The questioning cycle

Hey all - so I'm still talking a lot to the friend I've come out to, working on getting out to meetups, going to Pride this year, etc., but I find that being a little more out and comfortable ironically brings more questioning. I think maybe I've confused the idea of feeling gay with feeling painfully tortured about feeling gay. And on the flipside I've confused the feeling of normality with the secure feeling of passing. I don't think until recently I've ever been able to experience normal and queer in the same moment. But annoyingly, feeling normal brings feelings of confusion.

For my entire (and nowhere near complete) coming out process, I've cycled between feeling correct in my conclusions about my sexuality and (maybe) not. For instance, last year I was an emotional wreck because I didn't have a place where I could speak my truths aloud. When I finally got in to a therapist and told her so, that made me feel quite a bit better. But then the doubts and questioning crept back in. I thought I'd reached this earth-shattering conclusion about myself, but no. After that, the stress built back up, this time over coming out to a friend. I rebuilt the "I am gay" thesis in my head, and told her. Once again, I started feeling more relaxed and normal, and the doubts started to crawl back in. The latest hurdle was the stress of telling my wife (and she telling me) that it was probably time we talked about divorce due to our not getting along and my being gay. That was a huge step, and a huge relief to have it out in the air.

But again there are doubts. I have many reasons to believe that I am gay, but my relationship is also a wreck for reasons that might happen in any relationship, straight or otherwise. And lately it's been very hard for me to separate my feelings of wanting distance from my wife from my feelings of wanting distance from her gender, intimate relationship-wise. So the doubts say, would I really say no to starting a relationship with a woman who doesn't have these faults? I truly believe that at this moment I don't have the interest, but it is difficult to fully trust my reasoning in the current environment. I know I'll damn well get to a clearer place someday - this divorce has got to happen - but until then I think I will continue to feel quite stuck and confused.

I can see now why this might take a while.

 

This may be way too much detail, but it's so integral to my story I feel like I need to say it. In my 20's I had been exploring gay porn/erotica a lot & eventually naively stumbled into a cruisey experience that was hot and nice (and brief - I held him in my hand for a minute or two, he blew me & then I fled), but ultimately left me afraid I could have been exposed to HIV (I accidentally gave myself a deep cut on the finger with pre-cum on it right after I left - scared the shit out of my 20-something brain). I felt so stupid, I just went into hiding for a while & swore off the gay. Some time after I'd figured out (testing) there hadn't been an exposure, my relationship with the woman who would become my wife began. I decided that it was good enough, and moved forward. Where I'm at now is I have come to the conclusion I can't keep this part of myself closed away anymore because it felt like it was killing me to try.

I think that the part of my mind that is still questioning is the fearful homophobic part. When there is any room for doubt, it leaps up and says, "Aha! What about that!?!" It's demoralizing that for all the things that make me feel I am pretty darned gay, and for all the ways that I'm becoming somewhat happy about that, some other part of me desperately wants to deny it.

I'll continue going to meetups, though. It makes me nervous, but I really want to meet more gay men. For all my years of having the hots for guys, I haven't known any gay guys well enough to really humanize them. I really want to get over that hurdle. So beers, movies, etc. with a couple of local groups are the vague gameplan

Thanks for the pointer to the blog entry. I have listened to the audio book of Velvet Rage, and I've got a couple other books (a Joe Kort "10 things ..." book, and another about gay shame) that I'm looking at as well. I am getting helpful bits and pieces there. But I wrote today because it just hurts that there's this insidious doubt lurking around my thoughts & I think maybe I've spotted a bit of a pattern. I would welcome any words from people who have seen similar cycles.

 

This is a great point. There's some Sisyphean effort in living two lives, for sure & (to totally trash that metaphor) walking around in this hall of mirrors can be exhausting. Especially because, like you, I'm out to a few people, which is great, freeing, honest feeling), and not to anyone else (which feels like an even weirder lie than it did when I was totally closeted, probably because it feels less necessary now.

This is the most positive spin on self-doubt I've ever heard, thank you And I think this is actually a little self doubt, not a ton. When I look at the tableaux of my feelings and actions, I see gay. It's just there are these unsettled parts of me that are vulnerable to doubt (still in the failed marriage, not out to many friends, inexperienced with men, etc.), but I think when some of those hurdles are crossed, the most important of which is getting out of this marriage, there won't be so much ambiguity left for doubts to latch on to.

I did go through the, I'm married, this must mean I'm bisexual phase & told my wife as much maybe 11 years ago. For a time I really believed it, too. Then we had a child and had other things to concern ourselves with.

Last year when I acknowledged to myself that my marriage was over, and that I had enough emotional reserves to start facing the prospect of divorce (my mother died of a long illness in 2012 - I was primary caretaker & that whole thing ruined me for a good long while), this realization hit me that, my god, if I have my life back, I can find a man as a lover/partner! And that's probably the moment I began to believe in a deep way that I was gay. I still haven't thought of actually seeking a relationship with a woman during this process, but I have certainly been afraid of falling into one if I don't figure out how to come out & am pursued by a woman who is interested in me. Story of my life :eusa_doh:

I like what you're saying about the choice isn't to choose gay or not, but the choice to accept gay or not. I feel I am, more than ever, on the verge of accepting it fully. I saw this TEDx talk by Irish the drag queen/activist Panti Bliss, where she says that she is overjoyed to be gay - which I am paraphrasing badly. But what was great is that I felt a thrill upon hearing that - I thought, oh wow, I think I absolutely love this attraction I have toward men, and I only want to explore it more.

Since we're talking about shame & Panti Bliss, I found both this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXayhUzWnl0, and the TEDx talk https://youtu.be/hIhsv18lrqY are fantastically informative about shame and pride.

Barista - you are an insightful person, because I'm doing a lot of this But I wouldn't necessarily say I'm in a *vicious* cycle. It's just as I progress from step to step and new things about my screwed up hetero life are revealed to me, it is confusing when some of those things have nothing at all with being gay & the doubts crop up. But I think I'm getting that I don't have to see gay as this trump card that is the source of all the problems in this marriage. It turns out I can be gay and unhappy with my wife at the same time, haha.

I really do like your idea of building a well of feelings about these things to refer to. One nice thing is I work on a college campus, so there are plenty of feelings about attractive men in the reservoir I think I over analyze, for sure, so it's also good advice to just note these feelings and continue on as normal. I used to joke that my performance reviews at work should all just have one sentence, "Over-complicates things."

And yep, I am seeing a therapist, which has helped quite a bit. She is a lesbian and very encouraging to talk to on all aspects of my situation - gay man, mixed gender husband, father, worker.