From reading your posts I think that one thing you don't want to feel is "inferior" like your father made you feel. It sounds like that is what you keep trying to fix, to change how your father's messages kept affecting your self esteem. A relationship with a man "can" trigger you to feel inferior which is probably why you don't want a man to have anything else he cares about. I am wondering if your confusion about sexuality and being with a woman has more to do with your need to feel superior than actual sexuality.

It's interesting reading what you think about music too. I was always one that could do best music wise by ear, yet struggled when it came to reading sheet music and connecting the notes with the sounds. I was able to sit at a piano and play it by ear and yet to expect me to play it according to sheet music, forget it I would be lost. I honestly had no idea that it was a positive thing to be able to sing and play by ear, always felt I was a kind of "fake" because I could not do it that way. I would be able to play the guitar by seeing chords though, not the notes as I could remember the sound of the chords. It was not until YEARS later when I heard the Beetles wrote music and yet could not read or write music with notes etc. I used to write my own songs, but not in a conventional way. I wish I had known it was ok that I did so much by ear. I had to hear songs to remember them, and could not look at sheet music and sing by that. The music I wrote was by chords that I learned when I taught myself how to play the guitar. The song itself was memorized as I could not write it out into sheet music. I would have needed someone who could actually write things out into sheet music. I was ashamed to tell anyone that. So, I can understand that feeling of feeling "stupid" and needing to hide that lack of ability.

Anyway, it sounds to me that your father imprinted some deep doubt in you where you don't know how to create a feeling of worthiness and you struggle to embrace your sexuality in that he kept imprinting in you how women were inferior. It sounds like what you WANT to find a way to rid yourself of feeling the most is feeling "inferior".

That's why you don't want a relationship with someone who has cats or pets or strong family ties. These attachments would interupt your desire to overcome your need to rid yourself from feeling inferior. Perhaps your father not only sent you messages of women being inferior, but he tended to put other things as a priorty to him instead of seeing you as important and worthy.

What was your mother like? Did you even have a female presence in your life that mentored you?