Post by ocelotofdoom on Jan 23, 2011 6:00:06 GMT -5
I don't know if I should warn for this. I don't think there's TMI of the usual definition in this, but I still worry about creeping people out in posting this.
I'm kind of in one my "try-to-figure-myself-out" phases right now, and while googling, I found this:
www.asexuality.org/en/index.php?/topic/39889-turned-on-by-being-comforted/
I'm really glad that someone else - especially another asexual - has brought this up. In fact, that's probably the only reason I finally got the guts to post about it, anywhere. I definitely have some weird hurt/comfort stuff going on with my romantic orientation or whatever takes its place. In my case, it's more in the direction of protecting and comforting other people than receiving comfort. It's also not a sexual turn-on thing - I know what sexual arousal feels like, and this isn't it. On the other hand, when I've had fantasies about standing up for my favorite fictional characters and comforting them when bad things happen to them, I've definitely felt something that's not what I feel when hanging around even my very close friends.
I've been having these thoughts since I was very young, but at least for a few years, this has been creeping me out about myself. It bothers me mostly because of the reasons that one of the posters in the thread I linked to mentioned, namely that it can be exploitative. Closely related is the fact that it has no real-life application, so I don't know what to do about it. Finally, I worry that this is just a manifestation of my trauma issues. It's not that I'm thinking that the fact that it's based in trauma makes it invalid so much as that I worry that my mind has picked an inappropriate avenue to put that into, and now that's the only way I can conceptualize romantic love, or whatever I have in its place that is not friendship.
I'm starting with a new therapist soon (nothing bad with my old therapist, he just suggested I find someone with more availability), and I finally want to start dealing with this and figuring out what to do with it. I'm just not sure I'm going to have the guts to do so, off the anonymous internet (which I had a hard enough time getting to the point of posting on about this) and probably in more depth. I've written down what I think just in case I can't make myself say it - and even though all the words were there in my head, it was really hard to put it down - but I don't know if I can even go through with actually giving the new therapist what I wrote. This is the one major psychological thing that's bugging me right now besides stress (which is pretty much inevitable unless I want to drop out of law school), and I want to figure it out and learn what I can do with/about it. It's just that being open about this scares me a lot more than being out of the closet about being asexual ever has.
So... I don't know.... Thoughts? Help? Something?
I'm kind of in one my "try-to-figure-myself-out" phases right now, and while googling, I found this:
www.asexuality.org/en/index.php?/topic/39889-turned-on-by-being-comforted/
I'm really glad that someone else - especially another asexual - has brought this up. In fact, that's probably the only reason I finally got the guts to post about it, anywhere. I definitely have some weird hurt/comfort stuff going on with my romantic orientation or whatever takes its place. In my case, it's more in the direction of protecting and comforting other people than receiving comfort. It's also not a sexual turn-on thing - I know what sexual arousal feels like, and this isn't it. On the other hand, when I've had fantasies about standing up for my favorite fictional characters and comforting them when bad things happen to them, I've definitely felt something that's not what I feel when hanging around even my very close friends.
I've been having these thoughts since I was very young, but at least for a few years, this has been creeping me out about myself. It bothers me mostly because of the reasons that one of the posters in the thread I linked to mentioned, namely that it can be exploitative. Closely related is the fact that it has no real-life application, so I don't know what to do about it. Finally, I worry that this is just a manifestation of my trauma issues. It's not that I'm thinking that the fact that it's based in trauma makes it invalid so much as that I worry that my mind has picked an inappropriate avenue to put that into, and now that's the only way I can conceptualize romantic love, or whatever I have in its place that is not friendship.
I'm starting with a new therapist soon (nothing bad with my old therapist, he just suggested I find someone with more availability), and I finally want to start dealing with this and figuring out what to do with it. I'm just not sure I'm going to have the guts to do so, off the anonymous internet (which I had a hard enough time getting to the point of posting on about this) and probably in more depth. I've written down what I think just in case I can't make myself say it - and even though all the words were there in my head, it was really hard to put it down - but I don't know if I can even go through with actually giving the new therapist what I wrote. This is the one major psychological thing that's bugging me right now besides stress (which is pretty much inevitable unless I want to drop out of law school), and I want to figure it out and learn what I can do with/about it. It's just that being open about this scares me a lot more than being out of the closet about being asexual ever has.
So... I don't know.... Thoughts? Help? Something?
