So, most boring coming out story ever: I came out to my family as just gay because I ended up having a boyfriend I wanted to hang out with on a weekend my family was visiting. Everyone in my family basically didn't care, save for my mom, who believed that I was going to get shot in the head or drug out in the street to be beaten to death. So now that I am pretty much out to everyone as either bi, or gay to everyone who knows me I feel much more comfortable with my life. So now that I am out to my parents as gay, and my mom has finally stopped crying I have had more complications. I know that I really like being with guys, but I have some strange attraction to women. Its not sexual, but it is incredibly confusing. Is it normal to want to have vaguely intimate relationships with women as a gay man? IDK crazy shit. Also I am a total newb at dating in general let alone trying to date guys. I have met lots of guys who like me, but its really hard to find a guy who is the type that I would want to be with. I never tried to date in high school or really in college, and never a guy until recently, and the guys I meet seem for the most part flaky. Several of the guys I meet just seem to be sex driven horn dogs, and it is just an enormous turn off. I mean don't get me wrong I have a strong libido too, but save that for after the relationship has turned into something. Is this going to be something that I will have to deal with often or am I just hitting a rut with dating? Is my dream of having a relationship with a guy that is more akin to some kind of rivalry/thing where we push one another to become stronger or better in some way, and happen to have sex with one another, and live together. Not sure if that is just some kind of strange fantasy that would never actually happen, or not. Aside from that my friends have given me the moniker in the group as the "gaytheist", and one of my friends came out privately to me, and joined the ranks of flaky guys I know by coming out and propositioning me for sex in the same elevator ride. Anywho, I just wanted to leave these ponderings on the web to see if this was typical for someone who "discovers"(?) themselves at the 25+ mark. Mehhhh thoughts:dry:
Well, I don't know if it's typical for people coming out after 25, but there's definitely some parts of it that sound familiar. For me, there was some difference in how I felt about women after coming out vs. before coming out. Beforehand, I was kind of fixated on the confusion between not really feeling interested, and the idea that I'd have to date one eventually (so trying to force feeling interested). I did have quite a few female friends, but even at the best of times, I never let them come really close. After coming out, some of that changed. I no longer felt obliged to see women as: "must date one eventually" and just started enjoying my time with my female friends. This, in turn, led to a closer friendship than I ever allowed myself to have before, and thus a lot of confusing feelings. Almost as if I never really knew what friendship was before. Leading to sudden feelings of real appreciation for women right after I stopped seeing them as romantic options. Which is massively confusing, but I'm getting the impression that over time, it gets easier and easier to filter out the "good friendship" feeling from the romantic feelings I get almost exclusively for men. Anyhows, that's my theory. Rereading what I wrote makes me think it might not make sense to anyone else As for the dating: I don't think you're alone in what you want. Personally, Id be pretty happy to end up in a "perpetual best friends with benefits" scenario. Looking around at my friends, I even think that's more or less the arrangement most couples who have been together for a long time end up in. So I think it's definitely doable to find a guy with similar interests. There might be several reasons you don't find what you want, though. First of all: what exactly do you mean by "hard to find a guy who is the type that I would want to be with"? While I don't think it's bad to filter out the flaky horndog kind of guys, it might be worthwhile to be open to the possibility of dating outside your "type". Okay, maybe they might not seem like the ideal guy on first sight, but sometimes it does pay to go on at least one date and see if you might yet be won over. "type" can change with getting to know people better. Personally, I do have a "type" of guy that turns my head in the street. Yet, none of the guys I ever really crushed on fit that type. Getting to know them better just made them my type over time. Secondly: if you never find what you want, you might want to take a look at where you meet new people. Bars and clubs are rather known for attracting guys into hook-ups and casual sex, so it's not unusual if you end up disappointed by what you find there. You might want to see what else there is for GLBT meetups or groups in the neighbourhood. And lastly, this is not really a tip, but I guess it makes sense that there's a lot of horndogs around. Some people spent years and years in the closet and just end up desperate for sex the first few years after coming out. You could almost say that for some people puberty starts after coming out. (or worse: some people coming out after 20 have both the puberty phase of a 16-year old and the funds and time to actually pursue the kind of life the 16-year-old can only dream of). It might have even been the same for your friend: if you're about 100% of the gay guys he knows or is out to, it might just be he saw you as his only chance at sex. That might not help you, but at least it helps at understanding where some of those guys come from.
