I have a problem.
I'm ftm, 21, entirely pre-op, gay, and simply terrified of sex. As in, I sometimes remember that dating involves sex and get so scared and upset that I cry for a few hours and sometimes need to self-harm to calm myself down. This would not be a problem, but I'm also painfully lonely and want a relationship.
I've never been abused or had bad experiences with men (straight or gay) and save for dysphoria, I can't imagine where the dread comes from. I'm not an asexual, I want sex in theory but not in practice.
How do I overcome a fear of sex enough to be able to date? My chances of ever finding a partner are small enough as it is, even if going out wouldn't feel like sticking my hand into a bear trap.
You could date someone who struggles finding a date at all and then they would be content of merely having someone and not mind not having sex.
But in all seriousness you need to sit down, possibly write down why you might be afraid of it. Convince to yourself it isn't that bad.
Then watch porn and realize nothing immediately bad happens after sex.
Unfortunately in this hypersexualized society we exist in, finding an abstinent person is near impossible.
>>5389721
Where do I find a guy like that?
The only guys on Grindr want sex ASAP and the only guys on OkCupid are far far away, too old and crazy.
I hate to be picky but I have first hand experience that +10 year age differences in relationships don't work.
Also I can't find any of them attractive and I'm scared of all of them.
>>5389711
Do you dear anything in particular about sex?
>>5389728
Where are you OP?
>>5389728
Huh...
Can't believe I'm doing this, I'd never think I'd recommend it.
But your best odds of finding such a guy would be on tumblr who is and respects such special snowflake like things.
But yeah this seems like an extreme phobia that you should find a professional to speak to if it is in fact breaking you into tears.
>>5389746
But I fucking loathe tumblr nonsense and I don't want to date some kid who insists "genderfluid" is a thing.
I don't want to date someone I have to use terrorist tactics to force him to act like an adult.
>>5389750
Well....
Sometimes you have to give and take what you find acceptable in a match. Unfortunately there is no person that meets every checkbox you want.
I've come to accept it as: date a possibly dumb/crazy pretty person or date an average/ugly person of common interest and modest intelligence.
>>5389775
So my options are men I don't like who fuck me and leave or children I don't like who make me want to hit them?
>>5389740
Maybe you're a top, homie.
>>5389786
It doesn't really matter when you don't have tools.
If I got to choose, I'd still rather not have sex at all ever.
>>5389750
If you want to date people who act like adults, you'll have to act like an adult yourself.
>>5389787
Would you ever consider SRS?
>>5389793
*nor
>>5389786
Is he? Or just painfully self-conscious? Idk?
Have you had any sort of luck with being clear you want to take things slowly, or do you find yourself having trouble being assertive, or even wanting to be assertive, because up until then feeling mainly good feelings from being pursued, then feel like you can't stop them when it goes too far, or even to want to stop them because you *want to want* sex?
You already said you weren't abused and haven't had bad experiences and I won't probe further; but just ask yourself please privately if maybe it has happened to you and if it has, please remember you deserve help and to be able to ask for it. You self-harm, after sex. I know that people who self-harm aren't always people who have been abused, but it is a pretty huge warning sign, including of the fact you might not be willing to consider what others have done has amounted to harm. I know this may not apply at all, but please privately consider if it does in case this is where your fear comes from.
>>5389793
You're so fucked in the head you're cutting yourself just from thinking about sex, you're going to have to lower your standards somewhat here if you expect to actually find someone
>>5389803
I never get as far as actually getting there. I've made an account on grindr to meet men but as soon as someone within a realistic travel distance suggests meeting up, I freak out and block him.
I don't stick my hand into the bear trap. I don't trust it won't spring.
I can't think of anything that'd constitute as abuse. I can count the men I've had in my life with one hand and none of them have ever been threatening in any way.
>>5389711
Also, as a makeshift measure, I usually try to get men off via other means, because I'm a trans woman and I usually find anal sex painful, especially how early men attempt it and my feelings for them scarcely last longer than theirs do for me. I know it's still sex, manually or orally, but do alternate forms of getting them off appeal to or even work for you?
>>5389806
If I have to literally, physically hit my partner to make him stop saying stupid shit, it might be better for both of us to not be together.
I mean I don't know a lot about dating but I think it's best not to be with someone whose berserk button happens to be your favourite subject.
I don't want to share my life with someone whose psyche I have to systematically destroy just to make them tolerable.
>>5389816
I don't trust they'd settle for that.
>>5389806
If someone cuts, I don't think asking them to lower their standards in partners is at all helpful, nor is calling him "fucked in the head", but you knew that.
>tfw no trans gf who doesn't want sex
Unfortunately I am but a lowly neet in america anon
>>5389828
Hm. Are you attracted to trans men at all? I know that I'm most comfortable with trans women as while they usually still have a higher sex drive like everyone else, I usually find it easier to communicate what I am/am not comfortable with. Maybe you might have similar luck with other trans men?
You're in Europe: get some psychotherapy. It's cheaper and usually more reliable than US therapists.
If you happen to find a lacanian psychoanalyst, even better. They're better equipped to deal with sexuality issues than most cognitive-behavioural psychotherapists.
You have a phobic response to sex, and that does not need to originate from trauma (most phobias don't, which eludes a great part of our illiterate population). It has a nother origin, bt even then, origins are not really that helpful, you need to learn to regulate your phobic response.
Your self-harming is another symptom entirely, and probably connected to a whole other structure, which I can't surmise from so little information. However, I can advise you to immediately tell it to your therapist. It's no good to hide things from someone which needs to know absolutely everything about you in order to correctly diagnose and treat you.
>>5389850
I'll have to see if I ever encounter one. A real one, not the tumblr nonsense.
>>5389793
There are different ways of feeling about gender than yours, your own "different" way of feeling your gender already tells you it can happen.
I'm also not fond of that particular strain of feminism (which involves a series of strict moral prerrogatives and control over discourse and pratices) and all that crap, but I admit they can exist and that they can feel like they say they feel. Let them be, just don't get involved in their antics.
>>5389862
I'm not from one of THOSE countries.
Mental illness doesn't exist around here. If it isn't schizophrenia, down's syndrome or drunk psychosis, it's probably just all in your head and you should man up and stop having it.
>>5389877
That's what I'm trying to do. And that's why I can't fucking date one.
>>5389888
You could get to know some of them, there are always dissidents. Every totalitarian movement has their own brand of discontents.
>>5389881
Are you in the Schengen area?
you could always hop on a train to a country where mental health exists. I have many friends who drive 4+ hours for their weekly appointment in a different country.
>>5389888
Ok. Um. I will be back soon. I need to be able to relate you how I met trans women who didn't make me feel like we were all crazy and gross, and it took a long time, literally 8 years post-HRT, having started at 17. I was really the only person I knew who passed and was chronically abusive and took for granted trans women around me until um--it's not so analagous insomuch as I'm an extreme example. It's embarrassing and personal and I need to find a way if I can relate to you what is valuable while anonymising the details.
Basically, you are not alone, and it is so easy to become isolated and have those feelings of isolation drive you further inward. You can meet other trans men; but passing is a bit of a double edged sword here, you would easily walk past them everyday not knowing.
>>5389958
I don't tolerate anyone who has that kind of ideas, and I also don't tolerate anyone who tolerates that kind of ideas.
There is no peaceful coexistence.
>>5389982
No. I don't even have a car to drive to a different city.
>>5389987
desu I don't want anyone with that kind of emotional baggage. I know what I've been through and I can barely tolerate MYSELF.
>>5389998
Your intolerance seems exaggerated and it stands on the way of your happiness, doesn't seem like a good deal to me.
>>5389998
>desu I don't want anyone with that kind of emotional baggage.
That's the thing is you won't. Trans women I was hateful towards were still cringey and embarrassing, but like until I found undeniably functional trans women, and like literally a situation where I wouldn't have thought I would ever be attracted to another trans woman and then suddenly was, was really important in changing my life and outlook. I don't think I was effective in what I was outlining, but no it doesn't mean making out with someone with heaps of emotional baggage, completely the opposite situation. I was on my way home with all of mine to undo.
>>5390016
I have some asperger traits. Not enough for a full diagnosis, but some.
One of them is that factual errors make me fucking livid.
Vaccines don't cause autism. There are always chemicals in water because water is a chemical. You can't put a dog on a vegan diet. Cats do not have the mental capacity to understand art. The fat buddha statue is not Siddharta Gautama. The sky is blue. The sun is bigger than earth. Snakes are not slimy. "Catch" and "cat" are not pronounced the same way. THERE ARE TWO GENDERS AND NO THIRD ONES.
I can't stand being around people who are wrong about facts. It's like the sound of a dentist's drill to me. I can't stand it. At all. If I have to resort to violence to make it stop, I will. I would, however, rather prefer if people would not make me.
I just can't stand it when people seriously believe things that are wrong.
>>5390022
There's also the thing where vaginas absolutely disgust me.
Like, bluntly, you need to find the right conference to go to or something. I know a lot are cringey and alphabet soup'y, hopefully it wasn't a small window of ones that weren't that existed. You just aren't meeting anyone you relate to healthily. Tumblr is a lot of garbage indeed, real life is pretty essential and you may need to travel outside of wherever you are which may have a stifling shroud a prepulse inhibition by now to see things differently.
>>5390033
Hm, yeah, um, if indeed immutable that could totally obstruct things for you and I'm sorry if things are that rough. All i can say is I never thought I'd be attracted to someone with biologically discrepant parts either, or even ones that had been altered. All of the sudden it didn't matter and it played no component.
>>5390041
Can you explain that again like you are talking to someone who slept 4 hours last night and doesn't speak english as a first language?
>>5390048
no english good.
talk small word pls
>>5390050
Okay, I will try to substitute simpler language without slang and compensate for the way I tend to word things:
Honestly, you need to find the right conference to go to or something. I know a lot are cringey (unappealing, worsening dysphoria) and not very specific, hopefully it wasn't a temporary small amount of conference that weren't this way that existed. You just aren't meeting anyone you relate to in a healthy manner (that is, who would not have baggage). Yes, Tumblr is a lot of garbage. Real life association with people is pretty essential and you may need to travel outside of wherever you to see things differently, because often when we are in the same place forever much of what we could see differently we miss because it all fades into the background, and again, people pass, who you won't see unless you are in circumstances that make it clear.
>>5390084
1. I don't know what "conference" means in this context.
2. I don't understand the word combination "that weren't this way that existed"
3. Your sentences are very long and I only have a vague hunch of what you are getting at.
4. No I don't. I am lying. I do no thave a hunch. I know what all the words mean but put together in those sentences is like someone put a dictionary into a blender and made me eat it.
5. pls help
Okay, I'll just deal with 1. because I am really not helping, but I sympathise and don't think you are merely "intolerant".
There are large symposiums of people where people slightly more serious about life often go. Here they are often called conferences, like the Philadelphia Trans Health Conference I went to, but several years ago. This is way too personal and even involved someone who used to post here, so I really want to stop there.
Obviously, In addition to that, I realise I am difficult to understand. Hopefully someone will relate to what I am saying and be able to explain how you may easily have access to completely different circumstances, especially given how you are currently at the extreme of having such a mess as Tumblr seeming to be representative of all that's available to you. I wish you well. You seem pretty invested in having a partner, and it is leading to a hopelessness I am familiar with enough from past experience to not envy.
>>5390132
I'd be less invested if I could. I was raised in the whole you-go-girl-you-don't-need-a-man -thing, but apparently loneliness is the same kind of an alert system as being hungry or in pain, and can't be shut down by reasoning that being a part of the tribe or producing your own offspring are no longer vital for survival.
>>5389711
Dear lord, you sure as fuck shouldn't direct all this looniness onto some poor sap in an attemptto "date." It would be a disaster for him and damaging for you.
Bottom line is you need therapy. Ignore what anyone else says. Simply find a therapist you fit with.
>inb4 you can't afford it
Fucking figure it out. This is necessary healthcare nigga.
>>5390196
Free health care country.
plot twist: health care is shit.
As long as I'm not literally killing someone, I'm too sane to need help.
