When did you know and how did you come out?

well...thats interesting subject for me.
sophomore year of high school, after my three year relationship with the love of my life ended. i kissed my first girl. i had had crushes on a couple of my best girlfriends...but kissing that one girl did it for me. her and i would kiss in the halls at school. we were open about it. i never had to say im 'bi' to anybody, except the next guy i got involved with, because he was absolutely oblivious to everything around him.
as with my parents. i never told either of them. i was wrongly outed. i never ever thought it was my parents business to be in my sexual life. still DONT for that matter. my fathers room is right above mine, hes a smart man, im sure he knew before my mother found out. but i never came out and said 'yo, i like girls'. then freshman year here at stephens i met this AMAZING girl, and broke up with a boy that was getting ready to propose to me because i was happier with this girl than i had been with this boy for the past year. i feel, right now, that i will be happier in life with women.
but i dont limit myself. im single now. and i have my crushes, and one is a boy.
but yes...i digress. i was wrongly outed to my parents and my brother loved it, my best friends understood and loved me more for it, and it brought some wonderful people into my life that i dont think i would have met before i came out.

 

I first came out way back in 5th form, when i was 15 or 16.. I told my friends, and they eventually spread the word around (aren't friends great haha) but i didnt mind.

Most people who find out about my sexuality dont actually care - to them its just another thing they know about me, and it doesnt change anything. It's not a major issue.

I havent told my family though, mainly because they're not a significant part of my life and i don't tell them much at all.

One thing that frustrates me though is that not everyone believes i'm gay when i tell them. Some of the guys that i know (most my friends are guys) are still stuck on the stereotype that i dont seem to fulfill.

 

the first person i came out to was my straight friend who i was in love with. she was really cool and it turned out that she was bi and we ended up foolinf around .....so i guess it turned out okay. the next day she made me tell my mother and she was totally cool with it and told me she already knew.

 

Those who truly know their sexual preferences in their teens are lucky.

I remember having many sexual fantasies about cute guys while in my teens, but I forced myself to ignore them. I didn't want to even face the possiblity of liking boys or men. I had several straight sex experiences in my late teens and early twenties. None of these were relationships, they were simply sex. It was a case of me trying to convince myself I was "normal". All I know is the sex didn't feel right.

Apart from my mixed up sexual urges I am a very ordinary straight acting guy. I have a group of friends who are all very straight. My family and work colleagues are quite archaic, or at the least conservative, in their thoughts of homosexuality - this has always been enough reason for me too never out myself.

I know many of these people would be horrified if I were to come out. I'm sure they wouldn't believe me and I'm sure once they realised it was fact then they would feel like they had never really known me all these years. The majority of students at the High School I work at are openly anti-gay. I have a very good rapport with the kids and I think they would be stunned if they ever knew my true feelings.

So in summary: I'M NOT OUT, AND AT MY AGE AND POSITION IN LIFE, I DON'T THINK I WILL EVER BE OUT.

Good luck to all those who feel strongly enough to bravely announce their sexuality.

 

Twentyoneforever...Im sorry

I really think you should come out

 

Like Skeeter & a couple of others said. It's great that things are now open enough that people in their teens or earlier can be open about their sexuality. I get uptight often at how much we need to change the world to make it a better place for GLBT folks but this kind of thing makes me realize that really not that long ago I would have been arrested just under general purposes & if the pigs would have decided to they could bust people just on sodomy laws gay or straight alike. Thanks Gods that is another pice of history that I hope to goodness never returns.

Now back to the actual question...

I first came out to myself when I was in my late twenties, a little hard to really pinpoint, it was something that built for a long[/] time. I had crushes on guys that I couldn't admit to myself often growing up but suppressed them. As for my genderqueer thing. HA! I wasn't able to do anything about that in my little hole in the wall town that I grew up in. Hell, folks thought I was gay (or the term they liked to yell) FAG! even though I did absolutely nothing other than not wear the uniform flannel shirts & dirty blue jeans. Oh, ya, wash my hair once in a while. This was at the time that I was busy acting (or at least trying) macho. That whole thing kept me in my own little closet, as I said, into my late twenties.

Just as my second marriage broke up I was finally starting to allow myself to accept that I liked guys too & started wearing "girl cloths" around the house. Wife # 2 oddly enough inadvertently helped me realize that I liked guys. She started trying to annoy me by telling me I was a fag & how I should go screw guys. Stuff like that (yes, she is a piece of work) she didn't really mean it she just likes picking fights. That got me to thinking that in fact she was right but I wasn't ready to let go with it. It wasn't until about 3 years after I escaped that nightmare & was living with my present wonderful wife that I actually let myself "experiment" by going to gay bars. I have been hooked ever since. Yep, got the queers big time. I was 29 then. About a year after that my son was abandoned by the psychobitch that was wife # 2. This after an extended custody battle in which she won mostly because she was female. I am pretty sure what she wanted was the support money. Anyhow, at that time I couldn't chance giving her any excuse to try to take him from me so I went back into the closet. Not as far it was more like on the down low. I still got out & had some good times but I couldn't fully express things like I do now. That was about the time that AIDS hit. 5 people that I was very close to, three that I was very very close to died. I kind of got scared straight & went a little farther in the closet. That was until I guess it's 3 years ago now. I decided to go to an Ending the Day of Silence rally, I put duck tape on my mouth & that caused me to get my picture in the local paper. The next day a bi coworker accidentally outed me in the hallway outside the main office of our department. With the genie out of the bottle I let myself all the way out of the closet. To the point that I am now a 49 year old with adolescent breasts. Have had a short relationship with a wonderful man who I had dated back in the 80's & everyone near me knows I am bi.

As for those people who have feelings that they really feel more like they want/need relationships with the opposite gender but are still attracted to their own. That happen all the time. For a married bi that is pretty much how it works. For me I am attracted to males differently than I am females. I want what each has to give sexually for what they can. I do have some friends of both genders that even though they maybe don't realize it I am attracted to them as if they are the opposite gender than they are. It's complicated but ties in with concept that is more to gender than our physical bodies & gender is more of a continuum than a binary thing. Also the deal where the Yin/Yang is different balance in different people.

 

Hey! This one's prob. been thrown out there before but I was just wondering how you all have come out (or plan to)? Where and when was the right time? How long did you know (maybe your whole life... I know some people have known for less)? How did the other person react?

 

I am completely open with my bisexuality; so open, that I leave it up to other people to ask. If they don't, they either figure it out, or just think I'm weird; I don't mind either way. When I DO tell people though, it's because they created the situation; everyone that I've told it to has been acceptive and tolerant, but some are a bit ignorant still.

I've known I was bi for a very long time; I had the idea that you fell in love with somebody's mind and spirit, not their body, at a very young age. I was 14 when I finally accepted it. Now, I treat this differently than comming out about my gender dysphoria... it requires a lot more trust. I've only told a little over half a dozen people, but I'm pretty sure they have told others. I was met mostly with acceptance there too; I don't know about tolerance.

This is just me and where I live though; I dunno what the people who live around you are like.

 

I can't remember a time when I didn't know.

I came out to different people at different times in my life. I've had some "coming-out" experiences that went very well, and others that were disastrous. It seems best to wait until there is some sort of friendship or other good relationship, some sort of trust.

Don't come out when you're angry at someone or when you think that information will hurt another person. Come out as a gift, an expression of trust. Never come out when you think of being gay as a deep, dark, dirty secret.

You may want to come out to someone because you think he or she is gay, maybe even because you are attracted to that person. That person may indeed be gay, but he or she won't necessarily want to tell you.

Don't tell people not to tell anyone else. That makes it sound like being gay is bad, and you really don't want that. My experience is that the younger the person is whom you come out, the more likely that person is to tell someone else. If you want everybody in your school or town to know you are gay, find the biggest gossip around and tell that person and make him or her promise to keep it a secret.

Come out at a time when there isn't any other big drama going on with you and the other person. Christmas dinner is usually a bad time. Visiting someone in a hospital is another bad time. Come out in a place and at a time when you can be at least a little bit relaxed.

 

I came out in March. I had been depressed and my emotions were all messed up because I was crazy about this girl who I suspected was bi, yet I was in the closet and I had no openly gay, les, or bi friends to seek out for advice. My emotions were so screwed over, I knew I needed to do somthing, so I came out.
My mom had noticed I was acting strange. I was depressive, and had little intrest in anything other than sleeping. I didn't eat much. Luckily she didn't know that I was into cutting.

Well anyways, she was worried and concerned. I knew that if I told her she'd be cool with it, so one night, my bro and her were both in my room, and my mom was talking to me, and asking what was wrong. So I told her. She was a bit shocked for a few moments, then she saidI was too young to be figuring out my sexuality, so I had to explain my whole 'loving somones spirit, not thier body' theory, then she was cool with it. uring the whole process my brother didn't even bat an eyelid, for a minute I thought that he didn't even hear me. Later I told my friends and my crush, they were all cool with it, my crush even liked me, but due to the fact that her parents are homophobes and are always prying into her life we can't really date.

Now I'll tell people I'm bi if they ask, or they usally just figure it out on thier own if the topic of boyfriends, girlfriends, crushes and such comes up in conversation.

As far as knowing I was bi... when I was 11 or so I had this wierd feeling around certain girls, but I didn't recognize these emotions as actual crushes until I was 12 or 13. I fully came to terms with my bisexuality when I was about 13 and a half, yet stayed closeted until I was almost 15.

 

i told my best friend i was bi when i was 15, who told her friend, who told the whole of my all girl boarding school. which was fun. lol, i was in a room on a floor with some younger girls, and the teachers moved me to a room way away from everyone, incase i corrupted them or something, that hurt. one guy teacher was really cool tho, told me he thought i was brave to be so true to myself.

 

Hi there, finally I write something in this beautiful forum!

@ School
At school, when I was 16 yo, a mate found us (my girlF and me) while I was kiss her on the neck, and she has tell it to all our class mates. For few months we were a bit excluded from the group, but nevermind, no one was talkin' about homosexuality; we were, for them, only strange girls (Hippies both, too!)

With friends
'Til one year ago I haven't talk very much about my homosexuality, but then I've meet a little group of gays & lesbians in my town, so it was no more a problem, he he.
Was a little problem from 12 to 18 y.o., 'cause all of my friends were hetero (or I was think so...who knows )

With parents
My dad doesn't know, we don't talk so much, I seen him one time a week, so doesn't matter who I like, even if he talks about gay men with no nice words. He's silly, not cruel, anyway. I think that it couldn't be a tragedy. One day, if I'll be with a girl who I love, he will know it. Now is useless.

My mom knows everything about my homosexuality, I haven't say the phrase "Mom, I'm lesbian" but it was natural: she knows that I've suffer two years for a girl, she knows that I've build a GLBT website, she knows that I was @ Gay Pride last 4 june, we watch together lezmovie, she reads my lesbians magazines (she loves Diva Mag) and so on

PS: sorry for my bad, bad English.

 

your situation seems similar to the one with my father. And your english is beautiful... I wish I could speak Italian that well!

 

First of all a few years ago i mention 'not being straight' online.
Then never mentioned it really again.

On saturday night i came out to 2 of my friends, as the wkend before i got VERY drunk in a pub near by with my flat mates lesbian friend(who is confused right now, thinks shes bi maybe).. i remember walkin home from the pub but not really anything after that! she stayed at mine.

next day i was like, omg what happened lastnight, she wasnt there, and i only had slight flasgbacks. So my flatmate came through and i said i thought something happened the night before he said nah if it did it would have just been a kiss, anyway later that day his friend came over to pick up the phone she left in my room, he were just talkin like normal, my flat mate was like ah nothing must have happened otherwise she would have said something.. hm i wasnt so sure. Anyway my flatmate got a text from her and he said that he thinks something DID happen.

So the next day when he was in the shower i checked his phone and read the message, it said 'didnt you know, she aint straight, defo not.. i wasnt allowed to sleep, very keen '

so my flatmate knew this and said nothing, but a few nights ago i said to him that i was bi, buts its complicated. Lastnight i told another friend too.
my flatmate was like do you like her, etc i think u guys would make a good couple.. but i dunno shes older.. im 21 and shes 38. but she doesnt act or look it.

With my friends.They sorta knew it was personality with me. So I never really spoke about guys or girls. One of my friends guessed the other night too, cos i was like, omg i got really drunk last week and ened up in bed with someone, my other pal like 'who was he' and my other friend was like was it a girl?

but yeh, feel better that some people know.

 

Oh, really? Thanks!
I'm sorry if your situation with your father is like (more or less) mine...but what can we do? Nevermind, we're all together, right?

 

For me it was when I was watching porno with my guy friends and I realized that it was the penises in the porno that was turning me on and not the girls.

 

I have always known. I've been attracted to males since elementary school..

 

Same as above, I think it was more that I realised most people weren't gay. Just think, if I hadn't been bombarded with sexual health pamphlets explaining how lots of boys have homosexual urges in their teenage years and how it's probably just a phase that you'll grow out of I could've been emotionally well-adjusted from a much younger age.

 

In addition to the experience described above, I met this guy named Ryan a year or so ago and thuroughly enjoyed doing him up the ass. That sort of finalized matters.

 

when i touched a penis..lol jk

peace
chickens