When did you know and how did you come out?

Here's an interesting question (at least I hope it is).

When did you KNOW that you was gay?

I mean it's one thing to *think* that you might be gay (and a lot of people go though this stage, so I'm lead to believe at least), but when did you KNOW?

 

for me im bisexual. but when i knew i was bi is when i was going down on this girl ( which later on became my fiance then my ex fiance) and i actually enjoyed it and i had feelings of love for her and where it didn't matter if people knew that we were in love. that is when i knew i was bisexual.

 

I was in love with my gym teacher in first grade, obsessed over several women up until junior high, at which point I became head-over-heels infatuated with my basketball coach for the two years.

Throughout all this, I did not even remotely imagine that I was gay. Crushes on older women, especially in sports, became natural and even expected in me because they happened so often and from such an early age.

Then my freshman year in high school, during basketball season, I started feeling really...warm, maybe that's the right word...about my team, which was the closest group of girls I'd ever met. Just generally loving. As the season started to wind down, two feelings dropped over my head like a bucket of ice water. One, I was falling in love with this girl Kristin, a junior. I just absolutely knew I loved her...everything about her made me nervous, happy, sad, and angry at the same time. Two, we were watching another team's game one night and there was the best player in the state, a girl named Jamie. She was also the state's "famous lesbian" and as I watched her, it flashed in my head: SHE'S HOT. Both these feelings struck me on the same winter night, and I went home and sat on the steps outside my house in a daze. I just stared ahead, saying holyshit holyshit holyshit!

That night, I knew. I absolutely knew.

But of course then there was the huge, long struggle in which we all debate whether or not we're bi or gay or nothing at all, what the fuck we're going to do about it, who we could ever ever tell, why didn't we know earlier, why is this happening...on and on...it took a couple years.

 

when l had a crush on a high school teacher

 

I "knew" when I was 16.. thats when I put together my "feelings" with the word gay.. and it was an epiphany. like my mind opening.. "oh ... ok, my physical feelings toward my male friends means I'm gay". I pretty well knew at 14, but it was a "I'm not positive" feeling, not the all knowing feeling at 16.

 

Like rocknroll_girl's experience I had quite a lead up. I have two really great friends that I have known since I was a teen. I love both of them deeply but they both are straight so it is unrequited. As a teen I was somewhat disturbed by this but there is always a warm spot in my heart for them. Also confusing for me was just how much I was infatuated with Peter O'Toole after I saw Lawarence of Arabia when I was 7 or Elvis or Jim Morrison or David Bowie as I got older.
When I was 24 I was getting better in touch with myself but just like so many others I went from denying it & overcompensating & beating myself up for getting horny when I saw a cute guy. It wasn't until a year later that I started accepting it but it really took those next years to completely embrace being bi. I fell full blown, weak in the knees, butterflies in the tummy, in love with a wonderful man. That was when I knew for sure.

 

i remember the first time it actually hit me i was at this idiotic little social gathering called the friday night skate. it's a stupid thing that happens at the skating rink every friday where they turn off the lights and play music and grade 6-8ers skate around aimlessly. lots of drama goes down there. so anyway, my friend at the time was trying to set me up with one of her male friends. we were in grade 8 and everyone i knew was into the whole get-as-many-boyfriends-as-you-can phase. so she dragged me around introducing me to everything with a penis she could find. i finally just said 'hilary, look, this is really nice of you but in all honesty i think i'm gay.' we stopped being friends shortly after that. in all honesty it shocked the shit out me that that came from my mouth, but i knew i didn't say it just to get her to stop pushing guys on me. and that scared the shit out of me. so i went home and started rethinking all of my silly little fancyings, and as the night wore on it became more and more apparent. there's a pretty long and difficult story following that, but if i were to pinpoint a moment it happened, that would be it.

 

I knew for a very, very long time before I would admit it. In fact, EVERYONE knew a very long time before I would admit it. I wasn't comfortable saying that I was gay until I was 20/21 years old. I don't know why. My family is very accepting, I had plenty of gay friends. There is a process you have to go through, though, or at least I did. You grow up picturing yourself having a sitcom family like you see on TV. You almost have to morn the loss of your future the way you had imagined it.

Now, it is no big deal at all to me. Before you come out of the closet, you almost obsess about being gay. It consumes you, and takes so much energy and time away from you, trying to deal with it internally. Now it isn't an issue. It is such a small thing. I wouldn't redo highschool for anything!

Anyone understand this or have a similiar experience?

 

Yep. I had a very similar situation (the open-minded parents and friends but long internal process anyway) to yours. I started the process a bit earlier, though, I expect, given that I'm all the way out at 17.

When you're out it's SO MUCH BETTER. There is really no comparison here. Even the way you deal with the most heartbreaking relationship situations - it's a world of difference.

 

in grade 7 i juse kind of knew i liked girls...but i was terrified of being gay...not because i was homophobic...i just figured that since everyone in my town was pretty homophobic...being gay would essentially ruin my life...so bi was ok to tell my friends...and i dated a couple more guys after that...and hooked up with a couple more...it wasn't my bag...i really couldn't deny it for much longer...in the summer after grade 9 and after my big break up with my first girlfriend i gave up...there was no way out of it...my friends know now...

so i guess i always knew...i just didn't want it to be true...rhymes...wow.

 

I had fooled around with another guy my junior year of high school, but managed to not deal with what it meant until later. It wasn't until towards the end of my senior year when I got a crush on another guy, Chris, that it finally hit. When you see a guy who is cute, I had always told myself that I just admire him for the way he looks- 'everybody does, right?' But when I had my first crush on a guy, that is when it finally meant something.

But of course then there was the huge, long struggle in which we all debate whether or not we're bi or gay or nothing at all, what the fuck we're going to do about it, who we could ever ever tell, why didn't we know earlier, why is this happening...on and on...it took a little while, during which time I came to this forum. I believe my first post was asking for advice on an interesting way to come out to a friend. - That was soo long ago.

"You almost have to morn the loss of your future the way you had imagined it." I've never heard that said any better.

[smiles at patch]

 

that is a great way of putting it johnny...it definately changes everything...although right now being gay is a big obstacle in my life...i really wouldn't want it any other way...

and i just want you all to know that when i wrote the last "it" in this post...i wrote tit like 3 times before i got it right...i get distracted ya know!

 

I had my first relationship in the 8th grade and it was with a girl. That relationship ended when my mom caught us when we were 14. After that, I was frightened to "straighthood" and had boyfriends. For 10 years I met up on and off with my ex-girlfriend and talked. I was very mean with her and ignored her soon after we were separated from each other. As I got older and was more open-minded I began to open up doors I had closed long ago. She and her girlfriend (at the time) invited me to go out to a local gay club and on one of those occasions found myself admiring one couple and was just aroused by them. I was also hiding feelings for my ex-girlfriend. My ex-girlfriend and her girlfriend were having problems (no fault of mine) and broke up. We began dating and then moved in with each other soon after. I moved out of the house and told my immediate family. They closed the door on me....I am dead to my mother and although it hurts I am happy...being myself.

 

wow, tulip79, thats such a sad story and even more sadly is one which is repeated all over the world.



For me... I was 14. I was sitting in maths class and looked across my class and saw Amelia and was like "wow... she's hot." It was fucking weird. That was the beginning of 2 years of the most painful phase of my life... working this shit out with myself, my friends, my family and between amelia and i - nothing real ever happened... but who knows what will happen in the future... we're still sometimes in touch.



do you know whats weird? I'm now 19 and this shit with Amelia started over 5 years ago and ended about 3 years ago... and still, whenever I mention her name or write it, I have to pause afterwards and take stock... it still makes me stop still with the power of it... *sigh*



-Tamsyn

 

It's impossible to know you are truly gay until you are in your mid- late twenties.

 

Bug-man:

this has been brought up so many times...some people understand certain parts of themselves at different ages...and although it is typical of a teenager to think they know everything...i feel as though i have experienced enough in my life to know that i am gay...there is no set age for knowing...and what if i'm wrong about myself...so what...then i date a guy...there shouldn't really be a gender on love anyways...i have always told myself that even though i connect with women on a sexual and romantic level...there might be that one guy that i can connect with...in which case i drop the label...it's just a label anyways...
you never experience enough of life to be sure about anything within yourself...everyone is really different when it comes to epiphany and self-revelations...a twenty year old can know what he or she wants to do for the rest of their life...while a 60 year old about to hit retierment can still be searching for the one career that makes them happy.
sexuality vs. career...i don't know if that is a great comparison...so take what you will bugman...but i'm gay.

on the other hand i really don't believe that love exists...but that is really a whole other story.

 

I am bisexual, and came out to my closest friends a couple of months ago, and they were all super cool with it. Then I let everyone know that I was bi, and everyone I know in shcool is fine with it, luckily.

How about you guys? how did it turn out when you came out?

 

Depesnds -- I had a boyfriend when I was in High school, but we were discrete. I came out ot most of my friends and family when I was 19 and 20. It's a lifelong process, don't forget. I'm not outwardly out to most of my frat, who just elected me their President. I'll let them figure it out and go "dang!"

 

The fact that you were able to come out at age 15 is nothing less than a miracle; a testament to how the times have changed since I was your age. I came out twice, first as a gay man (in 1978), than as bisexual (in 1993). But I didn't come out the first time until I was well into my 20s and safely out of college (let alone high school). I had my second coming-out on my 40th birthday.

Thirty years ago, it was unthinkable for a teenager to come out -- especially a male teenager. Anyone who dared to do so back then would have been relentlessly harassed and physically abused. Indeed, some were driven to suicide because they could no longer take the nonstop abuse.

You are part of an entire generation that either knows someone who is gay or bisexual, has never known a time during the month of June when there wasn't a Pride Day celebration in your area, or both.

Congratulations!

-- Skeeter

 

i came out twice to 2 teachers and my best friend when i was in 7th grade, at first i thought i was a lesbian, but then i realized i was bisexual. in high school i came out to 1 guy friend. i tried comming out to another guy friend, but every time i tried to talk to him about it, he would say that gays, lesbians, and bisexuals, were sick. i came out to my mother in 7th grade too, but she doesen't want to hear anything about the girls im interested in. i've only met two bisexual girls and i only know one guy who's gay.