I don't want to be gay

This is the road I was forced into (as I see it) and I regret it but feel there was no other option for me. Most of my teen years were late 80's and being gay was never an option. I would have been kicked out of a baptist school, thrown into a Christian mental ward and pastors would have tried to cast out homosexual demons. So I my feelings were suppressed and my relationships with women were fronts. I wanted the relationships to work, but they were always doomed from the start. So I wound up being married to my work and remaining single, lonely and always feeling like there was something wrong with me.

If I was 23 now, I feel I would have a chance to make things different. There are places where it is not a big deal. I would have come to terms with my orientation much earlier and not had to live a lie in my 20's. It still would have been hard to tell my family, but support groups are easy to find when you are young. Tons of gay support groups at universities, not a single open gay person out of 700 people at work. Save yourself while you still can, it gets harder as you get older.

 

Well you said it yourself... "You can't always get what you want." I'm sorry you don't want to be gay, but you are. You can't always get what you want.

 

I really have nothing to add other than to throw my support behind the people rallying here. I hope you become more comfortable with who you are.

Actually, I changed my mind, I do have something to add - please remember that this hypothetical girl you want to rope into marrying you is not just a hypothetical inanimate object. This is a person. A person who you'll have to lie to every day of your life.

 

Wow, this is exactly how I've been feeling lately! Only, I'm a girl. But that last line, I can't count how many times I've said it. Sex just isn't number one thing in life. Mi have lots of gay guy friends and often I wish I could just get together with one who feels the same way I do, and we could just do the 'normal' family thing together... ::sigh::

Anyway, Thanks for this post. I need it too. Maybe we should be friends.

 

As has already been discussed here, going into a relationship with a woman when you know you're not attracted to her is very unfair. Most people will want a sexual dimension to their relationship and will either be upset to discover you've been hiding something or put off by it if you're up front about this in the beginning.

If I may, you sound very much like when you say "I don't want to be gay," you mean, "I know I'm attracted to men, but I don't want to deal with the social and familial problems of being gay."

And as the song continues, "if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need."

It's nice to make other people happy. But the first step to that is making yourself happy. Nobody who was miserable ever brought joy into the room. Don't give up on yourself, and you might be surprised - the normal family you want, with a partner and children and so forth, may not be out of the picture if that partner is a man. Maybe not in the very city where you live right now, but if it was purely a question of moving to a different city, doesn't that seem like something worth doing? And maybe you have some work of your own to do before you're fully comfortable being with a man in a relationship, but if your attraction to men is so much stronger, wouldn't it be worth it?

 

I used to think like you did. I wanted to get married to a woman and have kids because I saw my family and how happy they were. I wanted to replicate that happiness in my own life and make my family happy as well, but I knew that there was no way it would work. I was in denial and I would only be lying to myself, as well as my future wife and family.

This line in your previous post gave it away:

"If I was alone in this world I would probably enjoy having a relationship with a guy, but I am part of a big family."

So basically you only want to live your life being a straight guy because of your family. I used to think this way too. But then I thought, "If I was the only person in the world and could have a relationship with whoever I wanted to and have a family with whoever I wanted to...would this person be a man or woman?" In my mind, I knew it would never be a woman, (even though I am slightly attracted to them). I only wanted to live my life as a straight guy because I knew it would end up making my family happy. I also knew it would mean living a life of misery. If you end up living your life, pretending to be a straight man, with a wife and kids, you'll end up being miserable. You could also end up emotionally harming your wife and kids if they ever found out. What kind of message would that give to your kids? It would teach them that they shouldn't be themselves and that they should live in fear because people might judge them. Going into a marriage with a lie is not healthy and it's selfish.

Marriage is about giving 100% of yourself to another person and not about selfishness. If you're not completely attracted to women (and it sounds like you're not), then you will never be able to give 100% of yourself to your wife. You will never be able to give 100% of yourself to her emotionally, sexually, etc.

Most straight people buy into the fairy tale of living a life with a perfect husband/wife and perfect kids with the perfect home and the little white picket fence. Unfortunately, for most people, it never turns out this way. This is 2011. Approximately half of all marriages end in divorce. The idea of having a perfect marriage and family is a fairy tale. There is no perfect happy family in the real world. And if you end up marrying a woman, you'll end up having an even harder time maintaining a healthy relationship, because you will always know that you're not being 100% truthful to your wife and to yourself.

I used to think my family was the perfect happy family and I used to think I would also have a perfect happy family of my own. That's when I opened my eyes and discovered the truth. My family is dysfunctional, like so many other families are out there. If I was to live a life pretending to be a straight husband and father, it would make my family even more dysfunctional than the one I grew up in. That would be unfair to my wife and my kids.

In your own mind, you're coming up with all sorts of hypothetical ideas...but they aren't going to work. You need to accept yourself for who you are. You deserve to be happy.

 

Ok, I see where you're coming from. Right now, your family is pretty much your entire world, the only thing besides yourself that's important to you. I can relate to parts of that feeling, I feel the same way towards my mother, I'm just terribly unsure whether coming out to her would be a good thing for her. But my family isn't some sacred altar I'll make blood sacrifices to either. As another poster pointed out, families can fail, or be not all they cracked up to be under shiny exterior, for one. And if they are indeed perfect and loving, believe me, it's not because someone lies to his spouse every day and night.

Right now you only consider it from the two points of view: your own personal pleasure, and your filial duty. You persistently refuse to even think about how the human being you're going to wake up next to for the rest of your life would feel about the whole thing, let alone of the world around you beyond that proverbial fence. Ok, nothing can be done about that. But, could you do everyone a favour? Do what you will, but don't do it right now. Forget the whole gay-thing, or marriage, live in celibacy, if you prefer. And during that period, see the world, see the people. Find a way to live on your own for a while, or better go someplace distant, by student exchange or something. Make friends and enemies. Ask questions. Learn things. Then do whatever you want. however you want.

Re Apple thing: The only person who really knew is dead now But even if that's not true it's too good a story to pass up. Allow me a belief in one little pet urban legend, I'd even read the whole of Snopes and Straight Dope as a penance in the next year

 

weirdness magnet.... awesome
"you can take a stand and do something. At the moment, I'm not talking about gay rights thing... About anything: career, parenting, science, politics, take your pick. Success in anything worthwhile doesn't come cheap."

 

Look, habrá quien te quiera pero no quien te ruege. All this nice people are trying to give you advice but you're stuck in denial. I know living in South America and being gay is no easy but faking feelings and living with the fear of making other unconfortable will make everyone happy but you. We all go trough denial.

Allow yourself to be happy!

 

If you can find a woman that will marry you, knowing that you are gay and accepting that it won't ever change, i think you could possibly marry her without it being morally reprehensible. I don't think it will be a fulfilling life, though.

If you know that you are gay, and you marry a woman on the false premise that you are attracted to her, that would be wrong. Truly.

Sham marriages between gay men and lesbians have definitely been done. I think it's really, really far from ideal, personally. I don't think that kind of dishonest life is the best for raising children. I would consider something like that only if I were living in a society that still sent people to prison or executed them for homosexuality.

 

No.

There's your answer. No.

Now, you have the definitive answer. What's your next move?

 

I can't even tell you how depressing that would be. Trust me you don't want to marry a girl if you only want to have a "good friendship...that just had to have a little bit of sex in it." That sounds terrible and it would be leading the girl you are with on. It's just not fair to the other person involved.

 

If you believe straight women are all pure ethereal princesses of Victorian morality plays only doing sex as a duty and getting their kicks from kissing and cuddling, I have some real estate in Florida you might be interested in, you'll also get a free Brooklin Bridge. Yes, they want to have sex with their husbands and boyfriends, no it's not something that can be worked around. If they can't get that, they're unhappy, and do take actions you might not like to rectify the situation. Actions that would cause the very fallout and public ridicule you want to avoid. They're perfectly right in doing so too.

Ianthe said it better than I ever could about that other Bright Idea you would have soon.

Yes, you can find a girl who would willingly enter fictive/sham marriage. Keyword here is "sham." Also, if any of you "cheats" (somebody will) and it would get discovered (it will) the fallout would be so monumental you'd want to curse the day you came up with the idea, and just spent the lost years with someone you really loved.

No, you won't have the kind of family your parents want you to, however you slice it. Sorry. Sometimes people just can't have nice things

---------- Post added 1st Jan 2012 at 02:08 AM ----------

Oh, and yes, there is a fair share of "sexless," "only because of kids/divoorce stigma" marriages among straight people, it's oft-discussed phenomenon. Unfortunately for you, such a marriage is not a good thing or sustainablee in the long run. It's a sham marriage. Sex drive doesn't magically vanish, it's just that they do not want each other. I think you can figure the implications for yourself.

 

Ok, upon re-reading my post might have been a bit too harshly phrased. I didn't mean it, that's not good, and I apologize, and would try harder to formulate my thoughts.

It's like this, - what I understand from your post the kind of marriage you want is a loving relationship with babies ever after and nice house. What you would really get with any of your ideas is a plastic zombie version of that marriage, at the very beast. At worst (if you don't come out to your wife) it would be even worse.

It is excusable for a young gay man to have little insight into women, but it all comes down to that key misunderstanding of their nature. They aren't what you might've been led to believe by things said by and about them in "proper society." Believe me on this one, most of what you've read, heard or supposed about them is probably a misconception or outright lie propagated by that "proper society." And yes, I have a big collection of bridge deeds I've bought while figuring that out.

What women say and do in private is different, sometimes completely different. No woman I ever knew would settle down for any of your ideas, ever. I'm really sorry about telling you that.

 

Possibly? Haha. I always thought that would be the best way. I thought I would feel so bad being with a straight guy and allowing him to think I was straight. He would want sex in a way I couldn't provide and I'd have to keep too much bottled up. I couldnt do that to someone. However, I always thought if I could find a gay guy who felt as I do, and we went into it knowing each others beliefs and what we were getting into, then we could build a much better relationship because we could be open and honest, and be coming from the same place.

Sorry, I'm probably a bad influence based on all the advice here. But at leastmyou/we aren't alone.