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Common thread for those realizing later in life

Discussion in 'LGBT Later in Life' started by ariverinegypt, Feb 3, 2016.

  1. I'mStillStanding

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    For me I guess I anyways knew, I mean as a young child I was jealous that Ariel got to be with the Prince St the end of the little mermaid. But shame, guilt, fear, family, church etc. really "helped" me avoid it. The first time I prayed not to be gay I think I was 12. I continued that pray till early last year. Then end of the year it c ask bubbled up. Now I OK with being gay, it's just telling my family, especially my wife. If could just run away I would, and start living life as a gay man. But I have to face the music here or I'll never be able to really be happy.
     
  2. Totesgaybrah

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    I could have written this exact post.(&&&)
     
  3. confusedbubble

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    Same for me I never dated men I always made excuses that I didn't find the man attractive or I didn't have time to date, I was terrified that someone in my family would find out or I'd loose friends if I came out or had a same sex relationship I'm still kind of like that after years of repression
     
  4. Rydia

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    (*hug*)

    I'm not really afraid of losing people anymore. It's not that I don't think it could happen, but I just don't really care at this point. I guess that's the benefit of being older and more independent, but there are people I don't ever intend to tell about it, unless they have an actual reason to know, mostly because I just don't want to the attention or to have to keep explaining things.
     
  5. Choirboy

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    I was brought up in an extended family where everyone married young and had a bunch of kids, but there was remarkably little affection of any kind shown. Married couples weren't hostile toward each other, but I never sensed any great gut-wrenching attraction between any of them. One of my sets of grandparents married basically out of convenience (he was a widower with two toddlers and a set of newborn twins; she was almost 30 and single with "no prospects"); and the other set seemed to have married to spite her mother. So I never really associated marriage with physical or emotional attraction, and when I started having very definite feelings towards other boys, I chalked it up to something everyone felt before they found that one girl they wanted to settle down with. Kind of bizarre when I think about it now.

    There was no one in my family who was gay, or even single beyond about age 25, and I can remember getting the sex talk in freshman biology and being rather grossed out and embarrassed at the thought of it! By the end of high school I had met a few gay men, but "gay" to me was firmly associated with a very stereotypical pre=-AIDS lifestyle that was completely opposite to the comfortable family life I really was rather desperate to have. I came very close to coming out, and even had a 3-year crush on my (gay) college roommate that ended up with one drunken attempt at sex that he passed out in the middle of and then pretended never happened. My mother even made a gentle attempt to get me to come out after she met him (he was pretty flamey!), but I still saw "gay" as a lifestyle choice rather than a hard-wired orientation. I eventually assumed that my attraction to guys meant I was bisexual and secretly hoped to get married but also meet some guy I could fool around with now and then.

    Eventually I DID get married (no secret guy though), and things were all right for some time, although I realized fairly early on that my wife had issues of her own that kept our relationship from being very positive. I had no problem making love with her until it started to feel like there really wasn't any love behind it anymore. I also gradually came to the understanding that being gay was an orientation, now a choice, and the "gay lifestyle" that I felt uncomfortable with was not some kind of requirement that came with the rainbow card. So I came out to her, really more as a means to end the marriage than anything else.

    The common thread? Maybe the lack of knowledge and understanding of what those feelings meant. I remember a girl in high school who was terribly thin, almost skeletal, and now and then would end up in the hospital forced to gain some weight. I think of her now and go, duh, she was anorexic. But in 1978, I had no understanding or knowledge of that, and she was just thin and sickly. My being gay was much the same thing. I had a very messed-up idea of what it meant and had no experiences to correlate love, attraction, sexuality--and so I bumbled through it and eventually came out just past age 50. While I think now how great it would be to have figured it out earlier, I also have a couple of wonderful kids that came out of the marriage, and even though the marriage itself was largely strained, it was an experience that helped me grow as a person. And once I did come out, those experiences made me more able to form a positive relationship. No regrets. The experience is what you choose to make of it.