How denial works

I think a lot of it is family/social conditioning. I was raised to believe certain things about male and female roles and what I was "supposed" to do when I grew up, and I never really questioned it because I never had any competing narratives. I had my attractions/crushes on girls, but I brushed it off as meaningless because I didn't understand otherwise. It wasn't until much later that I began to recognize who I actually was and that the standard, traditional life that I had adorned myself with didn't fit.

I agree that kids today do seem to have more awareness about them than I did at that age, and that's a good thing! I also think it is somewhat generational - kids today have much more exposure to the lgbt world, and it is presented in a much more positive and accepting light than in years past. I would hope that trend continues and future generations grow up completely self-aware and accepting of their diversity.

 

What were some of the things which looking back you think were obvious signs of not being straight?

 

I think I'm still in denial. I look back too to high school, when I would have these crushes on guys. Random guys who I didn't even know, but I knew what time they would be waiting for the bus home or something along those lines, and I'd try to time it so I'd be there too. Or the guy whose class I was a student helper for and I went out of my way to tell him that he really needed to start doing his homework because the teacher was going to find out soon. I had huge crushes on these guys, but it was always just sexual. The idea of dating them and being romantic with them never crossed my mind. However, the idea of dating this one girl who I was friends with did cross my mind. It didn't happen - the day I decided I was going to ask her out, I discovered she had a boyfriend who was away at college. But I totally thought hey I like her, we get along, we should date! I wasn't attracted to her sexually, but emotionally I suppose I was.

College for me was spent always crushing on guys and hooking up with guys, but again no desire to date any. I did date two guys over the summer between my junior and senior year and it didn't feel right, but I'm not even sure what that means. Could be they just weren't the right guys. My therapist thinks it is because I had/have commitment issues (which I've never considered myself as having, but perhaps with men he has a point). There was one guy in college I crushed on in a major way, to the point where I did think I'd be happy to be in a relationship with him. He was straight and very kindly shot down my advances (yes, I made it clear I was looking for something more than just friendship with him). I actually cried when he shot me down and was pretty sad for a whole weekend. That was something.

End of senior year, one of my really close female friends and I end up getting together. Because I was curious about sex with a woman, and because I really wanted to be in a relationship, and because we were already pretty close and falling in love with somebody who you are already emotionally invested in just isn't that hard at all. But she knew I liked men. She even let me continue to have sex with men on the side. She tells me now (we broke up 3 years ago and we're friendly, if not friends) that she always felt like I spent more time trying to find guys to hook up with instead of focusing on her. But still, the whole time, I considered that guys were just for sex and not for relationships.

Even after her and I broke up, after 7 years, I spent time trying to find my next girlfriend. I hooked up with plenty of guys, but I only went out on dates with girls. The idea of going on dates with guys never crossed my mind. I met my now fiancee (well, we knew each other as kids and grew up together, so it's more like we reconnected), though her and I went through a bit of on-again/off-again dating. Still in between those times, I dated other girls! Never guys. Why? Why did the idea of trying to date guys never cross my mind?

Now here I am. This summer I met a guy who I actually fell for. Was supposed to just be a hookup, but we quickly became friends on top of it. And that became much more to me. To him too, though the shot I had at being with him was blown. But he showed me that I actually could have romantic feelings for a guy and have them returned. And that has me questioning everything.

I still feel like saying I'm gay doesn't necessarily work. I've still been with two women, though I feel like the women I've always gone for have been safe-bets (friends first, though I did go out on first-dates with two girls who I didn't know before) and had much more sex with women than men, technically speaking (you don't date a girl for 7 years and not have lots and lots of sex...I may have hooked up with more than 30 men in my life, but most of them were one-time things). I've never had a problem being aroused by the women I am with. But I do feel like right now if I were to be single and start dating men, I could easily give up sex with women. And that's confusing.

The whole thing is really confusing, to be honest. Feels weird to call myself bisexual, when I'm way more into guys. But feels weird to call myself gay when I do have a history with women.

Sad thing is, maybe none of this should matter. But when you're two weeks away from a wedding to a woman and just aren't sure which direction (doing it or not) will be the bigger mistake, it's all quite frustrating.

Sorry OP, I think I rambled much longer than you did.

 

As people who identify as bisexual or homoflexible with a strong sense of denial because of early childhood scripts from family, church, or society that gay behavior is bad coupled with other dysfunctional behavior from our family of origin, it's quite natural that we would point to our heterosexual experiences as justification of being straight with the shame and dysfunction covering up the rest. At least that was my experience.

 

"Denial" kind of assumes you knew and understood everything, but chose not to deal with it. I think for a lot of us, we didn't really know what we didn't know, and you can't really deny something you were basically unaware of. My family didn't even have any STRAIGHT single people in it, except for my uncle who was in the seminary, much less anyone gay (or suspected of being gay), and a family was always presented as the most positive and important thing anyone could do with their lives. I knew from a very young age that I was drawn to other boys, and although I had no sexual experiences with them, I felt a longing I couldn't understand.

Plus, the many married people in my family were never openly affectionate or sexual, so I was confused. The family was everything, but the feelings I had for other boys didn't really have any counterpart that I could see in the straight couples I grew up with. So while you might say I was in denial of being gay, the real truth is that I never saw attraction and sex as part of that family ideal, so I Just kept looking for the right girl. While I did have a college roommate I was very obsessed with (and he did some playing with my emotions too), I just couldn't reconcile that ingrained desire for a family with the attraction to other guys, and eventually, reluctantly, concluded that perhaps I was bisexual. I was confusing what I considered to be the "gay lifestyle", which I saw as single, no discernable family connections, and a fair amount of drinking and drugs and partying, with the "straight lifestyle" of family and kids. It wasn't at all accurate, but it wasn't denial either, because I had absolutely no understanding of gay as an orientation, as simply the reality of something I definitely DID Know, which was that I was sexually attracted to other guys and not girls.

I did eventually come to the conclusion that I was gay, but I couldn't reconcile the (perceived) lifestyle vs. the orientation, and as that was gradually happening, I also met the woman I eventually married, who I DID feel some attraction to, and actually wanted sex with (which had never happened before). So any real understanding of what gay meant was shelved again because I assumed I'd figured it all out, and all I really HAD needed was to meet the "right girl". Denial? Some might call it that. And perhaps eventually it was, but by the time it reached that point, I was married and had the family kids I desperately wanted--but at last I understood that I had been very much mistaken.

I suspect that if I had had some exposure to LGBT people who didn't fit the stereotype of the time, people like me who are quiet, introverted and generally unremarkable, I might have figured it out a lot earlier. But everyone I knew seemed to have stepped out of The Boys in the Band, and that just wasn't me (and still isn't). Being part of a gay community or being very openly gay isn't really my thing, because I'm a private person and have never been any kind of a joiner to clubs and communities. I have a co-worker who is as German as I am and does the festival thing in lederhosen and ethnic dancing, and I don't have any desire to do that either. I'm not ashamed of being gay any more than I am of being German, but it just doesn't define me to the point where I want to be pigeonholed by behavior that can make people say "Oh, he's xxx", whatever xxx may be. But I'm not covering it up either, and I think that for a lot of us, that's more important than a pride parade or a rainbow flag. Just knowing that there are other gay men and women out there who are happy being gay, while they live the same kind of life that everyone else you know does, makes a difference. You wouldn't necessarily guess my partner and I are gay until you caught the looks between us or the hand holding or the closeness that's definitely more than just friendship, but we're not afraid to do it either. That's really what being gay is, and it's a very simple thing. I think a lot of the denial that people feel is trying to make more of being gay than just wanting to love or connect on an emotional and sexual level with someone of the same sex. You may deny a lifestyle or what appears to be some kind of rules of behavior, but if you narrow it down to simply what you feel and who you react to, it's much harder to be in denial.

 

Hi zen fix - I totally relate
And have asked myself the same thing ...
How at the age of 42 I have been in denial for so long -
And yes for me I always put it down to - it was just my fantasy world
Even though I've had several sexual experiences and my first sexual experience was with a girl
I would say that denial sticks until something shifts - I'm sure there are psychological reasons and yes societal attitude
All I know is I'm very glad and relieved to not be in that denial anymore I feel free and liberated and out of the inner shame I felt
Horray for gay !

 

Yeah, I can relate to this a lot!
The country where I'm originally from is still very homophobic unfortunately, and until this day I know only one lesbian girl from there (and I don't actually know her personally but she was in my school) and that's it. I guess she was the kind of one who always knew she was gay and it was so obvious to her that she couldn't hide it from herself or from anyone. I remember her always smiling and seemed very self confident.

So based on that I thought that if you are a lesbian this is how you should be. I wasn't like this, though I was attracted to women, but somehow I couldn't accept that I was gay too.

So I kept reassuring myself that someone like me, a quiet, shy and sensitive girl with loads of self doubt cannot be a lesbian...

I remember when I was around 24 or something I've seen someone from a (the only) local LGBT organisation on TV, she was invited in a talk show, around 2005-ish, when everyone was still looking at her like she was some kind of freak...And I saw she was so feminine, and beautiful. In that moment I still remember, I felt dizzy and scared that shit, that means what I've been telling myself that I can't be gay because I don't look like some kind of stereotype, it's not actually true...

But then again, after that I found other lies to tell myself and forget about it for some time again...

 

Yes, if you *genuinely* didn't get it, then you weren't in denial.

But the whole beauty of denial is that at one level you *do* get it...but at another level, you don't let yourself get it. We are smarter and more multi-layered than your straightforward "hey, we can't know what we don't know" model acknowledges. I'm sure that for *some* people, that is really true. But I am also *quite* sure that for many more people than recognize it, there was something there that they *could* have seen...*should* have seen...and probably at some level *knew* (or at least suspected...at some level). But they wouldn't let themselves see, know, or acknowledge it. That's why it's called denial.

 

In my case, being a gay man and absolutely not being able to have sex with a woman makes denial pretty difficult.

 

You raise a good point here. We come from all kinds of families. My own family was dysfunctional enough to cause problems with knowing myself and confidence for me (or anyone else that might have been in that situation.) If you are from a dysfunctional enough environment, self preservation may kick in enough to force you to get rid of any kinds of thoughts that might put you in jeopardy. In my case, my parents were extremely emotionally abusive and I would NOT have ever felt that I could express any kind of thoughts on sexuality, let alone same sex attraction to my parents. No way. In fact to this day I do not even have any IDEA of how to bridge the topic-even as an older person, now. Telling my Mom that one of my friends is gay is one thing, telling her that I, too am gay, is completely another thing.

 

I think for me the denial rested firmly on two beliefs.

The first was a belief in the freedom of choice - anything is possible, it's just a matter of perspective. I've always liked men, of course. So if I liked men, I shouldn't have a problem being with them, right? I could do anything if I just put my mind to it, and people seemed to think very highly of sex and love. I wanted to have a piece of that cake too - I just needed to "get into it" and "connect" with my sexual self. I blamed everything not working on shyness and inhibition; I just wasn't working hard enough or looking deep enough.

The other was the belief that I couldn't be safe and expect love and acceptance, unless I adapted to what others needed and wanted. Socially, I'm a chameleon who likes to listen to other people, read them and try to understand what would make them thrive. I did this as a child as well. The strategy was to step back, observe the rules of the situation, and play by those rules. I'm wired that way.

Then of course, there's shame. 'Shame' is a strong word. I personally associate it with tangible fear or obvious pain. But shame can also feel like nothing. It can be the decision not to stand up in class, even though you want to. Immediately after, you forget about it. Sometimes it's not even a conscious decision. It just feels like there's nothing there. No opinion, no preference, no desire, no interest, no information. A dead zone.

 

Wow Sorrel, you are describing my life here with every single word you've just written above. I'm honestly speechless...

 

On Spot

OMG...Zen Fix, I came across your post and was shocked because I am in the same situation, same age, and married now 10 years. I have a life long examples that I've been through, and i think I just can't pretend anymore. I'd like to privately message you of you do not mind. ...

 

TeaTree, (*hug*)

 

One other note is our generation didn't have the support it had today. I have been in denial forever, but I'm happy kids today won't face the same factors we did growing up. If I would of grew up in a society like today, the sound of my identity would have been way easier to sccrpt, and i would not have gotten married just to satisfy a social norm, and i would not have that thorn in her life.

 

Choirboy! Thank you for sharing your story, it really resonated with me. It was much the same for me. In my teens, I was around a lot of "subculture" teenagers, some of which identified as LGBT. But as someone who had social anxiety (at the time) I just couldn't identify with people who went to bars or parties, displayed their alternative lifestyle in an extroverted way, had casual sex, etc. As you say - it's about seeking a connection, not about making a statement.

I also thought that the intense longing I felt was just a peculiar trait of mine. I'm an only child, and I thought I was longing for a sister. I had a few favorite children's stories and books for young teenagers that revolved around two sisters (or sometimes female best friends) and their adventures together. I cherished those stories, but they were about sisterhood, so that's how I interpreted my feelings - it seemed like I wanted a close friend. I had no LGBT role models anywhere around me.