Sex and intimacy with men

  • Having sex not out of desire for the physical pleasure or emotional closeness but because you like feeling wanted.
  • OR: preferring to ‘be a tease’ to feel wanted but feeling like following through is a chore
  • Having to be drunk or high to have sex with men
  • The idea of kissing, cuddling, dating and/or having sex with men is really scary/anxiety inducing, and the idea of doing any of those things with women isn’t (or is noticeably less scary)
  • Your fantasies about men still somehow turn out to be a little gay. Maybe you’re penetrating him, you don’t have to look at his face/don’t want to look at his face, you want a threesome with another woman, he’s very feminine, etc. It might be a “straight fantasy” but you’ve altered it in a way straight people might not be totally interested in.
  • Thinking because you don't like/pursue sex with men you must be asexual. Or vice versa with romance for men.
  • Your fantasies about men give you intense distress or anxiety. They could be intrusive thoughts, forms of self-harm, or otherwise.
  • When I think about guys, I think about all the things that I could tolerate doing with them (dating, kissing, sex, marriage) but always in terms of what I could force myself to do, not what I want to do.
  • Being around guys that are interested in me gives me intense anxiety.
  • Feeling weird/wrong calling your past boyfriends pet names or showing them PDA, but gladly showing your girl friends PDA.
  • Only being comfortable with sex with men if there’s an extreme power imbalance and your desires aren’t centred.
  • Using sex with men as a form of self-harm
  • You don’t have much of an emotional reaction to kissing or being otherwise physical with a man, or you even dislike/hate it
  • Feeling numb or dissociating or crying during/after sex with men (even if you don’t understand that reaction and think you’re fine and crying etc for no reason)
  • Being bored with sex with men/not understanding what the big deal is that makes other women want it
  • Doing it anyway out of obligation or a desire to be a good sport/do something nice for him
  • Never/rarely having sexual fantasies about specific men, preferring to leave them as undetailed as possible or not thinking about men at all while fantasizing
  • Having to make a concerted effort to fantasize about the guy you’re “attracted” to