How long have you lived in the closet?

It's difficult for me to distinguish between the time I was in denial ("no, of course I'm not gay!") from the self-hating thoughts. They occurred simultaneously. On the one hand I feel like I've known since puberty, so that'd be 14 years of me living in the closet. On the other, I didn't fully admit I was gay until about 6 months ago. And after I came to terms with it and accepted myself last November, it feels like I've been coming out at light speed.

 

Still mostly in the closet but I took the first few steps out just the past summer. Wish I'd done it sooner honestly

 

I had my hunches for years as a kid, some I knew. I never began to take the hinges off the door and sneak out occasionally for some Pop Tarts and Slim Jims until I was about 12, then tore the whole damn thing down when I was 19 (I say that instead of 16 because of my official facebook coming out).

 

Around the time I joined I just what I was.

6 months

 

41 years...it wasn't a closet...it was a panic room.

 

3 years

 

4-5 years

 

Probably close to a year now since I seriously started questioning and acknowledging my sexuality. But I have been "sort of" closeted since I was around 19, in that I knew I wasn't exactly straight, but I wasn't really willing to accept or deal with that.

 

Not very long because I didn't even realize I wasn't straight until recently. So about a year as of this month.

 

About 6 months or so.

 

Around middle school I started getting those "I like myself more as a girl" feelings consistently but I treated it like a fetish because I didn't understand it or want to understand it. I kept that down for 7 years. Then a few weeks before I turned 21, started doing a better job of trying to face the truth with lots of personal writing. I'm still closeted to a lot of people I know ... but in small ways I've at least made some progress. My immediate family knows, and so do my college friends. It's a start.

 

Surprisingly complicated answer...

I repressed my attraction to women my whole life, until finally coming out to myself when I was 23. I came out to my first friend about three months later. But when I was 21 I sort of had a relationship/non-relationship (exclusive without the label) with a girl for a year. We were both super in denial about what it meant. Long story short, she identifies as straight, and I am quite clear that I have been a Lesbian since birth... oh and she was the first person I came out to...

 

Still in and probably in for life especially with a fetish like mine.

 

I kept my girl crushes in the closet, but I didn't think I was gay at those times. I came out as "questioning" to my best friend first. This was March of 2014. Then came out as questioning to my mom in April. I needed her support really bad at this point in my life, so I wanted her to know what I was going through.

 

6 long years now, how time flys when, um, you're beating yourself up! About 6 months ago I decided I'd had enough and it was time to tackle it, so I started looking into it and ended up here. I'm hoping to make a start in the next few weeks and see how it goes.

 

I was probably in the closet for about 1 month after finally figuring out what I was sexual orientation-wise. Gender-wise not many people know.

 

I always thought that people everyone was kind of bisexual because my friend and I were so close growing up... we both liked men but we always touched each other and everyone thought we were a couple... later I found out that not everyone was like me, and that even my friend was just pretending because she thought it looked cool... I came out to a few facebook friends but will probably never come out to my super religious family or to my friends here in Korea because there is no protection for people for discrimination and lgbt is seen as a dirty perversion T.T So, I'm not sure how long it has really been because I didn't know bisexuality was even a thing until I went out on my own... T.T

 

8 years

 

Errr I can't exactly pinpoint EXACTLY when I snapped out of denial (I mean, even when I wasn't so much in denial anymore about liking girls I was still kind of. Like I would brush it off and not think about it...?)

I guess if I start counting from when I seriously realized more clearly what my sexuality is, it'd be a few months-a year in the closet (as of now).

 

Felt the feeling since i was inhighschool (i.e. 16 y.o.) but accpeted it? Still,having trouble with that. I have a very good work (which i love btw) and i have a reputation to stand for. So i guess i'm in a veryd ark closet