So I was getting my senior pictures done yesterday, and I wore this hat that has the two male symbols interlocked with a heart in between, and I was wearing it in one of my pictures and the photographer asked what the symbol meant, and I gauchely told him "gay stuff" (lols... I'm still an amateur at calling myself gay). So he said that he liked the hat and that it was cool that I could wear it like that and he revealed that his father is gay as well, so we just had a quick little conversation about that (and on a side note, I swear to God he looked a lot like Adam Beach who played on Law and Order SVU ) But, anyways, that little experience made me feel really good and proud about myself and really makes me feel much more able to talk comfortably about my orientation, but it DID make me start to think about how alone I feel about it. I'm totally out at school to all my friends and my immediate family, and well, it seems like everyone says they accept it, buuut nobody ever wants to hear anything about it... It's just completely uncomfortable to mention it around most of my friends. I feel like they just completely ignore the fact that i'm gay. I can only talk about guys around just three of my female friends, and it's not like I just go on and on and on about hot guys and yadda, yadda, yadda, but, I feel like I can be MYSELF. I even talked to my best friend about how I know nobody wants to hear about what I have to/ had to go through to come to terms to my orientation, and, he changed the subject right after that. Man, it sucks really. This is more of a rant to be honest, but, does anyone else have friends or experiences like this and were you able to talk to them about it at all?
I think the important thing to ask yourself is - do your friends talk a lot about people they like? If they don't, then it's probably more of an issue that they're uncomfortable talking about that sort of stuff in general, rather than a specific issue with homosexuality. If they do on the other hand, then clearly there's a double standard there, and my advice would be, without being confrontational, to just ask your best friend why everybody is uncomfortable letting you talk about these things when all of them already do.
Do my friends talk alot about people they like? Lols yeah, quite frankly they do, especially my best friend. I have to endure him making random comments about hot girls all damn day, which is why that question actually just made me laugh lols. Ahem, but anyways, you're probably right, I just feel like if I do, i'm just going to make things even more uncomfortable. My other best friend doesn't ever talk about relationships and is asexual as far as I know, but we're always gaming and just having a good time when we hang out so it doesnt bother me with him. My other close friend, however, well me and her have this odd history. Basically, I came out to her like 2 years ago, she took it a little bad and told me I needed to date a girl and i'll be fine, and she specifically said "date me! or any girl!" which made me think she liked me, so I kinda was all sweet-flirty with her for a while before formally asking her out because i was even more uncomfortable with my orientation back then, she declined for whatever reason which got me thinking i dont need to change who I am, then a year later I came out at school, she hear the news, then a few months later ended up telling me she loves me and it's this whole craaaazy thing... AHem, so I don't talk about it around her just because I don't wanna make her feel like crap. Hm, I guess I'm basically answering my own questions at this point....
I totally get what you're talking about. I feel like I can't talk about this stuff with my straight guy friends because all they want to talk about is how hot girls are. I joined a group at my school where lgbt people can talk about what they're going through. I've only been to one meeting but it was freeing to be able to talk to someone about it.
I've been there. Luckily I just make it awkward and joke with my friends. I keep it brief and casually embarrass them. The girls love me and I have better gay jokes than ever.
Oh yeah, it totally is a load off to bbe able to discuss it with other people. It's not like I wanna ramble on forever about it, I just want to be able to at least comment on an attractive guy when I see one. And if one of my female friends who had been guessing I was gay since 6th grade is to ask me if that guy over there is hot, I get nervous answering because I don't wanna make everyone else uncomfortable ya know But i think that I should slowly begin to try and get on to this level. Just throw in a casual comment here and there until it grows on em all
I think there is a limit to what your straight friends can identify with, it is much easier to talk about these things with LGBT folk...which goes to the heart of the matter, that being gay will have an effect on who you will eventually hang out with...The English verb "to like" is very profound, you "like" someone, you are friends with them, because you are alike in the things that you like.
Yeah, I get this feeling too. Whenever I'm hanging out with my straight guy friends and their friends (who I have to say are pretty immature for 21. Seriously, it pisses me off that they have the right to go out and have a good time and I don't, they don't deserve the privilege), all they ever talk about is having sex with hot chicks and all that. That's seriously half of what comes out of their loud mouths, seriously they're a bunch of pigs. Conveniently, I keep my mouth shut about my sexuality, just like they hope I would. I only hang out with them because my two best friends like them so much for some reason.
Just because my brain tends to proccess things in an odd, tangential way sometimes, I felt the need to look up the etymology (word history) of the word "like". Lo and behold, it comes from a Germanic root meaning "body" or "form" and basically originated as meaning "having the same form" or "with a corresponding body" (and historically that's actually a literal "body"--in German, the same root evolved into the current German word "Leiche", which means corpse!). So the word "like" is indeed profound and indicates a sharing of our very self.
Hey I definitely know what you mean, I relate to almost everything you've written! I only recently came out to a few of my friends (quite frankly, I came out to one 10 minutes ago! It turned out great, I'm so glad) but with my other couple of friends who have known for a while, they skip around the subject when I bring it up (in a vague manner). Same thing, I don't go on about my newfound sexuality all day, but sometimes I wonder when they'll finally see it as a part of me... I mean I thank them for treating me exactly the same as before I came out, and maybe their way of showing their support is to disregard it as a factor - but when I mention anything about sexuality they sort of go silent for a bit, then I have to break the ice. To add my own troubles into this, one of my friends had this fraction-of-a-second reaction where he moved back when I touched him. Yeah that... hurt. He's one of my oldest friends and all but to be honest he was never a really warm person anyway. I told him because I considered the length of our friendship, and it was sort of a 'spur of the moment' situation. But compare it to this friend I literally have only known for a week, but told her because she just had that warm, understanding and trustworthy composure - sometimes just trust your instincts I guess. I suggest, if you think your friends aren't completely comfortable with it yet, that you put 'I know this will sound weird to you' in front of what you're gonna say, because so far it's worked for me!
Heh I just may try that. I'm just trying to slowly weave it into conversation and anytime my best friend makes one of his notorious "hey you see that girl over there" comments, I'm just gonna follow up with a "yeah, the guy next to her is REALLY hot!" Heh I'm tellin you he will point to a crowd of about 50 people and expect us to see the one person he's pointing to, ahem, but that's a story for another day
I haven't read all posts as I'm in a really lazy mood at the moment (sorry) so if what I say has already been brought up then forgive me. To simply put it, they don't care. Most people don't want to hear life stories, they want to hear funny/amusing/happy stories, something to put them in a good mood. Telling a depressing story about how you were before you came out isn't interesting. As a gay guy myself, I could relate if someone told me about their coming out, but I'd probably be yawning as they did. Yes, it's a good achievement to be out, and it's something that will stick with every gay guy, but it is kind of boring, I mean, what's to say? All it's about is us accepting ourselves, a good achievement, but not a good story. I think this is an issue of you probably feeling you aren't getting enough attention. It isn't wrong to want attention, but you need to bare in mind that people hate attention whores, so for that reason I wouldn't ask anyone to start showing interest in gay stuff. Straight males cant relate, they talk about females with eachother because they share that interest, a straight male has no interest in other guys and so wont enjoy gay banter much. If you want to talk about this sort of stuff, then girls are where you need to be looking. Not sure if it's the same for everyone else, but me and my girl friends constantly talk about guys, and I'm rarely the one to bring it up. Anyway, back to my earlier point about attention - if a straight guy/girl was surrounded by gay people talking about gay stuff, he/she wouldn't then interrupt and complain that they're not paying attention to their straight side, simply because they've always been straight. Whereas to us, we've been "straight" until we come out, so we've had to talk about straight things. The whole gay thing is newer to us, and so it takes getting used to. I think most gay guys probably start excessively talking about gay things when they first come out, simply because they can, it's new and exciting, but it's just not exciting to everyone else.
^I think his point was that his friends talk to him about girls, but when he brings up guys they will quickly change the subject. That's not boredom or they can't relate. It sounds more like they have a problem with it. Yeah, at least they didn't toss him to the curb, but he has a point. It might be "boring" but a mature, caring friend would at least hear him out and show sympathy *once*. Is that asking too much?
