A question regarding realization

Hi, I'm a woman but i had this kind of experience, I always dated guys, got married and finally came out.

It's hard to explain what the process was because so much of it for me was deeply internalised. I was aware I liked girls and later, women from the age of 10 (though now I recognise even earlier crushes when I look back). But something about my own internalised homophobia and society's messages about what I was supposed to feel, made me grasp on to any kind of affection i had for men as belief they I wasn't gay. I was genuinely lying to myself, but without realising it fully. I never really lied to myself in terms of my feelings for women; I minimised those feelings but I didn't deny they were there. I suppose most of my life I came up with different understandings of what those feelings meant until i finally just acknowledged the truth.

I'm curious what makes you ask this question? Are you questioning your sexuality? It's a funny thing the way we each deal with our own feelings and experiences, this was my way of processing my sexuality.

 

I'd say my attractions to girls were more misunderstood than anything--as were my attractions to guys. I had a number of what I considered to be crushes on girls, but looking back, the feelings were a confused kind of mishmash, and what I was feeling was more like admiration and identification--the ones I liked were basically a kind of idealized female version of myself, and generally were attractive to a type of guy who I would want to be attracted to ME. And then there would be guys that I idolized and wanted to be like, but the feelings were really just a major crush that I didn't recognize as such.

That sounds very convoluted, I know.... The best example would be a girl I wanted to ask to prom. I really liked her a lot and assumed it was a crush. I couldn't ask her though, because she was dating a cute guy we both knew, and whom I was fascinated with and basically thought I idolized because he was smart and handsome and likeable. But when I look back, I realize it was him that I was crushing on, and I was kind of idolizing her because she was like an attractive female version of myself, and because the hot guy liked HER, he was kind of liking me by proxy.

Mind you, I didn't totally figure this out till years later. But the big clue was that my supposed girl "crushes" were always this kind of lofty spiritual thing with no sexual attraction whatsoever, but the guys were total sex objects that turned me on like crazy.

 

Wow @baristajedi if I were to explain my own feelings on my experience it is almost a perfect mirror of yours.

 

Here is what I think "realization" is all about.

We all have desires and feelings over which we have, at best, little control; that is a given. It is how we interpret these feelings which is the crux of the matter.

Before, say, the age of two, or so, we have no conception of a "self", this is something that we actively build as we grow up, usually based upon feedback from parents first, then others, and then further refined as we learn more about ourselves. It is important to understand that all of the things we think we are, are in fact decisions about what we are. The entire set of these decisions are called the ego, or the concept of the self. Are concepts real? No, they aren't. They are at best abstractions, as Alan Watts would say: "it is like confusing money for wealth, or the menu for the meal...".

So here we are, a mass of rather poor and incomplete, but persistent and well-defended self-concepts called the ego, really just abstractions, and, depending on who we are with, or in what context, we put on all kinds of masks, or egos, as necessity dictates (there is a scene in the recently released movie Darkest Hour where Churchill is about to step out of this home and he glances at a collection of different hats covering his entire wall, and he asks himself "Who shall I be today?").

So, to your question, were gay men who've had relations with women forcing themselves despite their natural orientations? Would that it could be that simple! The ego is a powerful beast, it will not tolerate the cognitive dissonance of alternative self-conceptions. I speak for myself when I say that I sincerely believed that I was straight, there was no tolerating any different interpretation. Sure, I had these "fantasies" involving men, but they were just that and nothing more. At the time, no thought or effort was put into making any kind of decisions about myself around these desires.

In the absence of any competing decisions, my ego happily chugged along with what was socially acceptable, youthful hormones took care of the rest, with just enough sexual desire to convince my ego that all was well with my libido, and left it at that...through a whole marriage with kids...until the rumblings from below could no longer be ignored...

 

I definitely tried to feel sexual attraction to women as much as I do to men, and sometimes it worked. I also tried really hard to feel romantic about women, but again the desire in that regard was much stronger toward men. My dilemma has been and continues to be that I am also strongly attracted by qualities that go beyond the physical or purely genital and in this regard women have gay men beat hands down.

 

Yes, it somewhat perplexes me, too, that the men you refer to here are saying they are now gay, having been with women in relationships previously. Some do not say they are gay now.

I dare say that some men could have felt strongly heterosexual whilst with women previously. I dare say that some of the men would have felt bi or gay earlier and chose to conform to heterosexuality, but later in life went with men. But I also dare say that some of the men saying now that they are gay but weren't previously are actually gender fluid, but are choosing to label themselves gay and live a gay lifestyle.

And I'd probably get some people here irate if I even dared to suggest, which I am daring to do, that some men who saw previously saw themselves as heterosexual before may have actually moved along the sexual spectrum to be gay.

I think that there is no one answer.