I'm Struggling with My Sexuality [INTIMACY]

Why do I keep falling for gay men? Why do I treat men like casual fun and women like future wives? And how much of that is actually me... and how much was it just trauma trying to keep me safe? 

In this intimacy episode, I unpack the hella invisible rules my brain created around attraction, intimacy, and vulnerability after years of trauma and dissociation. Through parts work and a lot of uncomfortable self-reflection, I started noticing patterns in my sexuality that felt less like preferences and more like survival strategies.

Yall, I'm not trying to figure out what label fits me best. I'm trying to figure out what parts of me are fear, what parts are protection, and what parts are finally ready to heal.


TW: trauma, dissociation, sex. Personal experience only; not medical advice.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

So I had a realization recently that gave me another identity crisis because apparently I only fall for gay men. So I was working at an event recently and I was smitten with this one guy. He was handsome and charismatic, and we had the same sense of humor, and there was just so much chemistry until I saw that grinder notification go off on his phone. And I thought, Dagnab it, I have fallen for a gay man once again. And you guys, this has been a reoccurring occurrence, so much so that I had to take it to my therapist and ask myself the very concerning question of, wait, what exactly am I crushing on? And once I started paying attention to the ladies in my brain that were talking about this, I realized that I inherently and subconsciously had all of these invisible rules when it came to men, women, attraction, relationships, my own sexuality. And that is when I had the horrifying thought of, oh my goodness, what if my sexuality has been shaped by trauma more than I ever realized? Places, everyone, it's showtime. Welcome back to The Naked Puppet, the show that pulls back the curtains on all things sex, intimacy, the body, and the brains. Yes, plural. This podcast is basically all about my healing journey after learning that I repressed my trauma, developed multiple ladies in my brain, and dissociated through life without knowing it. But I'm getting my life back one scene at a time. Hi everyone, my name is JC, and today we're tackling an intimacy topic that I've really been struggling with, and that is my own sexuality. Because I've always had very niche sexual preferences, but ever since learning about all my disorders and about how trauma has impacted me so subconsciously, it's made me face head on whether these are true preferences or whether it was just my brain trying to protect me all along. It's interesting and maybe some of you guys can relate. So, with that in mind, before you raise the curtain, a quick note today's performance does include topics of dissociation, sexuality, and references to trauma. If any of that feels at all tender, feel free to exit the theater, knowing that the doors are always open when you are ready to come back. And of course, this show is just my own personal experience. I am not a therapist, I am not a medical professional, so please seek license support if you need it. This is all just my own personal story. But all right, the stage is set, the spotlight is warm, so it is showtime, baby. All right, so a few weeks ago I was working an event and I was paired up with this one guy, and you know, there was there was some attraction right away. He was very handsome, I liked his sense of style. But we also just got along super well, super quickly. Just that kind of instant chemistry where we're making the same jokes, we have the same sense of humor, and we're already having a great time at this event, even though we're working. So day two comes around, and I'm already getting smitten. I'm like, wait, this guy's actually kind of cute and he's super fun, and I feel like I'm having a great time with him. But I also felt like that he wasn't coming on too strong. So I was able to be myself a little bit more. And you know, when I go to bed at night, I start thinking like, ooh, for my shift tomorrow, what am I gonna wear? How am I gonna make him laugh? How am I gonna make him think about me in this way? So by day three, I'm like totally smitten and I'm really turning on more of the flirtationship vibes. I'm really trying to, really trying to put out there that, like, hey, we should uh, we should go out for a drink later. We should, I don't know, touch lips tonight, maybe. What do you what do you think? What do you think? And that's when he starts giving clues that I should have seen from the very beginning. Because he started using pronouns like he when referring to past relationships. He started, you know, raising his eyebrows at fashionable men coming by and fanning himself and, you know, kind of showing his interest in the men. And that's when I'm like, wait, wait a second, what's going on here? And I remember asking him, hey, who's your celebrity crush? And his answer was Connor's story from Heated Rivalry. And I kid you not, it was so cinematic. Within like the next few minutes on his phone, he gets a grinder notification and outwardly makes a big spectacle about it. And that is when the glass shatters, and suddenly my internal organs start playing the Titanic violin music of, oh, oh, he's gay. I have once again fallen for a gay man. So, you guys, this is a recurring thing for me that I fall for gay men. And I refuse to, I don't know, see any of the signs because this man that I had been flirting with at this event, you know, he had a nose ring. He kept calling me a bitch all the time, in the sense of like, bitch, like what are you talking about? And I just, I always chose to ignore it because to be fair, my type is a little bit spicy. I've said that in an episode before, that my type of guy is somebody with a little feminine edge to them, someone like a Giancarlo Cerezi or even a Harry Styles, where you question, is this guy even straight? And you're not surprised either way. So, yes, there were signs, but that also is my type. I'm one of those people that just kind of hopes that they turn out to be bisexual, but I'm not surprised when they are not interested in women at all. But upon reflection, I kind of have realized this has been happening my whole life. You know, I can name at least five boys throughout middle school, high school, college, even, where I've had major crushes on them. I am convinced they're gonna ask me out and we're gonna live our life in holy matrimony, only for years later for them to come out as gay. What a concept. So honestly, if you've ever had a crush on me and you're currently married to a woman, um, congratulations. You've passed the test because I don't know if I've had crushes or if I was accidentally running some very niche conversion prediction service. So suffice to say that this has kind of always been happening. But fast forward to when I move to LA. It's COVID times, it's 2020. Shortly after that is where I meet my best friend Zach. Now, let me tell you about Zach. I love Zach. He is one of those gays that is obviously gay upon meeting. There is no hiding it, there's no questioning it. He is a gay man. But he's also so handsome and so charismatic, and he's the funniest person alive, and he's so magnetic that everyone in the room just wants to be their friend. And I remember meeting Zach and thinking, damn it, why don't you like girls? Because we would be perfect together. Um, but alas, I do not have the equipment that he enjoys. So he's an example of a gay man that I've fallen hopelessly in love with that I'll never get. But you know, we become friends, and during this time, he starts introducing me to his Wiiho Cinematic Universe. Now, you guys have heard me talk about West Hollywood. Um, it's basically just like the gay mecca of the world. It is just a very condensed population of gay men, and Zach was basically the prince of Wiiho. So I start going out with him every weekend, and it is absolute heaven for me. Not only is it just the gayest place on earth, but they play great music, they have great drinks, the vibes are immaculate. Like I just felt like I fit in so perfectly there. And not in a way where I'm like fetishizing gay men, I would like to say. It's not like I'm like, ooh, hunting grounds. I just really enjoyed the environment. However, being around Zach and all of his gay friends, I definitely noticed a pattern start emerging where I would just, you know, fall in love with his friends. Uh, you know, we'd be pregaming or we'd be out bar hopping, and they were just so handsome and very clean and very funny and fun. And they liked my company and I like their company. And every single time I would have this delusional hope of maybe this one's bi, or maybe this is my moment where I can flip one of them. But honestly, every single one, you know, based on just their outfit alone, the FBI could open up an investigation whether or not they were gay. And case closed, they always were. And it was becoming such a recurring thing that it was like if I found a man attractive and funny and emotionally available and dresses well, that I shouldn't even ask for their phone number, I should ask for their grinder account because they were automatically just going to be gay. And to be clear, once I knew they were gay, it's not like I was trying to flip them or I was secretly yearning. I wasn't actually in love with them. It was kind of like a, oh dang, I thought there was a spark, but maybe not, and I moved on. But it was when I started this whole healing journey that I started to bring awareness to this. And I started, you know, noticing this pattern and really thinking to myself, why the frickfrack do I keep falling for gay men only? But it made me question: am I falling for them because I like people that aren't emotionally inveilable or perhaps weren't even interested in me and it created a chase? Am I the problem because I'm fetishizing gay men in a way that isn't appropriate? Could I not even decipher between what was a true spark of excitement versus what was actual romantic connection? Or did I really need to do some digging into what my actual sexuality was? I didn't have the answer yet. But I started realizing maybe this isn't a story of me accidentally collecting gay crushes like Pokemon cards. Maybe I was trying to solve some deeper mystery about myself along this healing journey. So we're gonna put a pin in that because there is um, I guess, some other context in terms of my sexuality that I do want to explain. So, for context, I am a proud bisexual woman. I have always liked the boys, I've always liked the girls, I've always liked everybody in between. Um, I grew up in a very progressive household. Thankfully, we're from as early as I can remember, my parents were saying, like, if you ever want to bring a boy or a girl home for Thanksgiving, like we're always welcoming. Like, I think my parents wanted me to turn out gay. So I've never struggled with bisexuality in terms of that. I always knew I'd be accepted in my family regardless, and I was always open to men and women. Kind of only recently, within the past few years, have I adopted that bisexual label where I started talking about it more on social media, where I was outspoken about it among friend groups. Kind of similar to me being mixed, being half black and half white. I kind of did feel the need to announce it to people because I don't visually present that way. So I started telling people like, yes, I am the B in LGBTQ. But I will also say my sexuality in recent years has been a little bit more confusing because I would say within the past like six years or so, I actually started identifying as asexual because it was like, yeah, I liked men and women, but I don't want to have sex with anybody. I don't want anybody to touch me or look at me. I'm fine if I've never had sex again. And that ended up happening, where after I broke up with my recent ex, I became celibate and I haven't had sex since. There was zero desire in my loins. And so I was kind of like, damn, I really am asexual. But then, as you know, if you don't, there's a whole podcast called The Naked Puppet. You guys should check it out. I hear it's really great. Um, but then I learned about my childhood trauma, that I had repressed it, and that that is why I probably didn't like sex and that I was dissociating out of it, that my pelvic floor has literally been shut down my entire life. And that could be a contributing factor. And so as I've been on this healing journey, my desire has started to return. So because of that, I'm kind of back to bisexual because I'm like, well, I don't feel asexual anymore. And now I do feel like I want to hook up with men and women, but I also don't know. I don't know. So I don't know, let's try that again. And you know, I dabbled with pansexual um for a while, but that was actually harder to explain. Like I feel like I had to justify my reasoning even more when I told people I was pan. So I went back to buy because to me it's very similar. So so for clarity, suffice to say, I'm attracted to anybody, to everybody. But for the sake of clarity, I'm gonna be referring to men and women through the lens, through that lens for this episode. So that's been kind of the most recent update on my journey is that I have been identifying as bisexual. But I started noticing that when I would identify this way, you know, a lot of friends or family, they would say, like, but you've never dated women or you've never even been with a woman. How can you really be bi? First of all, if you think that way, fuck off. I don't have time to go into why that's not the case. You can be attracted to women, you can be identified as bisexual, even if you've never even laid a finger on a woman, okay? Just leave it at that, okay? But that sentiment, you guys, did start festering with me. Because I really would start thinking to myself, wait, they're kind of right. Why haven't I dated any women? Why haven't I hooked up with any women? Why aren't straight men doing it for me? Why am I obsessed with gay men? Um, and so all those questions really did start just festering in my mind. So I decided to run a little experiment. So, as you guys know, I have superpowers. Um, unfortunately, it is not flying or telekinesis, it is instead chronic dissociation and having committee meetings in my brain. Uh, but those committee meetings do come in handy because I am now aware that I have these ladies in my brain and I'm able to actually listen to them and hear why they're causing all of this confusion in my brain. So for this experiment, I started to venture out of Wii Ho and start going to more straight spaces and paying attention to the ladies in my brain. They used to just be background noise that would confuse me on why I would get such conflicting feelings, but now I'm able to hear them out. So I noticed that when I started going out, that I do like attention, I like being perceived, I like looking pretty, and I like thinking, oh my god, everybody's probably thinking that I'm pretty. But it's when somebody approaches me that a dark cloud comes over my aura. So I go out one night, I'm looking cute, and this man approaches me. And immediately it's like I went in my brain and I could see my parts putting on armor. Like they were physically a knight and they were putting on a breastplate and metal shields and chain mail and a helmet on, as if they were preparing to protect us. And I'm like, what is going on here? And the man would come over, you know, strike up a conversation. Hey, what's your name? Saw you from over there. And again, it was like I was armoring up and I had to ask myself, whoa, ma'am, this man just asked us what we do for work. Why are we preparing for a midnight joust right now? But that's what I saw in my brain. As he starts talking to me, I'm deflecting his questions. I'm answering them quickly and I'm asking him a question back, and I'm trying to make him talk. And I'm like, that's interesting, because I'm always complaining that people don't ask me enough questions, but I realize, wait, the questions are making me uncomfortable. Why? Because I don't want to reveal anything about myself. I don't want him to get to know me at all, but I want to make sure that he's still having a good time. Okay, that's interesting. I always thought I was a great conversationalist. Turns out the therapist was right. I am chronically avoidant. So we're keeping things light, it's fun, and that's when he compliments me. He tells me I'm beautiful or he likes my hair or that I have pretty eyes, whatever it is. And there's an immediate transition in my brain where before from third person I was watching those parts kind of armor up. It's as if, again, I have a super suit. That super suit goes onto my body and I become the armor. I am now looking down at my body and I am armored up like a knight at the round table. I had this impervious metal form on me. And I almost take that compliment and I internalize it and I go, oop, well, now we need to leave this conversation because now I'm uncomfortable and I am so armored up that there is no way to disengage it. So I leave that conversation. I literally have to go off into a corner and I'm like, ladies, what the frick frack was that? That guy was attractive. You know, we were having a good conversation. There was some maybe some chemistry there. Why did I literally fight him away? And one of the ladies answered, because he's dangerous. He only wants you for your body. And if that conversation were to continue, you will owe him access to your body. And it's because it's what he expects, but also what he's going to take from you. So you guys should know that I'm full of trauma. I've had very traumatic experiences. Some things that only my therapist knows about, some things that you guys may never know about. But I have had a rough life. And I guess that my brain just really truly never processed a lot of those events and really did just shut down and refuse to feel any of it. And my brain got wired from a very young age and throughout all these experiences in my life that, whoa, that was very traumatic, JC. Um, let's not feel that, but let's also make sure that that never happens again. And so my brain creates these invisible guards and these um, I guess, hidden rules. And those rules are that men just are danger. So we cannot let them close. We cannot let them get to know us, and we especially can't give them any access to our body because that is unsafe. So this is one of those things that should have been obvious, JC. Like, I, you know, I always question why I can't get close to men. It should have been obvious that, like, hey, because men have hurt you in the past, duh. But, you know, hearing one of my parts, one of the ladies in my brain, say it directly was devastating because it was like the first time it was clicking that, oh my God, all those things have happened to me. And that's why I feel this way about men, that I have to armor up because they make me feel like they're dangerous. I don't know, it was just that first time that it all really felt like, oh my God, this is me. This is me talking. And that realization hit me in another way too, because armor doesn't just protect you from bad things. Armor protects you from everything. You know, it protects you from the hurt and the pain, sure. But it's also been protecting me from the excitement and the spontaneity and the butterflies and my tummy and the vulnerability that comes with intimacy. And so I had to come to terms with the fact that my brain wasn't just protecting me from dangerous men, it was also protecting me, I don't know, from falling in love, from having a fling, from having that spark, because my brain built this incredible security system that kept me alive and kept me safe. So thank you, brain. But it also made me realize that I had built this beautiful castle and that I'm a princess and that I'm safe inside the castle. But really, I had just trapped myself there. And that was hard to realize. But the men part about this, you guys, made sense. It made sense that I couldn't become emotionally vulnerable with a man because they seemed dangerous. Like that all made, you know, like it completed a puzzle. Women didn't make sense. Women and my attraction towards women and my sexuality in general, it felt like a 10,000-piece puzzle that was all one color, and I didn't even know where to begin. So now it was time to run this experiment, but with women, because I didn't really know where I stood here. Again, I'm still thinking, wait, why haven't I dated women? Why haven't I been with women? Let's go out and I don't know, try to get a number or at least get those ladies to talk in my brain. So, right away, once I turned on those channels, I got an example that laid the groundwork for all of this next epiphany that I'm about to have. So I started going to a yoga class, and I'm in this yoga class, and there's this one woman who I would just propose to tomorrow. This woman was attractive, she was beautiful, but she also had this like energy around her where she just made people smile, like that everybody she would talk to. And that was very validating of like, yes, I am attracted to women. Like that's it, it was just very validating that like I'm a bisexual woman, okay? So I walk into yoga class one day and I see her. And, you know, instead of being like, oh my God, I should go talk to her, I should like start that conversation, you know, see if she's even interested in women. Instead, my immediate thought is don't make eye contact with her, don't speak with her, especially don't flirt with her. And you know what? Don't even look at her. And I thought, wait, am I, am I shy? Like, am I shy around women? Is that what's going on? Um, and that's that's true in a sense, because same-sex flirting is difficult because it is harder to identify if they might even be interested in that. You also don't want to make somebody uncomfortable if they aren't even into girls. So it is easier to just avoid it and not even talk to somebody if you find them attractive when it comes to same-sex type of flirtationships. But this situation felt very different because that little voice in my head wasn't avoiding in terms of being shy, it was protection. But not protection for me, like how I am around straight men, it was protection of her. Because I start noticing that I'm scanning the room and I'm making sure that none of the men are looking at her. And not in a way that like I'm jealous, like, don't look at my girl. I was looking in a way of, you know, it's a yoga class. We're putting ourselves into weird shapes, it's a very vulnerable setting. And so I thought, nobody better be looking at her body like that. Nobody better be oogling her. And I'm not even looking at her direction, but I'm making sure that nobody else is either. And so I left that class going, that was that was kind of weird. Like I've never brought attention to those feelings before. So I exit the gym. I'm walking home and I realize, oh my God, wait, is this a rom-com setup? Because there she is, walking half a block right in front of me. And I'm literally like, oh my God, this is my chance. Like, I can go talk to her and be like, hey, we were just in the same yoga class. Wasn't that so fun? You know, at least establish a friendship, you know, or maybe even flirt a little bit. Who knows? Like this was literally a meat cute. And instead, I got out of my body and I watched my body cross the street onto the other side of the street and walk even slower. I went into full depersonalization mode and I saw myself get as far away from her as possible. And it was so weird because it was like I was internally screaming at my body three feet ahead of me, going, What are we doing? Our goddess is over there. Why did we cross the street? But then my body was acting like we're in witness protection mode. And I heard, again, a little voice in my head say, Well, it's dark out. It's nighttime. We're walking behind her. We don't want to make her feel uncomfortable. We want to make sure that she feels safe. And by doing that, we have to get as far away from her as possible. So I walk home all in my lonesome, and I immediately go home and I do some parts work, which usually consists of me going, hey, what the frick frack was that? And listening to the lady that answers in my brain. And that's when all of these teams of parts start opening up and explaining that yes, we are attracted to women. We would love to be with a woman, but we cannot look at women the way men do because that makes me uncomfortable. And so I would never want to make a woman feel that way. Because signaling attraction to a woman signals that I'm a predator. And that makes me just as bad as men. Therefore, I'm not allowed to flirt. I have to protect women instead. So the best route in terms of my sexuality when it comes to women is to suppress all of my feelings because it's better to hide my feelings than to become the one thing that hurt us. And this was spooky. I remember in this session doing all this parts work, was it unlocked a thousand memories in my brain. It's like all my whole life just starts playing out like a movie in terms of all of these interactions I've had with pretty girls, where my heart is like, oh my gosh, I wish I could just kiss her. I wish I could ask her out on a date. And instead, I'm avoiding them. I have this weird distancing and this weird shrinking because I don't want them to think that I'm a threat. And as I watched these little scenes from my past play out like a movie, I realized that my pattern was overcorrecting around them. Where if I thought a woman was beautiful, I would act less interested, make less eye contact, create more distance. And I wasn't even allowing myself to feel that attraction because there was so much guilt attached to it. There was a lot of shame attached to feeling this way for women. And not in a way that, like, gay people are wrong, like you shouldn't be allowed to like women. No, again, it's not that at all. It's it was somehow me finding that finding a woman attractive automatically meant that I was reducing her down to her body because historically that's what's happened to me. And so I realized that again, my brain creates these invisible rules. And in this situation, my brain had the rule that if attraction starts to feel like you're objectifying somebody, then that makes you the danger. And so instead of risking becoming the very thing that hurt me, I just removed myself entirely. That's crazy. Now there's one other facet to this big realization that I wanted to bring attention to because it was news to me and it was very interesting to again hear those ladies in my brain. But I started noticing another pattern, and that's when I'd be working these events or hanging out with my friends or just getting back out there in the world on this healing journey. I started to see attractive men. Like I started noticing, wait, I think I'm becoming more attracted to men again. And that's just a result of a lot of the therapy I've been doing, a lot of the OSD parts work. I started being attracted to men physically again. I finally started noticing what happened when a guy actually made me feel safe. A straight man, I should say. So here's that scenario. I'd be out at a bar, um, you know, a handsome, attractive person comes up, starts talking to me. We're vibing. And even though I could see the little ladies in my brain starting to armor up, it never goes full super suit. It never goes full first person. And even when perhaps they call me pretty or give me a compliment, I don't immediately disengage. I instead start thinking, okay, maybe this one feels safe. You know, he might be fun to see outside of this environment. Maybe we could go on dates, maybe we could have fun texting, maybe squeeze in a smooch or two, who knows? But I always saw it as very casual. Like I always started forward-thinking, daydreaming, fantasizing, if you will, of a very casual light situationship, if you will. I never went full on going, like, oh my god, this could be my boyfriend. Oh my god, I I could see myself introducing him to my parents. It never even went that far, even in my daydreams. I always, always, always just saw it as boys are fun. Let's just have fun with boys. But with women, it was the complete opposite. The pattern I started noticing with women when I would start flirting with them, when I would start getting, you know, a sense of chemistry or connection, I would go and tell my friends, oh my God, I'm in love with her. Oh my God, I fell in love at this event today with this one girl. We were talking and I'm in love with her. Like that was the verbiage I would use. And I meant it because if that girl would have handed me a U-Haul brochure, I'd be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, let's not rush this, but also let's keep talking. What do you mean there's a discount right now? I could be interested. And it'd be so confusing because I'm not even allowing myself to be physically attracted to this woman, but I would be so emotionally connected from the very beginning. So it was that boys are fun and women are serious. And once I noticed this pattern of how my brain talked to me, I couldn't unsee it. Because with men, the fantasy was very contained. It was very light. We'd flirt, we'd kiss, we'd hook up a little bit, and that was kind of it. I was never picturing forever. There was always a ceiling where, you know, I'd never let them see those dark, vulnerable parts of me where it got messy and complicated. There was literally like an intimacy limit when it came to men. But with women, oh my God, my brain became a damn Hallmark movie where suddenly I'm planning our future dog names and I'm picturing us thrifting on Sundays and having matching coffee cups in the mornings. We'd move into a little house filled with plants and books and sewing supplies, and you know, we'd just be reading next to each other, and it was so deeply intimate and emotionally pure. And that's when I realized that my feelings towards women weren't even sexual. They felt so much more emotionally expansive, but also, I don't know, so much more integrated into an actual life that people hope for with a life partner. But then in that same breath, I go, well, I can't have that. That sounds way too emotionally complicated. I do not have the bandwidth to be with a woman because it requires so much more vulnerability and emotion out of me. And I simply do not and maybe will not ever have the capacity for it. So again, it's just a daydream, might even not let it happen. So that's again when I realized: oh, with men, I only see them as fun, as light situationships, because that creates a safe distance enough for my system. And with women, I only see them as emotional future wives because I know I'm not ready for that. And it keeps me from only admiring their physical form. And so again, it creates that safe distance knowing I'm not ready to give somebody that. And I want to pause here real quick and just um refute some of the naysayers that are going, JC, baby girl, wake up. You are a closeted lesbian. It's just any day now. I'm not, okay? I like men. I get why you might think that, but I need you to understand that I'm not secretly a lesbian or anything like that. I had this epiphany that these weird preferences were all just survival strategies for my broken brain, okay? All of these were the ways that I protected my system from being vulnerable because if I had to be vulnerable with somebody, that was unsafe. That's what this is all about is creating safety in my nervous system. And that is how I've learned to survive my entire life. My brain wasn't sitting up there going, here is your authentic sexuality queen, go have fun. It was literally like a little emergency manager going, Okay, team, based on previous disasters, here are the safest evacuation routes. We're only gonna treat men as casual because that's safe, and we're only gonna treat women as serious because it's never gonna happen for our system. So all of that was definitely illuminating. But now, now you guys, we need to go back to the original mystery of this entire episode. And that question is, JC, so you like men casually, you want women seriously, then why the heck do you only keep falling for gay men? And the answer I've come to learn is that I like myself most when I'm around gay men. Because with gay men, it is not actually about them, it's all about me. I do have this physical attraction to gay men, sure. I mean, they're clean and well-groomed and they have unique senses of style and they customize their avatars with piercings and tattoos and different hair colors. I find that attractive personally, yes. And then I usually find them funny. They make me laugh because we have the same sense of humor. We like similar things, and they give me that immediate best friend energy. And what I've learned is that that makes me feel safe. I'm not armoring up. I don't have that body fear or those threat responses. Instead, I'm able to have an organic conversation because I automatically feel safe around them. I don't feel like they are objectifying my body. I might have suspicions that they might not even be interested in me. And I like that because I don't feel like I need to perform for their attention. I don't get that little voice going, I really want them to like me. I can just chill and be natural and my authentic self. And so I realized that it's not that I like gay men. I like who I become around them. I like that I'm my most authentic, disengaged self because I don't feel that threatening presence of a man. Or a straight man, I should say. And it's interesting because I remember when I was like working through a lot of this with my therapist, she brought up a really good point that JC, that is what it's supposed to feel like with the right person. It should feel natural and it should feel safe. Yes, you might get butterflies, but those are good butterflies and not alarm bells from your nervous system. You should find somebody who does bring out the best in you, like you feel like these gay men do for you. And I thought, wow, you are absolutely right. But then I was also still hung up on this label of sexuality in a way of like, okay, so then what am I? You know, so I kind of fell down the rabbit hole where I'm like, okay, asexual doesn't really fit anymore. Bisexual, maybe. I actually dabbled with demisexual for a while, which means that you have to create a strong emotional connection before even considering being physical with them. And I liked that one. Um, but I, you know, I kind of started describing to friends and family, especially since I'm like now trying to get back into the dating scene, of like, what am I looking for? I'm looking for a friends-to-lovers situation. I'm a friends-to-lovers sexual. But in talking to my therapist, I realized what I'm actually looking for is somebody who either slowly lowers my armor or doesn't get me to armor up in the first place. And that mindset has been huge in a lot of this healing journey because as I brought awareness to just everything about all of this, things have started shifting in my romantic life because now I can do those parts work when I get split screened in real time. Or if I see a pretty girl, I'm allowed to think she's beautiful. I'm allowed to look at her, to flirt with her without feeling the need to be protective of her or that I'm objectifying her. And then when it comes to men, I'm allowed to accept compliments because compliments don't equal access. And because I have boundaries now, I'm the oldest version of myself, I have the most control of my parts, I can handle it. I can take it over and handle any situation with the boundaries that we've developed. And now with both men and women, I'm allowed to just have fun. I don't need to you-haul it with the woman and buy plants and puppies and live happily ever after. But I also don't need to get with a man and think, okay, this is not going anywhere beyond a situationship because that's too emotionally vulnerable. There is a middle ground, and I'm allowed to let things just unfold naturally without all of these expectations. And so I have kind of realized that wow, my sexuality is evolving even further. So the overall point of this episode, and you know, the title is that I'm struggling with my sexuality. But I really want to emphasize and kind of end this podcast on the idea that I'm not struggling with what am I? What is my sexuality? Because I've never really needed a label. I've never really needed those exact answers. I've always been very progressive in my views, where I believe I would love to live in the world where gender doesn't even exist and sexuality doesn't matter because labels to me don't even matter. I don't care what you call me. Pan, bi, queer, even, I identify with all of those and none of those at the same time, you know? So identifying my sexuality isn't the issue because I really don't care. What I am struggling with is realizing that my sexuality has in fact been shaped by my trauma. Both socially, romantically, sexually, these are all influenced by my need to protect myself. So when I say that I'm grieving it, I don't mean that lightly. It has been a process of heavy grief. Because I've had to sit with this horrible feeling of wondering what parts of my sexuality are actually me and what parts were just survival? Like if none of those awful things have happened to me in my life, would I be dating women sooner? Would I be more open and serious with men? Would attraction feel exciting instead of confusing and threatening? Would the relationships I've been in have felt more safe and secure and long term instead of feeling like some giant puzzle I was constantly trying to solve? And I know there's no magic machine, you know, where I can peek into an alternate universe and meet the Jaycey that is untouched by trauma. But there is grief in knowing that I'll never fully know that version of her. Because every time you guys, I uncover one of these invisible rules inside of my brain, there's a part of me that wonders, wait, is that actually me? Or was that just the fear and the survival mechanisms meant to keep me alive? And the truth is, I just I don't know who I'd be without trauma. I think there's a middle ground where, yes, trauma has shaped me, but I am who I am because of that. And, you know, that creates an identity crisis in itself. But that's literally why I made this podcast, because I get a second chance at making the version of me that gets to heal from all this trauma. I get to discover who I was meant to be. I get to keep exploring, especially when it comes to my sexuality. And I'm definitely still on that journey because I don't have the answers to everything, you guys. This is all a journey. This is me navigating everything. But apparently, um, my sexuality, my trauma, and the ladies in my brain, um, they're just gonna keep meeting every Tuesday to discuss it. But I would say overall, you know, maybe healing isn't figuring out exactly who I was supposed to be if all this trauma didn't happen. Maybe it's finally giving myself permission to become whoever I'm meant to be next. To become who I meant to be in spite of the trauma. And again, I may never know who untouched by trauma JC would have become, but I do get to decide who healing JC becomes. And that starts now. So thank you all for being on the journey here with me. But that's gonna be it for today's episode. It was kind of a big brain dump of a lot of the things in terms of my sexuality that I'm struggling with, but I hope it resonated with some of you guys because it is kind of crazy thinking who would I be attracted to or be in relationships with if it wasn't for all of these barriers that trauma created in my brain. So I'd love to hear from you guys if any of this at all resonated with you. But if you guys want to follow this healing journey in real time, you can follow me over on social media. I am on Instagram at JCAaron, where you can follow my daily stories of my life's and goings-ons and whatnot. I'm also on TikTok giving clips from this podcast, but also, I don't know, some other healing content as well. If you're watching the visual version on YouTube, make sure to subscribe. Subscribing really helps, leaving any kind of likes or comments. I just like hearing from you guys. It really helps with that sense of community. And if you're listening on a podcast service, make sure to leave this podcast five stars. Any reviews or engagement, help you guys, because I'm just hoping to help you all as I'm helping myself along this journey. But that's gonna be it for me today, you guys. I will be exiting stage left. And I thank you so, so, so, so, so much, and I'll see you in the next one. Toodle, I'm gonna go to the house.