My Whole Story for the silent EC readers

I have already posted various specific issues and questions on EC in the support and advice section. I have had wise and sound replies and also many more silent readers. It is to those silent readers looking for hope and re-assurance that I am now giving EC my whole coming out story...for people to comment on if they wish or just read in silent brotherhood/sisterhood

I first noticed I might be relating to the world differently from many other boys when I was very young. My friends at infant school were girls rather than boys. I was timid and sensitive and avoided the ‘rough and tumble’ play of other boys and even although as a slightly older child most of my friendships shifted to being with boys, I naturally befriended those who were gentle, more imaginative and more cerebral. In these early years I probably also began to sense that not liking team sports or not wanting to put myself in physical danger meant I was at some level not conforming with what the world expected of ‘men’ and although I could see I was not alone or unique in these tendencies, there was most definitely a ‘mis-match’ becoming apparent. Unbeknown to me, being ashamed of these tendencies began to insidiously influence my self-perception and behaviour.

As I entered puberty, my latent sexuality began to manifest itself in my imagination and then inevitably in the sexual fantasies I had when I learnt about masturbation. My first wank, which I remember very well, was on holiday in Pembrokeshire, in the hot summer of 1976 when I was 12 years old. I ‘came’ imagining playing with the naked body of another boy staying at the same hotel. Soon my incredible imagination included other school friends, boys and men from TV etc., all weaving into my safe but incredibly fantastic dreams, in my little, separate, secret sex world in my mind.

As my sexuality developed into what I now know was almost completely homosexual in its flavour, the serious ‘splitting’ of my personality began. With no role models or encouragement from the world around me about how people could be gay and content and integrated and authentic, I went all out to strive for a heterosexual existence. I imagined a future where I would meet a beautiful, caring (and preferably boyish, elven) woman and we would have children and live the ‘dream’, which society and my own parents were constantly enticing me with. And the deep shame behind this splitting just got deeper. Despite (or may be because of) being an intelligent and thoughtful young man, I could not untangle myself from the psychological and philosophical knots I was tying myself in. The utter fear, guilt, shame and self-loathing I was unconsciously associating with being gay drove me to create a taller and taller ‘pack of cards’. Justifications built on assumptions built on procrastinations built on avoidance … and so on it went.

Through University I tried to have girlfriends, and certainly had one very close loving friendship with a girl, but there was no sex of any kind. I kept myself slightly introverted, slightly aloof, vaguely asexual and learnt many tricks to avoid having to really confront any truths. It was only when I began my post-graduate studies that I began to meet and be influenced by people, who questioned the cosy, English, middle class idyll of how life should be. Not directly to do with sexuality (I was still very clever at making sure I avoided this), but to do with politics, relationships and ‘life’ in general. Also some of my friends and acquaintances were openly gay. This had the effect of making me question myself more deeply and as I became more confident as a person, I also began to want and to see that I could not move forward until I somehow resolved this inner conflict within me. And so, knowing I was in a good place, surrounded by loving, open, supportive and intelligent people, at the age of 23 I told my closest friends that I was bisexual. This ‘telling’ included my brother, but also more importantly my parents, who I told by writing them a long letter.

Several things came out of this process. Firstly I had my first sexual experience with a woman (a good friend who I asked if I could have sex with to see if I was able to be heterosexual). This person was actually going out with another good friend at the time, who sat downstairs knowingly while I fucked his girlfriend (and the friendships didn’t end as a result - what amazing people). I thought this was a changing point in my life. It was a moment in time charged with emotion I will never forget, although in retrospect the fact I chose to learn hardly anything from it was not at all obvious to me.

Secondly, on a consequent visit home to my parents, in another never to be forgotten moment in time, my father privately confided to me, that he was glad I was bisexual, because at least I had a chance of being ‘normal’. He then admitted he was and always had been gay himself, but that no-one (apart from a late male cousin) knew. This was the first and last time he ever spoke about this until the day he died 22 years later. I am still unsure about how this revelation, and his and my consequent silence, affected my own ‘coming out’ journey, but I now have to admit to myself it was inevitably negatively. If my strong, confident father could not accept who he really was, how possibly could I?

So, although I had now ‘admitted’ to my family and close friends that I was sexually different, and had in theory created a window to follow this ‘confession’ through and explore fully what it meant, instead I parked it and went back to striving for that dream of a normal heterosexual life (but now longing for a potential wife who would be happy with knowing I was bisexual). Even to most of those whom I had ‘come out’ to it was as if I had never told them. I tacitly encouraged them not to remind me or challenge me about what I had told them. I developed even more tricks and mind games to re-enforce my newly ‘partially out’ cool, liberal bisexual image. I convinced myself, after this initial ‘coming out’ to a select few, that I did not have to go around telling every new person about my sexuality, but would tell people privately when and if they needed to know. In reality I had gone well and truly back into the closet. Behind it all the shame was lingering and festering and the compensatory behaviours getting more and more fine-tuned, clever and habitual.

I then at the age of 28, I met my first true girlfriend. Just as in my idealised dream future, I told her I was bisexual and she accepted it. And just to confuse matters even more, I genuinely fell in love with her. I was with her for 2 years and we had a sexual as well as emotional life together. I learnt the pleasures of being sensually close with another human being and of being able to connect with and please them. I saw a future unfolding – marriage, children, the whole package. BUT all the time, when I was alone I would still have fantastic homo-erotic wanking sessions which made me orgasm easily and naturally. When I was having sex with my girlfriend my orgasms were mainly auto-erotic and although her reaching orgasm would stimulate me, it was very ‘conscious’. It was an effort and I know I did use other (homosexual) images in my head to finish the job (so to speak). Meanwhile I thought I was being honest by occasionally admitting to my girlfriend (cruelly I know realise) about man-crushes I was having. And so slowly, my dear, sweet, calm, understanding girlfriend realised this was not ‘right’. She met another man on her PGCE course and then it was over. This ending filled me with utter grief and despair. My genuine love for her led to a genuine broken heart and to genuine irrational behaviour (including practically ‘stalking’ her for 6+ months after we split – including move jobs and home to be closer to where she had moved to). This extreme response was of course fuelled by the fact that, because I was actually gay, it was going to be doubly hard to go through all this again to find another women.

Yet 2 years later I did, because another women found me! I think I was a challenge to some women who wanted to find the real me behind the contradictions of my slightly aloof yet also clearly sensitive and gentle persona. My second girlfriend was similar to my first in that I told her I was bisexual (and she also accepted it) and we did live together for nearly 2 years and have a sex life. But again the sex was not entirely honest. I did not like kissing her and after sex would regularly turn my back on her. This was terrible behaviour in retrospect. Like the first time, she also, as loving and beautiful and accepting as she was (although this time more emotionally honest about her own needs), eventually could not sustain this and she ended it. This time it was not ended for another man (although she got a new boy friend soon after) and this time I was able to talk through with her a lot more about what had not worked. She actually stayed living with me for another year and remained as a brilliant friend and is now my best friend. She knows me like no-one else and me her. Yet still for many years afterwards, through several other boyfriends that she had, and through periods of closeness and distance (emotionally and geographically), I held onto a vague dream that because she knew me so well we would rekindle our relationship and live together as a ‘proper’ couple (the happy bisexual in a straight relationship in a straight world). This dream was still totally counter to my ongoing sexual fantasies – all still decidedly homo-erotic. The splitting and the shame and the colluding and compensating were still as complicated, habitual and dangerously fragile as ever.

Throughout this period, during my late 20s and into my 30s, whether in a heterosexual relationship or not, I was externally having by all accounts a pretty successful life. Despite the endless, circular melodramas in my head and the oddly seductive melancholia of my private existence, I crafted a way of being in the world (slightly aloof and detached) that allowed me to function competently and even very well. I learnt to downplay the shame of being gay, and used the many advantages of being an intelligent, educated, white male living in late 20th century UK. I had a successful education and then a successful career. I even did things to seemingly take me out of my comfort zone, including learning to scuba dive and doing world travel (sometimes on my own – although always in a very safe controlled way). People seemed to ‘rate’ me as someone who worked hard and got things done. An organiser. My parents were proud of me, playing up my achievements, no doubt in part to hide their concerns about my love life or lack of it. Some friends even saw through my external persona to the open, sensitive, gentle, emotional man beneath. They loved me as a loyal, thoughtful, and diplomatic friend. To them I am forever thankful. But in a sense my external success and the network of (‘once removed’) love and appreciation I had nurtured made the ‘splitting’ more marked and the tension between wanting to be true and authentic and wanting to not let go of the ‘heterosexual, middle class, family man’ dream even more unbearable. I am sure I also used my ongoing special friendship with my last girlfriend to avoid facing or needing anything else – that and the immense release and satisfaction I got from my daily homo-erotic wanking (fired by my formidable imagination) meant it was easier to carry on with ‘business as normal’ than to confront the truth. Indeed I colluded with myself to stay in this ‘comfort zone’ for 10 years of singledom as my 40’s passed on by.

So I guess the next stage was a period of 2 years 2008-2009 when external realities of life and death began to burst my cosy bubble. My father was diagnosed and died of pancreatic cancer (within a 10 week period), only two days after my aunt died suddenly of a heart attack. My 97 year old grandmother deteriorated and ended up suffering the indignity of dying in a nursing home the following year, not before my mother suffered a mild stroke (from which she has still not and never will totally recover). Then my dog, which I had owned for 10 years, began to get ill and died traumatically in early 2010. Through out this time, which was nothing more than many other people suffer throughout their lives, I ‘coped’ surprisingly well. Just as I had developed strategies for covering up my sexuality, I developed strategies for covering up my fear of death and my grief and my anger. And still superficially my daily life went on successfully, although I did fail an important job interview for a promotion I assumed I would get, which I now see highlighted for me the deep lack of confidence and worthiness bubbling as ever under the surface.

Also throughout this period and in fact co-incidentally before all these external things started happening, I had reached a similar ‘stretch point’ in my life to the one in my early 20s where the splitting could no longer be sustained and I knew I had to take action. My initial action was to go to see a therapist. This was not, I convinced myself, because there was anything wrong – heaven forbid, but just because it would be ‘interesting’. The therapy was good and I made slow but steady progress gradually shifting how I wanted to live my life and how I wanted to relate to the world, through a combination of revelations from the therapy and realisations from the many and the various self-help and spiritual books that I had always tended to read (in particular Eckhart Tolle’s ‘Power of Now’). But still I circled around the shame at the core of it, with probably some collusion from the therapist. Toward the end of the annus horribilis of external events mentioned above, I challenged myself and my therapist to return to this core issue: my acceptance (or lack of it) of my sexuality. As a result we agreed I would switch to a gay therapist who could help with this specific issue, which I did. He was equally good, but I now was beginning to realise that (with his help) I had to start taking the lead and setting my own challenges, and so we get to the present day…

Since Summer 2011 I have: decided I am gay (not bisexual), I have told (re-told) everyone (apart from my Mum) and I am now living as an openly gay man with my friends and colleagues. I have begun to meet and social with other gay people (especially through the local Gay Outdoor Club). I have had a shamanic healing (last summer) and I have just attended an amazing weekend workshop in London, called the Quest, to help gay men come to terms with their sexuality.

I feel like I am now, at the grand old age of 49, at the beginning of a true journey of discovery…