I was just wondering about denial. Like, how do we do it? And for so long? And what makes us stop? I remember thinking boys were cute since elementary school. But I ignored it, because I "liked girls." It wasn't until I was about 15 that my interest in boys became more apparent to me, to the point that instead of ignoring it, I began to actively deny it. This lasted... 7 years (that was seven years ago!? Damn, I'm old). During that seven years I spent my share of time looking at gay porn and yaoi hentai. So how did I manage to convince myself that I was straight for so long? The mind's a hell of a thing, isn't it? So, could anyone tell me more about denial? How we can convince ourselves that 2+2=5, when we know full well it isn't? Or, would you like to share your own stories? (I don't mean to be nosey, but I'm new at being gay so I'm kind of curious)
I myself was in denial for about six years. Why we are capable of lying to ourselves Im not sure. However, I do feel as if it has something to do with the way people are raised. After so long of hearing something one tends to believe it.
I think that denial starts with the family. Because of obvious religious pressure as well as a generally small population of LGBT individuals, there is a disconnect between reality and what is percieved. You think things like gays are different, they aren't me or my family. I'm not gay, that only happens to other people. Gays are all flamboyant/dykey, but I'm not! And stuff like that. Especially in school when all we want is to fit in. Any sort of rationalization becomes perfect to convince yourself.
I wonder about this a lot myself. I did the same thing, and overcompensated by acting as "straight" as possible in a lot of places, like work, out of fear. It was that I would have to admit that my life was going to be harder, and that if I admitted it I would have to grieve the loss of the stereotypical white picket fence life I thought I was supposed to have.. in the end you can only pretend to be something you're not for so long. I wanted to fit in with my conservative private school and aspired to what the other girls aspired to... Even though I knew I didn't want that life, that just made me feel WORSE because isnt that the ideal?? I was somehow oblivious to the fact that I had choices, options and I could stand up for myself. I thought I had too much to lose. And I wouldn't say that I was consciously lying and deceiving people and hiding my "gayness," it was mostly denial and subconscious and trying to delude myself that I was doing what I wanted and that everyone felt like me they just didn't admit it. But there were lies and secrets, but it was more along the lines of my interests, beliefs, political and otherwise.. I was afraid of tripping someone's gaydar. I was out for a bit in college, but I was scared back into the closet when it came time to graduate and I was expected to get married and have kids. And the sad part is, I think I didn't give people enough credit, and I was living up to what I thought were their expectations but really I probably blew up in my head. The world would not have ended if I didn't get married after college. I thought, this is how it's supposed to be, nobody really likes this (when me and my ex were in the bedroom), you just act. I thought I had to live a life of serving a man and like it or I was not a "real" woman... ironing uniforms and making sandwiches and staying up for months on end with babies was what I thought I was "supposed" to do, and I had a total breakdown and couldnt understand why I had everything I'd ever "wanted" and still was so, so unhappy. I feel really stupid now. I was convincing myself I wanted a life that I didn't want, but thought I should. I was totally denying my own feelings, thoughts, beliefs, desires... I wanted to be perfect, and even though I did have some friends outside of school I could be honest with, it was the people pleaser and perfectionist in me that kept me in denial. If you say it enough times, it's true, right? :dry: But yeah, the denial is SO powerful... like, you're waking up in bed next to a woman, and still believe you're straight. Your experiences with the other sex are the only ones that "count." And it's petrifying to have to discover yourself when you finally figure out what you've been doing (lying to yourself), and then you're overcome with guilt because, at least in my case, I was the one putting the most pressure on myself to be like my "friends." What I one day realized was that hey, if these people freak out at the very idea of one of "them" being gay, I don't need myself or my kids around these people. Now, I'm in the middle of this process of creating a more honest life for myself. It means I've had to give up a lot, and right now I'm feeling pretty isolated, but hopeful. I did have to literally look in the mirror and force myself to come out... to myself. I actually had to say the words, "I'm gay. I'm a lesbian." Over and over until I could really start to accept it.
I was in denial for about 4 years. I just did not understand how I liked both men and women. The church I went to did not help things because they say that homosexuality is a sin so I thought that I was sinning. When I found other theories about this, I started to accept myself.
I was in denial until I was 18, when I got to college. When I was finally exposed to different perspectives, I realized that a lot of what I believed to be objective fact was really just shaped by the circles of people I had been around: namely, Catholic school and Degrassi (I wasn't very social). I didn't admit I was gay for a long time because I was never given any clear or accurate definition of what being gay really meant. I was taught it was evil and wrong, and so of course I would try to avoid anything I perceived to be evil and wrong, even if those things were my natural emotions. This is kind of why I majored in Sociology at college. The structure of society and distribution of knowledge greatly effects people's understanding of other people, and when denied adequate knowledge on important topics, ignorance can have devastating effects. An increase in teen pregnancies in abstinence-only high schools comes to mind...
I was in denial for at least 7 years. since middle school there has been a part of me thats always known i was gay. then as i got older i realized that i did like guys even tho i was trying to convince myself that i liked girls and during that time i also looked at gay porn. I would always be checking out guys in public and still i told myself that i was straight. I think that was because I grew up in a really conservative Catholic family so i was trying to be like the Church and my family expected me to be. It just doesn't work. I just got to the point where I was like what am I doing? I should be doing what makes me happy, not what people expect of me.
7 year denier here as well (huh, lots of us... i wonder if there's a link there). As far as why I denied it, there were two reasons, both from the same cause which was my church's teachings on homosexuality. 1) Accepting it would mean I had accepted my sin, and thus would make me a bad Christian, and 2) Accepting it would make me lose all of my status and positions in my church. Considering over 70% of my friends at the time were from church, this made perfect sense to me. Was it smart... no, not really. Did I hide it from myself and everyone else, absolutely. Now, you also ask "how can we convince ourselves 2 + 2 = 5 when we know full well it isn't?" That's a difficult question. I think it might have something to do with making things comfortable for us. This explains a lot of non-straight individuals (myself included) constant finding of evidence that other people are not straight and ignoring all the (much more present) evidence against our images, because it's comfortable to keep believing our crush could love us back. It's not limited to the LGBT crowd though. The odds of winning the lottery are astronomically high, yet people still play it every day. Some of them have convinced themselves that the next time will be the winning time. It's kind of the same, except in this example we're playing the lotto hoping the next time we say "I'm straight" it'll sound true.
i was and currently still am in denial. the reason for denial is that it helps you cope in way. you dont have to deal. problem is, the thing you are denying never really goes away.
But... acknowledging that you're in denial is essentially admitting the truth, which means you really aren't in denial any more In other words, that's a really positive step. I see denial as very different from being closeted. One is simply saying "I'm absolutely *not* gay" to oneself. The other is acknowleding that you are gay, or probably are gay, but not yet being ready to share that with others. And I completely agree that denial is a great strategy for having to deal with feelings that can potentially be overwhelming. Denial really does serve a valid purpose; it enables us to push through difficult situations, and it can be a means of allowing our minds to stop and take a breather before absorbing and owning who we are. From a psychological perspective, denial is related to our construction of schemas. You can think of a schema as a collection of observations, assumptions, facts, and other data that we collect about any given awareness, decision, person, etc. Before we even meet someone, we begin to form our schema about them, based on, say, what they write on a message board, how they dress, how they might answer a question in class, how they walk, who we see them hanging out with. This all happens, for the most part, in the unconscious. We categorize them: "That guy seems nice." "That girl seems like an asshole." "He is a smoker." "She seems like an athletic type." All of those things form parts of the schema, and when we don't know much about someone, any new piece of information that conflicts with old information will likely just update the schema because there isn't much to go on to hold onto the old information. But as we get to know someone (including ourselves) for a long time, we fill in more information, and the schema becomes more complex. And something such as sexual orientation, for someone about whom we have a complex schema, is pretty foundational; we base a lot of other awareness and assumptions about someone based on what we believe to be their sexual orientation. And for most of us, our schemas tend to default to "heterosexual" unless there's some reason (meeting someone at a gay bar, for example) to indicate otherwise. So imagine that you've spent 18 years assuming you're straight. That schema gets reinforced by society because that's the dominant orientation. You build up beliefs about yourself, who you are, what you will do, who you'll be attracted to, the idea you'll get married and have 2.3 kids and have a house with a white picket fence... all of these heteronormative ideas that society has given you. Then, you start getting conflicting information: You find yourself attracted to a guy. You enjoy looking at gay porn. The first response, if the existing schema about your sexual orientation is "I am straight", is to simply reject the new information as wrong, because it doesn't fit with the existing schema. In practical terms, this serves us, because if we always incorporated conflicting information to an already-complex schema, we wouldn't have much of an understanding of anyone around us. But in the case of sexual orientation, it's a bitch, because not only have we identified ourselves as straight, we've built all these other expectations about what that means for us. And there will be very, very strong resistance to throwing away the belief we're straight, because it means that we have to rebuild an awful lot of the parts of the schema, in terms of what we think about ourselves, what we fear others will think about us, what our existing beliefs about gay people are, and all of that. So... we throw away the info that doesn't fit, both because it doesn't match what's already there, and because we don't want to change that part of ourselves, since it will necessitate changing other foundational aspects of our beliefs about ourselves. Eventually, the evidence becomes overwhelming, and we can no longer look at the existing schema, the new data coming in, and continue to throw away the new data, because it is now more convincing that the existing data. And that's when we start to begin to accept the new information. And that's where the 5 stages of loss come in (denial-anger-bargaining-grief-acceptance) because we have to process the "loss" of ourselves as a straight person, and all the associated losses that come with that. And, in case it isn't obvious, our parents have complex schemas about us, as do our friends and others who know us well, and they have the same issues with changing the foundational aspects of their schemas of us, which is why it can take them time to process and accept. That was all a bit intellectual but I hope it helps to provide a little better way of understanding how the denial process works (or, at least, one current theory on how it works.)
chip, dude that was awesome. i like the intellectual stuff. yes, that is what i was going through. i had a straight schema for years and although i knew i was attracted to other guys, that did not "fit" with the long term schema i had formyself or that i knew was expected of me. so i would say to myself, "i am not gay" those are just thoughts but i am not gay. then that transitioned into, "ok, i am attracted to some guys but i just think they are attractive, i dont want to be with them". then that transitioned into, "ok, i'm finding myself more attracted to guys that i am girls, ok, i just haven't met the right girl." then that transitioned into, "ok, i'm not going to pursue girls anymore and i know there are no guys that are like me that i would like and that would like me back, so i'm not going to be with anyone." and then that transitioned into, "ok, i'm effing lonely, im tired of being alone, i really want a guy but i dont want to deal with all this gay crap, why me!" and then that transitioned into, "ok, there are some hot guys that are actually gay but i dont click with them, i dont click with anyone, i'm not sexual at all, im just going to be alone. i'm asexual." so you see, there is a lot of avoidance. i think the real thing is that this new schema (accepting one's attraction to guys) is hard because i'm resisting all of what that entails (other people knowing, being in a relationship where people would know, how can i have kids with a guy, my family wouldn't accept my kids from a gay situation, disappointing my family, blah blah blah.) so i sat in avoidance for years. problem is, i aint getting younger and as of late i feel that i am wasting a key time in my life where others my age have families or at least a significant other. i think i'm in all of the stages. maybe i am not in denial to myself anymore (yes, i see guys im i'm like, "he's hot" to myself). i'm in denial to others though. i let them believe what fits into the perfect schema. i'm straight. i have been angry a lot lately. not sure what bargaining is really. and i have been sad a lot too.
The stages aren't always sequential; we process some of them at the same time, and we move back and forth through them as we process. "bargaining" is "ok, i'm finding myself more attracted to guys that i am girls, ok, i just haven't met the right girl." or "Well, maybe i'm attracted to guys now, but it's just a phase and I'll end up with a girl." And the anger is normal and part of the process, and the grief is part of coming to acceptance. And... you're not *denying* to others, you are just not ready to be open with others; it's different than being in denial, and it's perfectly ok. Particularly coming out older (I didn't come out until my late 20s) it is harder because you feel like you should have done this already, and poeple around you already have an idea of who you are... but you'll find out that they really won't give a crap. It's simply a matter of being ready, emotionally, to put yourself out there. It's sort of like standing naked in a room full of people because you're making yourself very vulnerable. But once you start doing it, it gets easier, and I think you'll be surprised how quickly it can progress once you start taking the first steps. The good news is you're already past the denial, and that's one of the hardest parts.
I have a hard time figuring out when I went from not realizing I was gay to when/if I was in denial. I'm not sure when I finally understood that to be gay simply means that I'm attracted to guys instead of women and has nothing to do with being wimpy, flamboyant or wanting to be a woman. I recall being really upset the morning I woke up and first realized that the reason I liked certain guys was because I was gay. After that I thought I might still find a woman I could date, but never did and I'm glad about that now. I'd say I have more regret than denial.
mnguy how do we get past this so we can live our lives and not be complete at 60 when we are old. lol.
