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Twistedly Woven Web: I am presented with a new challenge.

Discussion in 'Coming Out Advice' started by Benway, Jan 17, 2016.

  1. Benway

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    Well, as some of you may know, I was in denial for over a decade about my sexuality. I did everything I could to suppress it and punish myself for thinking harmless thoughts. As of yesterday evening, I engaged in my first gay sex, and I'm feeling pretty damn good about it. But there are underlying forces at work that could set me back-- and I don't want that to happen.

    I am twenty eight years old. Legally, I have been an adult for a decade. Now, I live with my mother and I pay rent like a responsible person, but she's of Jewish descent and we all know what that means: Guilt, guilt, guilt. A few years ago I ran into... some static (the details of which are unimportant, the consequences of which, however, are) which lead me to telling her and my father that I felt that I was gay. Ultimately, they dismissed it as a "phase," (I was 23 at the time) and my Dad (a member of the Assemblies of God sect of Protestant Christianity) never spoke of it again. He's a fairly liberal Christian most of the time, though he does have his firebrand moments.

    My Mom (an excommunicated Catholic, daughter of a woman whose grandmother converted from Judaism to Catholicism in the early 20th Century-- effectively making me Jewish) however, did not take to this idea as kindly as my father. It's a story I'm sure you've all heard a hundred times. She ultimately figured I was just being "rebellious" and dismissed it. But every now and then she'll ask me that most haunting of questions: "Are you still gay?" That hurts me, it hurt a lot and it's something that set me back on my journey by five years.

    Now, while I was running from my sexuality, she never seemed to think about it much, with the exception of the occasional "are you still gay" question. She has the misconception that if I'm gay, I want to (and I quote) "have my testes cut off and my penis turned inside out and made into a pretend vagina." I like being a man, I just happen to enjoy the company of other men, sexually-- she seems to think I'm transgender or something-- nothing could be further from the truth. Yes, I'm a bottom, but do I want to be a woman? No, not in a million years. This however, is largely irrelevant to where I'm going with this.

    Last night, when I went out, she also went out on the town. She frequents bars with whatever man she's with that week and gets him to buy her drinks. That's fine, I have no qualms with that-- but I saw a window of opportunity and I took it. I called my friend and said "let's do it, tonight!" He says "sure," so after my Mother left for her pub crawl or whatever it is she does on Saturday nights, I slipped out of the house quietly and got a ride with my buddy to his place where we had the most amazing sex ever. Five minutes prior to him arriving, my Mom texts me, as is her clingy habit, asking me if me, the cats and my brother who rooms with us are "OK." She's like me, she worries constantly and I inherited my anxiety from her. I say yes, and I told her I was going to my friend's house (she knows all my friends, so I picked one she knew to put into the lie I told). She got worried that I might "be drinking" and continuously told me not to consume any alcohol while I was there.

    After this, it was up to pure luck. Knowing my Mom, she could be out drinking for twelve hours, or twelve minutes before her own anxiety kicks in and she comes running home. Last night, I got lucky and she didn't get in until 1AM, at which point I had been home for over two hours (I left at 8:30PM, got home around 11:30PM). I had my friend drop me off several blocks from my home, where I walked home through a bad neighborhood, and through the alleys of said bad neighborhood to avoid being seen by her, possibly roaming around, looking for me (she's been known to do that). As soon as I get home, I see the coast is clear and only my brother (whom I'm out to) was there. He had texted me the 'all clear' because I told him where I was going earlier.

    Now, onto the meat: Either it's a figment of my anxiety or there's something more to it, but since she got back (I greeted her at 1AM) she's been acting... strangely. My father once told me she can 'smell fear.' I think she smelled the fear I had that she might have had an inkling of what I was doing last night. I'm not sure, but I think she knows that something is up. It could be a case of the Sunday night blues, it could be the fact that her mood fluctuates now that she's in menopause, it could simply be that she's overtired. But I feel violated by her cold gaze and naggingly accusing tone. I don't know what she'd do if she found out, but I'm not about to tell her, because she's gone psychotic on me before. A good friend of mine once said to me that she was seriously abusive, if only psychologically (she's never hit me, nor has my father) and that I should seek shelter from her. Every time I've tried to do that though, she pulls a 180 and her tone becomes flowery and she showers me with money and gifts.

    Remember, I am twenty eight years old. My mother is a half-Jew/lapsed Catholic who tortures me with a horrible sense of guilt and shame. Last night I took a big step forward and I'm horrified that she might find out because if she does, there's a very real chance she will burden me with a psychological terror I've not seen in quite some time (story for another day). What the hell should I do?
     
  2. Contact1111

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    If she loves you, she will accept you no matter who you slept with. Also, there is just about literally no way that she would. Your just understandably paranoid. She doesn't know though.
     
  3. Benway

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    I know she'll love me no matter what, but I'm never going to hear the end of the guilt and shaming she'll impose upon me if gods forbid she finds out. Maybe I overprepared for the for the moment, it was something boiling in a crockpot for ten years and I worry that maybe it overflowed, if even just a little bit and that trickling stream of my plan was caught and wiped up and examined by her under a fine tooth comb.

    My father (who, as I've stated is a rather liberal, yet firebrand Christian and has no interest in my sexuality, that is to say he doesn't care if I'm gay or straight) hates the woman. He wants nothing to do with her and if he outlives her will be dancing on her grave moments after they pour the dirt over the coffin when she shuffles off this mortal coil. But she is in constant contact with him, providing him with unwanted 'updates' regarding 'my behavior.' Might I remind you I am pushing 30. She's going to start asking him questions and he's going to have no choice but to say "I don't know" to her and she's going to come back to me and ask me "where I really was when I was at my friend's house having a few laughs and watching a movie."

    Then it's all going to unravel. The pain, the setback. She's going to drag me to a clinic and make me get tested for HIV in a most non-discrete manner. She'll flaunt it at me when it turns up negative and go on and on about the time "I made put her through that," and continuously ask "why can't I just go out with a nice girl?" Or better yet, she'll remind me that she's the only girl I need and that my job is to give her rent money and take care of her when she gets one of her migraine headaches.

    If she has so much as an inkling of knowledge, a morsel of an idea even that I am gay, I am in for a world of hurt that is going to throw my progress back to the stone age and I don't want that, I'm already on several anti-depressant, anti-anxiety and anti-psychotic medicines, I don't need to add intensive Mother-ordered anti-gay therapy to my list. Every time I go to therapy she reminds me to "not make her the bad guy." I told this to my therapist and he said she said that because she knows she's the bad guy. She does mental gymnastics to quote a term from something I can't remember in popular culture, and these mental gymnastics always turn the argument around from her, to me and I will be guilted, shamed and emotionally punished the fullest extent of her capability if she finds out.

    Short reply to your reply: Yes she'll love me no matter what, but there will be hell to pay.
     
  4. SiennaFire

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    Let's see - you took a detour through a rough neighborhood and employed other duplicitous maneuvers to avoid detection of your clandestine rendezvous. Sounds like you are scared of your mother's reaction. She dispenses the guilt and you consume it hook, line, and sinker like a good little boy. Benway you are a 28 year old adult, perhaps it's time to redefine your relationship with your mother? Why do you allow your mother to terrorize you? You pay rent and she doesn't have any right to control what you do outside the house. Don't put up with her shit. I recently saw a pretty cool quote on EC:
    You need to come out to your mom. By coming out to her, your secret will be out and if you drop the bag, you no longer give her the power to make your life miserable. I'll bet you $1 that you'll feel better about being gay after doing it in addition to being free from the cycle of guilt with her. Pretty nifty?
     
    #4 SiennaFire, Jan 18, 2016
    Last edited: Jan 18, 2016
  5. Benway

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    I know it works that way in the real world, but here's the problem, I live on her planet when I'm in the same room as her. There is no reasoning with her, she is not a ration human being. My Dad divorced her because he thought that he was in danger and fought for custody of his kids because worse yet he thought she might harm them.

    And she did. She harmed us bad, now my brother, he got over it. But me, that's a different story. While guilt is a huge factor on my Mom's planet, suffering is the capital of her world. Whether it's her suffering, or making those around her suffer so she has someone to suffer with, or if it's inflicting suffering on others because she feels wronged by them for whatever trivial reason that may be she will not stop until the object she wants to suffer is broken.

    What's worse is that I'm not entirely sure she knows that she's doing it. If she's doing it on purpose, she's a mastermind and a god of manipulation, but if she's doing it subconsciously, I may have grounds to have her committed. Do you know how hard it is to do that in this day and age? In a post-Reagan world, mental health care is just a thing of the past, he came, he saw, he obliterated the chances of getting proper inpatient mental health treatment.

    But I digress. You're assuming she operates on within the boundaries of ordinary human sanity. She does not. She gets what she wants, and sooner or later she'll break me if she finds out what I've been sneaking around doing. You want another cool quote? Try this on for size: It's better to live in a tent with holes in it in the middle of a sandstorm than in a house with an discontented lady. King Solomon. That's some heavy shit right there and these aren't bricks I can just put down. They're cemented to my legs because she's family. Because of everything she's done for me.

    No, no, I'll accept that I'm gay. I'll go out with gay guys. I'll engage in acts that would probably make her vomit and cry. But the day my mother acts reasonably about something like this is the day the sun implodes and goes supernova and swallows the solar system. She's vicious, cold, calculating and cruel. And I love her. I don't want to break her more than she's broken me. She told me to go to hell one year on my birthday (the big 21) because I went out to dinner with my Dad instead of her. She didn't speak to me for two days, and disappeared until she followed me to my Dad's house just to chew me out more only to which I said "I love you, Mom." Like gender, sexuality and politics, she's not as simple as a binary equation.
     
    #5 Benway, Jan 18, 2016
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  6. SiennaFire

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    You're right. Your mom is a powerful woman. One of the themes of my reply is that you are giving your mom way too much power over you, and your reply demonstrates this. Your mom seems like a bully, and you are letting her get away with it by not standing up to her. In fact you are defending and reinforcing her dominance over you in your reply. Until you change this dynamic you will be stuck in this rut of bowing to her will and enabling the codependence.

    If things are as bad as you say, why don't you move out? Seems like that would solve a lot of problems.
     
    #6 SiennaFire, Jan 18, 2016
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  7. Benway

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    Moving out is the plan, my brother and I intend fully on getting our own effeciency apartment. The reason I'm hesitant in doing so and have not done already is because I'm worried she may do something drastic when I do, hurt herself or something.

    I defend and reinforce her because she's my mother. She carried me in her side for nine months and had the guts to give birth to me. I respect that, and because I recently learned what actually happens to a woman during her period I respect women a whole lot more than I used to-- I mean Jesus, how do you tell a little girl who's having her period that that's what's happening to her?

    But hey. We're all human, it may not be much but we do what we can.

    Besides, she's probably just got a case of the Mondays, she always gets finicky about Mondays and going to work (her work schedule is very different than mine, hers is more static) and she uses me as an outlet for her angst. And I guess part of that's okay, but I will acknowledge that sometimes it goes too far. But yeah, the Mondays. That's probably all this is that I'm working myself up over nothing about.
     
  8. SiennaFire

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    Just to be clear, I said that you are defending and reinforcing her dominance over you, which is different from defending and reinforcing her. The former is specific to her dysfunctional behavior of controlling her children through guilt, fear, and intimidation. No child deserves to be treated that way.

    Good to hear that moving out is in the works.

    Good luck to you.
     
    #8 SiennaFire, Jan 18, 2016
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  9. Benway

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    Thanks. We have a weird relationship. She can be my best friend or she can be my worst nightmare.
     
  10. Cort

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    So let me get this straight…

    You're worried that your mom is going to bring down the hammer of guilt and shame upon you for having committed the terrible, despicable, unconscionable act of sleeping with someone you love whom just so happens to be a guy?

    She thinks you are the shameful one? Has she looked herself in the mirror lately?

    From what you’ve said, your mother:

    - Let’s her religion do all of her thinking for her – and allows it to dominate her life and her relationships
    - Doesn’t have the courage to love and accept her own son for who he really is – and goes out of her way to make sure he knows she doesn’t
    - Spends her nights at bars drinking herself into a stupor – and worries about her son drinking (interesting contradiction…)
    - Bounces from man to man – seemingly incapable of forming a healthy relationship with someone
    - Is so possessive of you that she literally walks the streets in the dead of night looking for you
    - Abuses her son with psychological warfare – be it guilt, shame, resentment, etc.

    And she’s the one that thinks you should be ashamed of yourself?

    Your mother has problems – and I wouldn’t be so quick to jump to your being gay as being the root of her rage.

    I think that she is lonely and that you are the only good thing she has going on in her life. The idea of you getting into a relationship with someone – same or opposite sex – is going to upset her.

    Why?

    Because if you get into a good relationship, you might leave her. She likely fears that more than anything else. Her shamings and guild trips aren’t rooted in your being gay, they’re rooted in her being dependent on you.

    She can’t throw your progress back unless you let her. You may not see it, but you have all the power in this relationship with you mom. I’d be willing to be that if you seriously threatened to leave, she would fall apart.

    I think you should tell her.

    Additionally, I think you should assure her that you will always love her and will always be in her life as long as she is willing to welcome you into it. You need to make sure she understands that just because you’re able to enter into a healthy relationship with someone doesn’t mean that that relationship is going to take you out of her life.

    Just my $0.02.
     
    #10 Cort, Jan 18, 2016
    Last edited: Jan 18, 2016
  11. Benway

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    First off, I don't love the man in question, he's sweet, sure, but it was purely sexual.

    Second: My Mother doesn't let her 'religion' control her. She has no true faith, in fact I think she's a superstitious agnostic at best and that she secretly worships fairies at worst. She goes to mass once a year, Christmas Eve, that's it.

    I'm not telling her. I overreacted and spilled my guts out because I'm even more of a ball of mixed emotions than usual, right now. She's an odd, sometimes mean lady.