My Experience with Muscle Building and Body Shame

[supermagic]

I was debating on whether to put in in Muscle and Mind, or off-topic, but I went with off topic. If you tl:dr this, it's fine, as the point is more about me sharing than anyone reading (but I do thank you in advance).

Forgive any typos because I just finished writing this and I don't think I have to emotional stamina or clarity to read through this myself right now.
__________________________________________________ _________

I have a muscle fetish.

I've probably had it since middle school, when I first discovered porn and almost immediately got into body transformation media, especially muscle growth.

For a long time this was a virtual sexual experience that was separate from the outside world. Until my senior year of high school I didn't have anything I could strongly identify as sexual or emotional attraction, though they were certainly a slew of feelings that I couldn't quite describe/accept in my attempts to rationalized that this muscle fetish was disconnected from any kind of homosexuality.

I've always been small, thin, somewhat lanky, even though I eventually filled out some as I grew up. This has always been a source of frustration for me. That I wasn't "big enough", wasn't "buff enough," and ultimately wasn't sexually desirable. The thought of miraculously (or even through exhaustive effort) becoming massive and strong was incredibly sexually exciting.

It didn't help that I went to a predominately white, upper-class middle/high school with some utterly fucked racialized and gendered sexual politics in which (mostly) white athletes and (mostly) black "bad boys" were the male sexual ideals, two different, yet overlapping categories that I was perpetually excluded from because of my skills and interests, but most notably because of my body.

Granted, sports and organized athletics have never had much interest to me. I ran track in middle school and high school, mostly because my mom said I had to play some sport, and at the time, before my injuries set in, I did genuinely enjoy running.

I've always been more interested in art, math, science, performance, dance, music; activities that require movement, but are very different from formalized athletics.

Still, despite having no interest in sports, I still internalized the need to "look" like I played sports in order to be recognized as sexually desirable. And perhaps, at this point, to be able to see myself as sexually desirable. So when I gained access to weight training, and learned more about bodybuilding and body-weight training at home, I leaped on it as an opportunity to change my body.

Of course, what I learned, as many of us learn, is that I don't gain weight or muscle mass very easily. Initially, this was so frustrating that I developed a hot and cold relationship with resistance training where events of self-loathing or body-comparison would drive me toward working out for a short period, then the lack of results (or what I saw as the lack of results) would curb my interest until the not body-shaming event. Throughout much of high school, this was my relationship with lifting weights.

Eventually, I studied proper nutrition for gaining mass and started to make some decent gains. I decided to sign up for a weight lifting class (because that's what all the bros were doing, right) and ate enough beans and rice (I had been vegetarian for until the summer following my junior year, and that period still informs 75% of my food choices) to feed 3 people. And I can say that I generally started to feel good about myself. I was even able to masturbate to myself in the mirror, which I took as a sign that I had finally achieved some sort of self love. And while I can still look back at the moment as liminal, I cannot say with much certainty that I was actually expressing self-love because there was incomplete self-acceptance. I was able to celebrate the physicality associated with my blackness -my brown skin, my nappy hair, my large ass and lips- without reservation and even with joy, but I could still only accept my body as something in progress towards something better. I could only love my body as long as it promised/proceeded to grow.

In retrospect, the signs that I should have turned down the intensity of my workouts was always present: the residue pain in my shins and hip flexors from years of running, the easy fatigue of my right shoulder due to some ancient childhood injury, the weakness of my lower back, my chronic inflexibility. Even though I was aware of most of these things, the goal of increased size was too demanding, and too necessary, for me to be attentive to the needs and sensations of my body.

This lack of awareness became harmful last year when I hyper-extended both of my knees leg pressing much more weight than I should have at the time. While my initial response was rest and a knee brace while walking, I eventually became antsy after a month of only training my upper body, and prematurely went back to squatting. General carelessness outside the gym only exacerbated the issue and soon a persistent ache and soreness in my knees was keeping me up at night. A few months later I also started to feel an unusual tightness in my calf to progressed to excruciating pain due to what I believed was a small tear in the muscle (from overcompensating because of my knee injuries).

Yet recover was only a short interruption in my workout schedule as not working out was accompanied by a loss of purpose and identity. I had committed to transforming my body into this ideal form and could stop at nothing. Ceasing would only be evidence that I had not wanted my goal hard enough. Even then I had the language to recognize this hyper-individualist, capitalist, self-actualizing bullshit for the potentially self-destructive dogma that it is, but could not apply it to myself, perhaps because so much of my conscious and sensual experience, my self worth and the fulfillment my sexual desire, were both dependent upon the the success of this goal.

But then the neurological symptoms started. At this point, I was not unfamiliar with numbness or what I would describe as a lack of connectedness between sensory input and sensation because of my very brief, yet still very traumatic experience with psychoactive substances, including at least 2 unexpected trips, that left serious neurological and psychological residue: panic attacks, existential and mortality crises, apathy and depression, suicidality. Eventually these symptoms diminished and only returned when I foolish (or daring) enough to push the boundaries of my reestablished sense of reality, usually always to horrific effect.

This numbness, which started as a dissociation from sensation and conscious experience of stimulate in my leg, spread up my right side to my back and eventually by shoulder, down to a intense numbness in my right pinky. A few months later, my leg numbess would also extend into my right foot, where it has settled. I went webMD crazy and many severe self-diagnoses aside, correctly identified the pink and elbow sensations as ulnar nerve compression. So I tried not to bend my arm as I sleep, and that helped...for a time. Yet I continued to work out non-stop, having gradually moved to bodyweight workouts which were no less intense and required much more continuous flexion and extension of my joints, which completely negated all my other attempts at healing.

I starting deadlifting again, and the systems spread to my upper back, shoulders and neck, almost exclusively pain and raising my arms over my head became very difficult. This was almost 6 months after I had experience the first symptom, and for various reasons, including a misunderstanding about the state of my health insurance, had not been to see a doctor or specialist. I found relief through acupuncture, but this only sent me back to the gym and soon I was in pain again. It wasn't until an additional month had pasted and rest had proven ineffectual, that I went to see a doctor and was referred a physical therapist. At this point the pain was greatly affecting my daily mood and my interactions with others. Though naturally a bit of a loner, I had retreated almost entirely inside of myself and had injured many important relationships along the way.

Another month of healthcare bureaucracy and clumsiness, and I had a diagnosis. At least for my upper body symptoms. Two compressed nerves on either side of my neck. I suspect there is a group of slightly less compressed nerves on right side of my lower spine generate my foot and lower leg numbness as well as lower back pain, but I have yet to get that evaluated.

Originally I took this as good news towards uncritically returning to my self-destructive, self-loathing patterns. As the healing process has become more involved, and more about management rather than outright cure, I have slowly begun to accept the reality of these systems as a consistent part of my future.

And this has been a struggle, the loss of my self-ascribed status as a young, able-bodied person. Or rather my commitment to the illusion of what makes a 20-something black, queer male body desirable and valuable in a capitalist, ableist, patriarchal and white supremacist society like the US. An illusion I desperately served in order to make my self less deficient in respect to this reductionist standard and by serving only made myself more deficient.

I can look back an see how initial hesitation to seek treatment was in part a product of my unwillingness to admit possible deficiency and well as my inability to critically or emotionally explore my body transformation desires and their undesirable effects. Furthermore, even though "invisible," by pain and eventual lack of ability made me subtly put down my worthiness as an romantic or intimate partner. Like "who would want to put up with all this irritability and moodiness due to chronic pain?" And consequently I didn't talk about it with anyone, and just appeared inexplicably irritated. After I had to quick lifting entirely because it was too painful, this self consciousness was compounded by the feeling that I was wasting away, and that I was slowing become less attractive if I was continuously trying to get bigger. Depression and lack of energy or concern even to eat just sped up the trajectory of this downward spiral.

And now I feel like I've stopped going down but haven't started to come back up yet. I'm gradually starting to accept these sensations as part of my experience and to live with them instead trying the panacea them away or to live in spite of them. Because even if they disappeared tomorrow (an offer I would gladly accept), I cannot go back to living in the world the way I did before I experienced them, nor would I want. That world was, is, so full of self loathing and so empty of self awareness, presence and care. Therefore I figure any healing to come must come through accepting these sensations as part of my body now. Quite literally, my body is the storehouse of 21+ years of emotional and physical trauma and my injuries are a road map of that history. Until I face that history and accept its reality, I don't think there is any way I can move forward with my body and not against it. And this may just mean giving up on that fantasy of being huge and/or being with huge men.

And it hard, but I know that my muscle fetish has affected my ability to be intimate and to love my romantic partners. I was seeing this guy, and while I enjoyed making out with him, touching him and being near him, and all of these things were very. very sexually arousing for me, I was unable to have an orgasm while engaging in any sexual acts with him, which just speaks to how sexual attraction and release for me have become so inextricably lined to my muscle fetish (which is rooted in my own body shame) that I can't even be sexually expressive with someone that I am emotionally/romantically attracted to.

It's almost as if I have developed a complementary sexuality based more heavily emotions, intellect, and intimacy to overcome the limitations of such a selective sexual fantasy and am now constantly looking for a place where those intersect, where my desire for emotion intimacy and my desire for a sexual symbol for my perceived lack of masculinity can be found in a single person. But to be honest, even if I found such a man (and I will be honest and say I have not been with any really well built men), I fear I would still not be able to experience my own sexuality and desire because of my incomplete body acceptance. It's come to a point where I can't even trust my own desires and I feel this is the main reason I have avoided romantic/sexual relationships up to this point.

Now I'm not writing this as some cautionary tale, or to problematize anyone else's desires or fetishes (though I am trying to problematize my own). I'm writing this to process my own feelings right now. And I'm sharing it here because my muscle fetish is still something buried in a lot of shame for me and I want to share this initial in a space I feel more comfortable admitting this fetish.

I don't really know what to do know, or where to go from here, or how I'll feel in a few weeks, or a few months, but one thing I want to try is to better identify and critique that impulse that sends me from body shame and insecurity to sexually arousal to masturbation to muscle/growth related porn, and how sexual release in general has become another piece in my pattern of self-loathing, just as going to the gym was (especially since excessive sexual release often aggravates my symptoms as well).

If you have any comments, or questions or anything whatsoever, feel free to reply or send me a PM. To be honest, I don't think I'm ready for discussing this just yet, I'm just glad that I wrote this and got it out to the world. In time, I plan to share this with some people who are close to me, including a friend of mine who helped facilitate this by inviting me to practice a yoga mala with him and some of our other friends, any that experience inspired me to finally to give voice to this part of my life.

If you got this far, thank you for reading.

[Mdlftr]

Originally Posted by supermagic

I have a muscle fetish.

I've probably had it since middle school, when I first discovered porn and almost immediately got into body transformation media, especially muscle growth.


....

I don't really know what to do know, or where to go from here, or how I'll feel in a few weeks, or a few months, but one thing I want to try is to better identify and critique that impulse that sends me from body shame and insecurity to sexually arousal to masturbation to muscle/growth related porn, and how sexual release in general has become another piece in my pattern of self-loathing, just as going to the gym was (especially since excessive sexual release often aggravates my symptoms as well).

If you have any comments, or questions or anything whatsoever, feel free to reply or send me a PM. To be honest, I don't think I'm ready for discussing this just yet, I'm just glad that I wrote this and got it out to the world. In time, I plan to share this with some people who are close to me, including a friend of mine who helped facilitate this by inviting me to practice a yoga mala with him and some of our other friends, any that experience inspired me to finally to give voice to this part of my life.

If you got this far, thank you for reading.

Hello Supermagic,

Kudos to you for being able to articulate the thoughts you have had so far. Maturing as an individual is a lot of work and it requires mental growth and work, just as much as physical work and growth, as you are discovering.

Many of us on this Board have "issues" with muscle, growth, our self images and sexuality. Masturbation and whatever it takes to get us off to orgasm are a source of both sexual satisfaction and anxiety, as we often wonder "what it means" when we orgasm to a particular image or fantasy. One reason to ask that question and to try and answer it, is to try to understand ourselves better. Who are we? What are we? Are we worthy of being loved? Should we meet some arbitrary standard or state of physical being in order to qualify for love?

These are very common questions and not unique to you. Many people agonize over their bodies, thinking that they are "not enough, they need to be more" something: muscular, slender, bigger, stronger, etc.

OVer time, people come to a conclusion as to who they are, what they are, what works for them. Example: "I'm an average build guy with a tendency to "thick skin" around the waist. If I exercise and do cardio, I tighten up and look and feel good about myself." That's one situation. These conclusions often only come through life experiences, which is what you are learning.

Working through injuries is very common also. The fear that we may "lose it all" if we don't "work through the pain," is a common belief. The best advice is to get a competent PT to advise you and work through what they say.

You have raised a lot of issues. The main point I want to leave you with is that you are not alone. Many men struggle with these issues. This forum, by providing you with a source of feedback and the experiences of others, may help you with the learning that only you can do.

Good luck. We've all been where you are.

Mdlftr

[Dentistclark]

Supermagic, what an interesting piece you wrote, very thought provoking and I would agree with pretty much all that Mdlftr said above.
Body image is something so many of us struggle with. Guys like me who I would say are "normal" sized and who go to the gym to keep trim are bombarded with images in the media of what is "ideal". I get the impression that the builder guys are never quite satisfied with their size or shape. Throw in being gay where we can all be really bitchy and that's quite a mix. I learned (not so long ago) not to look at/listen to the media and try to accept the basis that nature gave me and change the things I can. It's not an easy head space to get into but itscquite comfortable for me at this moment in time.
Having no desire to be big myself but really turned on by muscle guys, I've always been plagued by the insecurity that I'm not "sexy" enough body wise for my muscle man to look twice. My own experience is that there's no way round that one, you just gotta put yourself out there, the bed stuff will come with time.
I hope you putting your thoughts on here helps to start the healing and that you get to the place you want to be.
Be safe, have fun and most of all.....be happy.
Hugs
Clark xx