Understanding Barriers to Heterosexual Attraction and Romantic Interest

Koby Frances, Ph.D. – Licensed Psychologist

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Introduction

According to secular society, there are individuals who are constitutionally incapable of heterosexual attraction and sexual interest. This theory is sometimes presented more subtly, claiming that some individuals can feel heterosexual attraction, but it pales in comparison to their more natural, consistent, and potent same-sex attractions. Both versions of this argument underlie the gay movement, which posits that some individuals simply cannot participate in traditional heterosexual marriage and that this is immutable because they were “born this way.”

My 15 years of clinical experience, primarily working within the religious Jewish community, suggest that this popular narrative is incomplete. It ignores a spectrum of experiences that are not as rigid as “being inherently gay.” Many people are therefore misled to prematurely give up on their own—or their loved ones’—heterosexual potential before they have a chance to identify patterns in their experiences. This can unnecessarily push them away from faith, family, and community.

In this article, I will outline specific types of heterosexual attraction barriers I have observed in my private practice, particularly among young adults considering heterosexual dating and relationships. (Issues in long-term partnerships may have their own dynamics, worthy of a separate paper.) I believe that each barrier offers a more individualized and empowering perspective than simply “I’m just gay.” Most can be addressed with accurate information about sexual desire and intimacy—often without in-depth psychotherapy.

Although these barriers are common in the general population, I focus on them here in the context of same-sex attraction patterns. Modern society often conflates these experiences into a single “gay” category, when they are often mutually exclusive.

Below are the most common barriers observed, listed from simplest to most complex.

1. Lack of Exposure and Experience

Many men and women who claim they are “just not attracted to the opposite sex” have limited meaningful interactions with them beyond siblings or cousins. This is particularly true for individuals from gender-segregated schools or communities. Even when inter-gender interactions occur, they may be superficial or negative, leading to conclusions based on inadequate “data.”

For example, a woman in her 30s consulted me, worrying that she was “inherently gay.” She had minimal interaction with men beyond casual dates that felt boring and interview-like. Yet, she admired women, sometimes feeling strong admiration and a desire for closeness. Therapy helped her see that she could develop attraction to men with the right match, focusing on identifying those she felt most comfortable with.

2. Meeting the Wrong Types

Many people believe there is something inherently wrong with them—thinking they are gay, asexual, or incapable of connection—when in reality, they are simply meeting the wrong types of people. Family, friends, or matchmakers can unintentionally exacerbate this by invalidating dissatisfaction on dates.

Some individuals fall into a “dating résumé trap,” seeking partners based on external perfection (family, career, grades) rather than authentic connection.

Helping young adults identify the types of people with whom they genuinely feel a spark can be transformative. Questions to guide this include:

• Who do you feel an instant connection with?

• What personality traits do they have—loud, shy, bubbly, spontaneous?

• What careers or hobbies do they pursue?

• What physical traits appeal to you, irrespective of societal standards?

Also, consider the setting: some people dislike formal dating yet expect to meet partners in loud, impersonal environments, which hampers connection.

3. Lack of Confidence and Self-Worth

Chronic low self-esteem can make connection with the opposite sex difficult. People may hyper-focus on themselves—worrying about appearance, behavior, or social performance—so much that they fail to notice others.

For instance, a young man in his 20s reported feeling unable to connect with women. He constantly self-criticized, causing anxiety on dates. Therapy focused on improving self-esteem and providing practical tools for socializing and dating.

4. Acute Symptoms of Anxiety, Depression, Dissociation, or Personality Disorders

Serious psychological dysfunction can interfere with authentic connection. Personality disorders, in particular, are defined by chronic relationship disturbances. In such cases, attraction may be based on fulfilling selfish needs rather than genuine emotional connection.

5. Outsized Arousal Expectations

Many young people who report lack of heterosexual attraction actually mean they do not experience immediate excitement or arousal upon seeing or interacting with the opposite sex. Modern culture often conflates “feeling attracted to a real person” with “immediate lust for attractive strangers.”

Clinically, I ask detailed questions:

• Do you notice physical attractiveness in some members of the opposite sex?

• Have you ever had crushes or romantic interests?

• Have you felt chemistry or bonding with someone, wanting more interaction?

Often, the real issue is outsized arousal expectations. People expect immediate sexual excitement, leading to confusion and frustration.

I teach clients that attraction usually develops gradually:

1. Initial appreciation for personality and appearance.

2. Emotional and physical bonding through shared experiences.

3. Gradual development of romantic interest, potentially evolving into sexual interest.

This gradual process is natural and is enhanced when both parties have intimacy skills, compatibility, and a mutual desire to develop the relationship.

Understanding Lust-Triggers

Some individuals, especially those with early same-sex attraction, experience immediate, involuntary arousal to specific stimuli—called “lust-triggers” or “arousal templates.” These share five characteristics (CRISP):

• Childhood-based

• Recurring

• Immediate

• Specific

• Powerful

Lust-triggers explain why some people expect strong arousal with new dates or partners and why pornography or casual encounters can be addictive. Three hallmarks of lust-triggers:

1. Exaggerated arousal compared to typical relationships, leading to unfair comparisons.

2. Stronger arousal toward strangers than real-life partners.

3. Diminishing arousal once a partner is seen as a whole person, creating dissatisfaction in real relationships.

Understanding lust-triggers helps clients recalibrate expectations and develop authentic attraction in meaningful relationships.

With an intimate relationship, on the other hand, though the arousal may not be as immediate and charged, it will intensify more gradually through a sequence of predictable “step by step” gestures and actions. The sexual encounter also tends to be more fulfilling, fun, and connecting, even if the sexual encounter itself is not as “lusty” or electric.

This provides a second rational explanation for outsize arousal expectations. In this model, the abnormal phenomena is not with real people of the opposite sex, but rather with their same-sex (or any type of) lust-trigger, which provides an exaggerated, immediate but very unnatural “hit” of arousal.

When outsized arousal expectations are the core issue, it is critically important to teach people everything about the differences between these two types of sexual energies in order to help them set realistic expectations. Sadly, without access to this information, people could spend their lifetime pursuing the “perfect lust trigger” in their real intimate relationships and will inevitably end up feeling empty and disappointed.

Difficulty With Intimacy, Vulnerability, and Trust

An obvious obstacle to feeling connection with the opposite sex is when people are just staying on a superficial level. For different reasons, the “entry questions” like “What do you do? How many siblings do you have? Where have you traveled?” don’t lead to anything more personal, which taps into their unique thoughts, feelings, values, and perspectives. Many young people who I’ve met have described this obstacle, complaining that dating feels like an interview and a chore. This makes sense: even if their date is the best-looking person they’ve ever seen and has only the best qualities, if they are just staying on this surface level, they are unlikely to feel any sense of greater interest, connection, or excitement.

This surface-level dating can be caused by multiple factors. Sometimes it just comes down to a couple’s chemistry and their natural ways of relating and speaking. Sometimes it is caused by other things like if a person believes that they have to put on a show for their dates in order to impress them, which can often have the opposite effect. Sometimes this pattern comes from people who are insecure or not self-aware, or just trying to avoid silence. I often teach clients that it is in the act of sharing one’s vulnerability (expressed at the right time and in the right way) where intimate feelings get sparked.

Of course, sometimes people come into dating with more serious “attachment wounds.” If they have been harmed by an opposite-parent family member – emotionally, physically, or sexually – or if they suffered the loss of a parent early in life, for example, these tend to complicate one’s abilities to trust others and be open to connection in a healthy way. Some people may also have traumatic experiences in their adult dating life, which can color their desire to try with another person and “drop their guard” in subsequent relationships.

For all of these possibilities, it can be very useful to teach people that relationship attraction is not just based on looks or first impressions, but is more often sparked by a sense that the other person is letting down their guard and sharing something personal that they would not just share with anyone. This automatically causes us to bring down our own guard, which can then lead us to trust them and share our own vulnerability in turn. This “baring of our souls” tends to automatically create an attraction spark even if the partner does not at first seem attractive. If people then continue to sustain and deepen this connection over time, this initial spark of attraction can quickly grow into stronger feelings of longing, admiration, and sexual desire.

Coaching people to work through any of these specific obstacles to intimacy can do wonders to help them feel more excited, connected, and hopeful that they too can experience feelings of romantic and sexual attraction with the right person.

Identity as a Barrier

Probably the most subtle issue here, but one that I see repeatedly in my practice, is when a person cannot connect to another member of the opposite sex because they are already boxed into a sexual identity lane, which acts almost like a physical barrier, stopping them from making a connection no matter how great the other person is or how well matched they are.

To use an example from my own life, when I myself started dating, I rigidly sought out women who I deemed to be “intellectual” because this was the identity label that I gave myself. Using this criterion to find a marriage match, however, made it difficult to trust my feelings when I was connecting with a person who I deemed “non-intellectual,” causing me to dismiss them as possibilities on this basis alone. I also became unhealthily drawn to the wrong people, simply because I judged them to be “intellectual.”

Similarly, this dynamic seems common among people who are convinced that they are “inherently gay,” whether or not they are public about this identity. When they complain that they “just can’t be attracted to the opposite sex no matter what they do,” it can often be because of this identity-lane issue, making even the most compatible person of the opposite sex feel as if they lived on a distant planet. Their attempts to date and feel attraction to women were thus doomed to failure from the get-go. Sometimes they were even used as a kind of twisted confirmation bias to prove the accuracy of the identity label that they had adopted long ago, even if they claimed to be pained by this label.

Hence, the only way to help such a person be open to heterosexual relationships would be to let them know that they are not actually “inherently gay” – that they mistakenly took on this identity because these were the only words that they had access to at the time – and to give them a better term and theory to explain their sexual or personality patterns. Sometimes people use “gay” to feel a sense of belonging and social connection, when they have difficulty finding this within their own peer group and community. Helping them to find other ways of feeling belonging, recognized, and valued can also go a long way in helping them to loosen their attachment to the gay identity.

This example shows us just how dangerous the wrong identity constructs can be and just how much identity labels can create traps for people that act almost like a physical barrier.

Dating and Relationship Fears

In my work with religious men with histories of same-sex attraction, I often hear about the same three worries related to heterosexual dating and marriage, which can either prevent them from starting to date women in the first place or which are always “hovering nearby” whilst they are dating and seeking out relationships. These concerns might also be common among single women with same-sex attractions looking to date men.

In my opinion, each of these three worries are based mostly on myth, which reminds us of just how powerful and pervasive sexual misinformation can be, but which also lets us know just how easily these fears can be extinguished simply with the provision of accurate information.

One common fear is what I call a “desire-comparison fear,” where the person believes that they are inherently unfit for heterosexual marriage because they are not as obsessed with or sexually turned on by women. Several facts can be used to educate men and relieve these worries. This includes:

• Many healthy men are not just primed for sex with attractive women at a moment’s notice and are certainly not obsessed with sex. Perhaps more men are inclined this way now, in this particular generation more than in any other, because of our sex-drenched culture. But lack of such knee-jerk reactions is not a sign of being abnormal or inherently different.

• When kids don’t have other healthy ways to feel good about themselves, and when they start to get attention from girls, they can use this attention as a way of keeping busy and feeling a sense of recognition and specialness. If they do not ever develop a more internal sense of self-worth, they can continue to feel emotionally dependent on female attention.

• Watching porn can and should feel wrong, and many healthy men have a neutral to negative response to watching it, particularly if they have no psychological need for it and if they did not grow up exposed to less extreme erotic images.

• If one’s lust-trigger has involved the same exact same-sex situation from a young age (or any specific situation), the person will not typically get as quickly and powerfully aroused by other types of images or fantasies no matter how “objectively hot” it is. But this has no bearing on the person’s abilities to feel interested and aroused with someone who they like and are connected to.

• Men talking about girls can also be a social bonding ritual and is not necessarily an indication of their inherent and constant obsession with women.

In addition to these facts, I often ask these clients to think about times in their life where they felt some kind of crush or spark with a female, either as a child or adult. Inevitably, they are always able to bring at least one example. These examples, I tell them, can be seen as objective proof that they are normal and can easily develop attractions to the opposite sex when there is some kind of spark, chemistry, or connection.

Furthermore, I often teach people that in most cultures, children are socialized by families, schools, and communities from a very young age to channel their romantic and sexual energy toward the opposite sex and away from the same sex. Even if a person has a history of strong desire for the same gender, unless they were reared in a highly unusual family or society, they do not easily “escape” this basic level of relationship conditioning.

A second common concern relates more to “performance anxiety” and their physiological responses during sex, such as: “What if my body doesn’t have an arousal reaction when I’m in the bedroom with my girlfriend or spouse—what if I can’t perform?” Here again, accurate information can help. I might say things like:

• If you are comfortable with your partner, and there is connection and closeness, God gave you the amazing ability to have everything work without you having to even try.

• In real relationships, feelings of desire are usually created by some kind of action. They don’t just spontaneously strike. When a person, for example, shares something private and vulnerable about themselves with a new or long-term partner, this can quickly ignite a certain desire for affection and physical closeness, which can then escalate if the partners choose. When couples have fun and are relaxed together, this too can activate a desire to be flirtatious and physically close. And in the right context, “above the belt” physical touch can easily create a desire for more. Sexual energy then gets increasingly activated as the physical engagement intensifies.

• Often there is a learning curve in our first physical experiences. If people are completely inexperienced with opposite-sex physical touch—whether or not they have same-sex experiences—they will often harbor similar worries about their abilities to perform.

This explains why many people reflect back on their first sexual experiences as being challenging and awkward, very unlike Hollywood movies.

The third most common worry I call the “marriage destruction worry,” and it tends to sound something like this: “If I date and marry a woman, I might cheat on them, they might find out about me, or I could destroy my spouse and family if I get divorced. I could ruin people’s lives!”

In this case, I like to first ask how the person came up with this catastrophizing worry. What articles, horror stories, or social media statements were they exposed to? The exaggerated fears surrounding this worry often tell me that it is not coming from just their imagination alone, but from some specific outside sources in the media, often influenced by gay propaganda. Knowing this can be very clarifying and relieving for them.

In response to this worry, I might first reassure them that they are good people, who are going to be great husbands and fathers (assuming that I believe this to be true). I might contextualize their fears by reminding them that any marriage is an inherent risk and that no one ever knows how things will turn out. But the two most important things that help to maintain satisfying marriages are:

1. Making smart choices about who to marry, and

2. Developing and implementing good relationship problem-solving and communication skills so that frustrations are used to bring people closer to each other and are not left to fester where they can cause even greater damage.

Strategizing about whether or how a person would want to tell their potential girlfriend or spouse about their same-sex history—and how to frame it in an accurate way so that the partner does not jump to the wrong conclusion that they are “inherently gay”—could be another path I take in helping clients take more control of this fear. Telling a partner or spouse about a person’s full sexual history is a complicated matter, and I tend to follow my client’s lead depending on what they prefer.

A person with a history of same-sex attraction is not any different than any other person with a different type of lust-trigger who would not necessarily tell their spouse about the specific people and situations that activate an immediate and involuntary arousal response. Last, I might reassure clients about the many people who I’ve worked with who had the same fears as them but who are now happily married.

Conclusion

Secular culture—and the gay movement specifically—is teaching our children to mistakenly conflate sexual energy that is activated by our “lust for strangers” and sexual energy that is activated in an intimate relationship. It is also causing children to mistakenly bundle together their feelings toward men and women as “opposite sides of the same coin” or a theoretical construct called “gay” or “straight,” when these sets of feelings are mutually exclusive. Both of these unchallenged trends are leading religious people to unnecessarily doubt their heterosexual relationship potential and to identify themselves as gay.

As I’ve done my best to show, there are often much more common-sense and resolvable ways to explain heterosexual relationship barriers, many of which can be addressed simply through the provision of accurate scientific information about desire and intimate relationships.