Okay so first time posting here.

I apologise in advance for this but there’s quite a hefty background to what’s going on.

First things first, I’m 24 years old and male. I’ve got a history with quite serious anxiety and depression. Throughout my adolescence, retrospectively, I see that this culminated in a very unhealthy, compulsive relationship with masturbation, porn and sex. I always considered myself heterosexual, and my life has been regularly plagued by intrusive thoughts about women, compulsive sexual behaviour with women, and a generally out of control attitude in relation to sex with women. During my adolescence, I became compelled to occasionally use gay porn, which I found quite confusing and upsetting at the time. This eventually led to homosexual urges which I would always berate myself for having. Normally in situations when getting high and watching a movie with a friend for example. Never out in the street in public or even at parties, as was the case with women. Eventually I learnt to accept that sexuality is a spectrum, and one that I am someway along, but never seriously considered myself far away from heteromantic. I’ve done a lot of work in therapy about my relationship with sex and masturbation, while it’s a struggle and I’ve still got a long way to go, I’ve mostly been on top of it which I’m very proud of and very relieved about.

Now the other side of the background is all about my ex. We first got together about 4 years ago. We had a very intense, very codependent relationship, which we maintained in a very tumultuous off and on manner over those 4 years, often due to my poor mental health, as well as some irresponsible behaviour on her part. Last year we were back on between April and September. This came after a period of us being split up due to my having drunkenly kissed another girl. In the interim I had done a lot of work on myself in therapy, but our relationship became a story of my remorse and her having all the power to decide that she didn’t forgive me. This did not really gel well with the nature of my mental health issues, which revolve around self-loathing, abandonment issues, self-punishment and isolation. Anyway, she ended up breaking my heart by withdrawing from me over a period of months. She has since admitted to having ‘checked out’, citing her plan to travel in Mexico for 3 months, which we had never really discussed properly. But I was pretty much torn apart but her refusal to communicate with me. Meanwhile, my mother had broken her ankle and suffered an anaphylactic shock during surgery (after getting divorced, quitting her job, losing all her money, and suffering a pretty serious depression of her own – all of which I was having to support her through) so dealing with all of that whilst my partner had ‘checked out’ was very very difficult. So, eventually I confronted her about my mounting stress and had to break up with myself, such was the extent of her unwillingness to communicate. This was very humiliating.

I should say that what I’ve written focusses on the worst aspects of our relationship down the years, and must make for some ugly reading – I will say that we were, and still are in a way, very very in love with each other, which is harder to quantify in anecdotes.

Eventually she left for Mexico and I spent the months she was away healing from the quite intense pain of the summer. I had finally gotten to a place where, whilst I still missed her, I was beginning to feel a bit more comfortable in my life again. I had adjusted to a reality where she didn’t want to be with me, and I didn’t want to be with her, and I was relatively fine with it.

2 days after she got back to London she called me, telling me how she still loved me and was thinking about me every day, and had a lot of time to reflect on how terribly she’d treated me. Since then (about 5 weeks ago), we’ve been having very open and honest talks about what’s been wrong with our relationship down the years, which has felt predominantly really encouraging and productive. I get the sense that both of us want to change ourselves, firstly, for our own respective benefits, and so that we can love each other better. We’ve slept together a couple of times, but want to avoid diving straight back in to a relationship until we can both feel that we trust each other and ourselves, which isn’t the case right now.

Now my real problem is that over the last few weeks, I’ve been having thoughts about men. It started when my feeling of excitement about what was happening between me and my ex had hit it’s peak. I read about Phillip Schofield coming out as gay and was plagued by an anxiety that that would happen to me after I had re-committed to my ex. The thoughts I was having were very obsessive and intrusive, and at times I felt almost psychotic or schizophrenic. Since I got over the initial anxiety, which was very harrowing, I’ve fallen back into very compulsive masturbation habits, sometimes to gay porn, sometimes to straight porn. The thoughts about about my possible bi-sexuality are still present, but in a more rational light, and I even started chatting to some guys on tinder in an effort to explore my sexuality. However, I’m struggling to marry how I feel about my ex, which is that I really want to be with her and for it to work, with my desire to explore my sexuality, and my impulse to message guys on tinder for example. I’m still not even sure if I’m attracted to men! I’m no stranger to excessive, compulsive masturbation and porn consumption leading to strange/unwanted and rootless sexual fantasy, and something I’ve discussed in therapy is my attraction to chaos/absence of boundaries/sexual gratification outside of what I consider normal. Rationally, theoretically, I’ve not got an issue with the idea that I’m bi-sexual or even gay, and I’ve spoken about it with my ex who is actually very supportive. I’m just finding it hard to know which of my feelings are real, which of my desires are real, and what is fantasy/coping mechanism/anxiety.

I’m sure this seems a bit muddled, I’ve written in a bit of a rush, but I hope it’s comprehensible. Not really sure what I’m looking for from the community, but it actually feels good and reflective to type all of it out.

Thank you!