I'm a 29 year old female and at the beginning of January I started questioning my sexuality. I don't have any memories of ever being attracted to females before this and had a few relationships with males throughout my 20's, one of which was a 3.5 year relationship. My childhood was filled with crushes on various boys, granted I feel like i almost always tended to fall for more feminine males, but I also think I really fell more for the guys I thought I might actually stand a chance with. From this statement it might be pretty obvious that I've never had very high self-esteem and definitely still struggle with this today. I live about 1800 miles away from my immediate family and have very few/basically no friends out here. My cousin lives in the area and I'm pretty sure he's also in the closet, but aside from him and his "roommate" I have no one to talk to. A lot of the people that I work with that are the people I'm closest to, seem to be pretty conservative and I don't want to rock the boat at work by coming out to someone there, but I'm pretty much bursting to come out to someone. I've thought about coming out to my cousin, but we don't tend to talk much about personal issues and I don't want to inadvertently force him out either. I've thought about trying to talk to my younger sister about it, as I am fairly confident she would be accepting, but I'm afraid she's not going to take me seriously as I've always appeared to be interested in guys and last year when her friend and former room-mate started having an affair with a female co-worker my sister seemed to have the impression her friend was doing it for attention (of course i could have been picking up the negative tones because I think her friend was still in a relationship with her long-term bf at the time). I did go to a few LGBT meet-ups earlier in the year when I first started having these feelings and felt super comfortable out with them, but there was some weird stuff with the meet-up organizer and I got myself kicked out (my best guess is because I blocked the leader on facebook after adding her as a friend and being worried her posts to me were going to raise questions). Unfortunately I don't have much time now as I'm in my last semester of grad school (online school), but I really don't want to have to wait until December when I'll have time to explore my feelings more. I've seen someone else post about the not wanting to come out until having had some experiences with dating, which is pretty much where I stand as well, but I feel like from my brief experience on a dating website, I found many women who expressed opinions about not wanting to be with another woman who wasn't out or who hadn't been with a woman before. So really I don't know if I should come out and if so who I should come out to. I really don't like the idea of seeing a therapist, I don't see anything wrong with being gay/a lesbian, I just want to experience it before I go around telling everyone I am only to get into a relationship and find out that I'm not. Thanks in advance, sorry if this was kind of rambling/jumbled. Trying to make sense of everything, which is hard for someone who always overthinks everything.
I didn't like he idea of seeing a therapist either, I'd been to one before for different reasons (so I thought) and she wasn't helpful/I wasn't being honest with myself. Now I occasionally see a therapist who is gay, and it has helped. I don't think there's anything wrong with being gay either, but when it's you, it's harder to wrap your mind around it. What about pt an online chat app? I've just started using one, you can be fairly anonymous if you want, you can state that you aren't looking for a relationship... I also think it really helps to have at least one person you can come out to in your real life. Someone you are already open with, someone who cares about you, someone trustworthy and loyal. These are just my thoughts, I hope it helped to post here on ec!
High Art's advice is pretty spot on. I'd only add this: I found a therapist who dealt with LGBT issues. She was also a lesbian. And while I'm a gay man it helped a lot knowing that she was a gay woman because I knew she'd been through it all and probably had it tougher as she was about 20 years older. If you are hesitant about telling someone you know that you're gay then I do recommend finding a therapist who you know is sensitive to LGBT issues (because you're in the US, make sure that they aren't some kind of stealth conversion/ex-gay therapist). The main reason is that I know from my experience the absolute relief and emotion I felt telling somebody, in the flesh, that I'm gay. It's an amazing release of accumulated tension and stress. The fact that it was only a therapist didn't stop me from crying. It's an amazing feeling to say it to someone in the real, as opposed to the cyber, world for the first time. Of course, I went and undid all that amazing relief and emotion by discontinuing therapy when it was getting hard and crawled back into the closet. If you find a good, caring, friendly therapist I would say do it and stick with it because they'll be able to talk you through your options and make you see things with more clarity and as much as you don't think there is anything wrong with being gay, because there is nothing wrong with being gay, talking through how you might cope with all the possible ramifications of coming out to people is only a good thing imo. But make sure the therapist is experienced, non-judgmental, and cares about your well-being and if you aren't sure about that try and find someone else. I should take my own advice ha ha. Good luck with it (*hug*)
Thanks for the advice, I think i will look into therapy, for some reason I really feel it would be easier just to talk to my sister or someone else I know. It was also a great relief to start going to an LGBT meet-up group where I could be myself and it didn't really matter, finding the time for all of these things is so hard though. I keep waiting for someone close to me to outright ask me if I'm gay, I recently cut my hair super short and haven't had a boyfriend in over 3 years, so I feel like people might be getting the hint, but my cousin and his "roommate" have lived together for about 6 years and no one ever mentions anything about it. In my family, we just don't talk about these things. Thanks again for the advice, I really appreciate it
I find the more people i reach out to for trust and understanding, the better I feel about my ability to cope and love myself. I feel more confident in myself. There isn't going to be an easy way to do this....And waiting for "the right time" might just lead to anxiety as you constantly are thinking about it but having no resolution. This is a tricky thing to deal with. Your instinct is to talk with your sister. Why not follow that? It's seems like you have thought through this so thoroughly, looking at all the angles. You are smart. Our family will always need adjustment time, but have faith in the relationship you have with her. You are suffering. Reach out. The above advice of High Art and Queen Bee are good. And there are others just like you here on the site who can bring comfort to you....because here...we DO talk about these things. Good luck with your last semester.
I have this dilemma as well, feel the need to come out to more people, but in the same time the "how can I come out with no real-life experience, no LGBT friends, and being in a straight relationship for eight years?". Then there is the issue with meeting LGBT people when you are not out. Looks impossible for me. Especially here, where I live. And there is also the "what if I'll come out to people and then I'll realize I'm not gay" or something. Though in my case, and I think the case of most of us who are seriously questioning our sexuality this looks more like an anxiety-issue. Again, it's about conforming to the norms, not disappointing people. So I'm trying to get over this part, to focus on myself, on my needs, and not necessarily put a label on myself. And my needs in this moment are to explore my non-straight side and my attraction towards women. But on the long run it's all about knowing myself better. So the ultimate challenge for me is to accept myself whatever my orientation is or will change. And this is the tough part because we always want to get ourselves in this comfortable box so that we can live happily ever after there. But I'm coming to realize that, at least for me, the recipe for happiness and life satisfaction lies in the exact opposite. A kind of letting go. I really like HighArt's idea about the online chat app. I would also like to connect to people/ women and not necessarily with the sole purpose of dating. At least not right now. There should be women who are interested to talk with people like us, who are not completely 100% out yet and who weren't always sure they are lesbians. I mean I've always been drawn to people who are not exactly cut out from the stereotype-catalog. About therapy, well, my experience with that was so and so, I visited a therapist about a month ago, and after two sessions she told me that she cannot help me and I would need to talk to people from some LGBT organisation instead. So yeah, here where I live it's not so abundant in LBGT organisations, and I'm also very very shy when it comes to going somewhere new, but especially when it's about an LGBT place. Yeah, I'm still not so comfortable with myself and there is a lot of inner shame I'm working through. But I'm starting to realize that I could actually use a bit more therapy, so I'm looking for something like an LGBT friendly therapist. Which is again, not easy to find here, but I think I found one I'm just too afraid to actually write to her yet :icon_bigg So it's a process and it takes time. I thought two months ago I will just jump through the stages of self acceptance because I'm cool like that :icon_bigg But no, it really needs time to sink in. I think talking to someone in your immediate circle, like your sister is a great idea. I would definitely go for it. I also know how difficult that is, especially when you are not fully comfortable with yourself. But coming out to your sister doesn't have to mean your faith is now decided and such, it should help you to talk about the issues you are facing even if you are not 100% sure about where will this lead you. I'm also gathering courage to come out to my friend from high school, and have been putting it off for similar reasons.
I feel you here, I've been wishing this to happen in a way too. I told my ex-therapist that I started hoping that someone would approach me on the street and ask me if I'm gay. And then that person would offer me help and support. Some kind of guardian angel :icon_bigg But in all honesty I'm still wishing for this to happen in some shape of form...:icon_redf
