Where do I start?

the way i see it you have three options;

1. continue to live your life as a single person and have noone in your life. that way no one will ever be able to say offically you are gay and you can keep up appearances that maybe you are straight. here's the problem with that. people will eventually start asking you where is your girlfriend or wife ? dont' you want kids? how come you never married? etc. that will still lead to them wondering and asking if you are gay.

2. get a girlfriend or marry someone to keep up appearances and make people believe you are straight: here's the problem with that. you not only ruin someone else's life, you will be denying yourself what you realliy want and you will be very unhappy as well. nobody wins here.

3. live your life for yourself and if they think you are gay and have a problem with this, that's their problem. you can tell them if you want or you can keek that side of your life private until you're ready to tell. the good part is that you will be a happier person. the bad part is that you may lose some family members or friends that disown you. however, many will support you and still love you. you never know. usually its' better than you think and noone really cares. but some people do have a rough time of it. but if they are going to toss you aside like that, who needs them anyway.

and it's not a "screw up" to be you. you are perfect as you are.

 

Welcome to EC!

>>>I don't wan't anybody to think that I'm not straight.

Ordinarily, I'd ask you to explain this thought a bit further, but I think you did so pretty well in your opening paragraphs. You've spent much of your life equating "gay" with "bad" (or "undesirable"), and spent much of it attempting to snuff out any hint that you might be gay. But now that you're coming to grips with the fact that you ARE gay (or at least on the gay side of the bisexual scale), you still feel the need to keep the illusion up. You're still scared of "being labeled a 'fag'", if you will.

And IH has the right idea. You ARE gay. There's nothing wrong with being gay. Some of us view being gay not as a curse, but as a blessing. I'm a rather "masculine" gay guy, myself, and I don't know what percentage of people on the street might pick out that I'm gay on first (or even second) glance. But here's the thing - I don't give a damn. Maybe they all do. If so, it just means they got it right. I don't give any thought to what people might think. I'm busy living my kick-ass life, and I don't want to take time out from it on a regular basis to wonder and worry if somebody can tell I'm gay.

I don't think this is going to be a really simple thing for you to fix. You've got about a decade and a half of "training" (even if it's self-taught) to undo. You're taking the right steps in the right direction. You seem to be aware that you're gay, and you no longer seem overly freaked out by it. But you may need to keep working on accepting it. And loving it. Because for many of us, being gay kicks ass. And if you can come to embrace that point of view, you'll stop worrying about whether people think you're a "straight single guy" or a gay guy.

Lex

 

possibly you should read tim gunn's book. i have not read it but from what i hear it basically says he has decided to live an asexual life. i'm not sure if this is what the book is about or not. what i continue to hear you say is that how other people perceive you is more important than how you perceive yourself and how you want to live. i can tell you with confidence that you cannot pray the gay away. you are either attracted to men, women, or both to some varying degree. if you are somewhat in the middle, people either pick one and deny the other. if you are into the opposite sex, then you're "accepted by society" if you are only into the same sex, then you have to accept it, go through years of self persecution over it, over live your life in hiding or covering it up or using other people (wife , girlfriends, and kids as a mask for your real self). it's your life. but i encourage you to sex counselling to help you work through this.

 

Well, a few things.

First of all, thanks for sharing your story. It's very similar to mine - I come from a pretty religious family also (lapsed catholic, we went to other churches but a lot of the ethos was still there), I spent a large part of high school and college trying to fit in and avoid "those" feelings, and after a while people started suspecting things and asking those sorts of questions ("when are you getting a girlfriend" and so on). I saw high school in ways very similar to how you did, and watched similar movies and such to explain it to myself or offer a way out (not Shawshank, but things totally like that). So I do know what it's like.

That said, hiding this kind of thing and stuffing it away never really works in the long run. You mention that your big concern is that this might affect how people see you - but from what you've said, it's already affecting how people see you. The choice isn't whether you can preserve your public image, but rather what you're going to allow yourself to do with your life when your public image starts to fail on its own. I'm not saying this to make you feel trapped or anything, I just want to point out that if you're accomplishing anything with continuing to hide, it's only denying yourself something that you seem to want. If that's enough for you and you can accept that, then by all means go for it. But don't do it to uphold a public perception.

Finally, I would strongly urge you not to pursue "cures" for being gay. They are immensely psychologically harmful and, as you noticed, almost exclusively religious-based, so they have a goal that doesn't seem to be your main agenda anyway. More than anything, I would encourage you to define for yourself what it means to be gay, or to have gay feelings. Lots of people want to tell you what that means - all the way from Catholic authorities to, let's admit it, a not small portion of the gay community itself. Put all of that, and them, aside for a moment and ask yourself, what do YOU want it to mean? More importantly, what do you want it to mean today? This week? This month? It will probably be a good idea to think short-term about this for the time being. Planning for the rest of your life (such as your earlier plan to be single forever - something else we also have in common, I used to be dead set on this) will be more stressful than it's worth. Think baby steps.

And after all that, a belated welcome to EC. Glad you joined, and looking forward to hearing more from you!

 

Hi there and welcome to EC.

A lot of people experience the same kind of fears and concerns that you have right now. It's normal and natural. However, it's not something you want to stay stuck in for a long time. I'd say you've been there long enough (i.e. since you were 7). It's time to move on and try something else on.

You said yourself that your mom might even know. She has come right out and asked if you liked boys over girls. And she didn't warn you that depending on your answer you were going to be disowned or burn in hell. She let it go. She's waiting for you to tell her.

You also said that you don't want to "destroy" the life you've been building for 10 years. What do you mean when you say this? Will all that you've learned in school / university be deleted from your memory? Will your life experiences (trips, friendships, etc.) be somehow blanked out from your existence? Will the money you've saved in your bank account suddenly be deleted? Your clothes, car, home? The vast majority of things in your life will remain TOTALLY unaffected by you accepting and acknowledging that you're gay. You won't be jeapardising a long term serious relationship, because you've denied yourself that opportunity so far - and are intent on continuing to deny yourself that opportunity. The thought of that makes me sad. The reality is that you still have most of your life AHEAD of you. It isn't the past 10 years that you should be concerned about. It's the next 60 years that you should be considering.

You're gay, and there's nothing you're going to be able to do to change that. If you don't have any fundamental issues with that, why do you think other people do? Do you think they're perhaps misinformed? Could it be because they don't actually KNOW a single gay person who can break the misconceptions that these people are carrying around? Is it possible that if they knew you were gay they'd slowly (or quickly) come around and be quite accepting - seeing that you're living a decent and honourable life?

Probably.

 

I was born and raised Catholic myself, although I didn't go to Catholic school. Fortunately, my parents were both very understanding when I came out to them, and they've been very accepting of both me and my partner.

You say you don't wan't to accept that you're gay because it would clash with the self image I have. Something I often say to people early on in the coming-out process is this. Being gay means you dig guys. That's it. That's all. Everything else is optional. If you've always pictured yourself...oh, let's say going to sporting events, shouting yourself hoarse for the home team, going out for beers with the guys, then going home to your house in the suburbs with the white picket fence with a wife and two kids...guess what? All of that is still totally within your grasp. The only difference is your wife is going to have a penis.

Another thing I'd suggest: get to know us a bit more. If you don't know any gay people personally, EC is a fine place to start. Read some threads, post a bit, interact some more. Because right now, "the whole gay thing" sounds like it's foreign territory to you. And because of that, it's easy to want to distance yourself from it, in a "well, I'm not like THAT" sort of way. But the more you interact with gay people, the more that feeling of alienation will disappear. You'll see that there's a ton of variety within the gay community, with just one thing binding us - our non-straight sexualities.

Lex

 

Just let go maaan.

 

Hey, if you want to go the "single forever" route, I guess you're more than welcome to. But I don't think it'll stop people from wondering. Because the biggest clue that somebody might be gay past the age of twenty or so is "disinterest in the opposite sex". Of course, you're welcome to fake that, too. Pretend to ogle the women your friends ogle, and lump all the women you come across as either hot-and-stuck-up-so-not-worth-the-effort, or too-ugly-to-consider. And then I guess you can be that weird presumably-straight guy who sends out the creepy vibe. But I'm not sure that'd be any better than being a suspected (or even known) homosexual.

You say you'd prefer being straight, or even asexual, to being gay. But it seems clear that you are gay (or gay-leaning-bi). In which case, the question is whether you'd be interested in moving along the path of self-acceptance. Where you can feel comfortable with who you are, where you can date or hook-up or get into a relationship if you want, where you can let the people in your life know. If not now, then sometime down the road. Or if you're still hoping you can pull off the straight act for another forty or fifty years.

Lex