30 years of denial

I am going with this theory too. Got many degrees and a good career. Always top grades. Yet was blind to the obvious! So there is some meat in this assumption. Either we are so immersed in making a success of our careers as a balance to something lacking in life or we are very good at using the so-called knowledge and intelligence to keep denying the obvious.

 

In fact one of the guys I know to be in the closet has studied psychology (sports psychology). Guess he knows how to manipulate his mind or is it the other way around?

 

I'll come back to this thread later, but it certainly rings true for me. I've struggled to understand how someone so smart (yes, me) was so incredibly blind to my own truth for so long. The thing is, I wasn't. My first crushes were on girls. My first kiss---Katrina. I also spent time wondering what the deal was with boys. I was so freaking relieved when the volleyball scene in Top Gun gave me...feelings. From that point on, I only ever allowed myself to believe in my completely acceptable and normal heterosexuality (thanks, church). Married at 20 to a good man I still deeply love. Damn. I absolutely wish I hadn't denied my true self until I was in my forties. But, I did what I was capable of. I shoved it down. Told myself a convincing story. Weird how well that worked, hey?

 

I've thought about very similar things about my past obliviousness too. It's frustrating that I was smart and didn't figure it out sooner, but I still think it was due to bad information. Garbage in, garbage out. I relied too much on the info I had, which I took to be true, rather than seriously considering who I was checking out, what I felt about them and why I didn't notice women as most guys did. There were a few girls in middle and high school I thought I liked, but I think it was bc they were popular and actually kinda boyish. Friends would comment on a woman who walked past and I was like, "oh, oh yea nice", or I didn't even see her. Maybe I was looking at the guy she was with, haha.

Part of my issue was that during high school I didn't hang out with friends outside class much which is where conversations about crushes and related stuff occurred (at least I imagine) so I missed out on that. Maybe had I been exposed to more of that, if the real definition of gay had come up and I believed it, something would have clicked in my head sooner. I probably would have just spent more years closeted had I figured it out sooner. I like to think had I known when I still had some self-confidence that I would have tried to meet other guys in college. One guy from high school went to the same college I did. Someone asked me if I thought he was gay, but I just knew that as flamboyant/artsy/wimpy which he kinda was. Had I known the truth, he's a guy I could have talked to about it and would have liked to date or otherwise fool around with and think he may have felt similarly. Yep, he is gay and married to a guy last I knew. What a missed opportunity.

 

This is me. So me.

I too am intelligent, and have really great skills when it comes to academic reasoning. And I'm really crap at the emotional stuff anyway. It was all just writing lists for me, I felt absolutely nothing. It was what you were supposed to do. Reading Jackie and other teenage magazines, it was all about boys. My best friend having a negative response when I asked her (aged 15) what she would do if I was gay didn't help.

To me back then being a lesbian meant something more than who you fancied - it was more like a lifestyle, and I was a girl from the sticks, we didn't have 'lifestyles' there!! I never knew anyone at school who was gay or lesbian. Another good friend I discovered not too many years ago is gay. No idea when we were at school. It wasn't mentioned back in the early eighties. I remember a gay man coming to live in the small town where I grew up. Pubs went silent when he entered, and yet he was inundated with late night visits from local men. He hated it.

I'd totally go along with this reasoning ourselves out of our feelings! Talking ourselves into norms.

 

My first kiss was my female friend when we were quite young. I still remember how much I liked it. Amazing how our intellects can blind us!!

 

I can relate. I didn't stop the denial until I was 30. I'm intelligent and insightful, so it boggled my mind how I could act so contrary. Denial was something other people did, not me Irony much. I noticed things at 9, but I didn't understand attraction nor had any concept of romantic love between women... so not sure if denial started here. When I was 14 I think I started rationalizing things. I sized up my attraction towards women to merely be intellectual curiosity or finding an appeal in anything sexualized. I was interested in "sex" and "nudity", not women, you see. Not being straight never crossed my mind in my younger years. I didn't have romantic crushes on girl friends but did with guys friends so that added to the denial and confusion. Though some of my best friends may have been disguised crushes, disguised even from me. I'm still unsure about them. There's been different ways I've coped with said attraction (not necessarily just denial), but those things kept me rather clueless or out of touch with my own feelings. Even when I did ask questions, my sexuality was so shut down it didn't matter.

This thought is curious, but after doing a little reading/research I can't find an article or study that supports this. As far as I can tell, defense mechanics like denial and rationalization are ones we all employ because we are all smart and creative people

Thinking about it, I think I'm okay with my denial and my "wasted" years. I wasn't in a safe and supportive environment much less ready to deal with those things at a younger age. Denial kept me safer and happier. Living at this time at 30 I have the maturity, wisdom, support, resources, and knowledge to handle the tough stuff and accept myself and my attraction in a healthy and loving way. If I realized I was attracted to women at 14, I would have been miserable and hated myself. I would have been dealing with internal conflicts and crisis for which I had no real help or worse... received detrimental help. I would have been rejected by family and community or been even more isolated. While it would have been nice if I realized things sooner, because I dealt with this later in life the "angst" of acceptance was short lived to make way for celebration. Maybe not everything in life is ideal, but I'm capable of making a wonderful life. Doesn't matter the age.