To start off, I am a 15 year old boy who has never had feelings for a guy before, I've never thought about guys in that way before, I like girls, when I think about sex, I imagine myself with a woman not a guy, I don't think I'm gay, I think I am bi but I don't even think about sex with guys and I have never even had feelings for a guy before, and then comes religion (muslim) and at times I feel guilty for having feelings for that person. We are both muslims by the way, but he is more religious than me. Moving on, so I have known this guy (lets call him Alex for now) ever since 2008, we have pretty much been best pals ever since then, and ever since then, me and my two other best friends (we'll call them Mike and Jonah for now and are also muslim) have pretty much formed our own group and have been like that ever since 2009, so up until 2011, everything was fine and nothing went wrong, but then ever since last year, I realized that I had loved him for a long time now, I was just too scared to admit it to myself, and ever since I admitted it to myself, I have been thinking about him all the time, wanting to be with him, and wanting to talk to him all the time. At times I think that its just a normal part of a bromance or something and that its normal, but then at one time I had a dream where we accidentally fell on each other and then I was about to get up and he pulled me and looked straight to my eyes and kissed me, ever since then my feelings for him like just exploded and I told him about the dream and he said it was just a dream (I have had four dreams about this guy so far!), and I have thought of having a relationship with him, but we would have absolutely have no sex and the only thing we would mostly do is hug and kiss, I am attracted to him emotionally, but sexually 0%, and the relationship would be hidden from our friends and family which is crazy, and I don't want anyone to tell me that its better if we tell our friends and family because if we do that, our friends won't talk to us again and our families would send us to the military. Now here comes the part where I am really confused, sometimes he would kiss me (which is cultural and normal in our family), hug me, put his arm around me, ask me to massage him, he would rest his head on my knees or arms sometimes, and even sometimes he would ask me if he could touch my boobs and butt which I would reply no to and would usually get away from him because I know its a joke, he does that a lot to me, the only thing he does to Mike and Jonah is kiss them formally, so when I try to do what is best for me and distance myself from him so I can forget about this, my mom would ask me why am I not hanging out with him (my mom likes Alex more than Mike and Jonah) or Mike and Jonah would probably ask me the same thing, and then one time when I actually tried to spend less time with him and hang out with some friends from school, he would ask me why am I not hanging out with him and he would say that he doesn't like it when I hang out with others from school and say that he is jealous, and then at times when we would have group conversations, he would say if any of you (me and our best friends) were gay, I would never hang out with you at all, but Alex isn't homophobic, Mike and Jonah are, I'm the same as Alex. At times he would just pull me and kiss me, ask me to hug him, and sometimes I would just kiss him out of nowhere, by the way, when I say he kisses me, I mean like on the cheeks, not lips, and then when it comes to girls, Mike and Jonah would start talking a lot, while he doesn't, as for me, before I realized my feelings for him, I thought I had feelings for this one girl in my school and I would always talk about her in front of them. I am also one year younger than him, me and Jonah are born in 1997, Alex and Mike are born 1996, I skipped a grade, so I am in the same grade as Mike and Alex are, but not Jonah, and there is also a 3 month difference between me and Alex. I just am really confused, one part of me says what am I thinking? Nothing will ever happen, this is not right, what will people think of you? You don't want to ruin your friendship with him? Do you? what will your friends say? (Mike and Jonah are very judgmental when it comes to gays) Your muslim, you can't do this, and then another part of me says that something is gonna happen and that he feels the same way about me too, and that I should tell him that I feel this way for him. SOMEONE PLEASE HELP ME!!!! I just need someone to tell me what all this means, before I probably blurt out something like this: LOOK I REALLY LIKE YOU AND I THINK WE WERE MEANT FOR EACH OTHER. because if I said that to him, he wouldn't be freaked out at all, right?. -_-
Hi there, and welcome to EC! I think you've come to the right place. It's important to get these kinds of things off your chest - and sharing them here means you're less likely to blurt them out to someone else - with negative consequences. At the age of 15 you've still got LOTS of time to figure this out. If you don't think you're ready to come out to anyone else, and you're not sure how Alex will react to you coming out or telling him that you like him, then perhaps it really is better for you to keep this to yourself - at least for a while. Not forever. But for a while. I know the thoughts and feelings can be really distracting. But if you were to just decide that you're not going to do anything about this for 6 months, and you'll revist the sitaution then, it might be less distracting and frustrating for you. Not sure what else to suggest. Other than to stick around here, read the stories of others, and see if the situation you're in gets any clearer with time.
Hey Thunderfall, welcome to EC. Take a deep breath. Everything is going to be fine. As Jim said, you're either fourteen or fifteen years old. This gives you plenty of time to figure things out. There is really no rush. You didn't mention which country you were from, but I think that's important in the context of this discussion. As I am sure you know, there are certain countries - particularly in the Middle East - which are really hostile toward LGBT people. I don't want to give you advice that is going to put you in any danger. What you are going through is normal. The feelings you're having are normal and natural. You may have been raised to believe something different, but the fact is being gay or bisexual is completely normal. As I am sure you are aware, what you are experiencing is a crush. The good news is those intense feelings don't last forever. The somewhat less good news is that if you're gay or bisexual you're going to eventually develop a crush on other guys. No matter how much you try to suppress or deny it, it's not going to change who you are, but no one can tell if you are gay, bisexual, or straight. I wish I could give you better advice, but it's going to largely depend on the country that you're in... there might be some support groups in your country if you believe that you are LGBT.