Welcome to Self-Therapy! The show where I pretend to be both patient and doctor – sometimes without the doctor part – and talk about the things that are too strange, embarrassing, or graphic for prime-time television. Viewer discretion is advised.

Today’s topics: how do you know you’re not bi, and thoughts on attraction after three weeks away from porn.

Tonight’s show is brought to you by Wendy’s chicken nuggets, because who’d-a-thunk dipping chicken in a frosty would make it five times better? And also by the common cold, because spending the weekend outside is overrated.

First topic: How do you know you’re not bi?

I call myself “gay,” or at least I did for the first year or two. Now I don’t really use any label, but whenever anyone asks for details I say I’m a “5” on the Kinsey scale. The Kinsey scale is a self-assigned scale of sexual attraction or activity from 0-6. 0 means all attractions or behavior is with the opposite sex, and 6 means all attraction or behavior is with the same sex. Placing myself at a 5 means that I am predominantly attracted to men, but occasionally feel attracted to women. I’ve used the phrase “only accidentally straight” before.

But the issue is the distinction between these attractions, and the concern that causes within me. I’ve compared the feelings before. It’s as if seeing a cute boy is standing in the middle of a marching band, while noticing an attractive girl is hearing a flute down the street, soft enough that you aren’t really sure you heard it at all. The two are so different it makes me wonder if they aren’t in reality completely separate feelings, or if what I feel towards any girl is (or can become) enough to satisfy the powers that be.

The guys I know who’ve gone on to get married often give a similar story. They met the girl and became normal friends at first. Only over a period of time and slowly increasing closeness did that attraction develop to a point where they could consider marriage. And plenty of them have children, so I know there’s some objective truth to their claims.

So for a while now I’ve known that my most realistic path to heterosexual marriage is to make good friends and keep an open mind to more intimate relationships. But until that happens, I’ll continue to wonder if I might not have the biological ability for complete attraction to both sexes. Maybe I’m not “accidentally bi” but just wishing?

Main topic: Thoughts on attraction after three weeks away from porn.

I’ve gone longer than this, but not in more than a year, and there was a lot of miraculous circumstances accompanying that last stint of abstinence. This time life is perfectly normal and I’ve had plenty of time to assimilate my new identity. So as I continue to try and avoid crossing the line from simple attraction into lustful pornography, I sometimes wonder about the bigger picture.

Let me explain what it feels like to see an attractive boy. First off there’s a jolt of immediate attention. Some combination of their physical features matches a pattern in my brain for the “attractive” category. Don’t ask me to spell out the list: that’s too embarrassing to put where my mom can read it. So, they match the pattern and sirens go off. My brain wants to observe every possible detail about this person. That observation might include a desire to touch them. Maybe even to kiss. But never has this attraction sent a conscious thought of “you-me-sex-now!” That feeling has never consciously reared its beastly head; it’s more subtle than that.

What usually happens is that the innocent attraction knocks a pebble out of the wall where the libido is caged up. And over the course of a few hours or days the wall slowly crumbles until it gets loose. After being caged up for so long, it’s often quite restless, but sometimes it’s smart enough to act like it’s been rehabilitated and deserves parole until it can sneak up behind me and stab me in the back. Once it’s loose and I’m bleeding, it knows I’m weak and can’t escape. So it lets me go to work and spend time with friends. It knows I’ll be back home eventually. At that point it’s like a prison warden, calm but demanding and unassailable. The battle to get it back under control is prolonged and tiring, often leaving the walls so weak it takes barely a nudge to crumble again. But somehow right now it’s hibernating. It snores regularly to let me know it’s still there and bound to wake up again, but for now I’m safe.

Okay, time to drop the metaphor.

I’m scared whenever I get tugged towards an attractive boy online. I don’t know how far things will go, and I don’t want to tempt fate. I get a little hypnotized, which just reminds me that I’m always so close to the edge. But despite the hypnotizing episodes, and even somewhat during them, I wonder if things are changing. It’s almost like I’m searching for the familiar feeling, but the old haunts aren’t working any more, and the draw isn’t strong enough for me to lash out for the strong stuff.

If this keeps up long enough, I expect my brain to slowly rewire itself. Indulging in porn strengthens neural reward pathways and changes what’s “normal.” So during withdrawal the brain has difficulty feeling happy, since it isn’t receiving the normal level of reward. It takes time for the switches to reset and the brain to find different ways to reward itself. I’ve heard two or three months for the initial shock to wear off. But like any bad habit, the old pathway won’t completely go away, and without something to replace it, it won’t even get weaker.

My meta-concern is that the attraction isn’t to blame, but it’s dangerously close to what is. All the biology involved is normal and okay. It’s a subtle transition from normal and okay to extreme and dangerous. And how can I go about letting the libido out for a walk without being afraid it’ll attack again. It shouldn’t be caged up. It should be trained and controlled.

To sum things up, because my brain is trying to shut down on me right now: even though I can still feel some of the obsessive compulsion I associate with porn lust, it feels a little weaker now after a few weeks. I know it’ll be some time before things get easier, and that the danger is never truly gone. The line between what is unavoidable but innocent and what is intentional and dangerous is so thin, but with practice I’m finally starting to think it can be done.