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Not sure what possessed me, but I decided to open a thread and see if we can get a discussion going about my and others' experience of being in the closet. I'm a 30 year old man, living in the southwestern United States, come from a working class, multiracial background, single, and a homosexual. I've been in the closet (for the most part) nearly my entire life. I'd say there are two general ways of going about a life in the closet, and I've done both: The first is to create an act, to actively pretend that you're straight. I've pretended to be interested in women, to find them sexually attractive (this is harder than it might sound, and not necessarily for the reasons you might think. I eventually had to concoct a profile of what my 'type' of woman was in order to keep my story straight (no pun intended)). I've had relationships with women (they were frequent and shallow, for reasons you can probably extrapolate). I've attended social gatherings and maintained friendships I wasn't really interested in in order to not come off suspicious. This was pretty much me through my high school and college years. The second is omission. You don't put on an act, necessarily, you just go about your life and you just never bring up your sex/love life (or in my case, my current sex life; I could at least talk about some of my past relationships). This more or less describes how I've been handling things for the last 6-7 years or so. It's a lot easier (especially as an adult as more people you meet are prone to mind their business) and while a little bit lonelier, having a 'fake' social life really wasn't much better. I actually like being alone quite often; I like other people but keeping up a social life feels like a burden to me, sometimes even a chore. I just got really, really tired of doing things I didn't want to do. At least now I feel like I can relax a bit. The downside to this one is that, even as an adult, I get the feeling that I come off aloof or asocial, and generally just a little... weird. Though that could just be paranoia. I'll get what I think might be some of the more obvious questions out of the way: Have you ever told anyone? I've told my three closest family members: an older brother, a younger brother about two years my junior, and a cousin who was like a younger brother to me. I've also told a select few friends and by extension some of our mutual acquaintances. I'm generally more comfortable telling this with newer friends or even random new people I meet: I guess my subconscious rule of thumb is that I'm mostly keeping it from the people who knew me from college and prior who had gotten to know me during my 'act the part' phase, and I generally don't want it to get too far out there to the point where it would reach these friends/family. Sometimes I'm more comfortable confiding in strangers than I am with people that I'm "close" with. Do you plan on ever coming out completely? I do anticipate a future where people I know generally know which way I swing, but I don't have any concrete plans to actively come out. People probably already know That's not a question, but OK. I'm actually fine with the idea that people might know without me telling them. I'd actually prefer if people sort of just 'figured it out'. So why not just come out? Especially since being gay is becoming more and more accepted? Honestly, it's not even about being gay anymore. It's more about... not being able to admit to people that I've known forever that I've been lying to them the entire time we've 'known' each other. I used to fantasize about faking my death, flying to a place where no one would recognize me and start a new life fresh. I don't think about this anymore, and as the years go on things get easier: just turning 30 has given me a new perspective - I mean, I was just a kid, really. I did what I felt like I had to do. At this point I'm more in the closet about being in the closet. I'll leave it there for now, hopefully someone finds this an interesting topic. Being in the closet is something that sounds simple but winds up effecting almost every part of your life and messes with your head. Questions/comments, feel free. so-i-creep-yeah fucked around with this message at 05:55 on May 12, 2015 |
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May 12, 2015 05:52
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BlindSite posted:Do you ever think you're kind of giving this too much thought? Why not just be who you are and ignore everything else? The only people who're going to think less of you for keeping your sexuality a secret are probably going to be pretty poo poo people with no empathy anyway and most of your friends probably won't give a poo poo and just be happy that you're happy. At the end of the day you're not going to get another go 'round might as well live your life. "I'm overthinking it" certainly has crossed my mind, and is one of the reasons I stopped actively projecting a phony straight life. That in and of itself was like a 'coming out' for me in a way. While complete disclosure would cause a bit of drama in my family (I'd be the only known gay person in the history of my family on either side), the real roadblock to that is a very personal psychological one. I wouldn't be just admitting to being gay, I'd be admitting to a decade's worth of related lies and deception that grew like a snowball rolling downhill. It's admitting to being an imposter. I've done my best in recent years to disentangle and distance myself from the pretend life I'd created, but at a point where I'm ready to admit it to everyone. Not yet. It doesn't help that my coming out to my brothers didn't go 100% smoothly (I told them separately, at different times). At the time - this was both about eight years ago - I was just happy they didn't disown me on the spot, but my older brother eventually made it pretty clear he wanted nothing to do with this part of my life and didn't want to hear about it. our relationship is cordial, but he doesn't seem to understand why I don't talk to him as much anymore. My younger brother was very unsettled by the idea that someone he'd been close to since birth turned out he didn't actually know very well at all. He came around eventually, but his reaction helped fuel my complex about being a fraud. (In contrast, I told my cousin last year and that went without a hitch). As for your question on using 'gay' as an insult, in my school days it didn't necessarily bother me, partly because kids just say lovely things and because I went to high school in the midwest in the 90s and college in the south right after: homophobia was pervasive to the point where I just accepted it as a part of life. These days I probably still wouldn't be bothered to see a teen use 'gay' to mean 'bad', but I don't think I'd be fully comfortable around someone over 25 who still talked that way; I'd either find him immature, or that he knew exactly what he was saying and meant it
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May 12, 2015 10:27
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Scudworth posted:You keep using words like "fraud" and "imposter". You have a serious complex going on here and again- you know it. I do understand where you're coming from and appreciate that you want to be helpful. I think most advice on this, if it's of the "just come out, nobody will care" variety probably aren't going to have the intended effect and it's probably best to just keep this thread to general questions/comments. You're right that it's all a big mental complex I have. Others' reactions are only a small part of what keeps me in the closet at this point. It's mostly about me and my self-esteem that's been whittled down to nothing over the years. Pointing out how silly it is that I'm in the closet isn't going to motivate me to come out--I'm just going to feel silly and stupid and want to retreat further behind my only defense mechanism. I hate myself for what I put myself through. I hate myself for lying to everyone, for hiding and being pathetic and cowardly, for leading people on, for doing things I didn't want to do, for being friends with people I didn't care for, for having sex with people I wasn't attracted to, for devoting the years of my youth to a stupid charade. I hate myself for hating myself. The only thing I have is that I don't have to face the humiliation of revealing this horrible part of myself to the world if I don't want to. Anything that makes me feel silly, stupid, or more shameful about this (even if it's not anyone's intention) is just going to set me back further. What I need to be able to do is forgive myself. The only thing that's ever helped is time and perspective; like I said, turning 30 has let me look back on things with fresh eyes. I hate myself less now than I have in a very long time. It takes time. I'll get there. I think.
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May 12, 2015 22:52
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Jeza posted:What happens when you find somebody you want to spend the rest of your life with? Or is that not part of the plan? That's a "we'll cross that bridge when we get there" scenario. Talmonis posted:One thing I wonder is, have you ever wanted someone close to you to ask if you were gay? My best friend of 17 years (we're in our 30's) has been increasingly withdrawn from our core group of friends of late, and I worry that it's because he's afraid we'll judge him for being gay. I want to ask him since I've always thought so, but worry that he'd be really offended or embarrassed. I want him to come back around more, so I can ask him to be the godfather of my kid. This depends on a lot of things. For the most part, I actually would prefer it for a close friend to ask rather than have me try to find some opportunity to come out (in fact, that's sort of my 'policy' at the moment - if someone wants to know, they'll ask, and I'll tell them). I can also see myself, if the topic comes out super out-of-the-blue, denying it almost by instinct and then later feeling obligated to keep the lie going. If you want to go through with it I'd probably focus almost exclusively on your concern about him being so withdrawn, and maybe bring it up like, "you know you could talk to me about anything right? I don't care if you're on drugs, if you're gay, got an eating disorder, whatever, we can talk about anything." How sure are you about him being gay?
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May 14, 2015 18:30
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^^ I do live in a big city. I have considered moving somewhere where my family doesn't reside. It's tough because I actually really do like where I live otherwise.
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May 14, 2015 19:11
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