Intense feelings of grief and loss

I had similar emotional effects during my journey as well. Mine were more tied to the loss of my family, the impact on my kids. Your definitely going through a grieving period from the description. I do indeed think what your experiencing is in the ordinary course. For me, such emotions came and went for about six months once they began. I say once they began, because I think it took me about six months after I came out to myself before I began to grieve.

 

There is so much grief in this process. I feel like I am making progress if I can go three days without breaking down in tears. (Today is not one of those day:-(
There is the loss of all of the dreams and expectations of what I imagined my life would be, the gradual loss of the relationship with my wife - at least the loss of the relationship we had... Which was very good in so many ways. But it is not total loss, it is change.
There is the loss of my straight identity, again, in increments.there is the loss of the support you have from society... It is filled with grief.

I can say, that in the years that I hid from the truth about myself,when I retreated further and further into the closet, I had lost the ability to feel most of my feelings, and was not able to cry, even when I wanted to.

So even in the pain of the grief and tears, i rejoice that I can feel again, and cry. I feel human in a way I had not for a long time. I am also beginning to look forward to exploring life in a new and different way, and hopefully find new relationships that are life giving.

 

It is human nature to feel loss more keenly than gains, we are programmed that way, ostensibly to protect us immediately if such occurrence happens again. Loss of illusions, including the loss of something we never really had is just as painful.

I mourned the end of my marriage years before it was officially over, so in a sense, I did this in stages. When I finally came out to myself, I wasn't thrilled, but there was a sense of relief and exhilaration mixed in with the displeasure of finding out something so profoundly life-changing.

I credit stoicism for keeping me more or less on an even keel. I had read Marcus Aurelius, and the basic philosophy of stoicism, which many erroneously describe as an absence of emotion but is really about avoiding negative ones...and it seemed to me that there was little point in nurturing those. I chose to live according to my nature, and that is always a positive development.

As BeingEarnest said above, that you are feeling as intensely as you are is probably something new to you...the closet has a way of deadening everything, including both negative and positive emotions. So welcome to the world of feeling! Being alive does unfortunately mean sometimes feeling loss intensely, but you need to see this as something profoundly positive.

In celebration of feeling and finally the possibility of love, I offer the OP the following stanza from Khalil Gibran's The Prophet:

 

I definitely didn't have any grief at the thought of never having another relationship with a woman. That ship sailed long before I decided "officially" to come out--I'd say at least 5 and probably more years before I came out to anyone, I imagined very consistently that if my wife suddenly died or divorced me, I'd avoid another straight relationship and live as an out gay man. But it took until about 2 years ago before it became an active choice on my part, something I had to do, NOW, rather than wait for fate to give me the opportunity.

I did have some sadness at the thought of what this might do to my family, and I did grieve the security and predictability of my current suburban existence. That lasted several months. Then reality took over, and I began to realize that the life I was grieving wasn't really MY life, it was my wife's life that I was riding along with. The sick feeling that I had about messing up her comfortable existence was gradually replaced with anger at myself for being such a doormat for years, and anger at her for being so insensitive to me that she never saw just how terribly unhappy I was.

Anger isn't really something I've ever let myself feel, even as a child, and that was difficult and rather frightening. In my case, that, and the frustration of realizing who I was and feeling that I couldn't rush the process, led to some depression, which was really far stronger than the grief. Now that I've adjusted to the pace, and realized that I'm really not destroying anyone's life by doing this, I feel much more at peace.

 

My grief was and is in a different direction. After I came out at age 54, I felt grief at having lost so much of my life pretending to be what I'm not, and having got enclosed in an inauthentic life

 

It's hard to avoid those feelings. I felt far more annoyance and anger at myself than grief, but the effect was the same - I beat myself up terribly for the decision I made to bury my orientation and live the "wrong" life.

But really, was it "wrong"? Sure, I missed the chance to experience being a gay youth. I might have had a wonderful relationship with a great guy for the last 20 or 30 years, instead of a straight relationship that's been strained for a decade and never really gave me what I needed emotionally. We can always come up with the good things that we missed out on, and it's overwhelming to think of them.

Life is a series of judgment calls and decisions that lead to other judgment calls and decisions. We do what we think is the right thing at that second, which leads to other things that we decide that are right for THAT second, and so on. There's no way to go back and KNOW that had I come out at age 15 or 20 or 25, I'd have met a wonderful man and I would be a million times happier and life would be great.

I know myself and who I am. I'm a rather naive and insecure person who regards moving backwards as failure, and I want desperately to love and be loved. Far less so now than in the past, but the fact remains that many of my decisions were based on those emotions and traits. Suppose I had come out 30 or more years ago. Maybe I would have met a great guy. Or maybe I would have clung to someone out of insecurity and been a battered husband/partner. Maybe I would have been so trusting that I would have ended up with HIV. Maybe I would have felt rejected by other gay men for one reason or another and become depressed and suicidal. Maybe the woman I married would have ended up beaten to death by her abusive ex because I wasn't there. My 2 daughters would not exist. Maybe the man I love wouldn't have felt the courage to deal with his own coming out because I wasn't there by his side.

You get the point. We're all George Bailey. Our decisions were what seemed right at the time and have led us to where we are. We can't reverse them, and beating ourselves up about them won't make anything better. But the fact that we spent decades in the closet or in straight marriages led other people to where they are too, and if we erase our closeted pasts, we also erase the good we DID do, and the good THEY did because of us.

Even if we decide that the best thing for now is to stay in the closet, if we think it's the best thing for now, no one has the right to say we're wrong for doing it. As long as you are taking responsibility for your life and being true to yourself and what you believe, you are doing what you're supposed to do.

Grieve for what never was and never had the chance to be. Absolutely. But never overlook the good that came about because of the decisions you made, either. And that makes the missteps much more bearable.

 

Yes. Very, very much so.

 

Being gay doesn't necessarily mean having to surrender your masculinity. I, for one, have always felt completely masculine, even when bottoming for a hot daddy top (sorry if that is too explicit).

 

Oh, the notions (often bastardized) of masculinity in the modern world, of living up (or down) to such ideas! Where do these things come from? Why do they perpetuate themselves so persistently?

Is it not masculine to love, to sing, to build, to heal and to destroy? Which among these, and so many other things "real" men do, are forbidden to those men who love men?

I can tell you one thing though...there are a lot of man-children out there, partial grown-ups, un-schooled and undisciplined "men" who make up a large swath of our society. These are guys who never really had the kind of mentoring, or fathering that was needed from grownups in order to become men. But get older they must, and for lack of anything better they tie themselves to some pretty lame notions of what it is to become a man. One could conceivably trace all the promiscuity, lack of commitment and a host of other childish behaviours, whether gay or straight, to the absence of knowledge of what constitutes manhood.

To a point, we could tolerate a few of them, but now...they seem everywhere, just check out hypocrite politicians, priests and pastors, for starters. The grownups have definitely left the room.

 

A lot of people have that embedded in their psyche. That's what makes it so easy to hide in plain site. Nobody is suspecting us normal guys of being gay. Sometimes not even ourselves. Not saying that's a good thing or a bad thing, but it just is.

 

Ditto.

And I get annoyed when people call it "internalized homophobia," as if that idea came from "society" and I just got brainwashed. I don't buy it. I've alway been a highly critical and independent-minded person. And I'm fine with gay people and fully supportive of them and opposed to hateful bigots wherever they may be.

But there is something deeply, internally problematic about accepting that it would be OK for me to be gay. There is a voice in my head that basically says, "Over my dead body." It's not about cultural norms. It's about identity at a very basic level: there is a ME which is straight, and the gay fantasies are NOT-ME. They feel quite alien, and my mind defends itself against them.

I don't know if this sounds insane, but there it is.

 

Sorry, but it is about your internalized feelings. Part of it is actually sexism, and the relationship between homophobia and sexism has been studied, and is interesting to look at. Part of the problem is that you feel that you're putting yourself into the place of a woman, when you're thinking about homosexuality. Thinking in these terms makes you feel like you're not a man, and all sorts of things that are difficult to consider.

My personal view is that if a homosexual act destroys the concept of manhood, than it is not a very powerful idea, if something so small and arbitrary could destroy it.

See GreatWhale, where he lists truly noble characteristics of men and women.

--

 

NB, I don't know if it is insane or not; but if it is, then I am right there with you in the insanity. I used to go to sacramental confession each time I "acted out," always feeling that it was not who I really was. Then I once heard a priest talking about people who come to confession and after saying what they did, they would say that that just isn't who they are. and he asked, well then who did it, if not you. that rattled me about, because it challenged my assumption that I was this straight person, and every time I had sex with a man it was just not who I am, it was a moment of weakness or a sin or something. It wasn't until I had a priest in confession tell me that my only real sin was pretending to be something I wasn't and that I should be honest and be the person I really am that my eyes were opened up. A different way around the barn than many people take, but it brought me closer to the truth than I had been before. there is only one 'me', and the only reason I do what I do is because I'm gay. what a relief being just one person after all those years. it was a lot of work being two people. am I saying that I got honest? HA! not at all. just a little less dishonest, day by day.

 

I understand it, whether insane or not. Coming to terms with any of this is a fairly crazy-making process in general for me.

Until recently I shared your annoyance with the label "internalized homophobia". I picture the homophobic as violently anti-gay. Even if internalized, it would express itself in loathsome thoughts, of which I do not have.

As I get closer to dealing with the possibility of coming out I realize I am having to wrestle with the notion that living as a gay man would be a demotion on the imaginary scale that I've been living my life by due to my upbringing in "the All American Family". Extending from the idea that society is better off when the "natural order" is being observed. We procreate, go to Disneyland, send the kids to college and sit back and wait to be grandparents. Sure, while doing all of this I was perfectly accepting of gay men and women and appropriately angry at those who hate. However to say I could be ONE OF THEM? Uh no, I'll keep my position at the top of the food chain thank you very much.

This is exactly what has gotten me to 50, sneaking around the house to watch gay porn while I carefully maintain status as a "family man" all the while dripping with misery. If you were to compare my life long acceptance of gay people to that of my son and his generation... Well then I am more accepting of the term "internalized homophobia" for myself, because these kids don't even understand why people are discussing the issue. In fact, along with geeks; gay people seem to be the new cool at least in my part of the country.

Maybe the cartoonish idea of masculinity is part of the anxiety, but honestly I've never felt like so much less of a "Man" then when I realized the damage I've done by lying to myself and everyone around me for so long.