HOCD and loss of attraction

[FSBHM]

Hi.

In advance, I am sorry if I made grammatical mistakes, I am French and very bad at speaking English.

Is it possible for OCD to temporarily make someone lose their aesthetic attraction to the opposite sex? That's what's been happening to me now for the last seven or eight months and it scares me a lot.

I was never diagnosed but I had a lot of symptoms that remind me of OCD (I never wanted to be with a man but a lot of intrusive thoughts/images, for a long time constant anxiety and rumination, checking behaviours, and other diverse and varied things).

I've pretty much managed to manage all this, it doesn't make me spike anymore, (it doesn't make me anxious anymore, I know it's OCD), but the loss of aesthetic attraction to women... I can't do it. I mean, I could say to myself, "Stop it is that OCD" for everything else, but for that, I can't do it. It's too much for me, it's eating me up from the inside, it's torture. I'm afraid my attraction won't come back or not entirely, I think about it every day, I look at pictures of girls every day. The more time goes by, the worse it gets. The girls I found attractive before all this are no longer attractive to me. And to make matters worse, the anxiety seems to be drying up (the feeling of a knot in the stomach is less and less there). As time goes by, I have less of a feeling it's OCD. It's horrible. I want my attraction to come back.

Will my attractions return entirely? How can I make them come back?
Is it OCD?

[FSBHM]

Someone ?

[Soda]

I began to write something for you but felt I wasn’t fully equipped as I am still working on my OCD issues. I thought maybe one of the other members who seem to have their thoughts under control would come.

I’m currently suffering with ROCD and with every type of OCD I’ve had that has anything to do with sex, sexual attraction has wavered. It’s terrible. The only thing you can do is treat the OCD. In my experience, if left untreated you’ll FEEL as if it has gone away if you get your attraction back to your partner/ opposite sex individuals — but, it’ll just jump to something else to feed your anxiety. TRUST ME, it’s been almost a decade I’ve been dealing with intrusive thinking. If it’s not one thing it’s another, sometimes multiple things at once. I’m working on therapy now, just started a few months ago.

With HOCD, the more you think about WHO you are attracted to, the less you are actually relaxing. You really wouldn’t feel in the mood if you were say...stressed about work or school or life, would you? This is the exact same. You’re seeing your sexual attraction as an issue. It’s bringing you stress. Your stress is messing even more with your attraction. It’s a cycle. You have to just remind yourself that it’s really not a moment by moment thing but a long term thing. Most gay people know they’re gay and it doesn’t bring them distress to feel aroused by other gay people or people who are sexually attracted to them.

[FSBHM]

Thank you for your answer.


I had totally forgotten that I had posted a topic here.
It's not sexual attraction but aesthetic attraction to the opposite sex, but I guess it's the same thing. I know I'm not gay, I don't find men attractive and I don't want anything to do with them, unlike women. But the aesthetic attraction having disappeared... I don't even have any more anxiety about this disappearance but it still hasn't come back, so I feel bad, or at least not like before the OCD. The fact that it's been a long time also plays a role.