Deadlock

Your in a bit of a pickle, a few things I would suggest is trying to immerse yourself in the culture? Attend a pride event, maybe go to a gaybar, see how comfortable you are being around other LGBT people. Have you considered talking to a professional, maybe a councelor or therapist ?
But if you truely don't want to live as a gay man, then don't, it's your life. But please don't force yourself into a relationship with a woman down the road just to be with someone, just so your not alone, don't do that to a woman that's looking for love when you can't provide that for her.

 

"I don't want to be gay." Oh, how I've heard that rolling around in my head over and over again for for 37 long years. I know EXACTLY how you feel.

I wish I could give you magic advice on how I got past it. I am one of those guys who ended up in an emotional, mental and physical crisis, resulting in my final acceptance in myself as a gay man.

I stopped asking myself if I wanted to be gay. I am gay.

 

Your out status confuses me. Everyone and no one. Does that mean everyone anonymously and no one in real life? As I started to come out to people, it gave me a new confidence and over the course of my crisis, each coming out lifted the fog of my doubts, my fears, my shame. What was underneath those punishing emotions was a love and forgiveness I had wanted to give myself. If you have not come out to anyone it could be what is keeping you stuck.

Coming out itself was my liberation not only from the secrecy, but also everything that secrecy was trying to protect.

 

Nerdbrain

Over the past few months of reading your posts I get the feeling sometimes that you have an academic interest in understanding your sexuality. Gather evidence, develop a conclusion. Yet, you are also fiercely independent and do not like to be labeled or defined.

I completely relate to this. I just cannot be the stereotypical anything. I think in a way this is why it took me until I was mid fifties to truly accept myself as bisexual and come out to my wife. But now I am disinterested again in the definition or living within the behaviors that define it.

I just do stuff. I kiss a guy (I suppose that's pretty gay). I make love to my wife (straight?). But, I don't analyze it anymore. I decided to accept my bisexuality, I needed to look in the mirror and say...you're gay. But, I have only done that a few times.

I don't want to be a bisexual, or gay or straight either. I don't want a label. I just want to be me...in the moment.

I know this is hard for you. Your academic mind will fight you on this. But, you need to stop the self analysis and start to react to life instead of planning every move. Live in the moment. This cannot happen overnight...I get that. Try a little bit at a time to just feel something simple without trying to understand or evaluate it.

 

Totally understand and I know the decades of stalemate, introspection and reflection. I think I've decided what is hopeless is that constant wishing I was straight or somewhere or somebody else.

Sometimes the simplest answer is all that is needed. I'm done with endless navel gazing, analysis, and wishing for something that's not going to change. I'm gay and that's that. It doesn't make the near future any easier. But maybe now I can find direction.

I love life and everybody in it. I just want to get on with it.

 

Deadlocks are a frustrating place to be, no doubt. In negotiations, deadlocks are where you never want to be.

It seems to me (and I may be totally off) that there is a fear somewhere of something that you might lose if you "give in" or "concede" (in negotiation parlance) to yourself that you are gay: as in 100% not-straight, totally, unequivocally gay.

So then, we seem to be at an impasse...unless perhaps you can concede a little on what may be a way out. Perhaps you can concede that you are not 100% straight? Can you live with being somewhere on the spectrum in-between? Are you determined to base your identity on the simple binary of gay or straight?

Back to what you think you might lose: could it be status? The privilege of being perceived as straight? No longer dating women? Loss of respect? Fear of ridicule perhaps, or just plain fear? In all of these, there is some loss, something lost by making a decision.

Enter Prospect Theory, first developed by the psychologists Kahnemann and Tversky. The gist of it is that the framing of a choice is more important when it comes to making a decision than an objective analysis of the real risks.

What Kahnemann and Tversky discovered is that we fear potential loss about twice as keenly as we appreciate potential gains, even though they may objectively be equally possible.

I have no prescription about what you may decide that you are, other than to perhaps just set aside questions about your identity, or to deliberately suspend the question and to let life happen as it will, or to just follow your heart and your desires to the conclusion of their own logic; free of labels and definitions that don't quite fit your particular situation. Can you, in the Zen Buddhist sense free yourself from the tyranny of opposites and find a space in-between where what you could lose is equal, or maybe, and even probably much less than what you could potentially gain by living as you are?

 

I can so relate to this. I always aproved of gay people and have as far as I can tell an understanding family. Yet the idea of posibly being gay still causes me to get into a panick. It doesn't make any sense. However for me it has become better over the years by trying to think positive thoughts about the posibility of being gay. Though I'm still not sure. Perhaps you should try really thinking positive thoughts about being gay. Maybe that would help.

Yet again totally feel you. If I think It's okay to be gay I ussualy get a headache from the panick it creates instead of a happy feeling. I think a part of it is what kind of stock you yourself put into it. If you for example tell yourself "I'm gay and that's okay" while not truly believing it. It's ofcourse not going to work. It's all about how you frame it.

 

It sounds a little like you want to be at the end of the journey already. You feel like you've been doing this for 20 years, and you've come pretty far, so why aren't you there yet? Where is the other side of the rainbow already? It reminds me a bit of myself in that way. That feeling of you should be at the end already, the endgame in theory being having a boyfriend/husband and whatever else you want from that relationship.

The thing is, you have come pretty far. You've accepted that you're not straight. Maybe not in terms of living out gay experiences, but you've accepted that you shouldn't be in a relationship with any women anymore. That's huge. I mean, think about everything you know about me. You've seen me try to embrace the lifestyle, read about me going on dates, certainly know my history with certain relationships. And yet I still sit here wondering if I can't make things work with my last female relationship...it's not a competition, but I'm impressed that you've shed the "relationship with a woman is something I can be happy in" idea that I can't seem to shake yet.

You've tried getting involved in the gay lifestyle and so far found it's just not for you. Maybe that's because it just isn't your scene? Dating guys is tough to me because every time it doesn't work out, I think "I must not really like dating guys, I should go date girls." Been doing that since I was 20. Really that doesn't make sense. But it is what my head tells me makes sense. So perhaps when you are trying these activities, you're simply not enjoying them and that's it. And that's okay.

As for dating guys, and hooking up with guys, perhaps you're just not ready for that yet. You want to be, you want the companionship like many of us do. But you're also still dealing with the end of a very important relationship in your wife, and so right now just might not be when your heart is open enough to meet somebody new and let them in. Especially not somebody of a gender that you're still conflicted over wanting to be with. Sex wise, well while I've had my share of hookups over the years, I now find unless I have some sort of connection with even guys, I don't enjoy sex. My days of random hookups seem done. I need to at least be friends with the guy and care about him. Or have a strong draw towards him (like I did with one guy I went on a date with an ended the night hooking up with. After the third date, when we hooked up again, my interest in him was less and I felt less connection and the sex was not enjoyable compared to the first time).

I think you're doing incredibly well all things considered. You finally broke past one major deadlock, be proud of that. And give yourself time to get past the rest.

 

Then don't be gay.

Go running back to your wife and pretend to be straight for another 10-15 years. Continue to deny your sexuality and that you long to meet a nice nerdy guy who will love you and take you from behind.

Perhaps by the time you are in your late forties or early fifties a different part of you will emerge and introduce a new perspective that tips the scale and helps resolve the impasse. Then you can lament wasting another 10-15 years, but that seems to be the road you're on. When you do, you'll think back on this day when I told you that you would do this -- unless of course you decide to carpe diem (!)

 

This might seem a little harsh, but I know from my own experience as a gay man in a marriage of 20 years with two teenage kids - it doesn't get any easier as time goes on. It only gets harder, with more to lose, and more anguish over lost years. Carpe diem, indeed.

 

Nerdbrain

Your post caused me to do a bit of introspection today. What I realized is that deep down I don't want to be bisexual or live as one either. I don't want to be "required" to do the things a gay guy would. I just can't do it. I won't do it. I'm not that guy. This is stupid. I dig my heels in. I freak out when a gay guy calls me a homo. I will not wear this!

But I am doing them anyway. Why? Because I know what it is like to sit back in fear. It almost destroyed me. It is unsustainable and will destroy you. It is true that fear paralyzes. You let it go too far and you will become unable to move.

Grow a pair and get out there. You will be fine. You can be a non-gay guy like me who just had an awesome experience with another man! Go to the park and marvel at the sculpture that is the male body. That's not gay it's just appreciation of another dude. Whatever works for you. Let the gay find you and stop fighting it.

 

just to be super crisp, there are two dimensions to consider

• coming out to self
• coming out to others

while i agree that the latter gets harder over time in a mixed-orientation marriage, this is not the op's issue. the issue is the former, and i contend that the reflection and examination of middle age as we come to terms with our own mortality might just provide the forcing function required to break the impasse if the philosophy of carpe diem fails to do so.

 

Siennafire's comment is dead on. What forced me out was not discontent in my marriage and nothing about the knowledge of my sexuality changed. What changed was an injury that forced me to recognize my mortality and the limited time I have to live and embrace an important aspect of me.

Nerdbrain. This will happen to you.

 

I've not had the "I do not want to be gay" situation. I have caught myself saying to myself, "I'm lonely as hell, maybe I should throw in the towel and date a woman." But then I watch something like Olympic women's beach volleyball and say, na.

Then there's that "I won't let them (religion) win" voice inside my head.

I do not subscribe to the "gay life" style I see portrayed in our current culture. To be perfectly honest this portrayal is a complete turn off. So I have to deal with these feelings and thoughts and how it is applied / applies to me. This is a major struggle.

I just want to live a normal life, fade in beneath a rock and live my life with a guy who I am attracted to.

 

Nick and Sienna, awesome advice. I came out to myself after the death of my father and your words ring true for me. That's the out to myself part.

However, for me, coming out to myself didn't result in self acceptance. I had a two year separation between the two. I just don't assume that coming out to self necessarily includes acceptance. Sometimes it can be only acknowledgement. No different really than coming out to another person not necessarily includes acceptance.

 

Iamgay47

For me, I knew I was bi by the time I was 16. I accepted it at about 22. My dirty little secret I could keep from everyone and not be gay because I despised gay stereotypes applied to me.

I thought I accepted this. But, not being out to loved ones was not really acceptance if it must be hidden. I was so afraid to be perceived as the stereotypical gay man that I could not be an atypical bi-man. Still my biggest fear. Baby steps.

---------- Post added 23rd Aug 2016 at 05:46 PM ----------

I also should add. Another level of acceptance happened last week. I was intimate with a man. The sexual part yielded nothing in the way of self acceptance. But, I kissed him in public later in the evening. And I didn't care if it was witnessed.

Funny though. I am still not out to my family. And, I have several gay siblings.

I get Nerdbrains struggle.

 

correct - coming out is the start of the journey

coming out to yourself starts the journey of self-acceptance and purging your internalized homophobia and shame, and there are many levels of acceptance as nick shared

coming out to others starts the journey of living authentically as an LGBT person and is usually a big part of self-acceptance

 

It sounds like you're confused as to what's really holding you back from being yourself or being gay or whatever... and trying to figure it out is making it all harder for you. You know you are gay but it's the being gay thing that seems to make it all so difficult. You're not alone. For quite a lot of people it's not as simple as realizing and then making it so. We have mental blocks, history, & conditioning that get in the way and beating through can be a big deal. Truth is, sometimes it doesn't happen. I fear this for myself.

What you mentioned about saying "I'm gay" and suddenly being proud and self-actualized makes sense to me as well. I'm gay, I can say it, I know it, but I don't feel proud or much of anything really. It's just a fact I've come to understand about myself and that's it. It just is. I neither love or hate it. Maybe you're putting too much emphasis on what to be gay should mean? Maybe it doesn't have to mean anything special at all? Think about what you want from it and maybe try set the goal posts towards those things. And if you really don't want anything, then that's perfectly fine as well. Life is not going to be the same for everyone.

Finally, since I've been on these forums, I've read a lot of your posts and noticed you mentioned your ex-wife a number of times. Seems like you long for the past and pine for something you know cannot work. Have you ever really thought about the fact that you might find that same type of relationship with a man? And that it might work and give you everything you wish that past relationship had given you?

I'm probably the last person that should be giving advice given the mess I've made of my own life, so if I've said the wrong thing, I'm sorry. But I do wish you the best though, and hope that you find some answers along the way.

Mark.