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I feel like my life is going nowhere...

Discussion in 'Coming Out Advice' started by kevin7620, Jun 18, 2005.

  1. kevin7620

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    So a little about me - I'm a 22 year old gay guy. I am not out to anyone, although I have been chronically planting a web of subtle hints for my kid sister (7 years my junior) so I imagine she won't be too surprised when she eventually finds out.

    Thinking back, I remember having crushes on girls up to around mid-high school time, but I've always appreciated cute guys as well. I am pretty sure of my sexuality, and am doubtful that I could be as happy with a girl as I could be with a guy.

    My desire to stay closeted has unfortunately affected my personal relationships with both guys and girls. As far as guys, I have few interests in common with my str8 peers - basically, I am not into sports and I don't drink... And as far as girls, I've never had a genuinely close female friend, probably out of fear that they would pick up on my sexuality.

    Other than this issue, the rest of my life is going quite well. I'm in a top graduate school and on my way towards a satisfying career, financial security, community respect, etc... although sometimes I feel like if school wasn't keeping me as busy as I am, I'd be pretty depressed. Fortunately, there's no time for that.

    So there are several issues that I have with coming out, declaring my gayness and "living it", etc.:

    1) I have no qualms that objectively I am physically unattractive. My feeling is that this is a much bigger issue for gay guys (especially the twink-type guys I'm into) than str8 girls. Briefly, I am moderately overweight (BMI ~27-ish), quite hairy, with poor skin, yellow teeth, and... oh yeah... a small (~4.5" on a good day), uncut dick. Clearly, every gay guy's dream. A corollary of this is that once I get my feet on the ground financially speaking, I fear that I will be suspicious that any attractive guys interested in me will just be into my $$$.

    2) I have a great desire to have children, and am concerned that this is an essential impossibility as a gay male. A corrolary of this is that I tend to buy into the argument that kids need both moms and dads, and I would feel pretty lousy raising kids on my own and thus depriving them of the experience of having a loving mom. I have not quite figured out a solution for this issue.

    3) I really don't immediately foresee anything positive about coming out. This would be a huge blow to my parents and "dishonor" them in the community once word gets out. I can confidently count on only my sister's understanding, as when I have innocently steered conversations towards gay issues with my parents and grandparents, I have elicited nothing other than contempt, hatred, fear, etc. Also, I imagine that once my classmates find out, it would be held against me that I kept it from them this long... although there is a gay group at our school that I am pretty sure would accept me with open arms... which would make my primary social status: "gay guy" (vs. my current "quiet, loner, pseudo-smart guy" status).

    3b) I don't foresee coming out as being at all beneficial for my career.

    So yeah, here I am. Just going with the flow for now. My parents have tried setting me up with girls in the past, but have now pretty much stopped. My mom thinks that I have issues (duh!), but seems to deny being gay as a possibility. So far, my strategy has been to not deny anything and offer just minimal (baseline) reassurance of heterosexuality when pushed into a corner. Actually, I was talking to mom a few days ago and she made some comment about me liking girls (me: silence) which shen then followed with "unless you like boys" (me: awkward silence for ~3 seconds), at which point she said "of course, i'm just messing around". So maybe she's onto something. But coming out over the phone just doesn's seem like a good idea from everything that I've read.

    And yes, I am quite aware that I am pissing my best years away. Though I'm still kinda young (22).

    I am not looking for sympathy, just "life advice". :slight_smile: Pretty simple, huh. Thanks for reading, and I'll be on often to respond to replies.
     
    #1 kevin7620, Jun 18, 2005
    Last edited: Jun 18, 2005
  2. Micah

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    First off, Welcome to the boards. :grin:

    The issues that you have with coming out seem pretty huge, especially when you look at the all together. Try focusing on the positives of being out. I think you'll find some motivation if you take a positive approach.

    Positives


    • No longer having to hide your sexuality. You will be able to be yourself.

    • Related to being yourself, you'll no longer have to block other potential friends out of your life.

    • Easier to find a boyfriend. If he's gay, and he knows you are too, then the chances of something happening are increased.


    I think if you tackle your concerns one at a time, then you'll see that they arent as bad as you thought.

    Negatives

    • Appearance: The thing that you have to remember is that being out isn't going to hurt your chances at finding a guy, no matter how unattractive you believe yourself to be. If you are in the closet, then guys won't know you're gay. If they dont know your gay, then you're simply not going to get a guy. Being out and letting other guys know you're gay, allows you the chance of getting a guy.

      You may think 'Im not going to get a guy if I'm out, I dont look good'. But you're not going to get a guy by being in the closet either. So if there's no to whether you're out or not, then you may as well be out.

    • Children: You obviously feel strongly about children having both a mum and a dad in their lives. There are a few solutions to this, but I think the best one is if you and your future partner made one of your close, female friends (see positives of being out) an active God-Mother, then the child will have a motherly figure in his/her life to look up to.

    • Family/friends/school: Coming out to family is usually the hardest thing to do, especially when they show no sign of acceptance towards homosexuals. If you're living at home, then I coming out to them might not be in your best interest. However, if you are living elsewhere, this removes a lot of the awkwardness which would be experienced. Also, it allows them to accept it in their own time, without pressure from you.

      I think you'll find your med-school to be more accepting towards homosexuals than, say, your highschool was. But being out will allow you to just be yourself around other people. You'll be able to make friends easier and if there is already a gay group, then acceptance is quite likely.

      Being labelled 'the gay guy' isnt the worst thing that can happen, and while it may seem weird at first, people usually get over that sort of thing quickly, especially since there are other gay people at your school.

    Good Luck with coming out. Again, welcome to the boards, and I hope I helped at least a bit.

    Dave
     
  3. nisomer

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    Well there sir. Firstly I would just like to say welcome to EC :slight_smile:. You will find many people here who have great advice (much better than mine) and are always willing to help. I'll have to say that it has helped me greatly just seeing that there are other people like me with the same problems and such. But anyways, down to your situation.

    I know how you feel. You often think like anything that you do, someone will think something of you and will suspect something. I suggest just trying to join one of your schools clubs/organizations or something like that, just so you get to know a few people and you can become friends with them. I don't know if it would be the same because you are in college, but I guess by doing this you will feel more "accepted". I think many people underestimate the power of school clubs and organiztions. My freshmen year in high school I was not involved in anything, I started losing many friends, and became very lonely and unsociable. Then last year I joined marching band. Man I met so many people, and also go to know many of my older friends which seemed to have been fading away.

    Hey, we are all different. But there are things you can do to change some of your looks. You could excercise more to lose some of your weight, and also buff you up a little more if you wanted. As to your yellow teeth, maybe brush a little more, or see a dentist once every 6 months. And hairy? Shave it off! :icon_mrgr

    Well there are always possiblities, but I don't think I can give you any of them. I'll leave it up to the others to answer this one.

    It may not be beneficial to your career, but it will most definalty be beneficial to your life, and to your happiness. Do you want to live your whole life hiding a secret inside you? Do you want to stay unhappy for the rest of your life? Unless you are truly happy right now, which seems unlikely since you came here looking for advice. I might be seeming a little harsh, but I just want to get the point across that coming out should not be blocked out from your mind. You WANT to come out don't you? You WANT to let go of that secret you have been holding on to for 22 years. I know you do.

    Who knows? Maybe your mom already knows? Or maybe she is just suspectful? It could turn out better than you think :slight_smile: And if you haven't already, I suggest reading "Seth's Guide to coming out" located on the top of this forum.

    Yes you are still young, and like I said we all have to come out at our own time. But don't wait too long so that you will regret coming out earlier in your younger years. I hope that I have been of help to you, and once again, welcome to the boards.
     
  4. joeyconnick

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    I'm sorry, I have to be the first to say it. What you meant to say was:

    Welcome to the EC, bitch!

    [I slay me! :lol:]
     
  5. joeyconnick

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    Well, you could do all this but I would recommend expending the effort coming to terms with yourself rather than feeling bad about yourself and trying to "fix" yourself (unless, of course, the weight thing endangers your health, in which case trying to "fix" that is for your own benefit, not in the (perhaps) vain hope that someone will find you more attractive.

    Yellow teeth can't be fixed with extra brushing, btw. Some people's teeth are just naturally yellow--the "pearly whites" sported by celebrities are generally the result of a lot of whitening or porcelain caps. Same thing is true with the unnatural hairlessness you see sported (or not, I guess) by celebrities and porn stars.

    Basically, society is QUITE fucked up in terms of what is presented as "desirable." I mean, what's considered "hot" has always been subject to social manipulation but I doubt that's it's ever been quite as articial as it is these days. For instance, to have the kind of over-muscled upper-torsos/chests you see on most guys in magazines (models and celebrities) most people have to take steroids of some kind. That kind of build is "natural" in maybe 1% of the population and you can bet that 1% doesn't match up completely with the 1% or less who are models/celebrities. There's a really interesting book on that whole male body beautiful myth called "The Adonis Complex." Check it out.

    Twinks are definitely cute (it would be hard for them not to be--there's an entire multi-billion dollar industry devoted to ensuring we think they are) but being attractive physically says nothing about someone's personality being a good match for yours (in fact, you could argue that someone who is quite twinkish is working pretty hard to look like that, which to me brings into question their priorities). Ultimately you need someone personality- and mind-compatible to partner with, if what you're looking for is a long-term relationship. So while looks are not unimportant, they're at least as unimportant as personality and intellectual synergy.

    The short version is that there really are several someones for everyone and that the best way to find them is to be (I know this sounds hokey) the best "you" you can be. What I mean by this is that the more content with and accepting you are of yourself, the more confident you will come off, and the more likely you'll not only attract someone decent but also be open to having a relationship with them.
     
  6. joeyconnick

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    Well aside from the sports thing, I doubt you have that much less in common with gay people, by which I mean super-academic people are not exactly the "norm" in society, so if you're staying in the closet because you fear you won't have stuff in common with people, you might as well abandon that reason.

    Danger, Will Robinson! The annals of history are LITTERED with gay people who have sublimated their sexual selves into being super-successful and they often turn around later in life and realise exactly how unfulfilled they feel personally. Not to say that career success and financial security aren't good goals but life requires BALANCE, and ignoring your intimate and interpersonal needs (we all have them) is probably not a wise long-term plan.

    I've already posted about this... basically you can live in a prison all of your own making when it comes to your (mis)conceptions about your attractiveness. You are setting yourself up for failure either way, which is not a very healthy way of approaching things. The way you've constructed your reality, you're either not going to attract anyone or you're only going to attract gold-diggers. I'm pretty sure that could easily become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

    I'd advise unbuying out of that argument. Whatever problems you might have heard that kids raised in single-parent families face, most of them can be tied back into the fact that most single-parent households are hugely economically disadvantaged in our modern globalised economy. A lot of reasearch has shown that what kids need, even more than two parents, is to feel loved, welcomed, and accepted, and while that might be easier if there are two parents to tend to their needs, it doesn't have anything to do with the gender of their parents. It's society that makes us feel like children need a mother and a father, and which still stigmatises those who do not have that ridiculous "traditional nuclear family" claptrap. The biggest "argument" for it is that children need both male and female role models--well, so what if that's true (and I'm not even saying I believe it is)? You don't have any female relatives who can be part of your hypothetical child's life?

    Plus, you might end up with a partner.

    And speaking from experience, two parents do not necessarily make for a happy home, and marital discord has a super-serious deleterious effect on kids.

    There are really far worse things than being "gay guy." Being "friendless lonely without any emotional intimacy guy" sounds like a far worse choice to me.

    As for your parents' "dishonour:" well, yeah, that can be pretty rough in certain cultural backgrounds. But frankly (and yes, I'm being somewhat militant here) any culture that requires the personal sacrifice of someone's entire intimate emotional life in order to be accepted is not a terribly healthy culture in my eyes. And parents who demand that from their children are... well, who's life is it anyway? Okay, obviously I'm speaking from a super-Western European/white North American point of view here but if you're as super-successful as you describe, or going to be, then isn't that enough honour for your family? I guess it comes down to how much you believe your life belongs to you and how much it belongs to your family. I've always believed in Shakespeare's "To thine own self be true,/and it must follow, as the night the day,/thou canst not then be false to any man."

    Well, it's a choice: potential career difficulties vs. guaranteed improvement in your personal life. And it's quite possible that, after a period of adjustment, coming out will make you MORE of a success because you won't be diverting so much personal energy into hiding your sexuality and dampening down your desires/needs. We often don't realise until we come out exactly what a burden being closeted has been. I mean, I was completely in denial to the point I thought I was straight and coming out was like... well, like I was a new person. Not that it was all perfect and rosy (although probably a lot better than some) but it's something I would do again in a heartbeat.

    Mothers are definitely more attuned to these kinds of things than fathers are. That's socialisation too, of course. Can you tell I'm a big sociology buff?

    Coming out over the phone is definitely not something I'd recommend; I really personally feel coming out should be done in person if at all remotely possible. Lots of people swear by letters but I think the metaphorical distance doing it by text creates is not conducive to the process. Every situation is different, however.

    Wow... you're really doing a number on yourself, huh? Some people still don't come out PERIOD, so don't beat yourself up for being as ancient as 22. Not everyone has the wherewithal to come out at 14 or 12 or whatever the youngest coming out age of the day is. There are tons of mitigating factors and ultimately it boils down to being a super-personal decision.

    So... hopefully some of this has been useful food for thought. I didn't mean to write a novella here but I tend to get carried away at times. *grin*
     
  7. Paul_UK

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    Welcome Kevin!

    Others have already said most of what I wanted to say, so I'll avoid being repetitive.

    I completely agree with Joey here. Certainly from my experience my whole life improved when I came out. The whole process beings about a new-found confidence. And because you are not trying to hide anything, you are free to get on with your life and your career without having to watch what you say and do in case your cover is blown. I don't know what career path you have chosen (did you say?) but I doubt being openly gay will be as much of a handicap as you think. Indeed the self-confidence you gain could help your career, especially when it comes to interviews and interacting with people generally. You won't have to worry about avoiding issues when chatting to colleagues socially - and this social interaction has as much (if not more) affect on your career progression as qualifications.

    I came out when I was 27. For a while I wished I had come out earlier, but there's nothing to be gained by regretting such things. In fact things have fallen into place well for me and I met my partner less than a year afterwards (we have been together for around 12 years now).

    As for your physical appearance concerns, don't try to be a twink! You can do something about the weight problem by improving your diet (cut down on junk food and stop eating when you feel full) and trying to exercise a bit more (walking or cycling instead of driving, using the stairs instead of the lift etc), but don't get obsessed by it. Skin may improve with diet and exercise (in my experience junk food does cause spots, no matter what the experts say), if not see the doctor. A dentist may be able to help with your teeth (assuming you don't smoke - if you do then quitting will help there). As for body hair, some people go for that so don't worry (some twinks may go for the "bear" look!). You are what you are physically, just do what you can to make the best of it!
     
  8. Kevin, I hear you loud and clear. Coming out can be a pretty daunting task, but the great thing is that you don't have to do it until you feel ready. Time is on your side. It really is. Good luck to you.