First, thank you all for your kind and thoughtful responses. I very much appreciate the time you took to write them.
In response to water_boy1999, I do believe that low self-esteem and lack of confidence are problems that I am contending with, but there is more to it than that, and looking at my post it seems like I didn't make it entirely clear. Not to diminish what you're saying at all, though -- it definitely is something that I need to work on.
Thing is, I know that, although I'm certainly not model caliber, I'm not unattractive either. Rather overweight, but not morbidly so, and I have a cute face
I also know that I have a lot of mental and personality attributes that would make me a good partner, especially in a long-term relationship.
The problem that I was meaning to get across was that although I do have some problems with myself _personally_, my difficulty with sexuality seems to go deeper than that to a more general malaise, if you will. I find the idea of _any_ man trying to get into bed with a woman to be quite repulsive, although I can't deny that I myself am attracted to women. For a long time, I simply denied my sexuality anywhere except in my own head, and even that was iffy.
Sordid -- that's the best word for it. Male sexuality seemed excessively sordid.
There were several times in high school and in my early university career that girls and women indicated that they were attracted to me. What was my reaction? To freak out and run away (once literally), because I couldn't believe that they saw _me_ as this sex-crazy "predator" that I assumed all sexually active heterosexual men were. Honestly, I was insulted -- I would have thought they thought better of me than that. I was also freaked out -- I couldn't respond positively because I didn't want to hurt them, and couldn't understand why they seemed to want to hurt themselves -- can you believe that?
As I said before, intellectually I realize that this is bullshit. But it's kind of a complex, if you will. A shame complex. I suppose it comes from mixing up sex and abuse, or some such thing.
Anyway, I guess I wanted to get this off my chest, and this seems like a place where it could be done. I thank you again if you've read this far.
(not sure if anyone's gonna read this thread again now that it's been a couple of days, but what the hell
)