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I don't think I can ever accept it...

Discussion in 'LGBT Later in Life' started by lost2018, Aug 27, 2018.

  1. lost2018

    lost2018 Guest

    Hi everyone
    I have been reading/lurking some posts here, some stuff seems familiar but, Part of me just doesn't believe I am gay....
    How do you really know you're gay? Especially later in life?
    I have intense fantasies, but they can just be fantasies, can't they?
    Are there any other explanations for strong 'gay ' feelings in middle age?

    How do people just know they are gay later in life?
     
  2. Shell87

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    Hi,
    I felt very much like you. I would question if I was really gay, am I sure, is it just a fantasy, would i feel this way if I was actually with a woman.

    In all honesty I don't think that I was 100% sure until I met my first girlfriend at 30.

    I was married with kids and it wasn't an easy time but I would never go back. I never knew I had the ability to feel that way about another person.

    Are you in a relationship? If not maybe just explore a little and see if your feelings develop.
     
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  3. lost2018

    lost2018 Guest

    What made you change or take the step?
    Sometimes, I have moments when I feel like I am gay but they go away after masturbating. My sexual fantasies are pretty intense but that's allI have to really go on, I don't look at guys IRL or anything.
     
  4. justaguyinsf

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    I can relate a lot to what you are saying. I also have intense sexual fantasies about other men and have dated and had sex with men, but I just find I don't think of myself as "gay." And it's not for lack of trying through therapy to understand what I am ... there just seems to be no answer. (I'm also sometimes attracted to women, although not as strongly as to men, and I was married to a woman at one point and have a kid.) I'll be interested to see what others have to say about this.
     
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  5. lost2018

    lost2018 Guest

    Yes it seems to me the explanation might lie elsewhere... wouldn't I have known by now (50)?

    I find myself physically attracted to women but the gay fantasies are pretty intense. I wish it was just clear...
     
  6. Thomas094

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    I recently have been struggling with this issue - married with kids and lately my fantasies - what I masterbate to- and what I look on the web is men. That being said I love sex with my wife. I am seeking the answer desperately as it swirls around in my mind and I don't know to think. I don't want to upend my world but the desires are pretty intense.
     
  7. SweetT80

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    Did you divorce? How did your kids take it?
    I feel some intense feelings for my female friend that hit me like a ton of bricks! I'm married with kids as well. Love my husband and family, but these feelings are crazy!!!
     
  8. Shell87

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    Hi Lost2018,

    In all honesty keeping it all in was making me feel as though I was going crazy and about to explode.
    I can see guys as attractive which messed with my head but looking back there was never a real desire to do anything more than look or definitley nothing compared to what I feel with a woman.

    I would watch gay films (not pornographic) and this felt the same as any fantasy. As I began to admit to myself it was as though floodgates had opened and I would see that I probably stared a little too long to think the post woman was just nice lol.

    I eventually came out to my husband which was hard to do. Afterwards though, all that anxiety went away.

    Rather weird situation as he came out as bi a couple of weeks later. We still spend lots of time together and even went to Pride together this year.
     
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  9. Shell87

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    Sweet80
    We had always been open about same sex relationships with the children which helped. I also stepped up talking about it, sort of drip feeding so that when I told them that would never be an issue.

    They all took the gay thing really well, seems I'm a bit more interesting than they thought .

    I seperated, the kids have been okay with it. We never said we were seperating because I was gay which I think helped. My relationship with my ex was rocky in the first week but is now better than when we were together.

    On amother note; I was also hit with it like WTF. Looking back though I can see there were signs I missed over the years.
     
  10. Choirboy

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    I think a lot of it has to do with how introspective you are, how much you understand yourself and your feelings and what they mean. I felt attractions to guys even before I was a teenager but never really thought of them as such, more like just some quirky fascination (because I was a pretty quirky kid anyhow). I also had a hard time separating the basics of being gay (attraction to people of the same sex) with the behavior of the gay people I knew, which wasn't really similar to the way I acted or expected to live my life.

    We all go through this in our own ways. I gradually lost patience and happiness with my marriage, which more and more seemed like me giving up most of my identity to keep someone else happy. At the same time, it seemed clearer and clearer that I could potentially love a guy and life a life that wasn't all that different from what I was used to. The scales eventually tipped enough that I had to leave the marriage for my own sanity and to allow my children to see me as a real person, not just a servant-like extension of their mother, and at the same time I decided that admitting I was gay was going to have the double effect of getting the marriage ended, and allowing me to reclaim the person I had allowed to drift away over many years.

    I did not have some a-ha moment of realizing I was gay, or a short-term period where I suddenly questioned my sexuality and came to an unexpected conclusion. In my case it was always there and I was very much aware of it, but chose not to act on it except for one time in college that had to hold me for 30 years. But I've seen other people here who were very shocked by the realization and had never even considered the possibility, or else remembered signs from childhood that they had repressed. Whatever it may be, allow yourself time to adjust to what you're feeling and think about it before you do anything. If you have a spouse and family and are not sure what it is that you're feeling, you owe it to them and yourself to think about it before you do something you can't undo.
     
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  11. I'm gay

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    I knew I was gay earlier in life, I just didn't accept it. For me, these weren't newfound feelings, but they did increase in strength after reaching middle age. It's common for that to happen because we reach an age where we begin to "take stock" of our lives, evaluating our life's choices. That happened to me following the death of my father in 2014. I was pretty happy before that, going along in my life with a wife and 2 kids. However, it's not like it was a total surprise to me - I knew I was gay, but I had suppressed all those feelings decades ago because I just couldn't be gay!

    I had told myself that these fantasies were just fantasies. They don't mean anything, right? Just like my secret gay fetish or something. That's how I viewed it. That's how I justified, rationalized and compartmentalized my gay porn use and masturbating to gay fantasies. Just harmless fantasies that don't mean anything. Only they did mean something.

    The simple fact is that straight guys don't wonder to themselves over and over "am I gay?" They just don't. They recognize their attractions to women and don't obsess over the idea of being gay.

    Coming to terms with being gay causes us to go through stages of loss (in this case, it's a loss of your straight identity). They are: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Grief, Acceptance. These stages can be in any order, some can be skipped or even repeated. Multiple stages can occur simultaneously. Your description sounds a lot like the bargaining stage. If it's just a fantasy, then I'm not really gay.

    OP: I'm not suggesting that you are in fact gay. Only you can decide your own sexuality. I'm only suggesting that if you are masturbating to gay fantasies, especially fantasies without using porn, then it's a pretty strong indicator that you are at least not straight.
     
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  12. greatwhale

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    Here’s a thought-experiment: imagine you are not in the later-in-life category, you have no relationship with anyone, no commitment to anything, whether with regard to where you live, or what you do. You have nothing of value that could be lost...in essence, you are as free as a young person just starting out in life...but knowing what you know of your desires and inclinations...would it still be as hard to accept as you feel it is now?
     
  13. Thomas094

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    No it would not as hard to make decision
     
  14. Thomas094

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    Awesome thing about life --never meant to be easy but rather thoughful
     
  15. iwa

    iwa
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    Whoever said there were only two check boxes, straight or gay? I spend a lot of time in bisexual communities, and I find far more support and others with similar experiences in those communities. it's very common for bisexuals to go through a certain amount of fluidity throughout life. There are times when I fantasize mostly about men, other times it's as if the interest in men was never there and I am focused on women. One thing that is very, very common is when bisexuals finally accept their same sex attractions, those same sex fantasies go off the charts for a while, but then things shift and balance out. Freedom comes when you just accept yourself and you like what you like without having to put a label on yourself. If you have any bits of shame around your same sex attractions, that alone will make them super juicy.

    Same here, married with kids, but my wife is always been very supportive of my same sex attractions, and for me there's no shame around gay fantasies anymore, so they've sorta become a bit mundane. A lot of time if you experience shame around the same sex stuff it makes it way more juicy.

    Most bisexual couples figure out ways to get needs met, have you talked to your wife about how you can get yours met?
     
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  16. Contented

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    Great thought experiment! If there was a magic do-over, and could start from scratch as a young adult I would never have been in a straight relationship. I think it would have been fantastic to be young and gay never having to live a lie for so many years. The happiness and contentment I feel now I could have experienced years and years ago. Unfortunately there are no do-overs so we forge ahead on this journey to self realization of our true sexual identity.
     
  17. Thomas094

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    My wife and I have not discussed although I think she suspects as she has asked if there is anything I want to tell her. I have not found the words to date. Wish I could be stronger and have open discussion
     
  18. silverhalo

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    It sounds to me almost like its not so much that you don't think you are gay more that you are struggling to accept it. I don't think there are that many people who 'just know' they are gay and continue on their merry way in life, it is just that people are often not vocal about the struggles that have led them to where they are now so all we see in society are out and proud gay people, the people who aren't out and proud we probably don't see. Most people have a period of disbelief, and at least some amount of time working on accepting their sexuality.
    If I asked you to counter why you aren't gay what would you say?
     
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  19. SevnButton

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    I think we place WAY too much emphasis on labels. Labels are useful for communication when there's clarity. But what matters is the choices we make. Labels should not the basis of a choice. Saying, "I'm gay so I'm going to have sex with someone of my gender", does make as much sense as, "I'm having same-gender sex, so I guess I'm gay". (I hope that makes sense.) So @lost2018, I hope you can follow your heart and good judgment, be with whoever feels right, and don't worry about which box you should be in.
     
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  20. Nickw

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    What Iwa has described very much coincides with my experience. I knew I was bisexual, although I couldn't define it or understand it, from the time I was a young kid...about 13. Throughout my life my desires would fluctuate depending on who was my current "crush". I never, really, acted on either gay or straight sex except for light stuff with both. When I met my wife and married I bet I went 20 years without even the fantasy of m2m intimacy. I was having a LOT of straight sex.

    As my wife's desires dropped, my same sex desires became very intrusive and finally almost overwhelming. And, my sex drive, in general, has become a bit ridiculous. I think that this is very common based on conversations I've had with other middle aged guys. And, it's not limited to bisexual or gay men. Straight guys go through the same reawakening of their sexual desires. So, to me, it makes sense that whatever drives our sexuality, it intensifies later in life and we have the WTF moment.

    I think bisexuality is under rated and under represented. I have a gay brother. I have a bisexual brother. I'm guessing a Kinsey 3 and a Kinsey 10 (lol). My gay brother was completely unable to have a relationship with a woman and completely unable to be sexual with one. My other brother was married to a woman but is more comfortable with men. I'm more comfortable with women. Let's not forget that sexuality is a spectrum and we don't need to look at the needle on the gage and suddenly see "gay" when it passes into that zone. When the needle heads the other way down to zero we never say someone is straight unless that gage reads zero.

    OP. What matters is what you need in your life to be sexually fulfilled. And, this could change throughout your life. I've decided I'm in this for the ride and find it to be very interesting...this human sexuality thing. Who said life should be static?
     
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