Ask me about being in the closet

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Ask me about being in the closet

lizardman: Jun 30, 2007; by R. Guyovich

EDIT: (OP here, in case there's any confusion)

RacistGuidingLight posted:

What you haven't done is laid out the perceived repercussions of coming out, as a thirty rear end old man. Is there any threat of estrangement or loss of employment?

The repercussions are about 10% family/friend drama and 90% my own personal humiliation at revealing that I've been a closet case my whole life.

***

Listen, (and this is to everyone reading the thread, not just who I'm replying to), I realize this is SomethingAwful.com and being snarky is just what we all do, but I'm exposing the most vulnerable side of myself to you guys. I realize being in the closet is pathetic... and that's exactly what keeps me from admitting it to anyone. Even if you're trying to help, even if you're 'just loving around', even if you think I'm being an idiot for putting something this personal on the forums, you're not going to be doing anybody any favors by being dismissive, critical (even if you're going for constructive criticism), or teasing. I'm not even necessarily looking for advice: this is an Ask/Tell thread, not an E/N thread. I guess I'm just asking for you guys to cool it a little. I've seen you all do it, I know you can.

You can't shame someone out of the closet--it's likely the entire reason they're in it in the first place.

EDIT: AAAAAAAAHAHAHAHA I just posted this on my usual account. Well, I really wouldn't blame you for making fun of me for THIS.

lizardman fucked around with this message at 01:02 on May 15, 2015

# ¿ May 15, 2015 00:56

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 02:55

lizardman: Jun 30, 2007; by R. Guyovich

FreudianSlippers posted:

They all already know you're gay. When you come out the main response is going to be "We've known for years.".

Okay. That's not really the point.

# ¿ May 15, 2015 01:29

lizardman: Jun 30, 2007; by R. Guyovich

Yes, it would be a problem with certain members of my family.

We're not talking about "just shyness". Decades worth of shame doesn't just magically resolve itself due to self-awareness. It takes time. I'm getting there - and I think I really am making progress since I'm more just mildly annoyed at your comments rather than taking them to heart and fleeing the thread in tears.

Shame isn't anything to gently caress with

quote:

Shame is often confused with guilt--an emotion you might experience as a result of a wrongdoing about which you might feel remorseful and wish to make amends. Where you will likely have an urge to admit guilt, or talk with others about a situation that left you with guilty feelings, it is much less likely that you will broadcast your shame. In fact, you'll most likely conceal what you feel because shame does not make a distinction between an action and the self.

I said before, this stopped being about just being gay quite a while ago.

# ¿ May 15, 2015 02:52

lizardman: Jun 30, 2007; by R. Guyovich

thrakkorzog posted:

Here's the problem. You're being a drama queen about being gay.

I've had plenty of gay coworkers. Yeah, they're out and proud. I didn't give a poo poo about their sexual preferences, I really only cared if they sucked at their job, and I had to cover for them .

OK, so you don't want your parents to know you're gay, that's a fair issue.

But you want us to be sympathetic because you can't come out of the closet even when it's OK to step out of the closet, and everybody is sympathetic. poo poo, I'm a straight dude and my mom never met 75% of the women I've dated over the years.

I'm starting to think I should have named this thread "Ask me about having lived a fake life" or something. I really don't care if the average person thinks I'm gay. Hell, one of the reasons I'm not all that embarrassed about accidentally posting on my usual account is because I've already admitted on here that I'm gay. I just haven't been able to bring myself to admit to people from my past that I've lied to them for so long.

Weird analogy: say that for most of your life you told everyone in your life that you were Irish (actual Irish people reading, insert another nationality). You put on a fake Irish accent 24/7, you did stereotypical Irish things, dyed your hair and put on makeup to look more Irish, dated Irish folks (regardless if you were attracted to them or had any affection) just to keep up appearances, listened to music that came from Ireland regardless if you liked it, you went out drinking at pubs all the time even though it wasn't something you enjoyed doing because you thought it would make you seem more Irish.

Finally, one day you realize 'what the hell am I doing?' and you're finally dead-tired of pretending, and the whole thing was just so stupid and you can't believe you did it. Thing is, you have no one to turn to because nobody actually knows you. You're not even sure you know who you are yourself. Your entire life revolved around supposedly being Irish. You want to make honest friendships but you have no idea how to be honest. You're not sure what your interests are because you almost never did things because they interested you, you did them because you thought it was something an Irish person would do. You see old pictures and video of yourself and you're so mortally embarrassed at yourself: why did you waste your life doing something so stupid? You kind of hope you don't have to admit to people you meet "yeah, um, I used to pretend to be Irish. For years'. And you dread having to tell people you've 'known' for years that you're not really Irish and pretty much everything you've done was a lie (and in some cases that would mean admitting you never really loved them or were attracted to them ever).

It's such an absurd hypothetical, but I hope it helps some folks understand how rising gay acceptance doesn't by itself necessarily encourage someone to come out of the closet like flipping a lightswitch.

# ¿ May 15, 2015 22:47

lizardman: Jun 30, 2007; by R. Guyovich

Not trying to abandon the thread, just couldn't work up the :effort:

to post responses for a while.

GORDON posted:

I made too many decisions in my life based on what other people and family thought would make me happy. I dumped the girls they didn't like. I married the one they disliked the least. I went to the school they wanted me to go to, studied what they thought I should study. Your early 20's kind of suck for decision making.

Eventually I moved several states away from them for a new job, and became my own person, and did what the hell I wanted to do. I often got disapproval from 700 miles away, but at that point it was easy to put it out of my mind.... until eventually their opinions stopped mattering at all. My own decisions ending up being good ones, and I was finally happy, and my own man.

Poison Cake posted:

Also, people make pretty big changes all the time. They go back to school, they move to a very different place, they end (or begin) a relationship, and their lifestyle changes radically along the way. Doesn't mean they were at any time "inauthentic", but it does mean they tried different things and (hopefully) became more confident about what they really wanted.

MrNemo posted:

I feel I've experienced a similar situation, if I lay it out let me know if it sounds radically different or if you recognise something? A few years ago I started a PhD and after 7 or 8 months realised I really didn't like what I was doing. As a fairly obvious result my work started to suffer pretty badly as I quickly lost all motivation. Rather than sensibly approaching the issue I started to withdraw from anyone who was involved in the department (including my supervisors). I didn't talk about my work with family or friends if I could avoid it and stopped talking to some friends from my MA programme largely because I knew they'd be asking me how my research was going and possibly want to compare research. It carried on for far longer than it should have done (well over 6 months of basically avoiding the world, daydreaming about having a sit down with everyone and explaining the whole situation and then not doing much more than drafting emails) and the end result was a lot less interesting or judgemental than I'd expected. I still haven't really talked to many people about what actually happened, they get a simple 'I realised I didn't like it that much' rather than 'I was lying to your for like a year about my work and how I was doing every time we talked'.

In that regard I think I can appreciate your position OP and I'm sure you're aware that from an outside perspective you should just come out and it probably will be only about as bad as you think rather than you fear or feel it might be. You haven't though mentioned whether you're actually engaging in a social life now that you're no longer faking a straight life. I think advice wise it would help to know if you've simply retreated from the issue entirely by ignoring it entirely or if you're concern really is coming clean with people you feel you've been lying to for so long.

These posts have helped me realize something: living an inauthentic life is not uncommon, especially for teens and college kids. They try to look like other people in order to be part of a particular scene or get noticed (or not noticed, as the case may be) or they hope to fake it 'til they make it. And some folks continue to live inauthentically well into adulthood, pretending to love their spouses, pretending to like their jobs, humoring people they don't care for. I took it to an extreme, to put it mildly, but even if it's pathetic, it's a part of growing up. Hmmmm.

To 'MrNemo' in particular: I think your situation does resonate with me. In fact, being in the closet was a big influence on my career decisions at the time: basically, I wanted a 'normal' career and shied away from anything 'weird' or artsy-fartsy, this in spite of the fact that I really enjoy being creative. Now, this might have been a good idea regardless, but I should have based those decisions on practical terms rather than how "gay" or not they were.

As for whether I have a social life: the answer is a definite "kind of". I have lots of acquaintances, but to be honest if I stop and think about it I'd say I probably only have one truly close friend--my ex-boyfriend (he's been the only male romantic relationship I've had, for those curious), and I see him maybe once or twice a month. I usually go weeks without 'going out' with people. Thing is, I really don't mind. I really enjoy my time alone. I feel like I can rest when I'm on my own. I don't know if I'm just a natural introvert or if some side effect of my former lifestyle (and I wonder if it's something I'll "grow out of") but as of right now I don't feel like my sparse social life is a problem.

Sockmuppet posted:

You just came out to us (I have no idea why, but I recognized your username and went "oh, I've seen that guy around from before I even made an account!")

I can only imagine the instant of panic you must've felt when you realised what you'd done, but how does it feel now? This was a pretty harmless dress rehersal for the real thing, since we're weirdo internet people you can get rid of by closing your browser, but maybe it could help you get a more realistic impression of how it's going to be in real life. Personally I'm notorious about building stuff up in my imagination, both the good and the bad things, but in my experience, worst case scenarios are pretty rare. It sounds like you're afraid of your minds exaggerated idea of how bad coming out is going to be, maybe it'd help if you sat down and tried to be honest with yourself about how likely the consequenses you fear, actually are.

Ha, thanks. I'd already mentioned I was gay before on this username so I wasn't in a panic--I used the alias mostly because it just felt like common sense for such a personal topic--it was more like the embarrassment of clumsily spilling your drink all over yourself in front of everyone at a party.

# ¿ May 28, 2015 00:19

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 02:55

lizardman: Jun 30, 2007; by R. Guyovich

Let's see if I could get the thread going in some new directions.

What's the hardest part of pretending to be straight (as far as being able to pull it off)?
Really, it's the having-sex-with-women part, but since I want to address that on its own, I'll go with: trying to figure out which women are considered attractive. Of course there are many obviously beautiful women out there, but unless they were drop-dead gorgeous or obviously ugly/ unattractive in general I struggled with it. My favorite example: when the first Spiderman movie came out, I thought Kirsten Dunst was kind of homely but I was confused because media kept pushing her as some kind of 'It' girl and I just thought, 'Is Kirsten Dunst really supposed to be hot?' I had no idea. Apparently I was right, if the dudes I asked were any indication
How did you handle having sex with women?
This was difficult, I dreaded it at first, but it was surprisingly doable. It helps to think that, in the most reductive sense, a woman is literally just a man with a vagina (and vice versa - a man is literally just a woman with a penis) so I didn't have to see the opposite sex as some kind of other species like the straight people I know seem to. I was never really attracted to my female sex partners physically and it was more like I was getting off on myself and how hot and manly the way women reacted made me feel (it did turn me on to have a woman moan and know she is attracted to me), and vaginas feel good when you're inside them. Mirrors helped a LOT. Of course there were numerous times I couldn't maintain an erection, and I usually just shrugged it off and used my hands or mouth to give pleasure.
Any particularly difficult moments you wish to share?
In my college years I had a gay stalker who tried to extort me for sex. This was a tough situation that I didn't take serious action against as early as I probably should have at least partly because I didn't want to attract too much scrutiny and attention from people. He eventually became violent and there was a moment that later on disturbed me because I realized I had been so used to being in the closet that it had overridden my fight-or-flight instinct. I've never told the vast majority of my friends and family that this episode ever happened.
Any benefits you've gained from your experience in the closet?
Aside from the avoidance of discrimination and harassment, I feel I've developed a really good sense of "straight-dar". There's "gaydar" and while you can detect a lot of gay folks with it, I've found that gaydar's really about sensing a particular personality type so you'll get a lot of false positives. I think it's much easier for to tell when someone is overwhelmingly straight on the spectrum and then work from there. I can't really say this is some super-useful ability to have, but hey, it's something.

# ¿ Jun 1, 2015 18:21

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Ask me about being in the closet