[gry1]

hi, this is my first post here.

I feel very ashamed and uncomfortable about this, haven't ever talked about it and I feel like it's slowly driving me crazy.
I'm 22 y.o. and don't have any sexual experience or hardly any experience with the other sex in general.
I feel very confused, strange and uptight about sex.
I think this has a lot to do with the fact, that since I'm about 12 years old I've been watching porn on the internet.
At first I think it was more out of curiosity, it didn't really arouse me, but it still clearly did something to my mind.
Since the beginning of puberty I've felt uncomfortable in my body, the way it was just never looked/felt right to me.

I've felt literally ashamed and disgusted about it ever since and everything related to it. So I gradually started sort of dissociating mind and body. It's like I only lived in my head, in my own mind, isolated myself from the rest of the world completely.
This affected my life and mental condition in many ways. In fact I believe most of my other neurosis stem from this disturbed mind/body relationship which comes from my aversion against my own body.
So when I was around 15 years old, when most others start making first experiences with the other sex, I started to be actually excited by pornography I'd casually watch and masturbate to it. And it wasn't just "normal" porn, I went almost straight into the heavy stuff. It was also mainly hentais (cartoons) I masturbated to.

It all took place in my head, it had to be thrilling and extreme. I could only reach orgasm when "I" was powerless, objectified and humiliated.
It's like I have to create a setting in my mind where I temporarily take on an artificial identity, to feel a short ecstasy, to actually feel my own body very briefly but all the more intensely. It's weird because the thought of the things I usually masturbated to, being done to me in reality, disgusts and appalls me. When I masturbated first I'd feel satisfied and great afterwards, but with time I'd only feel empty, numb, unsatisfied and bad about myself and even more cut off from my body.

I decided I must stop watching porn and masturbating, which has become almost compulsive. I don't watch any porn anymore, especially the sort I'd used to mostly watch has become taboo for me. So far I'm successfull with cutting out the porn, but all those images and the feelings associated with them still seem to be deeply burnt into my brain. They keep popping up and lure me into giving in to them, to just feel that incredible high they used to give me. I always feel miserable afterwards when I give in to the temptation, it often happens when I feel too tired to control myself.

The idea of having real sex scares and panics me, even though I often feel the urge for it. For one, because of the idea of letting someone get so close (emotionally and physically) to me and because of the many conflicting feelings I have around sexuality. I still don't feel too good about my body, albeit a bit better than in the past.

Something that should be natural and enjoyable has become like an alien, abstract, frightening concept to me. Something very shameful, raw and dark. Although I can reason it's not all that, it's still deeply rooted as such in my subconsciousness.

I also feel I'm getting more anxious about it the more time passes, since it becomes more and more difficult and awkward to catch up on all the experiences that most other peers have made long ago.

I just had to write that down and especially admit to myself what a problem this is, that it might even be a primal one.
Sorry this was so extensive, I actually have much more to add still, but I'll leave it at that for now. Thanks for reading to anyone who made it until here, any thoughts are appreciated.

[gry1]

I realized it's not just because of my body which I hate, but profound self hate in general. Because of all those overwhelming feelings I've been experiencing since childhood, that I don't know how to cope with, which makes me feel so powerless and helpless. It makes me feel so weak that I just bloody hate myself.

I seem to be identifying with these feelings so much, since they are so deep and intense, that they also produce the most intense sexual fantasies.
Especially when I'm already feeling particularly down, weak and ugly and am somehow confronted with these feelings, sexual fantasies of humiliation and being at the mercy of sb. appear. It's almost like I enjoy being helpless so much, because I think I don't deserve otherwise and those orgasmic highs I've had because of it keep me coming back.

[BlueCrustacean]

I'm sorry to read that you're going through all that. You deserve to love yourself and your body.
The first thing that comes to mind is that maybe that porn you saw at an early age set up your mental image early of what naked bodies "should" look like, which is usually highly unrealistic, and you started to compare your own body to theirs. A lot of self hatred comes from comparing yourself to others. Everyone is unique, so there's really no need to compare.

Perhaps there may be some deeper things going on as well, like parental issues, either being abused or neglected.

[spondiferous]

I don't know if this will comfort you at all, but many, many people have issues around sex. Whether it's self-loathing, body image, abuse issues, religious issues, there's all kinds of reasons. So you're definitely not alone.

The main thing to remember is that porn is fantasy. It can be super helpful for processing things about sex and bodies (what you're interested in, what you like, what you don't like) but at the end of the day it's made for entertainment. It's not at all modelled on reality, not from the bodies in it, and not from the way people treat each other. So if you're comparing anything to it, you could definitely come up short, as Blue suggests.

I think another thing that might be helpful is to remind yourself (constantly, if necessary) that it's your body, your choice. What I mean is that there can be pressure from society, from family/friends, and from others to have sex or sexuality that looks a certain way, and that way is maybe the case for a fraction of people. Everybody's different. So if you're feeling down on yourself because you're put off by sex and not having any (or barely any) it will probably just feed into the cycle of self-loathing, anxiety, and a feeling that you need to do something different, even if you're not ready, or don't even want it for yourself right now. Sex *is* natural but so is having boundaries around it, with yourself and with others. And if you're just not ready right now, you're just not ready right now, and it doesn't make you any less of a sexual being.

Whatever the case is, I wish you well in sorting it all out. You can message me if you ever want or need to talk about it, or anything else.