Being gay, depression, sex, health anxiety… [venting / discussion]

Hey everyone. So I’ll start by saying that this post is mostly going to be about some of the more negative aspects of my life related to my sexuality. I am out, but don’t really have any gay friends that can relate to some of the things I experience and I think I just need to vent. If anyone has any insights or can relate I’d be happy to hear back and talk about it. So I’ll start with a little bit about me. I grew up where homophobia was the norm, so I spent most of my time as a teenager in denial about my sexuality. While quite a few of my ‘friends’ starting around middle school time clearly noticed some differences in my behavior and would make fun of me for being gay, I managed to cover it up and pass as straight through high school. I tried to deal with all my repressed feelings mostly with drugs and alcohol (easily accessible at that age where I was), but also developed a perfectionist mentality (looking back I see this as me trying to compensate for being ‘flawed’). I started coming out around the end of High School / beginning of University. Admitting it to myself was probably the biggest challenge at first, as all of my friends and my older brother turned out to be really supportive. Coming out to my parents didn’t go as well, but in the end it worked out better than I had expected (i.e. I didn’t get disowned, they told me they still loved me but would never accept it, had to deal with a few months of them trying to convince me otherwise, asking me if I had tried this or that, how I needed to go on hormone therapy, how I should try things like conversion camps, etc.). I moved to a new city after that, and in the next few years I worked on my relationship with my parents / family, and now everything is fine. At this point my entire extended family knows (except for my ridiculously homophobic aunt), and my parents have no problem talking about it. Unfortunately, spending all that time trying to repress my sexuality with drugs/alcohol led to some pretty severe depression. Spending my first few years of University trying to ignore the depression and focus on school just made my mental health worse (especially with the perfectionist mentality). The way things ended up, I just spent/spend most of my time isolating myself and pushing people away. While I’ve made a lot of progress dealing with my mental health and repressed issues at this point, it’s tough and things take time to get better. I do make more of an effort to be social, but all of my friends right now and straight and very introverted. As you can imagine, this makes meeting other gay men pretty difficult. This gets me to what I really want to talk about – sex, relationships, all that fun stuff. My thoughts about all this are a bit jumbled, so I’ll try to be as coherent as possible. My sexuality / sex drive pretty much drives me crazy. Currently, I’m not having sex with anyone and don’t use any hookup apps. While I have hooked up before with guys I don’t know very well (friends of friends mostly) and guys that I’ve met online, I try to avoid hookups because I get really bad health anxiety and I also just don’t really like that feeling I get after being intimate with a stranger. I know some of my health anxiety is irrational, while some is justified, and I am educated when it comes to disease transmission / risk and safe sex. Part of my problem is definitely also low self-esteem, because of poor self-care habits right now and some body image problems and stuff (as I mentioned, depression). I have a high sex drive, so I spend a lot of my time sexually frustrated, which has become really tolling. I masturbate a lot, but it doesn’t really help. It just makes me tense/tired at this point, but I still end up doing it anyways. I live in a bigger city, and so I know hookups are always an option. I’m just so reluctant to meet guys for casual sex (off grindr, for example) because of my health anxiety. The way I see it, some guy on grindr that is willing to meet for sex with me on a whim is likely doing that often with a lot of other guys. From a safety standpoint I’m just not comfortable with that. Obviously there are condoms, which are great. Health anxiety isn’t the most rational thing, so it still happens even being safe. Oral with condoms is also an option, and I’ve done it before, but it really is not enjoyable for me. Realistically speaking, I know it’s possible that the condom wouldn't stay on with oral sex (definitely NOT the case with anal). Honestly, even making out with a stranger off a hookup site would make me feel somewhat anxious (I don’t even like to share drinks with my friends normally). The anxiety surrounding it all is a lot less now than it was at the very beginning, but it’s still there. So the options seem to be to hookup as safely as I can, or to not do it at all. Knowing that I will experience the anxiety, while also not really wanting to be intimate with a stranger, makes me choose to avoid it if I can. This is a problem because the sexual frustration that builds up has an extremely negative and pervasive impact on my life and health. Avoiding hookups while knowing they are an easy option also requires a lot of self-control. I just don’t have enough self-control / energy to mitigate my suicidal ideology, sex drive, and academic obligations (yes, I have sought professional help for my mental health, and I’m planning to take some time off after finishing school after next semester, it’s just not really an option right now). If I did end up hooking up with someone, I’m afraid that I would have a lapse in self-control and cave easily if they pressured me to not use protection. I’m not sure if it is a result of me trying to repress my sexual urges, but recently I have been having pretty frequent fantasies about engaging in risky sexual behavior – I really do fully understand the risks/implications of these behaviors, and so want to do what I can to make sure these don’t ever become anything more than fantasies. Given where I’m at in life right now, I don’t really have the time or self-esteem to explore dating. My life is a mess, and I need to have more control and stability before I think I’ll be able to go out and meet people with the intention of dating. That just takes time. It’s unfortunate, as I think I’ve missed out on a few opportunities with some pretty great guys in the past few years. Like I mentioned, I do tend to isolate myself, and even putting effort into trying to make friends is tough (I really would like some gay friends). I could probably go on forever, but if you read all that then thanks for listening to me vent. If you did make it this far, I do have some questions as well. For starters, I’m beginning to feel like grindr / hookups are just the norm for gay men. I know a lot of people are into that, and I hope I didn’t come off as being judgmental, if you’re happy/comfortable with hookups then that’s fine. Part of me is just starting to feel like it’s something that I just need to get over and get on board with if I want to deal with my sexual frustration. Being in a relationship would be great, but I know that’s something that can’t be forced. I’m not really opposed to casual sex at all, but is it unrealistic for me to want to be able to have sex with people that I at least know and trust to some extent? I don’t know if I’ve just been feeling overly negative about it recently, but I feel more and more that the reality of being gay is that everyone just fucks everyone (besides a small number of committed relationships), with a line drawn between people that do and don’t use protection. I guess what I’d like to know is, based on your experiences, does it seem to you like there’s just a problem with my mentality when it comes to sex? Is it realistic for me to want to hold out until I can meet gay men that aren’t part of the hookup scene to have sex with? Or, similarly, to wait until I meet the right person to be in a relationship with that isn’t part of the hookup scene? Maybe it’s a flawed way to look at it, but I feel like if there isn’t a good chance of those things happening then it might be better to try and change the way I look at things and try to hookup as safely as I can. After all, assuming I do end up eventually meeting someone that I’m comfortable having sex with or that I want to be in a long term relationship with, I feel like if they have actively been part of the hookup scene then I’m exposing myself to a similar amount of risk (obviously I know sleeping with more people is more risk, but I think I’m looking at it this way as a consequence of seeing the hookup scene sort of like everyone having sex with everyone, so sleeping with someone is kind of like sleeping with everyone they've been with). If that’s most likely the case anyways, part of me feels like I should save myself the frustration and just try to go out and meet at least some of my sexual needs. On the other hand, I don’t want to push myself to go down that road if there’s a good chance of me making friends and/or finding a partner with a similar mentality. I know that was a lot. For anyone who did read all that, thank you. I guess I’m just a bit lost right now, and could use some input from people who have more experience (and from anyone who can relate to this at all). I apologize if the post comes across as being overly negative, it has been a particularly rough few months.