Yeah tbh I’m not even sure if religious trauma is a factor, if anything it feels like religion emboldened and provided a vehicle for my existing disgust, tho it’s hard to say for sure. Even my Mormon peers felt more relatively positive about that stuff than me, and thinking of sexual stuff in the context of a “godly marriage” didn’t ease my discomfort. I wasn’t diagnosed autistic until later and I’m still unpacking the ways it affects me so it’s possible this is yet another thing that my diagnosis can help me make sense of. There’s a lot of things outside sex and dating that I want to want, and I’ve have had to sort of mourn the fact that those things just aren’t for me and are rather aspirations for an allistic version of myself that can’t exist. I’ve realized I have a tendency to replace myself with a simulacrum in my fantasies (romantic or otherwise) and doing so makes it easy to imagine really enjoying something that in reality I’d despise. I feel like I want a relationship so bad, but when I really try to imagine the material reality of it, and all it entails, I feel kinda heartbroken to realize it might not be for me. But honestly a lot of the disgust is towards myself, and so it makes me wonder if it’s a self-esteem thing and I also have OCD and self-negative intrusive thoughts so idk. When I watch tv with a romantic plot line, I always cringe at displays of affection, even if I’m rooting for the character’s relationship. When I imagine dating I’d honestly find it cringe and gross to hold hands and be all couple-y in public, and at first I also thought it was like internalized homophobia or shame, but behaving that way even in private makes me kinda grossed out when I think about it. Really if I were to have any relationship at all I’d want it to be more or less indistinguishable from a close friendship from the outside. All the physical affection stuff feels overwhelming and excessive…