Any regrets about being closeted?

[ErosWired]

For those who say that you come out and discover that nobody cares if you’re gay, I’m very glad that you live in such a place. I never have. There is no such place anywhere in Appalachia. At best, people will say nothing or even feign support, but you will find yourself discriminated against in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. At worst, you can be openly called a faggot and physically assaulted. In my county, is would be most unwise to walk down the sidewalk in the county seat wearing a t-shirt that says “We’re Queer And We’re Here”.

 I am 55. I grew up in East Tennessee at a time when it was absolutely not okay to be gay. In high school, guys would call me a fag in the hallways. But you couldn’t exactly say I was in the closet - I’m Autistic, and as far as anything sex-related was concerned I was a very late bloomer. My entire sex education was self-taught from the Time/Life Illustrated Book of the Human Body. Which, it need hardly be said, made no mention of homosexual intercourse. Or any actual intercourse, for that matter.

I owe the fact that I didn’t awaken to any same-sex attraction from the start to a fluke of chance - a girl was attracted to me and made advances that eventually (very eventually) led to hand jobs and a couple of instances of oral sex, none of which I was ready for, and set me back a bit. Having a girlfriend tamped down a bit on the fag-calling in the halls, but the irony is that that girl now goes by George and lives as the man he was meant to be on the other side of the country. So my first relationship was essentially gay and neither of us knew it. (To make this more complicated, George’s best friend in high school, who came out as gay in college, was also one of my best friends, and although I had no way of understanding it at the time, I was in love with him. He was in love with George, but George being female at the time left him confused also. It was a wretched little retrograde love triangle mired in closeted confusion.

Even as an undergraduate in college I still hadn’t quite wrapped my head around the gay sex thing until I encountered my first gay porn, which was transformative. It was a bite of the fruit of the Tree if the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and I couldn’t un-bite it. I was, however, God-fearing in a pretty serious way, and for the next four years would buy gay videos, watch them, then destroy them in shame and self-loathing. I had discovered a part of me that I did not want.

Mind you, I like ladies just fine. (I eventually married one and had two children with her.) It was a good female friend who, the year after I graduated from my undergraduate years, kindly took pity on me and relieved me of my virginity. At the same time I was also relieved of the burden of thinking that God would strike me with lightning for fornicating; I was rather surprised that he did not, and decided I should revisit that thinking.

Loosening the death-grip of religion on my sexuality didn’t free me, though; I also had my self-imposed morality ingrained by growing up in a place where they called you “fag” in the hallways, and fag was not something I wanted to be. So from 1990 to 2004 I walked a Straight path exclusively, and got married.

Marriages often don’t end well for Autistics. Mine did not. She chose to go her own way. She was unhappy, and I gave her an out that would let her leave gracefully - I told her that I realized I was gay.

This was a half-truth. Had she not left, I would have been monogamously faithful to her to my death. But she grabbed the chance with both hands and used it as the reason for her decision. In that way, I both allowed and forced myself to be un-closeted to family and some friends.

 With her gone, and my obligation ended, I decided to lance this damn boil that had been festering deep under my skin my whole life, get it over with once and for all, and go find a man to fuck me. Eighteen years later, I’m still making up for lost time.

Do I regret being closeted up to that point? Hard to say - on the one hand, I do feel a sense of lost time and lost opportunity, and because of it I feel an urgency to do more now. But on the other hand, I have a feeling that if I had even once been cunted in my 20s my life would have taken a radically different turn during a period in the AIDS crisis, and I suspect I might not be alive to write this if it had.

I’m not openly “out”, now. I mean, I’m bisexual, and I’ve been trained as a sexual submissive specifically for men so that’s largely what I do. But to be honest, I’d be absolutely thrilled if sex never crossed my mind again. It’s a nuisance. If someone asked me today, “Are you straight, gay, or bi?” I would say, “I’m Autistic,” and leave it at that.

[BootmanLA]

11 hours ago, BlackDude said:

We don’t ask straight people to proclaim their sexuality, why should I?  I don’t have any wife or children, I pay my own bills. I feel I only need to be honest with myself. If I chose to share I like men, that’s my choice.

Let me start by saying I support your choice whether or not to come out, 100%.

I will note that straight people "proclaim their sexuality" all day, every day. Single guys talk about the girl they took out (or hooked up with) the previous weekend. Single women talk about the hot date (or the loser guy) that they went out with. When things get serious, the women gossip over whether he's going to propose. When he does, they're flashing the ring and talking about the wedding plans. The shower invites are posted on the departmental bulletin board. Everyone knows when they're out of the office for the wedding and/or honeymoon. If and when a baby is expected, they're all over discussing it (with a repeat of the shower deal).

And almost always, throughout, there's the pictures. Family pics on desk surfaces, on screen savers, on phones.

In other words, straight people make it clear that they're straight, day in and day out. Incessantly. We just are so inured to it that we don't notice - it's like the air we breathe.

That's not to say, again, that you "need" to come out. It's just that you're choosing not to do the exact things they do all the time.

[BootmanLA]

11 hours ago, BlackDude said:

I feel I only need to be honest with myself. If I chose to share I like men, that’s my choice.

And again, while I agree it's your choice, it's good to acknowledge that one reason you CAN make that choice, and the amount of pushback you get is muted, is because of the thousands upon thousands of LGBT men and women who came before you who chose otherwise - or who had little choice but to be out because they simply couldn't "pass". Their work make it a lot less socially acceptable for men to rag on other men at work as to when they were going to settle down with a good woman and start a family. The pressure to do that, pre-"out" days, is one reason so many gay men took the route of marrying and cheating on the side, and why so many marriages imploded after a decade or two when the pressure got to be too much.

Just as those early "out" folks made it possible for many of us to be "out" more easily today, they also made it possible to stay single and closeted if that's what you prefer, without being tagged as suspicious because you're past 25 and haven't gotten engaged. Acknowledging their help is the least closeted people can do, but sadly, too many of them look down on those pioneers for "rocking the boat".

[BlindRawFucker1]

I totally regret and am depressed that I’m still closeted to some degree.

 

My parents know, along with my two best friends—both of whom are straight.

 

None of the people close to me whom I’ve told, had any idea that I was gay.  In fact, and quite humorous is, that the first two words out of the mouths of the first three people I told was, “i’m shocked.”  After the third time, I almost laughed out loud when it was said.

 

For the most part, my parents are supportive.  My two friends couldn’t be any more supportive.

 

Being blind complicated the whole thing , of course.  No one with a disability has sexual feelings.  And, certainly not homosexual feelings.

 

I did know since I was 12, that I liked boys.  I know that I would have most likely been pozzed, during college, and most likely dead now—which I can’t necessarily say would be a bad thing—if I had had any sexual experiences.

 

I truly admire the kids today who come out when they are 12 or 13.  I wish that would have been me.

 

I’m slowly letting myself be a little more honest around people.  Since the pandemic began, I’ve gotten in contact with friends from when I was in school.  I immediately told them I was gay when we started talking about marital status and such things.

 

Amazingly, none of the guys had any idea I was gay in school.  One girl said she didn’t know, but always knew she would be safe with me, in all since of the word.  She never worried about me trying to be sexual with her.

 

Now the big question, would I change things if I could?  Here’s my shitty answer.  I don’t know.  I would like to think I would, but that is something none of us can ever do, so will never know.

[Sharpshooter13]

I came out at 24. Wish I came out at 19 my freshman year of college! Oh well better 24 than 34. Irony is that I feel more masculine and secure if myself being out than I did trying to be straight.

[fskn]

12 hours ago, BlackDude said:

I’m out to a few friends, no family.

[...]

We don’t ask straight people to proclaim their sexuality, why should I?  I don’t have any wife or children, I pay my own bills. I feel I only need to be honest with myself.

[...]

Without at all wanting to question — let alone criticize — yours or anyone else's decision not to come out to family, I want to ask whether having a husband, partner or long-term boyfriend would change the balance in favor of coming out to your family.

On a practical level, I'd find it difficult to have to "de-gay" the house every time, and to remember to present my significant other as a general-purpose friend (or to cut off contact with a partner while spending time with my family during the holidays).

In a health crisis (mine, the partner's, either person's parent, either person's sibling, etc.) or at the end of life, I'd also be very worried. If our relationship were a secret, I couldn't offer much support if the partner were tending to a sick relative, or if they were grieving the loss of a parent. Worse yet, if I died without acknowledging the partner, resources that I'd want them to keep — that they might have worked for and/or that might be crucial to their economic security after my death — would instead be expected to go to family members. The partner might not even be welcome at my funeral, if my family members had never known about our relationship!

On a personal level, I would feel as if I were being excluded from a significant part of a partner's life if they chose to hide their sexual orientation — and, by consequence, to hide me — from their family.

Coming out is certainly a personal choice. There is, however, no analogue for heterosexuals, because their family relationships are the default, common, expected, assumed, always obvious. LGBT people who choose to have close, ongoing romantic (and also economic — marriage is very much an economic matter) relationships may need to "come out" to make sure that those relationships are properly recognized. Conversely, choosing not to come out might make it difficult for LGBT people to sustain relationships.

[PozBearWI]

1 hour ago, BlindRawFucker1 said:

I totally regret and am depressed that I’m still closeted to some degree.

 

Now the big question, would I change things if I could?  Here’s my shitty answer.  I don’t know.  I would like to think I would, but that is something none of us can ever do, so will never know.

Self reflection is informative for sure.  It alone is a worthwhile habit to have.  But "would I change if I could" is of course always a moot point because we never could.  But we can change what we do now and we can make different choices tomorrow.  Regret just hurts us.  Learning from our past propels us.  

In addition to quotiing you BlindRawFucker1; and thank you for your candor; this whole thread is interesting and I am grateful to have happened across it today.

[poztwinksrhot]

On 12/4/2021 at 4:02 PM, Caged said:

I’m a 55 yo closeted gay MWM.  I had my first gay sexual experience when I was 13 and knew I was gay from a young age.  But by the time I left home and was coming of age and eager to explore my sexuality the AIDS pandemic of the early 1980’s was in full swing.  I saw gay men dying everywhere and I was afraid to be myself.  So I ended up living the lie of pretending to be straight.  I’m on my 3rd marriage and now it’s struggling too.  I actually have loved all of my wives, but I was never truly interested in them sexually.  Im grateful that today’s society is more excepting of gay men, but it wasn’t like that when I grew up.  I’m still caught up in the horrible lie and feel like there is no way out without hurting a lot of people.  
 

Does anyone else experience guilt about being in the closet and pretending to be straight?

I'm of similar age and had much the same experiences, except I never succumbed to the pressure to get married to a woman.  I spent over half of my life in the closet (peeking out every so often at bars and online, once it was available).  It was rough.  The other half I spent out, at least to everyone who matters (the local family, work, etc).  I don't see a need to announce it to every person that I meet on the street.

It was a different time back then, and I fault no one who stayed in the closet in those days, especially if they didn't have the fortune to live in a metro area.  Times are better now, and coming out is much more welcoming an experience than in the past (although still dependent on where you live, to a degree).  The marriage complicates things for sure, but if the marriage itself is struggling, and the wife is unhappy as well, then you have to consider if it's best for all involved to come out and start living the life that makes you happy.  Our time on this earth is finite and we can't afford to be unhappy for all of that time. 

We each have to deal with our own individual closets though, and decide which ones we're willing to stay in, and how and how often we poke our heads out the doors.  My husband is not at all into the kinks on this board, so I am closeted in that way, and since i don't want to give him up, probably always will be.  That doesn't mean that I can't enjoy the kink though, by participating on here, and chatting with guys who are fortunate enough to be able to be out of that particular closet and actively chasing, or whatever else makes them happy and horny.

There will always be closets.  Hopefully they will be used more and more just for clothing.  I think there will always be people hiding in the corners for one reason or another though.  It's sad, but it's life.

[BlackDude]

1 hour ago, fskn said:

Without at all wanting to question — let alone criticize — yours or anyone else's decision not to come out to family, I want to ask whether having a husband, partner or long-term boyfriend would change the balance in favor of coming out to your family.

On a practical level, I'd find it difficult to have to "de-gay" the house every time, and to remember to present my significant other as a general-purpose friend (or to cut off contact with a partner while spending time with my family during the holidays).

In a health crisis (mine, the partner's, either person's parent, either person's sibling, etc.) or at the end of life, I'd also be very worried. If our relationship were a secret, I couldn't offer much support if the partner were tending to a sick relative, or if they were grieving the loss of a parent. Worse yet, if I died without acknowledging the partner, resources that I'd want them to keep — that they might have worked for and/or that might be crucial to their economic security after my death — would instead be expected to go to family members. The partner might not even be welcome at my funeral, if my family members had never known about our relationship!

On a personal level, I would feel as if I were being excluded from a significant part of a partner's life if they chose to hide their sexual orientation — and, by consequence, to hide me — from their family.

Coming out is certainly a personal choice. There is, however, no analogue for heterosexuals, because their family relationships are the default, common, expected, assumed, always obvious. LGBT people who choose to have close, ongoing romantic (and also economic — marriage is very much an economic matter) relationships may need to "come out" to make sure that those relationships are properly recognized. Conversely, choosing not to come out might make it difficult for LGBT people to sustain relationships.

Great questions. I’ve dated other men who weren’t “out” before and it turned out fine. It’s all about honest communication with each other. If that person wanted to come out, then we would decide the next steps, but there was no pressure.

I don’t “de-gay” my house. It’s just a regular house with decor. I don’t have pictures of naked people hanging up no more so than any other person lol. I’m not a big photo person. 

As far as resources, for me personally, a legacy is something you build for your offspring. I don’t have any children right now, so it would go to my family by default which I’m fine with. 
 

If I had a partner, and needed resources to go to them, I would act accordingly. That would include possible marriage. “Coming out” doesn’t change life insurance policies or deeds to property. 
 

I think people falsely equate “coming out” with happiness. If they think coming out somehow makes they the superior gay, and everyone else is just miserable that’s fine. I know plenty of guess who are out and just as lonely and depressed as those who aren’t.  

I view myself as black first and foremost, so I guess I just have a different perspective. I love men but I will never buy 100% into the “gay community” but that’s a post for another time!

Edited January 6, 2022 by BlackDude

[fskn]

On 12/4/2021 at 11:04 AM, Muscledadbod said:

It was not an easy lifestyle like it is today where kids come out at 13 and they have parties for them.

Let's not inadvertently amplify false views held by religious conservatives and the like.

Anti-gay people often reduce sexual orientation to a "lifestyle". Obviously, the questions of who we fuck and who we love go much deeper than that.

And though being openly gay might be easier for some young people today (particularly white, middle-class Americans born to university-educated parents and growing up in large coastal cities), it isn't "easy" for anyone. Sky-high rates of suicide among gay youth prove that.

The journey is different at different times in history and in different settings, but it would be wrong to assume that young gay people today simply have it easy.

Similarly, it would be wrong to assume that leading a (somewhat) overtly gay life was impossible before current times. Berlin in the 1920s, or the 1950s–1960s world depicted in the film Der Kreis, give examples of people who made different choices decades ago — not necessarily harder choices, not necessarily braver ones, but certainly different ones.

Edited January 6, 2022 by fskn

[BannedWord]

On 12/4/2021 at 2:04 PM, Muscledadbod said:

Times were different for us when we were coming of age, and those were the formative years that shaped our personality.  It was not an easy lifestyle like it is today where kids come out at 13 and they have parties for them. If anyone ever asked me if I was gay, I froze. I hated the word gay. Now they identify as LGBT which sounds like an exclusive club. I was scared all throughout high school, and when I finally went to college, I felt a sigh of relief because I discovered gay clubs, and there were tons of them! There was no hook up apps, we went cruising...

 

So my first experiences with M2M sex were at 15. Growing up, I wasn't in sports, I didn't present as macho, I was more the 'nerdy kid' who was picked on until I was about 14 before changing schools (where I lived, if I'd come out as bi/gay, I'd have been beaten daily. I was already being called a fag before I even had an actual encounter). Went through the rest of high school awkwardly and unappealing to just about any female classmate. So as the OP said, it was different then. I had options for college and the one that was the most academically appealing was NYU. Yeah. Let that one sink in a moment -- NYC, The Village, Gay Mecca in 1983.

Again, a bit of a double-life as I dated women but found myself more than curious about other guys, so some nights I'd walk down Christopher Street and look around (white, orange and Robin's Egg blue, left pocket for anyone keeping score). And be checked out by really hot guys. Unfortunately, this was also the beginning of the AIDS scare, so any notions I'd had of leaning that way quickly got pushed to the back of my mind. 

The OP is right that the ridicule and rejection we found in the early 80's has now become almost a celebration of being out, or others asking why they haven't yet come out. 

So yeah...closet with a lot of baggage for a long time. I've called myself "bi" for as long as I can recall, and even that is ridiculed (women being scared they'll get dumped for a guy, guys lukewarm to dating you because they think you're denying yourself, yada yada). I've had a decent share of M2M experiences and enjoyed all of them and wished I'd explored it even more. Wished I'd been with more guys, or not shunned some advances. And I somehow still trigger the old "gaydar" for some people. Regrets? Yeah, had a few and if I had it to do over I would have been much more honest with myself and others on my sexuality. We can't live in hindsight and can only change by going forward. 

So...I'm bi, but at about a 95% + attraction to guys and that number is growing.

[Guest]

15 hours ago, fskn said:

  but it would be wrong to assume that young gay people today simply have it easy.

 

I disagree, coming out today is vastly different then in the 80's. 

When coming out in the 1980s, people did not support gay rights as they do today. There was no YouTube, no Instagram, no easy way to research sexuality or gender outside a library. Today’s teenagers have all this information at their fingertips. 

[BootmanLA]

5 hours ago, Muscledadbod said:

I disagree, coming out today is vastly different then in the 80's. 

When coming out in the 1980s, people did not support gay rights as they do today. There was no YouTube, no Instagram, no easy way to research sexuality or gender outside a library. Today’s teenagers have all this information at their fingertips. 

I don't think you and Fskn are saying contradictory things. Rather, I think you're correctly noting that there are a lot more support mechanisms for most kids today. But not nearly so many in the Bible Belt or deep in Mormon country, for instance. And no matter how much support there is online, there are still significant numbers of parents who do everything in their power to block their kids from accessing those things - no smart phone, internet blocked at home, sending them to schools where those things aren't available, and so forth.

Thankfully the number of kids in that situation is diminishing, but it's by no means approaching zero.

[fskn]

15 hours ago, Muscledadbod said:

I disagree, coming out today is vastly different then in the 80's. 

When coming out in the 1980s, people did not support gay rights as they do today. There was no YouTube, no Instagram, no easy way to research sexuality or gender outside a library. Today’s teenagers have all this information at their fingertips. 

Coming out as a young person certainly is different, but access to information isn't sufficient to make it easier.

The risk of being bullied by one's peers and abandoned by one's parents persists, no matter how much information an individual young person has access to and how much support there is for gay rights in society at large. It's even possible for parents to support gay rights in the abstract, but not as far as their own child is concerned!

One factor that can make coming out  more difficult today for young people who live in rural and/or conservative areas is economics. Through the early 1980s, it was feasible for a gay high school student thrown out by parents to take money saved from allowances, washing cars, mowing lawns, and gifts from Grandma; buy a Greyhound or Amtrak ticket to San Francisco or New York City; get a basic job; rent a room; and slowly become established in a more accepting place.

Today, that Greyhound or Amtrak ticket halfway across the country would cost a few hundred dollars; that basic job would require a high school diploma, if not a college degree; that rental would require references, a credit check and a pay history; and despite the advent of local minimum wage laws, the net wage and the available hours wouldn't cover the cheapest habitable lodging. I say the following partly in jest, but in cases where coming out safely requires migrating, you'd better have a big dick or a tight ass so that you can earn a lot as a sex worker or attract a generous sugar daddy in the new place.

Last but not least, there may be information, and even popular support, in the US and in Western Europe for white, cisgender, middle-class gay people, but society is barely beginning to consider what it means to be gay and a person of color, to be gay and working-class, let alone downright poor, to be trans, or otherwise to be different from the "acceptable" gay people represented in Lifetime holiday movies and featured in Wells Fargo Bank mortgage ads that run in the New York Times Sunday magazine (or — and this is the most incongruous and revolting kind of portrayal — in promotional clips shown before films at the Frameline San Francisco LGBT film festival). Of course, there have always been people in these categories, but society at large has never paid attention to them, and to their needs.

Please don't assume that everyone's coming out journey has magically become easier.

Edited January 8, 2022 by fskn

[Piggyybttmm]

On 1/6/2022 at 2:30 PM, BootmanLA said:

Let me start by saying I support your choice whether or not to come out, 100%.

I will note that straight people "proclaim their sexuality" all day, every day. Single guys talk about the girl they took out (or hooked up with) the previous weekend. Single women talk about the hot date (or the loser guy) that they went out with. When things get serious, the women gossip over whether he's going to propose. When he does, they're flashing the ring and talking about the wedding plans. The shower invites are posted on the departmental bulletin board. Everyone knows when they're out of the office for the wedding and/or honeymoon. If and when a baby is expected, they're all over discussing it (with a repeat of the shower deal).

And almost always, throughout, there's the pictures. Family pics on desk surfaces, on screen savers, on phones.

In other words, straight people make it clear that they're straight, day in and day out. Incessantly. We just are so inured to it that we don't notice - it's like the air we breathe.

That's not to say, again, that you "need" to come out. It's just that you're choosing not to do the exact things they do all the time.

Hmmmm wow. Ive never thought of it that way. This is so true, its so normalized that we dont even think of it as proclaiming their sexuality or coming out or anything. Its just the default