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Question for those who discovered their orientation later in life

Discussion in 'LGBT Later in Life' started by gollygee, Nov 5, 2013.

  1. gollygee

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    Greetings,
    I've been lurking around for a few days reading some of the posts while trying to figure out my own orientation. A little background I'm a 57 yo male struggling at the moment to get a perspective on who I am. My question is for those who discovered their own orientation later in life, were you able to look into the past and see the signs that pointed to something other than a straight heterosexual?
    Thanks in advance.:slight_smile:
     
  2. palimpsest

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    gollygee, welcome to EC. I lurked for a few months before I joined, :wink:, so welcome.

    Yes, it is amazing how many signs there can be if you start to look. It can, I think, become nearly and infinite loop if you are not careful. So, if that is a piece of your puzzle, I hope it helps. What I would invite you to do is open and talk to us more about what is going on, where are you stuck, etc.
     
  3. bassmaster

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    Welcome gollygee!! Glad to see you decided to join us. The problem you are having have been felt by many here. So feel free to open up and talk, ask questions, or simply vent.
    To answer you question... Being in my upper 30's I can look back and see certain signs. I can't say there is one clear cut sign but multiple things over many years that I should have picked up on. I think when I was younger I just thought it was something guys experimented with and that marriage and kids would fix all that. Not so much :wink:
    I hope that helps. And again, welcome!!
     
  4. biggayguy

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    Gollygee, welcome! There were lots of signs I chose to ignore or deny. I thought it was an adolescent experimental phase of my life. The "problem is that I never grew out of it. There was the clinging to my mom. The slightly femme clothes she bought for me. Then there was the staring at athletic types a little too long. There was also a few make out sessions with boys. Yet I still tried to believe I was hetero up to the age of thirty five.
     
  5. greatwhale

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    Hi gollygee and welcome to EC!

    I haven't much to add to what our dear friends have told you above, only that it took me a little longer... :rolle:
     
  6. gollygee

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    :lol:Thanks for the warm welcome. I'm not sure at this point I can articulate what's on my mind and heart. It's possible that I have been fooling myself for a very long time. I've been married for for 30 years, raised my family and provide a good life for them. But it occurred to me last week that I should examine my motivations and feelings instead of just pushing them aside. In grade school I did some experimenting with other boys my age, nothing too sexual just some minor contact. I was a jock in high school but I was never very good with girls. On several occasions I broke up with girls when our relationship was headed to sexual intercourse. At the same time I enjoy masturbation while engaging in anal play. After high school I would have sex with females but only when drinking and I was not interested in any relationship after. I would go to the strip joints with buddies but never got "hot" while watching. Seemed it was just a way to pass the time when drinking. In my early 20s I had a few (3) sexual encounters with other guys. I found these to be satisfying but it left me feeling guilty. I got married in my mid 20s and settled down. I found myself thinking of guys while having sex with my wife. Through the years I've lost interest in sex with my wife as I believe she has lost interest in sex with me. Now I have not had sex outside of my marriage but I have a longing for a another man to love. Not talking sex here but love. So thats where I am today. As I look back I wonder how I missed all this.
     
  7. Dragonbait

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    Details differ (slightly) but the punch line remains the same. You'll find that what you're wondering is quite the common sentiment here in the Later in Life forum. All I can say is that the brain is an amazing (and scary) thing! I've discovered there's no end to the things I can hide from myself - passport, safety deposit box key, sexuality...

    You're in good company here, Gollygee. :welcome: Pleased to meet you!
     
  8. Yossarian

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    We look backwards in time and reinterpret the signs that were clearly there, but not clear to us. The fact that we are "older" puts our teenage years into a totally different frame of reference of the 1950s and 60s. No visible examples to compare ourselves to. Nobody willing to talk about sexual feelings, particularly other guys. A lot of the adults survivors of WW2 and perhaps over machoed, and most of them exposed to at least several years of military service due to the draft and Korean War, then Vietnam, where being a "homo" meant court marshall and family disgrace.

    Against this backdrop, we have these strange feelings of curiosity about other boys, seeing them naked in the showers and not knowing what we are feeling means, mistaking attraction for embarrassment and modesty. Not being interested in girls but not wanting to get the crap beat out of us if we got too personal with the wrong boy. Sure, there were probably hundreds of "signs" that we had no way of understanding. And the majority of our friends dating girls, and talking about girls, and talking about making out with girls, and talking about what dreadful things happen if you had sex with a girl, got her pregnant and "ruined your life" by screwing up your plans to go to college. All of this stirred up with all the other baggage and self-conscientiousness and insecurity of high school and college. Then you get a job and try to over achieve, and don't date anyone while in your 20s and maybe 30s because you are trying to get ahead, and you hear about gay men dying of strange diseases they seem to be uniquely exposed to by having sex with each other, so you get married like everyone else.

    Then when you are in your 40s or 50s and married, you look back at your past and slap yourself on the forehead and say "How could I have missed such obvious signs", you look around you and see men being publicly gay, and know that you have screwed up big time, because "they" should have been you. But the clock only runs one direction, and after a while it stops. You are left with the question of what you want to do with the rest of your life before it stops, now that you finally know what all those signs mean.
     
  9. Spaceman

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    Welcome gollygee. Now that you've seen the signs for what they are, you're faced with the difficult task of deciding what to do about it. I'm afraid there are no easy answers, but you've found a great place to learn from the wisdom of others who are at various stages of the same journey.
     
  10. iadsfo

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    Gollygee, welcome! I can tell you that I always knew I felt a stronger attraction and yearning for attention from a man than a woman. I only dated three women, all briefly, before I met my wife at age 23. All three (and my wife) asked me out. The first three relationships ended before sex got involved (and all because sex hadn't gotten involved). When I masturbated, I only fantasized about men. When I had sex with my wife I thought of men or thought of a man having sex with her. But somehow I missed all the signs. Likely because it was a secret I kept from everyone, even me much of the time. Through my 30s my same gender attraction got harder and harder to ignore and, finally, at 43, it burst onto the scene as I was finally ready to put all the pieces of the puzzle together and the truth hit me like a ton of bricks. I came out to my wife and she has been extremely supportive of me.

    You will only see what you are ready to see, even if it is larger than life and right there in front of you.
     
  11. Welcome gollygee! :smilewave Love that name by the way! :eusa_danc

    I think I may be a little too young to be on this thread, but I can answer your question. Yes, I was able to look into my pre-teen and teenager past and see signs that pointed to my "later in life" orientation discovery.

    I tended to be a girly guy a fair amount of the time. I didn't want to get my hands or clothes dirty, and I always wanted longer hair too. I was always a wimp, never a "tough guy", never really a manly man and I always hated how boys couldn't wear pink! It's just a color people...:dry: But I tried to correct myself on most things, tried to slap myself on the wrist and say "no I'm not gay, not girly" because I didn't want to get in trouble or add another reason to be bullied (I was a fat kid)

    Now later in life, because I'm passed the drama of high school, I'm able to freely be myself and explore myself and my attractions and desires without as much judgement. And I couldn't be happier about it! :icon_bigg

    Look forward to seeing future posts from you! :slight_smile:
     
  12. gollygee

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    Thank you to one and all.
     
  13. Phepherly

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    Hi Gollygee,
    I struggled with bisexuality my whole life...and never...even...knew it. How's that for being ignorant of oneself!

    I had been married to my husband about 5 years (I was 32 at the time) when he woke up in the middle of the night and "caught" me watching a Showgirls marathon on cable. I wasn't even sure why I was watching it over and over except something was bothering me and my constant insomnia kept me glued to late night soft core porn.

    He then sat beside me, took my hand, and gently coaxed me out of the closet. At first, I had to actually accept the crazy (to me crazy at that time) notion that I was bisexual. I liked girls. From his support and acceptance of who or what I was, came the backtracking of all the times and all the dots I could now connect that made sense. These senseless holes of confusion became crystal clear and when I started telling the people in my life closest to me, "hey...my husband thinks I'm bisexual...." with a wink and a smile and in bated breath anticipation of how they would take it...they all responded with "yeah, we all pretty much knew that already. We have bets on how long it would take for YOU to figure that out already."

    And I was pretty shocked that I was the last one to know. Apparently, I flirt with women A LOT, and it's pretty obvious when I do. I was completely unaware at this natural occurrence but when pointed out, man did it make me feel awfully vulnerable and then guilt and shame that I just flirted away without knowing it in front of my husband. He just laughs at me and hugs me and says he wouldn't have me any other way.

    Thinking back to my first year in college, a bisexual girl I had befriended spent the night in my dorm room since she couldn't stay in the all boys dorm where her boyfriend was at the time. She crawled into bed with me and had her fingers everywhere and it traumatized me. It was unwelcome and now that I know I'm a habitual flirter, I'm sure I gave the wrong impression at some point, but that was no excuse to help herself to my body while I slept. I think that experience is what kept me afraid all of these years.
     
  14. oddsock

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    Gollygee, I'm in exactly the same position you're in, and I'm feeling pretty apprehensive and shaken up. However, at least I've managed to "come out" to my closest friends and join a couple of online gay dating sites. Gaydar and Match dot com seem to be the ones that are coming up with some possible partners. I'm looking for a relationship, not random hookups.
     
  15. Choirboy

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    Welcome, newbies. Yes, there were signs, and I actually get a good laugh sometimes thinking about how ridiculously obvious they were in retrospect, although they weren't when I was going through them. Depending on your upbringing and who you came in contact with, being gay was often either "not an option", or else something that wasn't even within our scope of experience.

    I often haul out the memory of a girl I knew in high school in the 1970's who was painfully thin, and who now and then would disappear for weeks on end because she was in the hospital because of being "sick". Looking back I realize she was very obviously anorexic, but that just wasn't a concept for most of us back then.

    Being gay, for me, was a lot like that. There were both obvious and subtle signs, but I was brought up believing that my goal in lie was a wife and kids, and I didn't know anyone who was gay, so it wasn't in my scope of understanding.

    Hope all goes well as you sort things out. The process is different for everyone, but it's progress! Welcome.

    ---------- Post added 7th Nov 2013 at 09:57 AM ----------

    Re-read this and realized I had a rather significant typo. I was going to edit it to "life" and then thought, what the hell, better to bold it instead!
     
  16. Dragonbait

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    Freudian slip? :lol:
     
  17. SaleGayGuy

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    Hi gollygee, Phepherly, and oddsock

    Welcome, you have all found the right place to get answers and find new friends. This site and the folks on it have helped me fully accept who I am and prize-open the closet door to step into a brave new world, baby steps at the moment but I did find the courage to come out to my wife.

    gollygee: is that Portland-OR or the other Portland? I used to work for a company headquarterd in Portland OR so had many visits, its a nice part of the world and very gay friendly I heard.

    In answer to your question gollygee, although I only realised late in life that I am gay, when I look back on my life I can clearly recall very specific moments in my teens and early twenties when guys, who later turned out to be gay, hinted at experimentation and I very firmly changed the subject. I know realise that it was my internalised homophobia that was preventing me from seeing the truth.



    Sale Gay Guy
     
    #17 SaleGayGuy, Nov 7, 2013
    Last edited: Nov 7, 2013
  18. gollygee

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    Once again thank you all. Sale gay guy, yes I am currently living in Portland Or. I have many other questions and as time permits I will try to post a few more as I continue to sausage out of my life.
     
  19. ormanout

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    Welcome GollyGee... from another Oregonian with a similar story.
     
  20. flatlander48

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    GG:

    You've come to the right place! I won't say that we have the answers, but your story shares a lot with many I've seen here and even my own to a fair degree.

    For many of us, the Brush of denial and suppression paints a VERY thick coat. Early on, we don't (or try not to) let ourselves think too deeply about who we are. We accept the role that society has given us and, because it seems to be simpler, we don't question it. Often it is only after considerable time do we begin to try to understand what's really happened for us.

    In my case, I knew the questions but I consciously avoided the answers. It just didn't fit the notion of how things are supposed to be. And by that point, there's a host of people involved: wife, kids, parents, grandparents, people at work, people at church, etc. It is so much easier to shut up and be still... It'll pass; it's just a phase...

    Only, it doesn't...