Hey all. I've been skulking on here for a bit, and something popped into my head the other day that I'd like some input on. Some background - I started having sexual fantasies about men in my early teens, and it's something that's grown and grown over my life until here I am, looking for a way out of the closet. I am married with a wife and son. The marriage isn't good (the son is fantastic). Our connection was never super deep, and after years of sporadic arguing, we need to split up. One odd feature of this is that my wife is very understanding about my being gay. I'd hinted to her a few times about bisexuality, but when I came out to her last week as gay (orders of magnitude harder for me), she was fairly neutral on the whole thing. No anger, just some confusion about how I was now saying I was gay when before I was bi. It'd be easy to blame the marriage problems on a general personality conflict, but I think there's something deeper going on with my self-esteem as a gay man, which a recent experience put in my head. As a part of my exploration, I've been looking at dating/hookup sites to see if there are men who I'd be interested in meeting. I won't try anything while my marriage is still in play (which my wife was again surprisingly neutral on, though I still wouldn't), but it feels good to know that were I available, there are men to date out there who might be a decent match. The other night, I saw something a bit stunning. A profile of what looked like my old, very outwardly hetero roommate. This was more of a hookup site, so, while clothed, there was no face. But the clothing, stance, build, age, description, etc. all match him perfectly. Three things happened - first, my stomach did a flip-flopping butterfly thing while I thought about the sexy implications of this. Second, I realized that if this were indeed him, aha, this may be why he's kind of disappeared from everyone's life. He's present here and there, but I haven't seen him in years. I've heard similar comments from friends, "can't find what don't want to be found," etc. And the third thing. I realized with a jolt that I'm not so different. I have almost no friends at all. I have FB people, but those aren't deep, and there is only one other friend that I hang out with ... monthly? Maybe less. The others have all gone by the wayside over the years. When I look back on my feelings, it feels like (and I may be rationalizing hindsight here, but the pattern fits) I've held myself back from connecting deeply in almost every major friendship/relationship I've had since my early 20's. I can sense shame based reservedness insulating me from people in the past (and, for a time I now think, from my wife). On the outside of the wall was me trying to appear normal, and to please them. On the inside was this pitched battle questioning, re-questioning, denying, accepting, re-denying, and re-accepting my sexuality. Over and over. I think I was afraid if they knew, I would lose what little friendship I was willing/able to have with them. They'd hate me because I was gay. They'd hate me because I was a massive liar. They'd hate me because I was a coward. So I faded away, every time. I rejected myself on their behalves. Wow, huh? And in thinking about this, I realized something that has made me even more sure of who I am & it's incredibly simple. If people knew that I was gay, I honestly don't think I would have much of anything to lie to them about. At that point, I'd just be me. Take it or leave it, but all out in the open. So, has it been like that for others? Is a lack of authenticity the bane of friendship and love? My potentially biased analysis says so, and that it's happened to me, but what say the rest of you?
One of the fundamental problems with being in the closet is that it changes your personality, it literally forces to you be other than who you are. Marriage compounds that effect, and the way people understand marriage today (with the ridiculous notion that the other person is supposed to be everything you could ever want or need), it is as if two people need to seal themselves off from others such as friends, family and community. So marriage, in a way, is the perfect closet, it provides the proper veneer over the diminished self that you must maintain in order to be "acceptable" to other people. Many, if not most, of the gay guys who have married are the ultimate people-pleasers, I know I was. So I went through the divorce, I came out to myself three years ago, and I have made more friends in the past three years than in the previous 25...and I am now in a loving relationship with a beautiful guy... I can tell you from this side of the closet, it is the best life I have ever lived...
GW, you achieved the black belt of the masters in such a short time. I am only at the beginning, at turtle's pace... maybe one day I can dream of getting there as well, one day at a time... I totally relate to this thing of not having any friends. I did not allow myself to forming any proper friendships since coming to this country and meeting her when I was around 20. The few people we meet are usually always other couples and all conversations revolving just around the kids. I used to be a guy interested in lots of stuff and this feels suffocating, nothing to talk about, I've become a completely boring guy. I do not even allow myself to go out on my own with my old friends when I am back in my home town, they probably wonder how much I've changed, I used to be a much more sociable guy. It live my life like I am just doing my job and feel almost like guilty of doing anything that does not directly relate to my 'task' in life. All the time just family life, holidays at parents or in-laws, and no friends. I've locked myself into a cage and threw away the key. I think she realizes how my eyes shine differently when I am with my old friends and this annoys her and I feel guilty, therefore, prefer to be at a distance from the rest of the world. Anyway, I don't know how to go out there and make friendships as long as I am living this way.
That's very encouraging. And while I've never given a ton of thought to how marriage is supposed to be, I do think the kind of marriage my wife wants is one of conventional convenience. She wants the home with the kid, to entertain her friends on occasions, and to fill it with all of the things she loves. To be honest, I don't think I'm one of those things, but I keep the whole ball rolling, so I have to be tolerated. But that's a developing story for another day Mr B, I am totally with you on the difficulty feeling like yourself in a marriage. I think part of my problems here are to do with being (oh so secretly) gay, yes, but there's a whole other raft of issues between us that have conspired to isolate me in other ways. She was always very prickly about having my friends over, and I never got the feeling they were welcomed with open arms they way I'd hoped at the onset of the relationship. I hope someday to be in a situation where things are warmer than that.
Wow. Perfectly articulated. All of it. Especially this : "On the outside of the wall was me trying to appear normal, and to please them. On the inside was this pitched battle questioning, re-questioning, denying, accepting, re-denying, and re-accepting my sexuality. Over and over. I think I was afraid if they knew, I would lose what little friendship I was willing/able to have with them. They'd hate me because I was gay. They'd hate me because I was a massive liar. They'd hate me because I was a coward. So I faded away, every time. I rejected myself on their behalves." Right there with you...
I have to say that what you wrote above hits some major buttons with me and how I now understand my former marriage. She didn't like your friends, well it would be perhaps OK if she didn't like some of your friends, but all of them? Are you expected to like hers when she entertains them? If so, why is that OK? Why is it that you are to be "tolerated"? Why is it OK that she gets to fill your home with the things she loves? Where is you in all of this? Well, you're beginning to find out who you are... I lived that life; the quiet, acquiescent husband, tolerating the thousand micro-aggressions, the way she would dismiss my friends and my family as "intruders" upon our relationship, the little insults, followed by the hostile, nakedly aggressive insults. Soon enough, if my mother or sister would come to visit, she would stay in her room, thereby avoiding the need to even greet them. It was because of the closet that I would accept being treated this way, I was not myself, I let the person I thought I was let himself be directed, managed and exploited. Until I could not pretend anymore, that is. Be sure about one thing: the moment you decide to assert yourself in your relationship, whether you tell her you are gay, or not, the moment you insist on being treated as an equal, rather than part of the furniture, is the moment things will change. Hoping that some day things will be warmer than that is perhaps wishful thinking...what is it that you want? In all of this arrangement, where is your life?
I think GW pretty much hit the nail on the head. I would just add that, as a gay man in a hetero marriage, whenever I encountered another apparently gay man, much as I would have liked to befriend him, I would immediately distance myself to avoid becoming suspect by association. As for your discovery on the dating/hook-up site, it seems highly unlikely that the headless torso you saw is in fact your former roommate; however, there's nothing to be lost in sending him an anonymous shout-out. You might even chat directly, telling him your suspicion.
Well, it really doesn't even matter if it is him. The real gold out of the possible recognition (I mean, even the somewhat idiosyncratic style of shirt looked familiar) is just that it held a mirror up to my own life & helped me see a bit of what I've been doing to myself. One thing about that guy, though, is that in the past when we still were in contact, thoughts of coming out to him always carried the most certainty of rejection. He was always a pretty cool guy, but he seemed pretty freaked out about anything gay involving men. How ironic if this ever pans out as the actual situation.
I can identify with this so much. I've lost touch with a lot of friends over the years. In my case, ironically, they know I'm gay or bi or something. And they could care less. But I have been unable to embrace that part of myself. I'm still not living as a gay man. And I still feel ashamed when I'm around these guys. Not so much about being gay, but about being so messed up that I'm not really living life anymore, just stuck in time. I wish I could tell them about fun things I do with my gay friends -- but I don't have any gay friends. Somehow I've just shut down my life. At some level, it's like my unconscious is saying "Better to have no life at all than to live gay."
So, this, GW. I spent the last two hours wearing my brain out explaining, but my confidence waned with my energy (it's late!), and I didn't post the massive rant. And it felt a little too one-sided, which I didn't have the heart to try and repair tonight Suffice to say, it's not a good situation, and it bears more than a passing resemblance to your once-marriage. But I would like to flesh out a couple of things: First, I feel that coming to terms with my sexuality *is* asserting myself. Or beginning to, anyway. I'm trying to let this thing out that I've kept under wraps for all these years, because I've come to realize that I've reached a point where I have very little left to lose, and almost everything to gain. Like you say, I am actively finding out who I am. And I have now said to my wife that I am gay, period, full-stop. We haven't discussed the implications, but it's out there now, and I've placed my foot on the first step of the path that will guide me out of this. And second, I didn't mean to sound like I wanted things to someday be warmer while being with her in some better version of our relationship. I'd say that ship has sailed, but it feels more like a fleet! No, that's more of a goal I've set, to build something with someone who *is* warmer than her, and be together as better people than she and I are right now in this marriage. You know what I mean? I don't know how realistic that will ultimately be, but it's comforting as a guiding light, just the same. So, off I go to snoozetown. :sleep: Have a good night.
I think that there is a lot in the mix for both of us. Yes, I'm gay, but while that has driven me away from people, my troubled marriage has also been the source of great embarrassment and shame. It has felt humiliating and cowardly for a long time to have continued to stay. I was considering divorce before my mom fell ill in 2011, but that idea got shelved hard when she got worse and passed away. It was really only last October that I felt strong enough again to face this. Well, and desperate enough, the secret was causing panic in me. But then I skipped a friend's re-marriage last year. I couldn't articulate it then, but it was because of all these feelings of shame colliding. I couldn't have been happy for them at that moment, so I stayed silent, and have pretty much excused myself from his life. That was one of many wakeup calls. I hope someday to explain to him why I couldn't even RSVP, but we'll see. My fervent wish is to get to the point where that won't happen again. Anyway, it sounds like both of us need to deal with our shame. It is also helpful for me to hear that coming out isn't some panacea for my life's problems. I also need to work on the part of myself that has allowed me to stay married to a woman like my wife. No more of that! (once I'm past it, I mean ... ugh)
