My internalised homophobia led to the denial of my sexuality

I dealt with a lot of internal homophobia as I grew up, which led to denial of my sexuality. I had a bad relationship with the idea of masturbation, and myself, at a young age because of this. I forced myself to think that just fingers weren't enough and I’d need something more substantial (like a penis), and because of this masturbation just made me completely uncomfortable. From the age of 12-16 I just couldn’t touch myself because I was scared I’d actually get off from something I didn’t want to be enough. But at 16 going on 17 I forced myself to do stuff with a guy. Not sex, but have them do oral on me and everything except penetration. I couldn’t bring myself to carry it on because I was so uncomfortable with it being a man doing it. I spent a lot of this period focusing on myself, and once I was over my homophobia and was comfortable with myself I got into my first relationship with a girl.

I found a lot of pressure with her to do stuff early on because of how ‘old’ I was and hadn’t had sex, whilst all my peers raved about it, what I didn’t realise is as her and I progressed towards a more sexual relationship I would just be more and more insecure because I hadn’t done anything to my own body so I had absolutely no idea on how to pleasure her. I would stop us from doing anything under clothes and clothes would stay on, because I could do dry humping and not freak out because I was doing bad. Very quickly she realised something was wrong and she asked me what was going on. I remember crying a lot and being so embarrassed about my insecurity and I was very worried she’d break up with me, or laugh at me, because I was so much more inexperienced than everyone else of my age. But she didn’t. She was very kind in explaining that we didn’t even have to do anything at all, but we’d take our time with it and that even if I did know my body that sex would be different and a learning curve.

She was also very kind in the way that once I was home that night she called me and softly told me that ‘if you’re comfortable, and you want to, I’ll stay on call and give you some sort of guide on how to touch yourself. I’ll be right here and if you don’t want me to, I can go.’

I think having that kindness helped me learn to not be embarrassed of my body, and that night I did learn without feeling insecure. It took a while for us to get to sex, but in the lead up to it we’d masturbate together and she’d always give me tidbits about what made her feel good so that I didn’t feel clueless about her and not being insecure that I’d be ‘bad’ at sex.

Art : https://www.rleveille.com/prettybadthings.html