Living with a Crush

Just to preface this a little, I'm a guy in my teens and I know that I am attracted to men, but have never told anyone about these feelings or had any intimate experience with another guy. My only relationships and intimate experiences have been with girls. However, I have stopped dating them, and really pursuing anyone. I think at some level I have definitely decided that it's not fair for me to keep up my charade of being totally straight when I know deep down I'm not.

Anyway, my current living situation is with a guy, my best friend. I have always really valued my close relationships with other guys since my personality doesn't quite fit with the "typical" guy. My guy friends are a different breed of guys. Other guys have certain societal standards to live up to in terms of being all about sports, girls, and putting every ounce of focus on making sure their reputation as a "masculine" guy isn't tarnished. My definition of what it means to be a guy doesn't follow along all these lines, and neither does my personality. I try my best to be me, while keeping my secret feelings to myself. Therefore, the relationships I have built with close guy friends of mine, I heavily value and appreciate since I think they are somewhat hard to come by.

The clincher with my current living situation is that I am head over heels for my roommate, my best friend. If I could bet money on his sexuality, I'd say he is gay too. He never expresses interest in girls here, and when asked about crushes will always just fall back on some interest he has at home that has never seemed to materialize into anything, and the dude has girls all over him all the time and he's just not interested. At some level I think that because he's so much like me, I'm convinced he is gay. I obviously can't rule out the possibility that he could just be a really conservative straight guy, in so far as girls are concerned.

Anyway, being "in the closet" as I am, it is really frustrating and hard for me to continue to live with him since I have all of these feelings for him all the time. I've talked about moving out next year and finding new roommates, but he still wants to live with me. We only planned on living together for a year when we were merely acquaintances, and now that our friendship has blossomed, and our living situation is a fun time I think he wants to stick around. He tells me since we get along so well it'd be kind of foolish for either of us to risk living with other people when we're doing fine. Some part of me just wants to come out and tell him that I have an enormous crush on him, and I'm gay, and this is why I need to spend less time with him. While another part of me is horrified that I could lose my best friend. I feel like common criticism to this is that, well if he is really your best friend he wouldn't ditch you just because you're gay. But I think that that reality is just something far too hard to face.

So right now I feel like I'm at a fork in a road, with the destination between my two paths far too uncertain. I could come out and perhaps tell him of my feelings for him (if he takes the opportunity to say he is gay as well). The results of this could be that I enter into one of the happiest and genuine relationships of my life thus far, or he could be uncomfortable with living with a gay guy, and I lose my best friend. I'm trying my best to weight out how to handle the situation. Do I tell him and roll the dice with the consequences? Or do I just find another roommate and hope that seeing him less will ease my situation?

 

Congratulations, EC. I guess this place really works :icon_wink !

I do have a success story to share. I decided to remain with my current roommate. But perhaps more importantly, I decided to come out to him, and actually perhaps unwisely gave the one-two punch and ended up admitting I liked him. The result? We're sort of together right now! I also came out to three of my best friends.

I feel very liberated, excited, and a tad scared. While it was harder than I thought to tell some of my friends, they were extremely receptive and supportive, as I had thought they would be. I guess the hardest thing for me was just realizing that once I said it, I really couldn't go back to keeping up my charade as a straight guy.

As for my crush and boyfriend, I guess? Ha, Can't believe it. But as for him, this is all very exciting, this is my first relationship with a guy, and I plan on enjoying it while it lasts.

Thanks for the advice, everyone.

 

I'm not sure how useful my advice can be. I decided to keep living with him primarily because next year that places me in close proximity to my others close friends as well, and that outweighed the advantages of living with a different group of people.

As for how I came out to him...I think it was pure luck. We had both been drinking that night, and when we came back to our room, we just started watching TV, sitting on the couch together. Living with the person I liked a lot, and seeing them so much led me to be sort of obsessed, lol, so...with a bunch of drinks in me I guess I lost my inhibitions and fears and just allowed myself to go with it as my situation unfolded.

He thought it'd be funny to draw on me with a marker when I fell asleep, but he ended up washing it off and as he was wiping away at my arms and hands, I started to just kind of run my fingers along his hands. I know...I have some really, really sweet game! Haha. whatever, lame, I know, but it worked! Anyway, after all the marker was gone he sat back down next to me, and I kind of moved in closer and just looked at him. He said to me, "I know what you want to do." And I replied, feigning shock, "What?! What do I Want to do?" Then he said, "Lets just do it." And we kissed. My first gay kiss. So, I guess I was kind of misleading I never actually TOLD him I was gay, nor did I ever actually tell him I liked him. I imagine it's fairly obvious to him now though, haha.

Now it's been a few weeks of me living with the guy I like so much, and as you can imagine it has been really, really fun.