Jungle Fever?

[Rockin80]

I feel like I have a compulsion for black man. It's not just a preference, no....it's compulsion.

What if a major depression ends up affecting even your sex life or sex drive?

9 out of 10 gays I meet on apps are black. Sometimes not even super hot but I don't care.

And even though the sex can be great...it's detached. I can't bring myself to be cuddly and affectionate.

This drives me insane and I can't help but feel that my chronic depression might have to do with it

[TigerLover]

Sexual preferences are usually borne of a series of memories and experiences that you can't even recall. The memory fades but the impression it made on your subconscious remains.

Do you think of black men as especially comforting or protective?

As for your inability to cuddle. Do you actually want to cuddle?

If yes it's probably more to do with your self-esteem. After all if you already have a low opinion of yourself it would hurt like hell if you tried to cuddle a guy and he rejected you.

[Beaux]

I don't know if this story will be of any help, but it is the only reference that immediatly comes to mind.

Growing up, my mother cared for 3 of my younger cousins after their mother died and they came to live with us. One of my cousins had a school mate who's father was (and still is...) terribly racist. He is a proud member of the KKK. In any case, when his daughter (who we will call "Kerri") hit puberty and started noticing boys, as it turned out she had an ~obsession~ with black men.

Kerri's dedication to the objects of her desire was total. By the time she was 15, she was pregnant with her first son by a 27 year old drug dealer. By the time she was 18, she had had her 2nd son by another, older black man. By the time she was 21, she had her 3rd son by yet another, different black man who was also involved in drugs. Today, at 29 years old, she had 5 children, all by different fathers. 3 of the 5 fathers are in prison for drug offenses, one is dead and the other is MIA.

Through all of this, different people in Kerri's life tried (at first) to get her to date white men, but Kerri claimed that her attraction was just like a person being Gay. She said that she wasn't capable of being attracted to a man of any other race, and that white men in particular "grossed her out". Eventually, her family and friends stopped trying to get her to date non-black men, and just tried to get her to date non-criminal men, but Kerri said that men who weren't "In The Game" we're just too boring....

Eventually, Kerri's house got busted because one of her new boyfriends was using her house to store stolen property and to sell drugs. In an attempt to get her children back, she was court ordered to see a psychiatrist. She spent several years seeing the psychiatric doctor, and eventually she came to the conclusion that her "attraction" to black men wasn't actually an attraction to the men at all, it was an attraction to a stereotype of black men foisted on her by the guilt she felt for the victims of her father's hatred.

Kerri is currently single, at almost 30 years old and with 5 children, just now realizing that she has never really been in love. She was in love with the IDEA of loving men who most closely matched the stereotype of her father's hatred. She says she still has a lot of work to do.

You need to realize that, if you aren't really "loving" these men, then you are doing both yourself and them a disservice. Know thy self, friend.

~Beaux

[Pix]

^^

That, I believe, explains someone I used to know who also came from a very racist family (but then so did her black boyfriend). Her black boyfriend was an okay guy (though he was in a krew of runaway kids, as she and I were), and I didn't have a problem with him. But I did have a problem with her being an idiot whenever it came to black men as she'd not only trust them all (which is as stupid as trusting everyone of any demographic, and this was in a bad area where extra caution regarding everyone, regardless of race, was warranted) but bend over backwards for them, which put the rest of us (including her black boyfriend) into danger. I tried talking with her about her "blind spot" but it was not possible to have a rational discussion with her on that (though she could be rational about everything else).

That aside, I've noticed long ago that many who are either obsessed with, or repulsed by, a certain race have an image of that race rather than it being merely visual. They might start out as saying it's visual, but eventually they'd slip up and reveal the stereotype they had in mind that was affecting their desire/repulsion.

Not just race, but other things, like smoking cigarettes, would trigger some stereotype in a person's sex drive and subconscious that would activate either incredible attraction or repulsion. (I lean that way about glasses. I think it implies someone who is very knowledgeable or has traveled a lot, which intrigues me, and can even get me attracted to them. Luckily, I'm conscious about this so that it doesn't control me, and it's not to the point that I require a romantic partner wear glasses, which is a good thing as most of them never did.)