Yeah, you’re completely right. Putting too much pressure on myself to “get it right” or figure things out as soon as possible wouldn’t end up doing any good.

Tried to masturbate in the shower and… well, it wasn’t awful, but it wasn’t really great either. I dunno if maybe I was doing something wrong, or if my expectations were incorrect, or something else? I’m not gonna get into specifics obviously, but… there was sensitivity and stimulation, but it didn’...

Morning or night is an option, technically, but I don’t think it would really work for me. I go to sleep pretty early compared to the rest of my family, and while I wake up early too, I’m not generally in the mood around that time - it’s usually closer to afternoon or evening. Also, I’m not sure how...

I suppose a lot of my questions and uncertainties revolve around disposal or being able to set things up in the first place. Like… I don’t know if semen has a particularly identifiable smell or something, so I don’t know if that would be recognizable as “evidence” or something? If I failed to keep e...

I suppose sex toys are technically an option, but they run into the same issue as trying to do things differently - or even trying to physically masturbate at all rather than rely solely on fantasizing. In other words, the anxiety/paranoia/general lack of knowledge of how things work makes it diffic...

Yes, I’ve looked at the various articles linked. There’s a quote in the second one you linked that stood out to me: “If we aren’t both careful and creative we can get stuck in fantasies that don’t mature and politicize with us. We can get caught in fantasies that perpetuate things so counter to our ...

Oh my god I spent so long writing out my early experiences that I got auto-logged out and lost the whole thing. Long story short, big contributing factors were a parent with trauma on the subject (meaning nobody ever talked about sex with me at all - never got The Talk), a religious upbringing, crip...

I have definitely considered that, because so many of my early experiences with sexuality and arousal were so steeped in shame and guilt, my brain may have correlated them so that a feeling of shame or guilt is necessary for arousal in some way. Although, neither shame nor guilt seem to prompt arous...

Honestly, a lot of it IS stories by others - in fact, that’s probably more of a problem, because it means that I’m less in control of where a fantasy scenario goes, and the characters involved are actual characters rather than “some featureless, unspecified person” like my imagination would create. ...

Likely both to some extent. There’s definitely an element of shame that makes it difficult to think about or remember these fantasies without distress - I spent a long time with feelings of shame attached to the concept of sex itself, let alone the shame that’s often attached to fantasizing about pa...

Hi. So, I’m 28, neurodivergent and AMAB, but very uncertain regarding my identity, and have spent a lot of my life dealing with guilt and shame regarding sexuality. The paranoia, anxiety, and lack of information I’ve experienced in the past have greatly shaped how I interact with sexuality, and I’m ...