How Long Did You Stay In The Closet?

My very first crush was when I was 4-years-old and she was a girl named Margaret and I had fantasies of having sex with her and getting married... (I barely knew what sex was back then so I just imagined hugging naked xD) but I never told anyone because girls liking girls was just not excepted in my world. Especially after my best friend said that girls can't love girls. So, I suppose I've been closeted as gay since I was 4-years-old. I first realized that I wanted to be a boy when I was around 6-years-old. I remember the first time I ever felt good about myself...I was around 5 or 6 years old and I was playing with my friend. I insisted on being the only male character in the pretend game we were playing...the dog, Jack. My two best friends were being Mary and Laura. (Yes, we were pretending to be the characters from The Little House In The Big Woods) My friends didn't know why I wanted to be a dog so badly, especially since he was a boy and I was apparently a girl. But, being that dog. Being that MALE dog. That was the best moment of my life. Because I really felt good about myself. I know it sounds dumb but being a boy made me feel really good.

I came out as gay when I was 11 years old and then I came out as Genderfluid when I was 13 years old (so, like, a few days ago xD)

 

when my brother was a baby he always wanted to be a karate baboon?????
i tell him decades later
he's nearly there

 

50 years. I don't really regret it because I really enjoyed my career (military) and I don't dwell on 'what could have been.' But I do feel like I am SO behind the curve romantically and socially at this point, that it is kinda frustrating.

 

I saw an episode of star trek ds9 one day and remember 'tickling myself' at like 5 yo to dax. My actual cognitive lesbian awakening was when katy perry release I kissed a Girl and i realised me wanting to fuck girls and 'normal me' were wrong together. So i was in the closet for ages since i didnt know what it was.

Now? Only my safes know im gay. so im sorta mostly in the closet still, but its obv unofficially im not

 

AllAlison, so funny you mentioned the Katy Perry song "I kissed a Girl." I took my Godson to a music festival in Phoenix once and, at one point, he insisted on going to the stage Katy Perry was playing because it turned out he loved that song. My first reaction was "why?" Then, of course, my dense head let through reality: he was straight (I never thought otherwise), but as a teenager, he was horny and the lyrics spoke to him. I wonder if he realized that the song was actually about a kiss between girls...):lol:

 

I was closeted at school for almost a year, if you mean being closeted after I accepted myself. Looking back on it, I had a crush in 3rd grade on a girl so I was closeted from myself for like, six years...

And I will remain in the closet from my parents for a long time.

 

Took me 1 year to first realize I was gay and another 2 to tell someone. Then my crush found out I liked him today and well nothing has been more embaresing and horrifying than that. Now I'm happily waiting till tomorrow to see if I can still act normally around him. My story is no where near as bad as others I've met .

 

During the last quarter of high school was when I started to come to terms with my attraction to guys but still in the closet. It wasn't until I was 19 that I began to accept that I was gay. I was an adult, I had moved away from my mom's house and my old neighborhood and being introduced to gay clubs helped a lot as well.

 

45 2/3 years...

Why come out? I've got my closet nicely furnished and tastefully decorated! :lol:

 

first realised i was lesbian at 13. finally accepted it at 17. I'm 19 now and still in the closet...

 

Still in it at 31. Partially because of family and also because I live in a very homophobic area of the U.S.

 

I was in the closet for 58 years. My only regret in life is that I didn't come out sooner. My life has changed drastically since October. In many ways for the better. My wife and I maintain a strong bond and my family has been very supportive. I remind people that I have not changed. What they know about me has.

 

I've always been out about my sexual orientation on an "if asked" basis. As for my being trans, that would be over 31 years to both myself and others, until I presented as male for the first time in a safe environment and it felt so right I realised I can't hide the truth anymore.

 

It took me many, many years to even admit to myself that I wasn't straight. Some things happened to me when I was a little kid which made it very difficult to cope with the idea of any kind of intimacy with males or females. In my early twenties I tried to take a few small steps out of the closet, but the trauma of my childhood forced me straight back inside. I think I needed to experience a safe heterosexual relationship first to be able to then even think about the idea of sex with a man. And I could only feel truly comfortable and accepting about myself after I found the courage to tell my therapist about the trauma from my childhood. And that was only three years ago. It's only very recently that I've managed to stop feeling sad about my past and what happened to me as a child and all the years I spent alone and isolated. So I think this is why I'm only now able to start coming out and also experiencing a relationship with another guy.

 

Umm... can't give an exact number. I think started realizing I wasn't straight in like fall or winter of 7th grade, and told my best friend for the first time early spring of 8th grade, and told my mom that summer. I told the rest of my friend group last December on my birthday, and now I pretty much tell people I go to school with very casually. Moving to a different state and going into high school made it easier because I saw more LGBT people around me. But I'm pretty closeted with my family. My mom is the only one on that side of my life that I have told. A lot of our family and my stepdad's family is Christian and fairly liberal..... I think. I will probably tell my family and stepdad once I move out and have money of my own.

 

After I was around 12 or 13 and noticed something wasn't quite right, moving on from the denial period to the age of 16, I guess that was how long. After I left school and October rolled around I told a friend, then I told my mum, then my nan.. then a short while later I told another friend who accidentally outed me to another friend, then I told someone else who at the time was a friend and then I never told anybody else until last year when I finally fully came out.

 

After putting everything together and being able to accept myself, probably 3-4 months? I knew it had to become known at some point if I wanted to be happy so I finally managed to do it.

 

I think about 2 years, I just kept it to myself and didn't really feel a need to mention it, but as my close friends came out to me as lesbian and asexual, I thought they'd like to know and support me so I came out as bisexual. Later, I doubted myself and id'd as lesbian, and came out to my family as lesbian and told my friends I was lesbian. But now, ~6 months later, I realized I was forcing myself to be something I wasn't because of internalized biphobia and trying to be "gay enough" to feel accepted in the community. I haven't told my parents, I don't think I'll make a formal announcement, just say it casually maybe or let them figure it out. My friends I'll probably tell them at some point, maybe next week, but I did put my sexuality on my twitter and tumblr so if they see it they see it. No big deal for me. Also I do talk about guys that I find hot to them, so they prob already know

 

There were three different times I started coming out. I knew deep down I wasn't exactly straight by senior year of high school. I told two of my closet friends I was bisexual. One my friends believed me and the other one did not. :icon_sad: That hurt. She thought I was doing it for attention. I don't know why exactly. I was not completely sure myself then so I believed she might be right. Fast forward to my mid-20s, I came out again as bisexual/pansexua because I was not ready to accept the fact that guys don't do it for me sexually. "Hearts not parts" was a great philosophy that helped me believe that I was. It didn't help many people were very dismissive of this by calling it a phase or whatever. At the age 29, I finally changed my Facebook status to only women to see how it felt. It felt right. Now, I am out to select people at work, select family members and friends.

 

I would say been in closet since 2006....still wrapping my mind around it.
I always knew i had something 100x stronger for females than males. But, I kept trying to test myself....push my boundaries to see if I could like a guy....failed.

I hope to come out in the next 2 years, but I will only come out if i feel I have a proper support system.

Do i regret taking all this time to be sure i had no capability to be with males? Nope.

Take your time and only come out when you have accepted who you are. Become your own best ally. Confidence in knowing who you are is needed after coming out because it can be very anxiety filled and there might be people that try to make you feel ashame of your sexuality.

Just my two cent to anyone in the process of setting the date for such a discussion.