Being ourselves

I'm exploring what it means to me being gay in therapy right now Molly.. And the fear society has on that.

For me it's acceptance of being gay. It's kinda huge, for me. Self acceptance is the key

 

Well, I have this negative stories and situations almost every day when I have to go to school. Cause only one person in this school, my best friend, knows that I'm gay. So I have to pretend that I like boys in order to reveal my true sexuality. I could say it to my other friends but I don't trust them 100%.
But basically I'm open and honest bout myself when it doesn't come to boys and girls and this stuff

 

I'm starting to be honest with myself that I am gay (with wife and kids which is the other challenge). I strangely don't have a problem with being gay at all - in fact, if I can resolve my other issues I look forward to it BUT and it is a BIG BUT, I have such guilt and fear for what I will do to my loving wife.

She is the person that I promised my life to and now I cant give her that, I am only half a person and she needs to know - I know I would never want to put anyone, especially my wife, through the pain I am going through and I hope that she can understand me in time.

My counsellor gave me some very good advice, he said that being honest will set me free and reading on here it seems to be true ... I watch with interest to the stories that come through in this thread

 

It was about a year and a half ago that I finally looked at myself in the mirror, after years of denial and talking around the issue, and said to myself, "OK, I'm gay and that's never going to change. What do I do about it?" A month or so later I came out to a couple trusted people at work. 7 months ago I told my wife, thinking that I needed to be honest with her and with myself. In fact, being open and honest was my sole motivation--I had no expectations of anything other than finally being able to look myself in the eye for the first time in my adult life.

It's been a challenge. I have had plenty of issues at home holding me back. Responsibilities, both financial and emotional; fear of facing a future where I was honest about myself, but potentially alone and in a totally new way of life that I wasn't sure of being able to fit into.

But my wife, instead of being almost completely in denial, is now asking questions and seems to be interested in moving things along. With some degree of hostility, yes, but it's not unbearable (an certainly not unexpected). My daughters both know about me and accept me. My sisters have been very supportive, and several more people at work know and are OK with it.

More importantly, just being open and honest about myself, finally, led to making a connection with an amazing guy in the same situation who has touched my heart like no one else has in all my 52 years. It was the absolute furthest thing from my mind and the last thing I expected, but maybe it was the reason I started this whole process of being open and honest in the first place. Or perhaps it was the reward for it.

No, it hasn't all been easy, and there are challenges ahead, particularly with regards to ending the marriage and making sure the kids are provided for in the best way possible. But I feel as though my life is going through the rebirth of Easter thanks to finally showing some honesty about who I am.

 

Awww, John, fantastic post. I feel like dawn is coming .. It's a great feeling.

 

The biggest issue holding me back is that I think that being open and honest about who I am to the world in general will not improve things for me enough to justify the pain it will certainly cause my wife and any potential difficulties my children could face because of it. Basically, I'm trying to balance how 'out' I need to be to be reasonably happy against what is least disruptive/painful for my family. I really am extremely lucky - I have a wonderful family and a very good and happy life - so I don't want to do anything to unnecessarily jeopardize it. I do try to keep in mind that if I can't keep myself reasonably happy I could grow to resent my family - messing things up in a different way.

I am hopeful that being open and honest with myself, my wife, and a few others will be enough for me.

 

That's a very important consideration, StayJay. That can be very different depending on the person and their orientation. It was clear for me personally that being out to only a few people wouldn't cut it, but for me, my closet status basically meant my external self has been at one end of the scale, while the reality of who I was lay at the other end. Not something I could easily reconcile or balance in any way, and the further out I get, the more I have come to realize how much I really HAD to come out to be happy. That may not be the case for you, and if you can make it work, more power to you. Being out is really a state of mind first. If you are out to the people that matter to you, then the rest don't matter unless you feel they truly need to know.

 

I found that when I finally accepted who I am and how I really feel it was like a great weight lifted. It's like I started to understand parts of my personality and behaviour that I always thought were a bit off, but really were a part of me I was suppressing and hiding from.

Now I feel free to be who I am and have found it's made me more confident. I think in some small way, it has also made me more understanding and sympathetic towards other people and the problems they may face.

Happy days

 

Self acceptance (when it finally came) was a huge relief, coming out to my parents and sister was like the lifting of a dead weight. There was no way that I was being myself carrying that lot around all the time - I was very depressed and anxious.

Self acceptance and coming out meant I no longer had to laugh politely and change the subject when people asked me if I had a girlfriend.. yet (that question and the tone it was asked in really used to p*** me off). I no longer had to avoid certain conversations or concoct stories and tell lies - for me that was the hardest thing of all about being in the closet. The deception was terrible.

 

Choirboy, I can see where this wouldn't work at all for you, with the gulf between your reality and the external self the closet required you to project.

I get to embrace much of what might be considered feminine about me everyday in the roles that I have within my family, which helps. I think the difference for me lies more in how I physically present myself and what parts of me I let others see. It is tiring to always have to be guarded, but I don't usually feel like what I am showing people of me is not really me, it's more like it's just not all of me. I think If I can have a few more people/places where I can let down my guard, it would help make the rest of the time easier.

Only time will tell!

 

I think in my case the only thing holding me back, is myself. My friends are almost all 100% a-ok with me being gay, and I know that my family will be quite accepting and supportive of it. So in a lot of ways for me the struggle is not other people, or what other people think, but the struggle is with myself - with getting me to finally properly accept it and be happy with it and move on with my life.

And I think being on this site has helped me in that regard - and Choirboy and Linco (who have both posted in this thread) have been, and are great inspirations to me

 

I feel like I am happy to be open about being a transman. I am who I am, and any chance to raise awareness of trans people is a plus. My only concern is of ever finding someone I guess. Anyone I meet may just never think to look at me that way simply because they know I'm trans from the start.

 

For me its mostly fear of rejection by less influential people like my coworkers. And I'm afraid my ex might loose it and make the divorce nasty, though I think she will be happy to have a better excuse to tell people than the current ''it just wasn't working'' line.
My brother, the person who matters most, will be happy I'm happy. My mom might have a stroke but I'm probably not that lucky. But I can't tell them because I'm mid-divorce and they are close to my ex too, and I don't want to make them lie/would rather not give her lawyer ammunition. Honestly after my brother I really want to tell my ex, even in divorce she has been fair, and acted like a friend. I'm probably being paranoid but its FL so best to be cautious.

 

Acceptance of self has been hard for me. Being really shy, it's hard to open up to people. Growing up, I also got teased for how i wore my hair, what I wore, and what hobbies I was interested in so I started to be a lot more closed about what I shared, thinking that I might be teased for expressing what I was interested in. So, I guess, I wanted to feel like I fit in more. In the sense of sexuality, again I don't "fit" into mainstream society, so learning to accept my full self has been hard, but I'm working on it day by day.

 

Being in the closet has not been working out for me. I feel as though my relationships are fake because if they knew this secret, they wouldn't feel the same about me. My mother specifically may completely write me off. My friends would pledge their allegiance to my husband since they've really been more his friends all along. When all of my relationships seem fake, then nothing in my life seems authentic. It's fucking depressing.

I feel like I need to get it out and start from scratch. I did it as a conservative Christian when I became an atheist and it was scary as hell (pun intended ), I had NO friends left and I had to start from scratch with friends that could relate to the real me. I feel like I have to repeat this process all over again and it's no picnic. This one is going to be a bigger blow, for sure.

I do agree with radioactive bi though. The more I accept and share with others, the more everything makes sense. And I've barely begun.

 

Great thread…for me, a 58 year old married man not yet out, it's about only one thing: The pain I will cause my wife who has stuck with me in a less than perfect marriage for 25 years. Now that I've figured out why it has not been great, how can I not repay the time she stayed with me?

 

For me, self acceptance happened about two years ago. I realize who I am, and I am happy with that.

That issue that keeps me in the closet is society. I think society is getting better as a whole, but I live in a very conservative area, where it is NOT acceptable. All I hear is that this 'lifestyle' might be legal (I do live in a state with marriage equality), but they all talk about that how they do not have to accept it. So if I did come out socially, I would be an outcast, and as someone who did not have any friends growing up because of being bullied, I just do not want to go back to that.

The other thing is the stereo types that exist out in the public. My best friend, who I came out to, keeps on trying to get me to go out the clubs. She keeps telling me that is what all gay guys do. My response is that I did not like clubs before, why does that change now? Or that she expects me to be this shallow person because "All gay guys are these shallow people." It just frustrates me.

 

Don't those stereotypes just make you want to set down your cosmo and bitch slap someone, honey? :lol:

I get so frustrated with the assumption that the magic words "I'm gay" were supposed to change my personality completely. Apparently the reliable, caring, cautious, kind, slightly dull person I was before being blessed with fairy dust was supposed to have evaporated, and no one told me. My wife's assumption has been that I am desperate to be out clubbing, picking up rent boys, slapping our small town in the face with my gayness and corrupting our children with my decadent lifestyle. I'm secure enough to handle it without feeling too hurt by it, but it's kind of annoying.

Coming out, to me, doesn't mean CHANGING who I am. It just means I have the freedom to BE who I am, without having to worry about the wrong person finding out. It doesn't mean that I suddenly feel the need to put on a big gay show. More like, I don't feel the need to put on ANY show. I'm just me.

 

Well played sir :eusa_clap

I think my wife assumes I would act and dress like a drag queen 24/7 if given the chance - she really ought to know me better - I'm really much more of an occasional soccer mom sort :icon_wink

Hear, hear!