Why I’m Questioning My Attraction to Men

Was it love I sought…or did I get swept up in all the wrong things?

Content warning: sexual assault

I don’t know if I want to date anymore. I don’t know if I want to have a romantic partnership again. My experiences in that department have only ever landed somewhere on the spectrum between heartbreaking and abusive.

And yet…I can’t say for certain that I don’t want a romantic partnership.

Both of these feelings exist at the same time. It’s very strange.

As I feel the tension of these opposites, I find myself increasingly curious. Why have heterosexual relationships been so incredibly destructive in my experience? Why have I been attracted to the type of men I’ve been attracted to? Why didn’t I pursue my attractions to women?

And perhaps above it all, considering how trapped, disrespected, and unhappy I’ve felt in my heterosexual relationships, what kind of relationship do I even want?

I am shocked. You know that expression about picking your jaw up off the floor? I feel like my jaw has been on the floor for months…if not years.

Every exploration I do of my desires for a relationship, every step I take into my therapy journey, I realize just how programmed I have been to want a certain type of relationship, to embody a certain type of sexuality…and how brainwashed I’ve been that doing these things will magically make my life wonderful.

Truly, it genuinely disturbs me to think of how often I put a white towel over my head as a child and pretended to walk down an aisle. For me and my sister and friends, playacting our future weddings was just part of our regular leisure time. And considering how often my nieces (ages 7 and 9) talk about getting married, I can see this hasn’t changed much.

Is it just me, or is this weird? To fetishize one kind of relationship so intensely that our little girls, instead of being children, are rehearsing for their future weddings?

And let’s also note how gendered this conditioning is — I’ve yet to see a little boy act out a wedding scene or talk about his future wife.

Sometimes, I want to ask: Who did this to me? Who made me grow up thinking that the best thing that could ever happen to me was meeting a man and getting married?

Was it Disney movies? Cartoons in which the heroes, who always had bulging muscles underneath spandex or armor, had to rescue the high-heeled, perky-bosomed princesses in every other episode? Romantic comedies in which everything was a mess until the two lead characters finally decided to stop bickering and get married?

I honestly don’t know. But I believe that I really, truly was brainwashed. There was a formula for happiness and a recipe for womanhood. I was made to believe that if you followed all the rules, performed all the steps, and did everything just as you were told, you would finally get that happy ending…and it would only be the beginning.

Did you ever experience that level of intoxication over the promise of a heterosexual partnership in your future? I’ve never tried drugs before except for a couple of experiences with marijuana, but I wouldn’t be surprised if my brain was once wired like an addict’s, chasing a chemical rush that I believed would finally make me feel good.

But it wasn’t until I was 12 that things got really complicated. That’s when I first began to experience sexual attention from adult men. That’s when I endured my first experiences with sexual assault. That’s when I learned that my body belonged not to me, but to any man who decided he wanted access.

And that’s when I discovered that the world was not a safe place.

I found myself crippled by anxiety, understanding that no matter what I did or where I went, I would likely endure more unwanted attention, more abuse, more trauma. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how to function.

Thankfully, those formulas and recipes I had discovered early in life about womanhood and heterosexuality continued to assert themselves into my field of awareness. In fact, I began to notice just how often the damsel in distress archetype popped up in movies and TV shows. She was absolutely everywhere. I suddenly realized I was surrounded by fictional women who had been raped and left for dead on the side of dusty trails, in forgotten rooms of cold stone castles, and in the dirty streets of early 20th Century America.

And you know what? They were all okay. Why? Because the hero of the story found their naked, bleeding bodies, carried them to safety, patched them up, and declared their love with both actions and words. And it was clear to the audience that nothing was ever going to hurt them again.

I was sold. Bring on the boyfriend, universe!

I find it a sad irony that I almost never felt safe in the romantic relationships and sexual encounters I experienced. All of the men I have engaged with started out nice enough — some downright chivalrous.

But most of them descended into aggression and sometimes violence as the relationship wore on. They lied, cheated, called me names, slammed me against walls, threatened me, and shoved their body parts into my mouth so hard, I’d gag.

Further, I felt empty and lonely in all my relationships. I wanted so badly to connect, to communicate, to build a life together. But I always felt like I was just going through the motions.

There were so many arguments about why I should be the one to do the dishes and laundry, so many criticisms about my weight, so much commentary on what I ate, so many interventions about dressing more modestly.

Memories of my sex life often come as mental images of myself floating above my body — even during some of the experiences that felt fulfilling, fun, and relatively safe. I felt so invisible, playing the part of the sexy girlfriend who was trying to please her man. I was an actress in a role, and the whole relationship was just some play I felt forced to act out.

I had never imagined it would feel that way. It was supposed to make everything better.

I was supposed to be happy and safe.

Age didn’t fix anything. It turns out dating after 40 isn’t any different than dating in college except that your partners are more likely to come with ex-spouses and children. Everything else is just as confusing, just as hard, and just as heartbreaking.

But I suppose I’m grateful for that. Had any of the relationships (flings) I’ve had in my forties turned into a long-term arrangement, I suspect I’d be right back where I left off in my thirties: floating above my body in the bedroom, acting out this play.

I already knew that I didn’t want to end up there again. But that’s about all I’ve figured out.

I’m a single, childless, middle-aged woman. I bought my own house. I have a job I truly enjoy. And I’m at an age now where my priorities around building a partnership and family have wildly shifted.

I still want a romantic relationship. I still want to explore my sexuality with someone. And I might even want to have a life partner. Maybe.

But I’m not thinking much about that. I’ve been far too busy examining where I’ve been and how I got here.

I hate that I was taught to fetishize heterosexual love. Honestly, it disgusts me to think of myself as a child pretending to walk down the aisle. There were so many other things I could’ve been playacting as a young girl.

And it absolutely breaks my heart that I clung to the dream of heterosexual love because I believed having a boyfriend would make me safe in this world. Do you understand the gravity of that? In order to function after being sexually assaulted countless times as a 12-year-old, I had to hold on to a belief that a man would protect me from other men.

Wouldn’t it have just been nice to grow up in a world in which young girls weren’t sexually abused, assaulted, or raped in the first place? Where we could exist without the constant threat of harm?

And honestly, that’s no reason to desire a relationship in the first place. Men deserve better than to be desired for their ability to protect us from other members of their gender.

The whole thing is just gross.

Having come to understand this, I can’t say that I know what I want any better…but a different kind of knowing has come from these inner explorations.

I no longer feel such a deep need for a partnership. I feel an increasing freedom from our culture’s “comphetness.” And I feel like the picture of that perfect relationship has entirely shattered — and thank god.

Therapy has helped me to process my sexual trauma for the first time since it happened. There is no fixing it, nor any hope that one day it just “won’t matter,” but I am getting better and better at giving that part of myself love, compassion, and an intangible retroactive sense of justice that I can’t really explain.

And with that comes a greater understanding of myself, a deeper love for myself, and the ability to recognize and set healthy boundaries.

As I go deeper into this journey, that fetishization of heterosexual love is falling away. I no longer feel the need to have some culturally-defined sense of femininity validated by the presence of a male partner in my life. And I know now that a male partner cannot protect me from other men — nor should that be a factor in a truly loving, equal partnership.

I feel that if the opportunity to explore a partnership ever arises again, I will be ready for the first time. It won’t come from need, fear, or the pressure to play out a heterosexual fantasy.

Instead, it will be because I know myself and want to let someone else know me.

© Yael Wolfe 2023

Yael Wolfe is a writer, artist, and photographer. You can find more of her work at yaelwolfe.com.

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