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My story - help appreciated!

Discussion in 'Coming Out Advice' started by SohoDreamer, Apr 11, 2017.

  1. SohoDreamer

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    Hi guys, I used to frequent this site regularly a while back in my mid teens so I don't know if anyone will remember me or not. Some of the stuff I’m gonna write down below I have actually posted about (when the experiences were more fresh and recent) in previous threads which will still be somewhere on the site. Anyway, I stopped posting because I thought I had kind of come to terms with my sexuality and decided that I was straight. This decision was not an easy one and in the back of my head, there were always lingering doubts. I repressed these thoughts and tried to move on, but again, deep down I knew this was not me.

    I'm going to be as candid as possible here because this hopefully is still a safe space for me where I don't have to fear being judged, ridiculed or under pressure to be someone who I'm not. I also don't have to worry about people I know finding out my "secret" yet and so can share without fear.

    So I don’t really remember when exactly my first feelings of perhaps not being straight arose. I have vague memories of being a kid (maybe 5, 6 years old) and feeling more connected to girls in an emotional sense but perhaps romantically more to guys. But of course I was a kid and these feelings were not really indicative of anything. It wasn’t until high school that things became more complicated, difficult and confusing.

    I had friends in high school and I wasn’t lonely exactly. I got invited to parties but I wouldn’t say I was in with the popular crowd so much as I was in with any particular group. I was kind of a drifter, moving from group to group and spreading myself wide. I enjoyed (and still do) meeting new people and having new experiences.

    My first sexual experience with a girl was when I was 16 (she was 17). I was really drunk, it was after a party where we went back to her place and to be quite honest I don’t remember much of it but I’m fairly sure I didn’t get a proper erection and that it was all over in a flash. My first sexual experience (and so far only) with a guy was also when I was 16 (he was 16 too). This was after a New Years party where we’d kissed for the second time, and we went for a walk, just us two into some nearby woods. We kissed for a while and he convinced me to go down on him - he had obviously already had experience unlike me. This made me extremely nervous and I really did not enjoy the experience at all.

    At this point I had already come out so to speak to my high school friends (and obviously in high school things spread like wildfire and all sorts of rumours were formed within days) as bisexual. Again being high school lots of people mistook my coming out as bisexual as coming out as gay, even though I stressed that I was attracted to both girls and guys, whether this was truly the case or not. But following the New Years experience with that guy, I was really hesitant and scared to make a move with a guy again. There were a few times I shared a kiss with a guy following that but to this day it remains my only explicitly sexual experience with another guy.

    I gradually made my way back into the closet, stating to everyone that I had spoke too soon and that it was “just a phase” and that I had made a mistake and all sorts of cliches. I don’t think everyone bought this but even so, my closer friends believed me and so after a while everyone (including me) started thinking I was straight again.
    During this straight period which is still ongoing now, I haven’t had a single satisfying sexual experience. In fact I never have. Every woman I’ve slept with has been disappointing for me, and I’m normally pretty desperate for them to leave the next morning, but also really hate being rude. I also get down over the fact that they might feel used even though that was never my intention at all. I have fancied female friends in the past but when I really get honest with myself I think these have merely been romantic attractions and not sexual. I find the female body attractive but it’s almost more from an admiration point of view than one of lust, desire etc. Whereas, even though the idea terrifies me and I have a lot of blockades and barriers to overcome to make this a reality, I do think I have different kinds of feelings towards guys.

    I’ve considered maybe I’m asexual but I masturbate most days and get satisfaction from that so surely I should be able to with another person? I guess I just feel like I’m living a lie but I’m absolutely terrified for anyone to find out, especially because I’m still so indecisive about who I am but then I don’t know if I’m ever gonna have total clarity on this. I feel like I might go through life just not knowing and not having the right experiences and I don’t want that to happen.

    I’m kind of envious of people I know who have come out already and I do know that most of my friends are not homophobic, at least not in a malicious or aggressive sense, but I also know that we live in a heteronormative society and so people’s opinions of me would change for better or worse whether they want to admit it or not. As such I don’t know I feel comfortable around certain people who might have homophobic inclinations, but they’re still people I have to see in my life and so how do I come out without changing relationships with these people?

    Most of this has probably been pretty incoherent and so if anyone’s actually read the whole thing I apologise for the lack of sense I’m making. But I’m just so confused and so frustrated. I want to be myself but I don’t know who that is! If anyone has any advice on what I should do and how I should go about doing it, I would be eternally grateful. Either way thank you for reading and letting me share my story here. Even if I’m still confused, it did provide me some catharsis to write out my thoughts and feelings here.
     
  2. Rin311

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    I'm not going to pick at what you wrote and tell you who you are. Only you can do that.
    What I am going to tell you is that first of all, let go of labels. I read an article recently that said that sexuality exists on a continuum. There are people out there who are 75% straight, 25% gay; 100% gay/straight, etc. etc. not everybody's 100% whatever or 50/50.
    So if I were you I would put the labeling aside since trying to label yourself can be really stressful.

    Second, because you are interested in guys to some extent, I would try to get some more experience with guys just so you can see how it feels to you emotionally and sexually. Figuring yourself out is not a sprint but a marathon. You don't have to have all the answers right here right now. Give yourself the time you need to figure it out. Some people take months, some take years, and that's FINE. Stressing yourself will only make you feel bad. Go easy on yourself.
    Good luck.
     
  3. quebec

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    SohoDreamer.....Try to figure out who you are?....ME.TOO. We have a lot of similarities, but our biggest difference is that I hid in the closet for 55 years. (Yeah, that's not a typo). For the last two years or so I've been trying to figure myself out too. It's not easy....a lot of introspection....a lot of actually talking out loud to myself has helped me isolate issues that I have and then work to deal with them. I have also found a therapist (gay) who has been incredible. He hasn't tried to "push" me to be gay but has helped guide me to see who I really am. I am not there yet....but I am so much better now than I was just a few years ago.

    I agree about the label! You don't have to label yourself...you may not fit neatly into a particular niche, a particular label, and you don't have to. For me a label was good. Just to be able to admit that I was gay was a huge step for me. Now when I say "I AM GAY", I smile and feel genuinely good inside! I only do that when I am alone! I am only out to a few people, but the fact that I am out at all is fantastic. But as I said....labels are not for everybody. If trying to find a label that you fit is causing problems, then just forget it. BE.YOU. You don't need a label to be yourself.

    The suggestion about trying to be with a guy to help you know better what your attraction is, is a good one. You don't have to have a major romance and you might very well be able to be up front with the guy and tell him that you're still finding yourself. Tell him that you like him and are attracted to him, but just don't yet know if you're gay, bi, pan or what ever. Most same-sex attracted guys would be willing to go with that...kind of as a friend to start with and with the understanding that the relationship might be kind of open-ended.

    Anyhow....hang in there! You have already gone through more than enough mental and emotional turmoil, now is the time to loosen up and put yourself out there...have a little fun and in the process find out a lot about yourself.....David
     
  4. SohoDreamer

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    Thank you both for the kind responses! You're definitely right in that labels should not really be so important, they're constrictive and box people into stereotypes and connotations that they don't necessarily belong to. I also very much agree with sexuality being a spectrum and so I don't think I am 100% anything, but it would be nice to have a little more understanding of who I am and where to go from here. It'll be a long process but I'm determined to be more open with myself and not repress feelings just because I'm scared.

    As an update on my situation, I finally did tell one of my best friends yesterday. We met up for a few drinks and I revealed to her how I've been feeling for a long time and that I just really wanted to tell someone and that I knew she would be understanding. The feeling of telling someone, especially someone I knew would not judge, was pretty great and I did genuinely feel a weight off my shoulders because keeping everything to myself has caused an internal struggle and has not been good for me.

    I think it'll take me a while to start telling people in general though. In fact, there are some I may never tell, especially my family because I don't particularly consider it to be any of their business. What I want to be is happy - both with myself as a person and with my life in general, and I just want to find the best way to do that. It'll be a long journey like I said but I think I'm finally on a path where I am being more honest and open.

    Even if nobody responds to this, it is nice to have a safe and secure platform where I can express myself without fear.
     
  5. grass

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    The admiration feeling you have for women is how I feel with guys. If I see a trim guy with well- fitting pants, I'm like, "Damn!", but I don't really want to DO a guy.
     
  6. OnTheHighway

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    SohoDreamer, you mention in your first post that you do masturbate. Mind sharing what it is you typically think about when you are doing so? What you fantasize about can provide quite a bit of clarity.
     
  7. SohoDreamer

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    I feel this so much!
    Well, I rarely do so without visual stimulation i.e porn. And I watch a variety, although I stray away from a lot of straight porn because as far as I can see a majority of it tends to humiliate the woman and I just find that uncomfortable and degrading to watch. I tend to think about the woman though, when one is involved. In fantasy I would say I'm looking at the woman and so on and it quite often involves women wearing dildos and other similar apparatus, sort of playing a male role.

    But this doesn't really relate to my reality. In reality I feel a spark with guys that I just don't feel with girls. And again in reality, as I stated in my first post, I have never had satisfying sex. I know this could conceivably just be bad luck, that I've ended up with the wrong girls, and I think I do probably have a relatively low sex drive. But I'm sure I'm not asexual and that it is a long period of repressing feelings that are preventing me from having a satisfying sex life and not simply a lack of desire to have sex - I think about sex every day, although not to any debilitating extent.

    I think my ideal situation would be to move somewhere nobody knows me and start afresh. Everyone I meet I could be open with and I wouldn't care so much if they judged me because I wouldn't know them yet and so the ones that did I could disregard rather immediately. My problem is that I'm very self conscious and so where I live at home and where I go to uni in London I'm terrified of the idea of anyone disowning me as a friend because I'm not straight and even of people who would accept it but would view me differently.
     
  8. OnTheHighway

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    Try staying away from porn for two weeks. No porn, no masturbation. Clear your mind, then after two weeks, go and masterbate without porn. See what turns you on. You might have a better sense after that.