Ask yourself: would you act on your feelings if you didn't experience "shame, anxiety, inadequacy and rejection"? If so, I'd say that you're straight, but have some mental issues you need to work on. Which is okay, and you're def not alone in.

Yeah, I ask myself that all the time, and I think the answer is kinda yes. I say kinda because in these past few years my whole life has been built around the expectations and demands of someone who's completely alone. Am I okay with being alone? Am I alone or lonely? How can I be sure? I'm very therapized, but this and my phobias have always been a sore spot that I couldn't manage to fully deal with. I'm currently seeking a new therapist after being with the same one for more than five years, but the financial commitment is out of my reach right now.

You know, one of the biggest problems I have in my situation is that I often feel very lonely, not in not having a partner, but rather in being seemingly the only person in my social context who has no interest in seeking sex and love. I hate it that pretty much 95% of all pop culture seems to revolve around either sex or violence, two things I'm averse to in real life. The thing is, I'm desensitized only to violence in media. Stories about sex and intimacy make my skin crawl. I'll gleefully watch John Wick kill five hundred henchmen, but show me people kissing as the emotional peak of a story and I'll cringe. Fucking weird.

Anyways, thanks a lot for sharing your thoughts. It means a lot to me to know that I'm not surrounded by horndogs even in the online spaces I frequent.