Now that I'm making plans to move forward I feel guilty for feeling happier.Self-Programmed to bring my self down. I think I already know what many you would say. I don't like being a grown up sometimes. Kind of sucks. Finding a place means I have to furnish & decorate it. Husband is the one who is good at that. Don't like to shop. Having a toddler tantrum in my head. Wish my therapy appt. was tomorrow.... AND I was in the market today and did a subtle double take as I thought I saw the woman who was the reason I came out to husband. She lives about a half an hour away and is not a possibility but heart lifted then sank in a few seconds.
Hi Rose. It seems pretty inevitable that you will have these mixed emotions. I assume that the guilt is for disrupting the lives of your husband and children? And beyond that, we all carry around this old self-lacerating super-ego that wants to punish us for feeling good about things it doesn't approve of. It sees pleasure arising from unexpected quarters and immediately wants to stomp it out. I realized this morning that at some level I had been hoping and expecting that the end result of therapy would be an end to homosexual desires and "success" as a heterosexual man. Now I see that "success" is accepting myself for who and what I am and being happy about it, not trying to meet some unreachable standard I have invented for myself.
Hi Bill- Yup-Guilt on breaking husband's heart and disrupting my tween's life. As stated in another post the only lie I have told on EC is # of kids I have but told husband about EC so doesn't matter. Keeping secrets kind of brings out a paranoia that I hope is gone once I am totally out. ---------- Post added 28th Apr 2013 at 10:28 AM ---------- My therapist is a LBGT therapist and I think gay herself. Maybe a therapist that specializes in LBGT would help you too.
Not at all... I hate secrets. I am usually 100% honest except in the past about my sexuality. When I out myself to a person a great burden is lifted.
Ohana-What I like about EC is that except for restrictions on personal identifying info we can be ourselves here. I've decided as long as my son knows first really don't care who knows I am gay. No interest in bars or dating websites. Just not me. Hoping that just living my life in truth will bring the right woman into it.
I found myself thinking about you a lot today Rose, wondering how you were. I wish I could give you a hug and just sit in a cafe and talk. I don't feel I need to change therapists. The one I have seen for the past 12 years has been a huge help and has been extremely supportive as I have slowly, with much resistance, come to realize that I'm gay. He tossed the idea out there a few years ago. I thought about for a week or two and decided that it was wrong. In the past 3-4 months, I've been inching closer and closer to embracing gay. And feeling quite good about it. Now that I have truly come out, I'm sure I'm going to have doubts in the weeks ahead. Later today, I'm planning to call my closest friend, a woman I was madly in love with in college, and tell all. When I raised the idea a couple of months ago, she said emphatically, "You're not gay, Bill. Everyone has homosexual fantasies." What she doesn't know is what all of you here at EC and my wife all do about my real history in the closet. If she wants to know how I can be so sure, I'll tell her much of what I have posted here. Also, I'm pretty much with you on the issue of dating, etc. I have too many other things to worry about right now with regard to work, money, and marriage. (For my wife, one benefit of my coming out is an interest in learning how to cook.) If I meet someone I like, we'll see. But I just can't deal with one more complication in my life right now.
Hi Bill- Thanks. Hugs back.Were at EC Cafe- The coolest one out there. The past few hours I have felt really good-like I've made the right decisions . Glad you have a good therapist. My last one years back not that great- I've had lots of baggage that was dumped on me in younger years that new therapist has really helped me with in a short amount of time. Re- Your friends quote "Everyone has homosexual fantasies" I think most strait people don't.... Unless they are in denial. Had this conversation w/husband last night. I know he was being honest that he had never had one. That's the one question he has never asked me. Being gay for me is loving and accepting me and everything that I am. I need to work on me some more. Grieve end of marriage and adjust to changes. I think dating too soon might not be the healthiest thing. For now I am happy with my EC friends and thats enough.
With regard to my friend's comment. She and I have both been deeply influenced by psychoanalytic theory and practice. (We we both in analysis in grad school.) It is sort of taken for granted in psychoanalysis that everyone starts life as bi-sexual but that early experience tends to shape us with a narrower identity, pushing most people into a hetero identity and others into a homosexual identity, but at a fundamental level we are all sexually ambivalent—drawn to both men and women. I think that's part of why people like you and me can discover that theirs has long been a mistaken identity. There was enough "hetero" there to lead us to accept the identity that everyone else seemed to take for granted. Almost everyone in analysis discovers unconscious homosexual fantasies that have long been buried. People who identify as homosexual almost always discover some degree of erotic interest in the opposite sex. So I'm sure you're husband is telling you the truth. He hasn't had conscious homosexual fantasies, and whatever unconscious ones he may have had are of little significance. My wife has told me she never felt any sexual interest in a woman. But on the other hand, she made a passing comment that when she masturbated she didn't much care who was doing what to her "down there." It just felt good. I take that to mean that she has indeed experienced at least a little bit of homoerotic desire. Anyhow, my friend has known me for 40 years as a heterosexual man, including onetime lover. She doesn't know anything like the closeted history that everyone who has read my posts here do. So I may find I have to disclose a few things at least in a general way in order to get her to see who I have really been all this time.
Hi Rose...I am new to this site and am going through pretty much the same things as you and have been having a lot of emotions and guilt lately just trying to be myself and be happy. I am hoping talking to some peeps who know where I am coming from will help me lighten my load a little and hope I can do the same for them.
Yep guilt, happiness, excitement, shame, all emotions that I can cover in half an hour and I'm sure you're all exactly the same. I have been told by several people that 'everybody has homosexual thoughts at some point', but when I ask them if they ever have, the answer is always a resounding 'no'. That's not the point though, it's not like we've had one dream, once... I doubt very much that anybody would go to the trouble of completely turning their and their family's life upside down just because they had one gay thought in the context of a completely satisfactory heterosexual life. Straight people struggle to deal with what they can't understand and just because they are in the majority they think they're right.
