Nah, I should have thought that some men could not resist the urge to have sex and so, from watching too many movies with explicit sex scenes, they take off their clothes in public, which probably feels good to them (sexual fetishes do exist), and rub their genitals with that other person’s genitals. That explanation would have been more plausible, and I should have stopped there.
Instead of having sex with men on dates, I think a more socially appropriate exercise would be social dancing. In college, I took a free-elective course in social dancing for women. I thought it was for women only, but in reality, the teacher combined that class with the other class for men. There were more women than men, so the teacher invited her former students to dance with the additional female students. I thought dancing was a fun physical exercise, so I didn’t like the fact that extra women had to sit out when some men, particularly her assistants, were absent. At that time, I briefly wished that I was male, so I could still dance AND take the lead role. Dancing provided a physical intimacy in a socially acceptable way. Never before have I been so close to a man and so dependent on his directions. One day, the teacher suggested that there was a place outside of class where we could practice our footwork and dancing skills. I looked it up but decided not to go, because it was a drinking establishment. I was only comfortable with dancing with the sober undergrad students, not random drunken strangers. If the dance hall had been a mainstream church, then I would have felt more safe.
Sex is also a socially acceptable form of intimacy, just not in public.
I’m guessing you have a very strict religious background, which is how you ended up trying to understand human behavior from movies and scientific articles rather than from actually interacting with people.
And a lot of your skewed conclusions happen because you cling to the assumptions that you were indoctrinated with and try to force them into place even when the real world contradicts them.
Your analysis of dancing is pretty good. I’d encourage you to take the step to go to a dance bar, because no one’s going to make you drink unless you want to. Gather up some friends and have a good time.
That will depend on your dancing experience. From the brief class, I mainly have gained novice leading skills in the waltz, the quickstep, the foxtrot, and the tango, so I would make a very bad lead at this moment. Trust me. It’s considerably much easier to be the follow. A forceful raise of the lead’s arm indicates that the follow should spin. It’s also difficult to be the lead, because when there is a dip, the lead must be able to hold the follow, as the follow’s center of mass has shifted considerably. The only way to improve the lead/follow roles is by practice and training the muscles involved for years. One recurring joke from the dance class was that ballroom dance was not the typical middle school/high school dance, where the girl would put both arms on the boy’s shoulders and the boy would put both arms on the girl’s waist and the boy would lower his head in order to avoid looking at the girl’s face. In that kind of dance, that is not leading and following, which is why I used the terms “boy” and “girl” rather than lead and follow. I am not sure whether the same thing would happen, if the dance partners had been of the same sex. I think it’s a weird opposite-sex middle school/high school thing. That said, I never went to a high school or middle school dance or senior prom, namely because I couldn’t dance and I didn’t have a partner. Speaking of a dance partner, one male classmate from the college dance class said he “got lucky” after the prom. I thought he won the lottery, so I asked him how he got lucky. Well, he just smiled and asked the instructor to tell me what “getting lucky” meant, but the dance instructor merely said, “when a man and a woman…” and got distracted. That was when I suspected it was related to sex, and my postulation was confirmed when I looked it up at home. Apparently, some people equated dance partner with sex partner.
None of this is a rational reason to avoid going to a dance bar or other social environment and practice dancing. Lots of people who dance poorly go, and they have a good time, and people have fun with them. It’s not a requirement to dance well or even know how to dance at all – part of the fun is learning with a partner, even as you struggle with the moves. There should be a lot of smiles and laughter. And you are under no obligation to have sex with anyone.
This doesn’t mean you have to go dancing – I understand that you seem to be an incredibly shy person, and you may not be ready for it. But the reasons above are not rational reasons to avoid going dancing.
Actually, I once searched for local dance ballrooms on the Internet, and there was one at an Unitarian Universalist church. The dances were held weekly and was a source of revenue for the church. If I were serious about dancing, then I would probably dance with an invisible partner and be self-taught as lead and follow, emphasizing more on the lead role, so that I can visit a ballroom to meet people and ask a woman to dance with me. Alternatively, the church welcomes beginners and offers gender-neutral lead/follow roles.
Ever since I was a child, I wondered how people had sex. At first, I thought people had sex in their bedrooms. This belief persisted until my early twenties when I suspected out of the blue that something was clearly wrong in the picture. I interacted with some people on a different forum, a gaming forum, and created a thread about how humans were more morally conscientious than the game characters, like not having sex in public places, but I got all sorts of disagreements. Then I paid close attention to sex in the news and became appalled at the things humans would do in public. At the time, I just knew that sex was what people would do in their bedrooms and get pregnant or disease. My knowledge of what actually was defined as “sex” started when I was 15 or 16 years old and explored the sexuality portal on Wikipedia. There, I was intrigued by the various sex positions. I had no idea that there were so many ways to copulate, and the human bipedal movement never occurred to me to be the primary cause of this phenomenon. Yet, the various sex positions were so incredible that I could not believe it was really true. And I didn’t. I thought the various sex positions were what prostitutes would do with their clients or what people from subcultures would do. It was quite difficult for me to pinpoint which ones were what married, heterosexual couples would do, because if I were married, I didn’t want to perform sex acts that would be associated with subcultures, fetishes, or kinky sex. The Wikipedia article, being an encyclopedia, just provided the sex positions with pictures. Some descriptions were not developed either. At this point, I didn’t think about motion during sex. Then, I watched sex-laden movies like The Borgias or Nymphomaniac, and I realized that there were movements in sex, but in my recollection, I saw no evidence for the female pelvic thrust. That was when my knowledge of sex became more accurate than before. Also, when I was 16, I thought all sex began with foreplay, and the foreplay itself was sex. In other words, sex, in my 16-year-old mind, was disrobing and kissing and making out and then the individuals would stay in a fixed position called the “sex position”. I couldn’t separate the foreplay from sex until that discussion on the gaming forum and numerous news articles of public sex revealed to me that sex was the penetration of the orifice. That said, on a related note, I once asked my Classics professor in class why the Roman aqueducts had male and female parts. He told me that it resembled sex. At the time, I was imagining a flaccid penis in the woman’s vagina and became erect upon stimulation. Knowledge about erection that would occur before, not after, the penetration actually came later. Then, I decided to get this thing settled once and for all. I decided to ask random strangers on the Internet about the sex business, hoping that they would describe every technical detail in the process, and I chose this method because I saw it as safer than engaging in sexual activity, because that would ultimately mean I would lose my virginity. I think I learned about the value of virginity when I was 12, because I watched a video at school about a girl crying, regretting that she lost her virginity early and had a kid. There have been studies that report that young participants of pre-marital sex regret that they had sex. Feeling sorry for the girl in the video, I promised myself that I would not lose mine until I have a house of my own and would be financially secure. On the other hand, I have noticed that some people have reacted with suspicion of my sincerity, and rightfully so! If I had sex and someone asked me this question, I would respond, “Why do you ask? Why do you want to know? You want to know about my sex life? Well, it’s private and none of your business! Scram!” Obviously, I couldn’t ask a straightforward question, like “how do you have sex?” I had to ask a very specific question in the most technical format - so specific that people would be unaware that they are answering a sex question. Therefore, my question about the pelvic thrust by which nervous system was, in my opinion, justified, because my hidden motivation was to know whether the thrusting behavior so commonly described was consciously controlled or involuntary movement like peristalsis in the esophagus. Yes, it was a trick. But I would argue that it was a necessary one to get people to explain the mechanics of sex without embarrassment and, as a result, suspicion of the questioner’s sincerity. For this reason, I apologize for the trick, but I want you to realize that it was necessary, even though I did suspect that many people saw through the trick ahead of time by reading between the lines and knew that the question was about sex.
They do. In fact, this is probably the most common place for sex. But it’s not mandatory.
What was wrong?
It seems to me that you don’t have wide enough experience of how people interact with each other, sexually or nonsexually, to put into context the information you’re collecting. Almost every statement you make is both true and false. You’re trying too hard to generalize.
You have to understand that your family and your school were not being honest with you. They were giving you skewed information in order to influence your behavior.
Virginity has no value. You should avoid having sex before you are emotionally, physically, and intellectually mature enough to be ready for it, but that does not create value for the absence of sex.
I am still not entirely sure that you are sincere, but I am willing to treat your questions as if you are. I don’t think you’ve done anything you need to apologize for.
The negative reactions you are getting from people are largely because of:
(1) The odd characteristics of how you communicate.
(2) The astonishing level of naïveté and experience that you seem to have not just with regard to sexuality or sexual relationships but with human relationships in general.
(3) The odd conclusions you reach based on the information you are given.
(4) Your obstinacy in sticking to those odd conclusions, or abandoning them only for a different set of odd conclusions.
(5) The apparent fear you have of intimacy and the way your extremely sheltered upbringing colors your opinions.
(6) The moralistic approach you take with respect to intimate relationships.
I’ve only been superficially skimming most of the OPs threads, but his/her posts do read to me like a very sheltered survivor of a fundamentalist cult of some sort. Imagine if Carrie had the internet instead of a horrible prom date. Then again, they could be the work of a person on the autism spectrum. Or even a bot. Or, of course, a wanking troll. It’s my uncertainty that’s prevented me from responding.
Umbridge, my best advice for you is to find a good therapist. Find some help getting past your anxiety and go learn about life by living life.
You can’t learn sex from behind a keyboard. You can’t learn dancing there, either. Both are activities that must be experienced to understand. While there are some moves that many sexual encounters have in common, and many dances have in common, there is no way to rote memorize this and have a fulfilling experience. There’s too much room for variation, for personal preference, for silent and spoken communication with your partner. One dancer’s dip is another’s disaster. One person’s favorite sex act is another’s nightmare.
If it feels good, do it. If it feels good and carries a disease risk, get a condom and use it. If it doesn’t feel good, stop and talk to your partner and tell him or her what might feel better. If it feels good to your partner (as evidenced by rapid breathing, flushing and maybe moaning) do more of that. If your partner tells you something might feel good, try it. Vary your speed and intensity to find what you both like, whether that’s touching or kissing or licking or coitus.
There’s a whole lot of humans on this planet. Nearly every single one is the result of a successful sexual act between two people who once knew even less than you do. No one is born knowing or understanding this stuff. We teach each other (yes, usually in the bedroom, but not always) and we learn from experimenting.
You’ve done your prior research. You’ve reviewed the literature. Now go put on your empirical research scientist hat, find a willing lab partner and let the experimentation begin.
No, I was never raised in a religious family. In fact, I saw Christianity as an American thing. My parents were not religious in their home country either, and neither were my grandparents. They were skeptical of religious institutions. Christianity is actually a minority religion in my parents’ home country, but I think it is growing despite the persecutions and the penalties for operating underground house churches. The so-called “persecution” that some American Christians claim is not really persecution. (I recently attended an ELCA church that briefly criticized the “persecution”. I thought the sermon was interesting.)
No, I don’t have autism or Asperger’s syndrome. I have gone through life without any problems and graduated college without mental health professionals or medications. My grades in school have consistently, for the most part, been mostly As and Bs. I am sure that I have average intelligence.
No, I do not think that I am a troll, because that implies the deliberate intention to cause disruption. Though, the definition of troll has been extended to unintended disruptions as well, and shamefully and regretfully, I have been accused of trolling in that regard, but I think I just need to know the proper place to post my thoughts and the appropriate manner to post them.
Your bot suggestion is the most approximate estimate, and you may be surprised that I have thought of myself as a robot in a human body. While there are narratives about deities being incarnated into human flesh, I have pondered whether I am really a “robot” in human flesh. This pondering, I believe, began when I was very young, perhaps in elementary school. I would touch my nose and my eyes, and I wondered why I couldn’t see myself, unless I used a mirror. Who am I? Why am I doing in this body in this world? Do I have a purpose in life? Do I really have a choice? The choice aspect led me to think that I could make choices in life, even if my choices would be considered counter-intuitive and strange to other human beings. Hence the “robot” part. Here are the examples.
When I was ten or eleven years old, I said in my sleep that I would stop speaking my mother tongue. I saw no point in being bilingual, and I saw no promotion of bilingualism. The change happened slowly, and eventually it got to the point where my parents would speak to me in my mother tongue but I would return in English. I lost the comfort of speaking in a secret code. Nowadays, I regret the choice that l consciously made, because all of a sudden “multilingualism” is a good thing, and parents want their kids to be bilingual. At this point, I made a conscious effort to speak my first language again… slowly, so no one would notice any marked difference.
When I started high school, I had a mental notebook and made a conscious choice to do something different than what I did in middle school. I added making friends on the list, because I knew making friends and small talk were my weaknesses, and I had an odd fear of talking on the telephone or acknowledging people I know in public. My parents certainly didn’t teach me that; it’s one of my strange childhood fears. In fact, it was their scolds that made me realize the importance of this communication and force me to overcome them. At the time, I didn’t have any friends since elementary school due to work-related reasons and moving to better school districts and bad social skills.
By tenth grade, I decided to take a different turn. I wondered what it would be like to hold a blank, emotionless face all the time for a whole year. I thought it was a good idea, because it was new and I thought laughter attracted too much attention. What a bad idea. On top of that, I removed friendship-making from my to-do list and avoided going to chess club or creative writing club. After that, it was difficult for me to return to my previous self.
So, yes, to answer your question, this is why I think of myself as a “robot”. I ask questions, unusual questions, as an attempt to communicate and overlook my inability to do small talk.
Therapy is for people who have abnormal psychology. I made those choices in life. No helplessness there.
Paragraphs! We’re getting somewhere. OP, you’re sounding more human by the minute.
Although I still have no clue what this thread is actually about. Something to do with sex? Maybe you could try to restate the OP in more readable terms? Just if you’re up for it.