Coming out older and regret...is it too late?

There are a lot of men in the same situation as you. So, i guess not finding someone won't be a problem. In my opinion, it's way easier for you to be in a relationship than most of the young ones, mostly 'cause of the maturity.
You still have time ahead to find someone. Better latter than never.

 

Hi,

You are still very young in regards to the situation.

I got 20 years on you and in the same boat, but no regrets in finally choosing happiness.

Everyone has their own schedule and it cannot be hurried.

Soon you will be Turing down male relationships.

Best of luck.

Stuck

 

As you say yourself, you generally accept that the past no longer exists. You also say that you are "still good-looking and healthy". Both those things put you in a strong position in terms of finding love. Just because it took you a little longer that you would perhaps have wished to acknowledge who you are does not mean you are past your sell-by date at all. I know exactly what you mean with regard to not knowing what the future holds, I guess that's partially a by-product of living in a world where the main path laid out to us is that of a heterosexual partnership.

I know I'm a lot younger than you, and so probably not that best source of advice, but hopefully some of what I've said will be helpful.

 

Greatwhale, I had to resurrect this thread...it is exactly the way that I feel!

Looking back, there were so many opportunities for me to come clean to various friends. I think several suspected, and intentionally steered the conversation towards gay topics, hoping I'd "bite." But I never did. They eventually accepted that I wasn't going to come out, and the friendships gradually dissolved due to lack of common ground. I was the boring guy with no love life to speak of.

I could have made SO many gay friends and had incredible relationships. I could've gone to clubs like Babylon on "Queer as Folk" and picked up guys in my 20's and 30's.

Instead, I stayed home watching TVLand every Saturday night and let my active years slip away. WHYYYYY? Sometimes I just have to shake my head.

Now I face the awkwardness of coming out to people at retirement age. This is what 16 year old's do on "Glee" now. And I'm doing it in my 50's! Sigh. But at least I am doing it, I suppose.

I feel your pain, Greatwhale. We're in this together, friend!

 

It's never too late. You could live another forty or fifty years, so live it in a way that makes you happy

 

You're right, hitgirl. Thanks for the kind words. I'm sure Greatwhale and I both appreciate them.

 

No probs... everyone has been so supportive of me on here, it's such a nice forum to feel like other people understand what you're going through

 

I'm 58 and struggling with the same feelings. The regret for the past may always be there, but does it make it any better to continue a way of living that makes you unhappy? I too have an ex-spouse and kids and worry about coming out to them. I guess this is one of the challenges of aging, regrets, whatever they might be.

Let's not let the past determine our future. It's not too late even if we are "past our prime."

 

Greatwhale, thank you for starting this thread--I didn't notice the date when I read it, and was surprised because you seem to be in a very different place now! SeniorDiscount, thank you for reviving it. I struggle with these thoughts, too--I'm too old, everyone good is taken, no one will want someone who is just now figuring things out, etc. One thing that helps me counter all of these thoughts is a story from my own family. My grandfather was widowed suddenly after 51 years of marriage. He was very sad and lonely for about a year, and then he started looking for a new wife. The first woman he proposed to died before they could marry. He then found someone else, a younger woman in her 60s whose husband had died very young. She had raised four children by herself and had been single that whole time. They got married, and had 20 very good years until my grandpa died. Their story is very inspirational to me; wonderful things can happen at any age, if you are open to them.

 

Ditto Geode's comments--when I first read this, I thought, this doesn't sound at ALL like Greatwhale, then I looked at the date.

My situation is creeping along pretty slowly, but at a pace I can deal with and adjust to. Some people would probably be getting impatient but I'm OK with it. I know that I have wasted a lot of time--I had considered coming out several times in my 20's, but fears and insecurities always stopped me. I'm not going to let that happen this time. When I think of the number of times in college in the early 80's I scoured through the personals and debated responding to them, I know that as trusting and naive a person as I can be, there's a good chance I would be long dead by this time, instead of almost 52 and facing great changes. I don't believe "things happen for a reason", but I do believe in accepting the best aspects of the outcome of our decisions. I may be middle-aged, standing in a partially open closet surveying the landscape outside, but I'm alive, healthy, reasonably good looking, far more well-adjusted than I was 20 or 30 years ago, and I have 2 wonderful children and a surprisingly accepting wife who is now nagging me as much about things that she thinks might turn off a prospective date, as she does about winterizing the pool or fixing the leaky faucet. Just because I have been driving in the wrong direction for a longtime doesn't mean there isn't a new road to turn down and fuel in the tank.

A story from my own life--My mother dropped dead unexpectedly of a heart attack at age 46. My dad was 51, the same age I am now, and was so shook up by the changes in his life (and some very major health problems that had just been temporarily fixed) that he actually got a gun and was considering ending it all. He was sure that life was over and he could never adjust to being alone again. Probably much like a lot of people on EC feel after coming out later in life. What do I do now? Do I even want to bother?

His revelation came about a few months later when an acquaintance of Mom's lost her husband to another unexpected heart attack. I'll admit to some ulterior motives in forcing Dad to go to the wake, telling him that athough he himself didn't know either one of them, he could still offer some support, since the widow was going through the same thing he had experienced less than a year before. (I knew her and suspected they might hit it off.) So he went, and finally came home over 2 hours later, after spending almost the whole time talking with the widow. They ended up dating within a couple months and after several years, came very close to marriage before his health started failing again and he backed off, because his situation really wasn't likely to improve (and it most definitely did not) and he didn't want to be a burden.

I think we often convince ourselves that we can't adjust to a drastically new situation, or that we have wasted or youth and have nothing good ahead of us, or perhaps we have made a huge mistake that will mess up our lives forever. But often God, or fate, or the roll of the dice, or that vague oportunity that we decide to take a chance on--call it what you want--gives us chances we never even knew we had. They're out there.

(And if one of my girls ever demands that I go to a wake for someone I really don't know, you can bet that I will listen to them!)

 

English teacher: Regret is a word that has nearly no meaning. Why regret when you could do something to change the status quo?

Though I have no experience of that...and hopefully won't, its TRUE that one shouldn't regret. I don't regret confessing to my crush and get turned down. Instead I try to see the positive impact it had on our friendship and try to stay great friends with him. One should never regret about being late. It was meant, a fate, for you to find out /accept it/admit it at a slightly older age. Maybe God (sorry for being so theological but I couldn't find a better way to express it) did that so you could find your Mr Right then. Go outside to the brand new world and find that person. Hmm, I wonder who he is for me...

Hugs, and Good Luck!

 

(*hug*)

 

So glad to have stumbled upon this revived thread. I have the very same regrets and often ask myself what's the point of coming out after waiting so long. In my heart of hearts I know it is my only chance of finding peace and being truly alive, but it's such a hard step to take. Seeing the great leaps made by folks like greatwhale and choirboy is very inspirational and I thank you for sharing you journey.

 

Thank you Greatwhale and Seniordiscount for sharing & resharing this thread.

As a multiple survivor, I try to consciously live without regrets, try to always identify the silver lining in every otherwise negative situation, try to see what I have gained from the path taken vs. what I may have missed due to choices made at a fork in the road.

And as much as I try to live every day keeping with this philosophy, I do have to admit, now that I find myself at this pivotal stage in life, to wondering - dare I say regretting - what kind of life I may have missed by taking the well-trodden path vs blazing my own trail. Reading this post flicked a switch for me, and I really need to thank you both for that.

First I have to say, before I'd even reached the point in the thread that caused this paradigm shift for me, I was happy to read it just to see how Greatwhale's own journey has progressed - to see where he's come from... to realize that he's not always been this uber confident and philosophically grounded guru is actually quite inspiring. Seeing where you were, GW, and knowing how far you've come in a relatively short time gives me great hope.

But back to my AHA! moment. Somewhere through the course of the thread, probably when Hitgirl suggested that you could live another 40 or 50 years, it hit me (no pun intended Hitgirl).

My future ex-husband has always been fond of saying that he wants to live to be 104, so we could celebrate our 75th wedding anniversary. The first time he said it I cringed, because it sounded so old (that was shortly after we married - I was still in my 20's). He took to saying it with increasing frequency over the years, and I took to experiencing increasingly violent reactions to the idea. By the time we'd celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary it had begun to sound like a life sentence, and I began praying that one of us would suffer an untimely death. Instead of enjoying his vision for our future I took to focusing on the here and now, trying to take one day at a time and just not even contemplate the many many years stretched out ahead.

But reading this thread, reading Hitgirl's comment, flipped that switch for me. I immediately went from regretting time lost to anticipating that long and fruitful future - without the man and his vision of it - but in a future that I can finally freely imagine without the curse of my marriage; a future full of my own desires. WOW! For the first time in ages, I think I may actually dream well tonight.

So thanks, to Greatwhale for his original post, to Hitgirl for her brilliant observation, and to SeniorDiscount, for unearthing this gem for me to find. You've all given me the greatest gift tonight. (*hug*) Thank you!!!
(&&&)

 

Terrific site! I came out as bi just this month, as a result of working my alcoholism recovery program. My first guy crush was on the child actor Billy Mumy when he played Will Robinson on Lost in Space. I've had a handful of homosexual encounters, and am divorced with two grown kids. I masturbated mostly to twink porn while married. I broke up with my girlfriend over a year ago as part of getting sober and really like the idea of just paying young male escorts for sex. So as to not jeopardize my recovery, I want to keep this little science project simple