our personalities, including the knots -- that, indeed, we can't live without them. They define us to ourselves and, all to often, to others.

So… how does one find that one thread that can lead us back to something more essential, something fundamental, something that was there in us from the very beginning -- before all this stuff we call "life" happened to us? How can we find some quiet within the mind, some peace within the sea of churning and conflicting emotions, perhaps some hint of a 'taste' for who I really am, what I truly desire -- and, most importantly, the power I need to transform myself to the human being I can be and deserve to be?

I offer no answers, only questions perhaps worth pondering. But what I really want to point to is the possibility of knowing without 'thought' so much. It is the thoughts and feelings that are tangled up. So, where can clarity come from?

[Lexington]

Welcome!

"Only falling for straight guys" is a very common trait amongst gay men, and there are many potential reasons behind it. Here are two:

* Some gay men are attracted to the "masculinity" that they see in straight men, and feel that gay men either have this to a much lesser extent, or are missing it entirely. Even if they find a guy attractive and appealing, once they find out the guy is gay, that attraction can diminish greatly...since, in their eyes, the men aren't as "masculine" as they thought.

* In a sense, straight men are "safe". They're unobtainable, and thus are OK to lust after, since, well, nothing will happen. You don't have to deal with any of the aspects of a relationship if you know immediately that one will not be forthcoming. And, of course, refusal from a straight man is (in essence) easier to take, since he's not rejecting YOU - he's simply not "built that way". You don't have to wonder "what's wrong with me", since you know why the relationship isn't happening - it's because he's straight.

And your overall position isn't that uncommon, either. I've met several guys online who occupy a similar space. They are the "unlovable", or the "forever alone". They may occasionally say that they dream of a loving relationship, but they usually follow that by announcing that it won't ever happen. And I wish I could say that they all eventually break out of that mindset, but honestly, they don't. They've spent many years shaping their own fortresses in their own realities, and words from a distant gargoyle (or even something more concrete) usually end up having the impact of a cotton ball against a brick wall.

It's completely irrational: If I can touch a couch, or a coffee cup, or a cigarette, why can't I touch a human?

No, it's completely rational. Couches and coffee cups and cigarettes are inanimate. Touching a couch doesn't come with a social contract. A coffee cup won't recoil from your touch. A cigarettes won't ask what you're "on about" when you pick it up. Touching these items is a one-way street. You can briefly touch your coffee cup, or caress it, or pick it up and throw it against the wall with all your might - the cup won't care. (You might, if you have to clean up the mess, but the cup doesn't. )

Touching other humans is far more complex. Are you doing it right? Are you conveying the message you wish to send? Are you touching too firmly, too softly, too briefly, too long? And what does the return touch "mean"? How should you respond to it? Questions upon questions.

That's not to say the questions aren't worth answering. Human touch can be damned awesome, after all.

Lex

[Paratrakl]

I have often thought that psychology is incapable of really helping. Think of it this way: you do something, or repeatedly behave a certain way, and you find this behavior or pattern of behavior to be irrational and/or destructive. We believe that there is a reason for our actions--since there is always an explanation for the observable behavior of objects in the physical world, there must be a reason for our own behavior. And indeed there could be an unconscious that informs our actions. Let's say a psychologist has told me that I find unavailable men, and exclusively unavailable men, attractive because I am trying to reenact my distant relationship to my father. (We have, by the way, no particular problem with each other; my father and I have simply never been close.) And this explanation of my behavior is plausible, because we assume that we base our attachment patterns on the attachment we had to our parents. But how is this to be demonstrated, logically? My dealings with straight men could well resemble my relationship to my father in some respects, but that doesn't demonstrate any causal link. And how much must a psychological explanation of observable behavior resemble that behavior? You could as well say that my amorous inclinations are due to the fact that I ate some ice cream on July 15, 1992. The point is, if there is an unconscious, since it is unconscious, there is nothing to say about it--an "unconscious thought" or "unconscious motivation" is a contradiction in terms. So anything we say about the unconscious--about the hidden motivations for our actions--could be replaced with any other explanation, however implausible.

An explanation in terms of unconscious motivation could, in the best case, serve a therapeutic purpose, but only if I believe it to be true. In that sense, psychology is at best a mere placebo, and if the patient believes his treatment to be a placebo, it often simply doesn't work--even if he's being given real medicine, so to speak. And the possibility that there simply is no explanation of my behavior still stands. If I accept an arbitrarily constructed explanation of my behavior in terms of a psychological theory, perhaps I can use the explanation to view and alter my own behavior, but if I reject the explanation on logical grounds--that the truth of the explanation has yet to be demonstrated--then I must simply conclude that there is nothing to do except allow myself my own foibles. And generally, this attitude has enabled me to resign myself to the prospect of a lonely death, and also not to think about this prospect often. But when I start to wish that it were otherwise, and when I can't rationally accept an explanation of my behavior, and when the world provides me with so many examples of people who simply don't have to confront the abysmal irrationality of their behavior--because their behavior, although no more rational than my own, is "successful"--it becomes almost unbearable.

The matter about being able to touch coffee cups and cigarettes was my own dark joke--the joke is that a human is an object like any other, after all, not a thing to be privileged over any other.

[Rareboy]

I would seriously and frankly suggest that you would benefit from some serious face time with a therapist. From your disassociative behaviours to an admission of social paralysis...there is so much going on here that is a haunting cry for help.

You are the one who will have to do the heavy lifting here....but at 26 years old...you can't sacrifice your life and happiness to this.

I will be thinking about you and hoping that you make an effort to free yourself from the prison you inhabit.

[Lexington]

I don't know if it's more humorous or confusing or sad or in-retrospect-not-at-all-surprising that you already have your answers ready for the therapist that you aren't going to see. Probably the last of the four.

After all, judging simply by the two posts you've made here, you're certainly no fool. It's not like you are unaware that mental health experts exist. So you must have, even in passing at one point, pondering the question "could seeing a mental health expert aid me?" And you clearly rejected that notion. All of which fits in with the vague type of person that I mentioned in my previous post. Nearly all of them hold one of two (overlapping) mindsets - "therapy doesn't work" or "therapy won't work for ME". And, of course, they're right. It won't work. Mental health professionals (and amateurs) can't help those who feel they can't be helped.

I'm a bit ambivalent towards rareboy's statement that your post is a "cry for help" - to me, it's more of a vague request for understanding. And I do believe that he's incorrect that "you can't sacrifice your life and happiness to this", because you most assuredly can. I've known several guys who have chosen not to "free themselves from the prison they inhabit" (to use his metaphor), and have instead worked to make their "prison" as comfortable and enjoyable as possible. Were they happy? I think they were. Would they have been happier if they had worked on "escaping"? I'm afraid that's outside my area of expertise.

Lex