I’m tired. I actually wrote a decent bit here before but lost it because I didn’t save it. This is a reconstruction.
I’m tired in a way that isn’t just a lack of sleep. I don’t really know what it is. My sleep schedule isn’t great. I’m in that sort of caffeine cycle too where to compensate for feeling tired I drink more caffeine and thus tend to go to sleep later (or at least less easily) which contributes to being tired.
Nowadays I would probably usually talk to an LLM about this. One will likely still read this, but I wanted to write it here more as a stream of thought / chronology. It’s too personal for people I know well and therapy takes time and money. To be clear, I am working through some of this with my therapist, but again, time and money.
I think I have some sort of OCD-like malady. I’ve never been diagnosed and it never rises quite to the point where I think it is some full-fledged thing, but I do experience some symptoms that I think would point to the same sort of issue. This OCD-like tendency, while not entirely, is often related to sex. I’ve never had sex. I’m 30 now and this fact has begun to pain me more and more. I’ve waited, mostly due to my upbringing really. It wasn’t until my late 20s that I really reached beyond what people call second base. It feels a bit pathetic now. It’s not that I didn’t develop into sexuality nor have sexual experiences, but rather I have avoided intercourse and that deep sort of intimacy. But I know about sex. I learned about sex from the internet a long time ago. I don’t remember when it was, I was in my early teens probably. I managed to avoid the worst parts of cognitive dissonance by couching it as research; always carefully navigating Wikipedia or some other informational site. My parents basically never even had “the talk” with me. A kid told me about it at a sleep over and my parents later just confirmed that in a rather brief conversation. They trusted me; I was a good kid with good grades who made good choices. I suppose they thought I would just figure it out. The only other conversation of the sort was just my father saying something like the following: “A boy I knew growing up, his father told him that variety [of sexual partners] was the spice of life. He was wrong.” I think once or twice my mom asked me if I ever looked up inappropriate images on the internet (I said no). We never talked about self-pleasure. But I had learned about that too (like teenagers I guess) by accident. The fact that it was discovered naturally did not remove the feelings of guilt associated with it though and shame/dread were deeply tied with release. At the start there wasn’t even any related pornographic material either, just the act itself. Of course later there was and it was varied and nuanced. Because I had learned from encyclopedias, I was very aware of more fringe things like bondage/BDSM. Such ideas (kinks) were appealing to me in some way that reflected desires from when I was much younger. The primal appeal of capturing or something like that.
I had drawn a bright red line in my mind around all of this; I decided to myself that no one could ever know. If I had to lie, it would be justified. Anyone else knowing about this represented an existential threat. I was raised in a Southern Baptist home and went to a Southern Baptist church and Southern Baptist school. The only time such things were discussed were in a deeply negative light. It seemed almost impossible to separate the concept of sex from lust; they might as well have been the same thing. Before I had any desires of my own (and even some after) I had a self-image that was deeply rooted in the idea that I was a good/righteous guy. Internally, I had already experienced great concern that I might sin in my own mind or that I was doing something wrong and that I might somehow forfeit my salvation. As I grew and began to care about the opposite sex, this only got much much worse. You might have encountered some purity culture framing before. I certainly didn’t know the term at the time, but that was the waters in which I basically swam. Girls at my school wore promise rings. I was in a book group for the (now-defunct) “I kissed dating goodbye” in early high school. I vaguely recall a visitor to our church telling a story about how they had watched porn and eventually it wasn’t enough for them and they became a rapist (who was later saved in jail). I think at some point in youth group or at school someone indicated that masturbation was sin (though for the most part sex just wasn’t discussed at all). I hadn’t stopped though. It was, for periods of time, almost daily for me; always coupled with intense shame afterward. I would try to quit and would make it for weeks or months sometimes but then start again, feeling deeply bad about it like I were some kind of drug addict. This cycle probably even continued into early college and beyond now that I think about it. I would listen to angsty music about “the fight inside” and other addiction-like-framings (sometimes from Christian nu-metal bands and whatnot). I really felt internally torn and there was no one to talk to about this.
I would often fantasize about girls I knew on Facebook (from school, peers); maybe looking at a bikini picture or something like that. In my mind that was better than true explicit content; I wouldn’t have to feel so bad afterward about the heinous act. Further into high school I had also developed other outlets for getting off such as chat rooms with random strangers. I would sometimes meet people on Omegle and then get their contact and talk with them on Kik. There you could find someone who might be interested in some clumsy sub/dom type thing for a conversation or two. There were stakes, it felt more real. I did that quite a lot actually. The first real nudes I ever received came from a girl who I think I randomly met on Facebook. I still recall when I received them on my flip phone at my cousin’s house. I was probably in 10th grade or so. I had only had my first kiss the year before, though at that point I likely knew about all manner of sexual acts. There was a growing and strong divergence between knowledge and experience.
College changed things somewhat as I had a bit of a culture shock. All the ideas I had about being an exemplar or so holier than thou type of person had been melted away by experience (and much introspection, I’ve written about it elsewhere I think). I still never had sex. Once I got to feel up a girl through her bra while making out (at her request). I still very regularly masturbated and still engaged in online roleplay. At this point porn felt like just a tool to get the thing done. I never understood people who framed porn usage as porn addiction. It never has been / was about that for me, it was just about a way to get off faster/easier and I still often felt worse if it was the avenue of approach. I had sexted a number of times in college as I recall, it was still pretty rare though. I still felt a lot of guilt. I had also picked up more feelings towards the ideas of power play and sub/dom roles (with desires for both, particularly submission which felt more taboo).
After college there was more of the same, but less and less actual contact with anyone. I didn’t date anyone seriously really (harder to find people my age outside of college). I still felt negative feelings around sex, but they were more muted, dulled. It had been about 10 years since I had really learned about it probably. There was still self-pleasure, sexting, but nothing physical with anyone. I recall sometime during First Impact when I was very sick I worried I would die without ever getting to have sex with someone. This probably wasn’t the first time I thought that, but it was poignant as it was the closest I had been to death probably. Sometime around Second Impact I think I made it to second base with a woman who would later be my only real girlfriend. We did some light roleplay in person. But later I felt weird about it and we had reduced contact. That was a frequent pattern; sexting someone and then feeling guilty the next day; having to say things like, “we shouldn’t have done that” or saying nothing at all, but fading from contact. I never got into cam girls or the like but would sometimes use dating apps in other countries (think PH) where I was more likely to match with someone who was selling content or was looking for “fun” or whatever. I had, by this point (and perhaps earlier) developed a deep resentment for how I acted while horny vs how I usually way. It felt very Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde to me.
Post-Third Impact I was in a different sort of place. During the immediate aftermath, in the midst of much distress, I recall my parents asked me if the doubts/deconstruction (my word, not theirs) was because of “some secret sexual sin”. In retrospect, it feels absurd and I really resent it. They never talked to me about that before. Now what? They think that I’m gay? Or “addicted” to porn? Or got a girl pregnant? Or maybe that I had sex at all? The audacity to ask me that. And yet, the thing I had felt guilty about that kick off my questions was my development work on SillyTavern because I knew some people (some clearly younger) used it for lewd roleplay; I had used it for roleplay. But that was only a catalyst for something that had been building for a decade and is described better in Anatomy of Collapse. I was feeling depressed for much of this time so I really had pretty low libido for a while I think. At some point around this time I learned one of my friends was in an “accountability group” for porn. I didn’t like knowing that.
I eventually got my first girlfriend and we stayed together for about a year. There was lots of foreplay-type stuff, never any sex. There was even bondage type stuff, but never any sex. This was a cause of great division in the relationship eventually, even though I had told her that’s how it was far before we dated. She wanted sex and I didn’t provide it, even after losing the reason why I had abstained in the first place. I existed in a limbo where I could but didn’t do anything. We had lots of arguments about this (she felt unwanted, etc.). We eventually broke up. I couldn’t really explain exactly why to my friends or family. It was not until I was 29 that I slept in the same bed as a woman. Still no sex. It was my ex (from above), we had started talking again and she spent the night. Nothing really came of that though, but it was exciting. Then after turning 30 there was another woman who I made it to 3rd base with. She stayed the night multiple times. I could have had sex, but I didn’t. We dated for a few months and then it ended. I miss it.
And now I am here. I feel what seems like a lot of regret. I feel like I wasted my 20s; the time where I was most likely to have sex with someone attractive, in their prime. And what do I have to show for it? It sure feels like basically nothing. I’m still in a roughly deconstructed state; I still cling to some vestiges of my prior worldview and it’s really hard to remove the underlying feelings they evoke. For the same reasons I don’t even drink or curse, despite knowing I easily could and don’t even have any real moral qualms with them either. I still have negative associations that seem to taint sex broadly while simultaneously wanting it more than at any other period in my life. I worry I won’t be able to enjoy it or that it won’t live up to the status I’ve given it in my mind. I have strange kinks/fetishes that only really exist in my mind because I’ve rarely if ever had a way to try them or act them out. I’m still a technical virgin, but I wouldn’t really claim much purity at this point. It really all just sucks and I feel like I am broken in some way and it seems less and less likely every day that I will find an attractive partner.
Since Third Impact it’s taken me a couple of years to be able to tell my therapist much of this. She still doesn’t know about some of it. My friends of course don’t know and still are very much in the same sort of purity outcropping (or at least a generally Christian view of sex) as before. I feel like there is no way to bring this up without judgement and I don’t really know what the value would be. Most of them are married at this point anyhow and plenty of them seem to think that the telos of sex is firstly reproduction (and that deviation is bad). It’s only been in the last couple of months that I’ve been able to say to myself that I want to have sex this year. Even that sounds pathetic and I don’t even know if I would follow through if given the opportunity. I’ve made such a big deal of it for 15 years now.
But where do the OCD-like-thought-patterns I eluded to come in? They come in the form of an intrusive type of thought (usually) regarding sex as a contaminating agent to other thoughts or concepts; Not wanting to get a sexual image or idea associated with a song, movie, or hobby that I enjoy. The more I resist it when it comes on, the worse it gets of course. This seems like a type of OCD or something like it. It’s very frustrating and it’s troubled me for at least a few years now. I can’t help but think it’s related to the sexual history I’ve laid out. I recall deep worry/guilt that I might think of sex while at church a long time ago. It’s been bothering me more lately. Perhaps as a side effect of this or just a change in my feelings since turning 30, I basically haven’t seen (nor felt much want for) porn in the last 6 months. It just seems unappetizing right now (unreal and unfulfilling) and sometimes there is a worry an image will get associated with something, so it’s just not worth it I guess.