Regretting not coming out earlier

There is only one way to deal with what life throws at us: that is to love everything that happens to us, yes, everything. Many say they love life, but what they are saying is that they love only the good things in their lives.

Nietzsche had a thought-experiment that would test whether you really do love all of your life: the idea of "eternal recurrence", or, how would you feel if you had to live your life all over again?

His prescription is simple: all you have, all you will ever have, is now, this very moment, so live it as best you can, and forget about the past, you cannot control that, let it be, it has very little bearing on what you will do at this moment.

Don't for a moment think that any past moment was wasted, things had to be as they were because it all seemed like a good idea at the time, enough said.

So if you had to, absolutely had to live your life over, what would you do now to make that eternally recurring life the most exciting, challenging, beautiful thing that you could have? You cannot change the past, but you can make choices about your future, so focus on that!

 

May I suggest that your regret is actually logical, but in an erroneous-zone kind of way?

It is logical to assume that time may have been wasted living a life that is not who you are, but who were you then, really? If you are logical now, you were logical then, you acted according to what you thought was best.

You are now in a world of feeling; this tends to happen when living with integrity, so feel it all, without reserve, let the feelings come and see them go just as naturally.

 

mangotree, thank you for starting this thread because I've had similar feelings. I'm also glad your post lead to the subsequent posts by great whale. I'm 33 and just began taking steps to come out.

greatwhale, although I had similar feelings to mangotree, your posts are exactly what I needed to read and I believe there is so much truth and positivity in your words. Thank you, I love your attitude.

 

Hey Mangotree,

I understand what you're saying as I sometimes feel the same way. I think a lot of that has to do with forgetting what things were like when I was a teenager though. It's much easier to be out now (though still not necessarily easy), than it was 15-20 years ago. I don't know what things were like for you, but no-one was out at my school and there was a good reason for that. I also don't think I would have had the emotional maturity to handle certain things back then.

Seconded.

 

There is definitely part of me that wishes I had the courage to be fully out when I was younger. But at the same time, I have been blessed with 3 wonderful daughters, and that has been more than worth any missed opportunities of youth.
I've already been mulling over what age range to consider for a potential dating pool. The sound of a nicely toned 25 year old sounds wonderful but I also don't wanna be too cougar-ish.

 

Angelscruzy, who doesn't like the sound of a nice toned 25 year old...

Mangotree, I feel the same, I torture myself when I am having a shit day with the thought that I almost came out to a friend at school but didn't... I really regret this, but I use it as the motivation to do it now.

Way I see it I might have missed out when I was younger, but I've avoided a lot of immature broken heart stuff too, hopefully now I am more grown up I can find someone bit more mature when I am ready to start dating etc.

 

I think it's easy for those of us who are gay, particularly those of us who come out later in life, to have regrets. What would life have been like had we come out earlier? But as Great Whale says, such regrets are futile — you cannot change the past, nor perhaps, should you want to. In my own life, I identify three distinct stages: youth, a time of questioning, doubt, fear, unhappiness, learning and growth; middle age, a time for family, career, travel, children, calm and yes, great happiness; and now, a time when I can finally be myself, be independent, be GAY! It's tempting to think that this last stage will be the happiest, but in reality I know that it will be tinged with some unhappiness, as age, infirmity, the death of friends, and my own ultimate decline set in. I think I can honestly say that all three stages have made me the person I am today, and I would not really want to change anything. My children are a great joy to me and a source of pride, and my wife remains my best friend and supporter, my being gay is something I now embrace and celebrate. When I think what my life might have been had I come out in my twenties (something I rarely do), I can only conclude I would likely have perished in the AIDS holocaust.

 

Yeah, I'll second that!

Anyway, I know that I for one haven't gotten to the point where I can let bygones be bygones, where I can just know that the past is gone. I carry around a good deal of anger and hate and sadness with me all the time, and I'm not sure it'll ever completely go away.

But right this second, I think I'm okay with that. I know I'm grieving a loss. When you say a "lack of potential memories" hurts, I understand. I feel like I've got a big fat void in my past that I'll never be able to fill, and it really does hurt. So you know what, maybe I need to be angry right now. Maybe it won't last forever, but for right now, it's what my mind needs to deal with that void, with that emptiness. My strategy, rightly or wrongly, isn't to try to sidestep my anger, or sadness, or whatever, but to plough right through it and live it as safely as I can. Maybe if I do that, if I work through it, it'll go away in its own time.

 

I think unless you're one of these kids now who tells their parents at twelve--and bravo to them--everyone regrets waiting as long as they did. I will say that far and away my biggest regret is not coming out for college. I would like to say high school, but Utah in the eighties and all even my present self isn't sure that would have been a good idea. But college, with perfect hindsight I know I made the wrong choice in waiting. Sure there's the whole butterfly effect thing--it's always possible that somehow me being out in college would have ended the world by now, but in a practical sense I know my life would have been even better if I had.

But I didn't know that at the time. I don't go so far as to say that I made the right decision given what I knew. I don't believe that. I made the wrong decision. I should have been more courageous. I should have trusted people more, loved people more. But you know those are lessons I've learned since. I've grown and moved on and part of that has been forgiving myself for what I did.

 

I know how you feel. After coming out to myself, first of all, I felt great. Really I did. Didn't see any reason to feel the wasted years or the cowardly thing...and was in fact foolishly offering platitudes and gentle correction to people on here who were ashamed and regretful. Now, two months since coming out to myself and my best friend and six months into a journey that led to my coming out, I finally do see why people feel that way. I do every day.
Because I'm in the middle of it, I can't really offer you any words of advice except to say I know what you're going through. And I apologize to anyone to whom I offered all those "Oh it's OK don't feel bad" statements to. There is no level of hell that can match this feeling of being deprived of years of my life. I had no right to minimize this hell for anyone before experiencing it myself.

 

Of course I do this too. Every day, especially on my worse days this thought is torturing me over and over again. I had my birthday lately and around that time I'm more down than usual.
I know I'm not that "old", but somehow I have this duality of how old I feel and what do I see in the mirror. Lately this has become an obsession for me, and it manifests through me imagining others seeing me the same way...But in my better moments I know this is only an illusion, not that it doesn't create loads of pain but it's me watching the world through this critical lense.

If I think this through I know for sure that I couldn't have come out earlier in life (and I'm still not really out completely, so...) Because of where I lived (which is still Europe's most homophobic country if we don't count Russia in), because of who I was (extremely sensitive, introverted, anxious kid). I couldn't have come out at least until in my twenties, because what I did in those circumstances is to tuck down my sexuality to some unconscious level and all I got left was the confusion and the occasional "I shouldn't feel attracted to this person", so I was telling myself I'm actually NOT feeling what I'm feeling...
In my twenties this confusion turned into a depression and before I came out from the depression I landed in this relationship I am now.

I woulf be a hypocrite to say that I regret all that from above. There were so many amazing moments through all this, and then we get to that paradox again: the person who is writing this about regretting to come out earlier wouldn't even exist if she had come out earlier

When I'm regretting, I'm imagining the younger me in her confused moments and feel sorry for her. Or I imagine myself from ten years ago but with what I know now, how I see the world now. Well, that's a different world and a different person.

I don't know how to stop torturing ourselves with these regrets, maybe it's not possible. For me I think it's about actually starting to discover what I want now from life, what I like (not what is on the list of things I'm not afraid to do), all the little things, and leave less time for self criticism.

 

When one contemplates one's past life and failures, it is a good strategy to be "philosophical", of course this is a very old way of "dealing" with our feelings about the past, very few even know what it means.

Being philosophical means that it is possible to elevate one's experience to a higher level, and maybe even bring a little mythology into the mix. This elevation brings the personal to the level of the mythical, and by doing so, brings what seems to be a personal experience to one that is shared with all humanity in all times.

Consider fatalism, or the idea that it was Nature's intention for you to live your life as you did. The myths talked about the Fates, three goddesses who wove the thread of everyone's life, from birth to death. It is said that not even the gods could defy them.

By knowing these myths, it is possible to see that we are not as in control of our fates as we think we are, that all kinds of unpredictable circumstances decide our "fate" in this life (if you really think about it, how much control do you really have? You can't change when or where you were born, or the families and religions you were born into, or even your sexuality for that matter). It is an attitude of humility to acknowledge that our locus of control is very much constrained, much more than we think. If that is the case, if we are not entirely masters of our fates, then why be upset?

Negative emotions are a barrier to joy, they bring you out of the present, the only thing you truly have, to a place that is unnecessary. By all means, look at the past as a learning opportunity, but why is it necessary to feel anger or regret?

 

sometimes i regret not coming out earlier, like my 20s or even my 30s but i know i cant change what was and that i made my decisions for what i thought was the best back then. but i really dont regret them or staying in the closet for so long since i received a gift beyond calculation, my son. who is growing into a stronger, more open man than i have been for the first 47/48 years of my life. the past is gone, the present is to be lived and the future to be decided.(*hug*)

 

I agree mangotree, I've been dealing with it for a few months, it comes and goes but this has been my source of motivation to move on.

 

greatwhale

Very insightful as ever.

This is not meant as a criticism, but as a challenge to some of what you suggest is a way out of regret.

Clearly you subscribe to the ‘live in the present’ philosophy. To me this has some attractions and benefits, but I have my doubts. Whilst it might help us move away from superficial desires, regrets and worries, I feel we are dealing here with deeper and more personal issues that (some of us) feel a need to understand and deal with.

“Live in the present” can sometimes seem like a polite way of saying: Oh stop worrying about the past and just move on. But the past is a big part of who we are and it contains many lessons for us now.

For me, it is much more powerful to understand – really understand in all its gory, ugly, uncomfortable truth, and in its real context – why I did what I did, why I didn’t feel able to come out before I came out, why I made the decisions I made (and, for me, I accept they were my decisions, however much they were influenced by external factors – I was the decider).

“Regret” is an unfashionable word. We’re not supposed to regret things. Sometimes we need to confront those regrets head on, understand them, deal with them. How do we learn from the past by putting it out of mind and always ‘living in the present’.

 

I completely agree, and said as much above, the past is there to teach.

What must be confronted is the negative emotion that goes with the contemplation of that past. It is absolutely necessary to unflinchingly look at what that past was and what formed our decisions within that context. My point is that we rarely act from a purely logical place, and what we call free will is fraught with a thousand forces that somehow balance out.

Many were able to come out despite the forces against them at the time. This is humbling and troubling, if they were able to, why weren't we? Mere cowardice? Maybe, but I think it is far more complex than that, especially considering the fluidity of sexuality over a lifetime and the wide spectrum between purely straight and purely gay.

More to my point is the Nietzschean standpoint I mentioned above, what he called amor fati, the love, not just acceptance, but love of one's fate. This is not nihilist, it is an affirmation of life and the possibilities of joy in it, even in the context of suffering. To love one's fate is to love life in all its complexity and diversity, and to accept, yes even fatalistically, that things happened because they had to.

Yes, I am saying that it is important to let the past be, simply because I cannot change it, given this (tragic?) fact, what can I do except focus on what I can control? Knowing what I know now, from what I have learned, and from the totality of who I have become in this moment, I can control what I value and what I deem important, and for me this can only be the present moment.