Hi all, I posted a bit about myself in the welcome forum, but I'll repeat some of it here. I was on EC for several months in spring 2013. During that time, I came out to my wife and many friends. I'm not entirely sure I'm happy I did so. Three years later, I'm divorced, living by myself, with very few local friends. Most good friends are on the other side of the country. I did not want to get divorced after 30 years together. And truth be told, my sexual orientation doesn't seem to be the main reason that our marriage deteriorated, but I know it was part of the problem. I should back up and explain a couple of things. Like so many closeted gay people, I had known about my homosexual desires and fantasies since I was in my teens, yet refused to accept them as in any way meaning that I was gay. In fairness to myself, I believed (and largely still believe) that I was bi and felt (and still feel) that living as truly bi is just too complicated. I had a few homosexual encounters when I was in college and grad school, but pretended to myself that they didn't matter. Before we married, I explained to my wife that I had sexual fantasies about men and looked at gay porn magazines. I told her what I had always told myself. These were just fantasies; they weren't the "real" me. As we got older, my wife's interest in sex lessened and I didn't complain. Secretly, I was sort of relieved, because I just indulge my gay porn habit, which had become a big part of my life. My wife retired. She seemed a bit lost. I told her one day (truthfully) that I loved her, thought she was still beautiful despite her years, and wanted her to be happy. She said she felt badly because she had lost interest in sex and was worried that it was unfair to me. So I her that I was coming to accept the fact that I was gay. We talked about it a bit. I felt great about it and it seemed to bring us closer. She was good humored about it and would ask me if I was attracted to a gay friend of mine or others. I told her that I was not at all attracted to R; she joked that she was. We talked about the extremely hot gay man who lived across the the street from us and agreed that we both thought he was gorgeous. That's around the time I started to post on EC. So everything seemed fine. I envisioned a life of openness and acceptance. Maybe I would see men, if she had no problem with it. (She was actually spending a lot of time with her gay male music teacher, so it sort of seemed amusingly symmetrical. [No, I was not attracted to her music teacher, if you're wondering. In fact, I couldn't stand him.]) I'll have to continue this history lesson later tonight. I'm going to movie now. Bill
Thanks for posting your story, Bill. I related strongly to much of it. I'll be interested in hearing your further thoughts. Tom
Hi, Just want to say that I can relate. I relate to this statement very much: "Like so many closeted gay people, I had known about my homosexual desires and fantasies since I was in my teens, yet refused to accept them as in any way meaning that I was gay." I have been very conscious that I found women very sexually attractive, since I was at least 8 years old and fantasized about lesbian sex starting at least from my early teens I would say almost everyday, but I didn't think that I was lesbian. I even "experimented" like you when I was in college and grad school, but my dating experiences didn't work out, so again, I didn't think I was gay. Like you, I told my soon-to-be husband about my lesbian fantasies and experiences and he didn't seem to mind. In fact, I have told all my boyfriends about my lesbian fantasies, and none of them seemed to mind, even watching lesbian porn together. I am also divorced, but I filed because my ex-husband had an affair. While I was devastated when I discovered his affair and thought it was absolutely the worst thing that ever happened to me, I realize now that it was huge blessing in disguise, but it took me awhile to get there (even though I'm not even dating anyone, it has given me a lot of freedom to explore who I really am, not just as a lesbian). Hang in there. Part of you knew you had to divorce.
NYCer & Tom: Thanks for your comments. I plan to post more about my experience, probably this evening. I think you are probably right about a blessing in disguise, NYCer, but it can be hard to see it that way sometimes. Indeed, as I'll explain in a later post, I initially went back to dating women after the divorce. Fortunately, nothing came of it, otherwise I would probably find myself in the same situation again. Instead, I really feel as though I now have a second chance to live my life as a gay man and I shouldn't screw it up by trying to suppress it all over again. But I find myself hesitating, which is why I decided it was time to return to EC. It's great to be able to have these conversations with people who know exactly what you are talking about. Even the most accepting friends don't quite understand all the psychic gymnastics you have put yourself through as you tried very hard to be heterosexual.
Interesting points and I can relate. My path after separating from my wife almost 20 years ago was to explore dating and having sex with men, which after about 10 years I stopped doing because I could not really identify as gay and I realized I wasn't being fair to the guys I got involved with. I still think that if I were to meet a guy who I believed I could build a committed relationship with and who I felt a strong connection to (emotionally, sexually, values, etc.) then I would formally "come out" and get on with things. But that seems a remote possibility at this point. And I still am sometimes turned on by women I see and wonder if perhaps I could meet a woman who would accept my having had sex with men in the past and sometimes being turned on by them as well (I would not have an open relationship with a man or a woman). But that's a very daunting challenge as well, so I mainly concentrate on friendships, my career, keeping in touch with my daughter, and hobbies. I'll be interested to hear more of your experiences.
justaguyinsf, We have a great deal in common. I should describe myself as bi, which is the reality. It has been a very confusing reality. And I realize now that the term does not adequately describe my experience. It's not as though I could sleep with a woman one night and a man the next. On the contrary, I have gone for extended periods of feeling exclusively heterosexual in my attraction, desires, fantasies, followed by extended periods of being exclusively homosexual in my attractions, desires, & fantasies. And I have to remind myself that both are real. I have been like a dog chasing its tale in trying to define myself sexually. It's exhausting, and in a different world it would be totally unnecessary. So I worry that I could not sustain either a heterosexual or homosexual relationship for very long. If you could leave sex out of the equation, I could have a possibly lifelong relationship with a woman. But you can't leave sex out of the equation for very long, and I know that I would quickly find myself wanting to have sex with men. Indeed, if we were talking solely about what sort of sexual life I wanted, I would have to say primarily homosexual. At this point in my life, I would very happily just declare myself gay and be done with it. In fact, I did that once and it didn't work, except to hasten the end of my marriage. A friend of mine said that as we get older we become more who we really are. That may be true. Another friend, a former colleague who came out many years ago (leaving his wife, who was also a colleague) and I were discussing this a couple of years ago when I in turn came out to him. We talked about the peculiar logic we all adopt in the closet to convince ourselves that we're not gay: "It can't be true because I don't want it to be true." I find it amusing that your are in SF, while I live 5 minutes from the heart of West Hollywood, the two gay capitals. So close and yet so far.
First of all, there are a couple of typos in the heading of this thread. It should say "Coming out, going back in, coming out again, maybe." After my last post, I tried to get some work done. But I could not focus on anything but really coming out, all the way out, forever. No more trying to hold onto thoughts about my marriage, heterosexual relationships, or anything that I cling to and that gets in my way of being unambiguously gay to myself and everyone else. It was incredibly liberating. I realized that I don't need that stuff anymore. No more worrying about whether I'm bi or gay. I am basically homosexual, and that's great. Cause for celebration. By the way, I love using the word "homosexual" to describe myself. It was something I was taught to be afraid of, it was a stigma, it implied perversion and mental illness. But I'm none of those things (although a bit neurotic sometimes), and I'm now happy to be homosexual, even TO BE A HOMOSEXUAL OMG, feels great to say. I realize that I skipped over the divorce and life after in earlier posts because I went to see a truly terrible movie. As I said, I came out to my wife in 2013 and everything seemed great. I felt like I feel right now. But things went south. My wife did not bring up my homosexuality although she alluded to it in a letter she handed me when she told that she was divorcing me. She said that I "need to have a sex life beyond masturbating to pictures of naked men in your [home] office at night." She was right of course, although that has continued to be the sum total of my sex life for the past six months. As I said, I spent three years after my divorce dating women. I wasn't trying to hide the truth. I had a genuine burst of heterosexual energy. I believed I had been mistaken about being gay. I did not end up in any relationships, and I now see that as a blessing. I'm sure it would only have been a matter of time before I found myself back in the situation I was in before I came out to my wife. That's one of the things that energized me tonight: "Do not make that same mistake again!" I told myself. I am single, self-employed, and gay. There's no reason to bury that last fact. Anyhow, my wife was mainly angry about money. She felt that she had worked very hard to be able to retire comfortably and do what she liked, but I was earning almost nothing. I had a book contract, but the advance was very small. We really were living on her money. I felt terrible about that. I still feel terrible about that. The book eventually came out (not in the gay sense! hah!) and did well critically--so-so commercially. Obviously, there were other issues roiling beneath the surface. I'm not sure I understand them even now. We had grown apart, but much further than I realized. I suggested (not for the first time) couple's therapy. I thought that we should try to rebuild a life together, even though the were now both very different people from the two that originally married. Really, despite my coming out, I had changed less than she had over the years. As I said a few days ago, I came out to friends and family, not just my wife. Not everyone I knew, but my brother (my parents are dead) and several good friends. One of them insisted that I was not gay and her boyfriend agreed. Apparently when she told him he said,, "He's not gay!" I told her my secret life history, the steady diet of gay porn, the sexual encounters with men, and so on. She was prepared to believe I was bi, but not gay. And I started to agree with her. So I retracted my declaration of homosexual independence. I felt very silly, but oh well. The thing is, most people assume that we had all worked this out in our teens or twenties. It's weird to turn sixty and still be torn about it. I recently told one friend that I think I was right about being gay. I discussed with her the fact that I didn't have any close gay friends in L.A. and wasn't sure how to start meeting gay men, since I don't want to go to a bar. It's funny, since I drive right past a dozen or so of them many night on my way home. I have given them the eye many times, thinking I should just go to one. They are not dives after all; they are pretty nice places. I don't doubt that I could go in and end up going home with someone. But I would much rather find another way to meet gay men. We are, after all, everywhere! That's enough for now. I haven't even had dinner yet, because I wanted to write this post.
Yea, that's a neat bit of irony isn't it? I am hopeful that as social norms and our understanding of sexuality continues to mature there will be a greater understanding that some guys (probably a lot more than one would think) are in the proverbial grey area. Women have been accorded this for a while but it seems that there are small stirring here and there that men's sexuality can be fluid as well. I read an interesting although somewhat short article on nymag.com yesterday about rural, straight-identifying men who have sex with other men on the side but don't consider themselves gay. An interesting read if you can find it. Probably because of my own "questioning" orientation and because I've learned that the grass is not necessarily greener after a divorce I sometimes interject a note of caution when guys who post here are urged to leave otherwise happy marriages because of sexual feelings toward other men. One may not get what one is hoping for!
Yes, the grass is not always greener. That's for sure. But the marriage is already history, so I now find myself wondering what to do about my situation. I think I have had it with ambivalence. Time to start thinking of myself as gay and be done with it.
If only coming to terms with who we are were a guaranteed recipe for happiness! Of course, it isn't...but I would argue that happiness is beside the point. I think there is too much emphasis on happiness generally. I suspect this is a North American obsession...that little bird of happiness alights on the branches of our lives so unpredictably. Germans, for example, can be pretty dour, but they tend to be somewhat more genuine (with all due respect to the danger of over-generalizing). If you ask a German "How are you?", they will tell you; gory details and all! The emphasis surrounding coming out should be about living with integrity, there is more than sufficient good to be found in that; happiness may follow, but there is no guarantee. One can however be reasonably confident that being happy is less likely when one is in the closet, yet some may be perfectly happy there...could it be the happiness of living an illusion and thereby feeling "normal"? Who's to say? I went decades under that same delusion, until the cumulative pressure, the weight, of the truth could simply no longer be ignored. When it comes to finding someone and the potential for happiness there, it is trivial to point out that there are relationships that work, and relationships that don't, the gender is (almost) irrelevant. Hopefully, we will have learned a thing or two about what it means to be in a relationship from your past forays into that mine-field; insights gained are also fairly gender-neutral. While you are currently alone, why not read up on this topic? There are so many ways to screw this up, yet so many rush into relationships, unlearned in the ways of love, or too immature to engage in one. Take this "single-time" then as possibly an opportunity to really think about what you want, you may, or may not, find that a relationship is what you need at this moment in your life...
Actually, if you ask a German how they are, they will say "gut, danke" and that will be the end of it. It's Americans who can't stop talking about our feelings.
That was an interesting read on the issue of happiness vs. integrity, greatwhale. I'm still not sure why it's necessary to announce one's sexuality as one would one's job or email address in order to live with integrity, so if happiness doesn't follow it's hard to see what the point would be. I tend to think that living with a respectful level of privacy and discretion is consistent with integrity, and that intrusions into that area quite often veer into the territory of nosiness rather than fostering integrity. On the other hand, I can see how one would have to come out if one were in a serious relationship in order to live with integrity (but then that gets back to the whole relationship problem).
With regard to coming out, this does not mean announcing it to the world indiscriminately, I am strictly on a "need-to-know" basis. Indeed, I am not out to everyone at work, principally because it is none of their business and I do not foresee circumstances in which my relationship with my boyfriend would impinge itself on my public life here at work. But this may change and I am not afraid of it. As for the expectation of happiness, well, I am certainly for doing what is good in the hope of finding happiness, or at least some degree of satisfaction, but to expect that happiness will or must follow as a result of some action we take is to expect too much of happiness. This word is related to "hap" as in "it happens" or more to the point: it is happenstance. The current overarching ideology in the present time is that happiness can be bought, of course, we know very well it can't...may I suggest you read up on "hedonic adaptation" to find out why. Doing what is good, or what is right does not mean that it will necessarily lead to happiness. Doing what is right leads to what constitutes a life of quality, harmony or excellence, words which define attitudes to life that we have all but forgotten. Confusing mere happiness with all these other attributes is an error. A life of doing what is right can sometimes lead to tragedy, meaning, for example, having to end unsatisfactory or damaging relationships for the sake of a greater harmony, chiefly within oneself but also in the greater environment we inhabit...this is not a happy circumstance, but it may lead to better things.
