My story is long and confusing and it's been going on for years now. I at a point where I not able to resume my daily activities without a lot of anguish and pain caused from my closeted lesbian relationship with my best friend of 10 years. Yes, you read correctly. 10 years. I apologize as this I just need to get this off my chest. Any help would mean the world to me right now. I apologize about the long read. I used to visit my home country every summer to see my friends. One summer night when I was jokingly was telling my best friend that I might be a lesbian ( I was probably 20 years here). It's true, I have been questioning since I was 13-14. I always had trouble caring for boys, except one guy crush, which was not serious (we were so young and he had a gf). We used to have sleepovers all the time, and I did not have any feelings for her other than sisterly love. She had a lot of family issues and I was always there for her and she really appreciated it. I think she felt adventurous and started to play with me and poking me and tickling me and asking to see my boobs. I was extremely shy, I was never going to act on my lesbian feelings with anyone in the world, let alone my best friend. Things started getting intense and I would hug her while she slept and massage her tummy. She felt safe. We fell in love, so hard. Butterflies, sleepovers, phone calls, ditching our friends to be with each other. Nothing ever felt like it, I was beyond happy with her, we had the most innocent love of all. We felt so much guilt, her more than me, but it felt SO DAMN good, we both couldn't stop being with each other. I decided I was going to move there for work. My family didn't understand why I would leave home and go across the universe but they supported me. I moved, and we continued to have a lesbian relationship behind our families and our friends. We were inseparable. Guilt still followed us. We did nothing about it. Almost three years pass of being with each other secretly. We didn't know anything else, we would stay in the house on the weekend in the bedroom eating and sleeping with each other. It was literal bliss, as if nothing else mattered. I couldn't believe I was not "acting christian". My family is christian, and my dad is beyond religious. We tried breaking up, it didn't work. We started fighting, some friends made some hints, but we continued. But the heavy weight of the secret was killing the both of us. I was so sad with the way our relationship was, scared, confused and decided to come back to my home to my family. Somehow, she ended up moving here as well. We said if she was going to move here for the better, we still can't be together, our families will disown us. We agreed. My mom helped her meet someone who can keep her in the country. On the train ride back home, we wept because we had to face life and break up. By this time, she was living in my house, and I saw her daily and we tried hard to not be together. She started online dating, and me too. It would hurt like hell when she went out on dates and I never really cared about going on dates with any men. This continued for a while, lies....jealousy, make up sex, immediate attraction that took over us. She moved out, got her own place, we were still inseparable (talking on phone, seeing each other, sleeping with each other). THEN....she met this one guy, who she seemed to like, they had sex. THIS SHATTERED ME. I couldn't believe that she had moved on, after everything we had. We fought and fought and fought and I begged her to take me back. This continued for a whole FOUR FUCKING YEARS. ON, OFF, ON, OFF, ON, OFF. We were both too depressed and we had tried killing ourselves. A lot of shit happened between her and me such as slamming doors, tens of missed calls, showing up at her place. She would go online and not answer me, so on. She always seemed to be better at moving on. Me? not so much. I dated and slept with guys, but only did it out of emptiness. I was still struggling with attraction to women, but I never acted on it because all I wanted was the love of my life. Evyertume I would have a crying fit and text her so much and she would give in. She asked me to be with her and marry her, yet I COULDN'T DO IT. We decided to move in together as friends since we won't be together obviously....this caused so much tension, she was going out all the time, and I started going out. We would both bring guys home.....She would be jealous, I would be jealous and we would fight, sometimes physically. WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME? She asked me to be with her? Why don't I just give in? She had a lot of good things about her, she made me love myself and realize that I have so much self worth, she taught me how to speak to people and respect their opinion. She taught me adventures. I love how strong she was/is. At the end of the day she's all I think of. All that was going on in my head, we don't have the same interests, she has a lot of debt, she slept with several guys (perhaps out of emptiness but she did it and still doing it), my family aren't huge fans of her, and couldn't muster the courage to come out because of my family is so religious. She accused me of not loving her, and she was so bitter because I had refused her so many times but I continued to ask for her love even though she respected I did not want to come out and be with her. She had all the right to be tired to be my secret. I truly hurt her and she started acting so careless and texting guys and sending nudes to them and just generally not much interest in me. This made me act out and be super bitter. Then we would still make up and be together the next day. I put my entire career on hold because I cannot muster any courage to change my job, everything was closing in. I have no interest in life and many days I contemplate suicide but never go through with it. I still pester her and stalk her and I cannot think of being with anyone but her. She wants this as well, but I cannot do it. I am so unfair. I have sent her so far away from me. Sometimes I wonder how she still talks to me. I have been living with this secret for too long, My friend circle is small. The day finally came, I was not going to live with this secret anymore. I was going to explode. Six months ago, she had left to be for vacation in the US to be with this guy she met on vacation with family. I spent nights and nights crying and weeping. I finally texted her I was going to tell my mom about us. She said go ahead, but we are done. She won't be with me because I had refused her a million times and It's obvious that I have no serious plans with her. In my head I wanted to have a house with her and be happy. Then again, my family would literally disown me. Mom walked in and saw I was legit weeping and weeping and asked what's wrong. She could tell something was wrong. My head was racing, my heart was exploding. I was losing the love of my life. I couldn't give up now. I told her. She freaked out. She said BUT YOU ARE NOT GAY? ARE YOU? I said no I am bisexual. We have been in love for 10 years. She went into deep depression and threatened to tell my dad and my brother. It was miserable. She demanded I stop seeing her and that she wouldn't accept this at all. Blamed me for everything and said I am disgusting and that my dad and brothers wouldn't approve of this at all. This pushed me back 100000x. Somehow I felt better, but I still felt worse about telling mom. She would text me to not go see her and that shes not good for me, even if i was gay. Today, I live with my parents (a year ago i left my girl because we fought too much) and still go see my girl and sleep over. She loves me, I love her. As we speak, she's on a date, because apparently I won't do anything about us. She's sick of being my toy and I agree. She's careless, and I cannot move on from her. I don't know what to do, date men? date women? be lonely and alone? I feel shunned out from everyone. She can't stand talking to me cause lately I have just been crying and complaining. I texted her lets be together, even though I don't know how our future will go on. She said, I will not move in with you if you do not marry me, I am sick of you bailing out. I said, marriage is insane, I am not even out to anyone. My mom has such a bitter relationship with me. I said let's move in and tell everyone. She insists, marriage or nothing. I couldn't move from my bed today, I barely slept, and have no interest in seeing a man or a woman. I have no clue what to do, guilt consumes me, worry and jealousy are eating me alive and I can appreciate any advice. I will end this here. Thank you for reading.
Ok, here goes my attempt here. I keep hearing some reoccurring themes. The first is that you have no interest in seeing a man or a woman right now. Well, that's kinda good. You should take this time to deal with your inner battles first. I don't believe that you are in a place that you would be able to offer much in a relationship right now, and that's not too fair to the person you would be seeing. You would only wind up using that person for sex or to get your friend jealous or both. Either way you would only end up hurting that person and making your self feel even MORE guilty than you already do. So in my opinion, you are not ready to date. I also feel exhausted reading this. SO much energy, emotions and life is being used in your inner battle. I know that right now you feel like your battles are with family and your friend, but they really are within yourself. I think that if you were to use all of that energy for coming out to your family, that battle may have been ended a long time ago. Not to mention that you probably would have had your friend's support along the way. By now, your family would have either come to terms with you being bisexual or cut off ties with you all together. I know that the latter is painful and not ideal, but at least there wouldn't be this endless supply of guilt and hurt like there is now. Metaphorically, it's like a wound. If you don't let it heal, it will just keep hurting and bleeding. If you deal with it, after a while it will heal. Yeah, it may leave a scare and not heal the way YOU wanted it to, but it is healed none the less and is no longer something you need to expend any time or thoughts with. In other words, if they can't except you for being you, then move on. I know that sounds easier said than done. That's because it is. But you shouldn't allow yourself to be immersed in such negative surroundings. I feel that any energy that you have left should be used to come out to your family. When your ready. But here's another thing. You need to figure out who you are. It seems to me, you still have questions as to weather you are gay or bisexual. Either is fine. But you need to feel comfortable in your own skin. Then, once you figure THAT out, then you will be ready to come out to your family. As for your friend. Again, once you come out to your family, you will be able to try to work things out with her. You just need to attack these issues one thing at a time. begin with yourself. Next your family. And finally your friend. But make sure you completely work out each individual issue before moving on to the next, or you will end up having all these cluttered issues again. Just like right now. I would also recommend that you go see therapist to help you get through this. You have such a complex issue. Therapy can help you see thing in a completely new light and help you navigate through this. Therapy can also help you if your family decides to "disown" you. Which as a parent, that really annoys me SO much. But that's a different thread altogether. Well Helenas, I really hope this helps in some way. Here's to your health and happiness. *HUGS HUGS HUGS* and sending you good Juju!!!
This sounds horrible, exhausting, painful - for both of you. Please, please, go to a decent therapist, who will help you work through this.
