Coming out

[salas]

My coming out is still in process. I mean, most of my friends knows, my siblings knows and most people i meet now know. But it wasnt always that way.

I was 13 when my secret came out accidently. One of my classmates ( i was in a private school) was sooping in my bag during the break and he found my diary (guys, do not ever, ever ever keep a diary) and he found out that i was gay, that i was mastubating over the hunkiest guy in the class. He scream loudly, he yelled it in the court, to everyone outside that i was gay. After that, it was hell for me, you know, the traditional beat ups, the eyes of shame and all. Only the girls and my in my class(most of them) and our teacher (a woman) were on my side. After a year, it was the same, i became the most popular guy in the entire school (in a bad way, a very bad way). But the teachers were happy that i was gay, i was defrent to them, so the did everythings to protect me from the other boys if needed. But i had to do something to stop tha charade, so i made everyone acknowledge me as a person with the help of the girls. It was not easy, it took me two years to make the whole school accept me… and they did. Of course, there were some stuburns but the were easy to handle. After two years, i had friends and i was more or less respected. Unfortunatly, that same year, i had to change high school for private reasons.

So, i moved to a public school. I was already confortable with my sexuality, i was happy to be gay and i was happy to be accepted in my last school. So i didnt want to start all over again, and i didnt want to put up with secrecy and peoples shit for my final 3years in high school. The only thing left for me to do was to know my new school first, know people better, see if they were more open-minded. It took me a year... Then when i had a new group of friends, and i was confortable with them, i told most of them that i was gay. They took it better then i thought. I didnt tell my best friend (he is like a brother to me) because i knew he hated gays. The other didnt tell him either because they knew it would be a desaster. Finally, the senior year, i told him because it was killing me. As expected, he flipped out, he wanted to kill me. I was the best friend he ever had, i was his brother, and for him, i had betrayed him. We spends days without talking to each other. Then one day, he came to me after school and he started to say horrible things to me, that he wanted me to change back. I cried a bit. His girlfriend (she was a crew member too, and she was th first one to know i was gay) talked to him, and he gave in after a few days. We became friends again, we were brother again but i still feel like he still did totaly forgave me for being gay.

My parents dont know i'm gay; yet i feel like my mom has a idea but they dont know. My dad definitly doesnt know cuz if he did, he would kill me ( he is 100 percent homophobic).

Know that i'm in the united states, i'm more free to tell anyone i want. But i dont shout it on the streets though... i dont want to make people unconfortable and i dont like drama, so i only tell when people ask me or when i want to.
My siblings know and they are very cool about it, but we dont talk much about it, i just dont want them to know what i do in my room.

[dontlie]

I'm not sure if I can say that I realized that I was gay when I was 13, cause ever since I was I child I somehow lliked men, I always paid attention to guys (especially naked or shirtless) on TV and wished I could touch those guys.

When I was 14 I had a crush on a classmate, but decided not to tell him. Then the next year I fell for another straight classmate, he was a great guy and a good friend, so after telling him that I was in love with someone and talking with him for a couple of months about love (and trying to find out who he fell for) I came out to him. It was … scary, my heart was beating really fast and I was afraid that he was homophobic and would out me to the whole school, but he didn't have a problem with it at all and nothing changed. Later came out to 2 other classmated. After graduation I came out to my cousin, a female classmate and a classmate who had been dating my sis, then my sis. Then one day I found out through my sis that the cousin I trusted most outed me to her mom, who told my mom and her husband, who then told my dad. I planned to come out before leaving home for uni, but then ended up being outed. The good thing is they don't have a problem with that, even though it caused a little "fight" between my parents (they'd divorced many years ago and haven't been talking to each other since then; my dad thought that my mom made up the story about me being gay). During my underclassmen's graduation party, with the help of alcohol, I managed to come out to them and my teachers. After that I came out to a couple of other classmates and others found out about me being gay through those underclassmen.

I feel really lucky to have a family, friends and teachers who are not homophobic and don't have any problems with me being gay, even thought I had a small serious talk with my dad when I was 16 during which he said that he didn't want me to start any relationship cause I might be "confused" and even suggested that I should go to a shrink to make sure that I'm not confused.

[thomas261989]

I have just moved to Australia for 6 months and I planned to come out to my friends here because they are more openminded but due to low budget, I have to share my room with another, who is straight, and I cannot come out yet. If he knows I'm gay, he would moveout and I'll be dead 'coz I can't afford the rent. Poor me.
And watching porn is a great problem since we go to the same school and I cannot lock him out to watch porn.

[Hobbestails]

I came out by writing a letter. Though I'm bi. Still applies.

[garjr71]

I really shouldn't be posting here
but I just can't resist
why you want to come out of closet?
I mean, why there is closet in the first place??
My sexual preferences comes under my own personal life/space
Why would I want to involve others into it?

Why come out in the open? Doesn't matter publicly or to parents/siblings/best friends

I mean, who cares if I work 24x7 around the year and don't want to get married?

~rR

[roto13]

@rR:

I really shouldn't be posting here
but I just can't resist
why you want to come out of closet?

Because hiding every romantic relationship you ever have is a giant pain in the ass. And the more homosexuality is known, the less taboo it is.

[thomas261989]

Well, my mom has heart conditions and she kind of homophobic (has never said anything about gays and lesbians but she always talks about homosexuality like "something" unnatural and warn me that she does not like it). I love her dearly and it may kill her it I tell her. Maybe I just come out to my friends, who really don't mind and don't know my mom at all.

[d4rud3]

@Yoruichi:

… o.O Umm (legally I shouldn't have been able to get porn until I was 18). But you'd be amazed at how much porn a 12 year old can find on the internet. (Having your own computer in your room and a lock on your door does wonders). Yeah, I've been watching gay porn since I was 12. And yes I live in California, so I imagine it is much different than what you're used to.

Ok just to be clear I can't technically be prosecuted for that since it happened so long ago right? Don't wanna be admitting to any crimes here.  

Hahahaha I was in the same predicament. My mother found about 300+ pages/videos of porn by the time I was 15 and freaked out, but then got over it eventually.

[thomas261989]

I came out to this guy because he seemed so cool about that, he'd never dated a girl and acted vary kindly to me. I could come over his place at anytime or give him a ring and there he'd be. And most of all, because I was madly in love with him.
This turned out in a very ugly way. Although he'd never dated any girl, he had no feelings toward me, he freaked out whenever somebody passed by when we talked, kind of paranoid, and furthermore, he turned out to be a pain in my ass, making fun of me whenever we met at work (yups, I met him at my workplace). I never opened that much to anyone, I told him everything and now I'm so scared that someday, somehow, he'll tell everyone and … well, I don't know what'll come after that.
Damn, this really really destroy my hope of a welcomed coming-out and now I feel lost. I don't know if everyone I love would be like him when I come out to them. :cry2:

[AlexKS]

@thomas261989:

I came out to this guy because he seemed so cool about that, he'd never dated a girl and acted vary kindly to me. I could come over his place at anytime or give him a ring and there he'd be. And most of all, because I was madly in love with him.
This turned out in a very ugly way. Although he'd never dated any girl, he had no feelings toward me, he freaked out whenever somebody passed by when we talked, kind of paranoid, and furthermore, he turned out to be a pain in my ass, making fun of me whenever we met at work (yups, I met him at my workplace). I never opened that much to anyone, I told him everything and now I'm so scared that someday, somehow, he'll tell everyone and … well, I don't know what'll come after that.
Damn, this really really destroy my hope of a welcomed coming-out and now I feel lost. I don't know if everyone I love would be like him when I come out to them. :cry2:

Don't worry about ppl knowing you're gay, it really isn't so scary as it seems… But still you should first check the person's views on gays and see if he is tolerant, or not very aggressive and will not turn his back on you if he'd know that you're gay... I've met some people in my life who don't really like gays, I never heard them speaking out positively about us, but they've accepted me, I mean the fact that I'm gay without trying to turn my life into hell...

I guess I first understood that I like guys when I was about 14... Then when I was 15 I kinda accepted it as a fact and understood that I will probably not change, but decided to keep it a secret, just to wait and see what will happen... But a couple of weeks before turning 16 - I realized that I actually fell in love, with a guy from my school... At first I fell great, I fell like flying, understanding myself better, but after a week I felt lonely, I was afraid that I could never be together with him and my love will just die, because I never told anyone about being gay, and besides that there were very few signs of hope that he's gay too for me... So, I don't know how it happened, but I was just having a nice evening with two of my friends (girls) at the home of one of them, and we started talking about stuff and then I came out, and told them about this guy whom I loved (who they knew, because we were all in one school) and they took it pretty easy... One told me: "I knew it!" And the other was shocked, but not in a bad way and accepted me pretty quickly... After that evening we became even better friends 

Than I came out to 3 of my friends, who are guys, and they all accepted me without any problem, they always listen to me and support me... And than, my dad discovered that I'm gay... This really sounds like a cliche - he found my gay porn on the PC... And not even the porn itself, because I hid it very well and he's not such an experienced user, but he accidentally got into the "Recent" folder while trying to attach some pictures of his to an email, and in this folder somehow the icons of the deleted 10 sec. porn movies were saved... So he was surprised with it, called the unsuspecting me into the room and asked me about how much do I like these movies... I started shaking like I don't know what and couldn't say a word for about 10 minutes, and then asked him if he will throw me out of the house now... And it all happened when I was 17 and fully dependent on my parents... But he was a little bit offended by that I could even think that he would do such a thing, that I will always be his son and he will love me... Than we had a serious talk, he tried to understand why did I turn out to be gay, suggested shrinks or going to a prostitute maybe, but he didn't push me or something, told me that my personal live is my own, and that he will not intervene in it... And we decided not to tell mom about it... It all was such a relief for me, because I planned to become independent, move out of the house and only then tell my parents, and my relations with my dad never been good, and he never appeared as a tolerant person to me, so I never expected him to accept me so easily...
Now I'm 19, all of my friends know that I'm gay, I also came out before my mom recently, because I was really sick and tired of hiding it from those who are the closest people to me, especially that now I know that I have nothing to be afraid of... She took it harder than my dad, but also said that she will always love me, though she can't understand how is it that I like guys... We don't talk much about it, but still I'm sure that my parents will always support me and that they really love me...
Oh, and I'm the only child in the family...

Recently I also came out to a new friend, who I fell in love too, but he's straight and I kinda always felt it, but still had the hope, because he doesn't act as a 100% straight, he's very gentle and smiling all the time... Very confusing 
And he accepted me as well, he was a bit surprised, but not shocked and he doesn't have a problem with me being gay, though I never told him that I loved him... Just that I like him... And I asked him if he's straight for sure, and of course the answer was "yes" and this helped me to crush all the hopes I had regarding him and me being together, and I also killed the love I had towards him, that started to become a bit painful, because I really can't see any point in loving someone that for sure will never return you the love, and there is no sense in suffering because of that, in my opinion...

But still, I'm not leading a totally open life, I don't talk about myself at my work place (not that anyone ever asked me about my personal life), though I know that most of the ppl will not have any problem with it, there are several openly gay guys working in there and they are treated perfectly fine by everyone, and not everyone I know and communicate with know that I'm gay... But I'm currently working on it and maybe soon will not hide it from almost anyone...

Oh, such a long post... Well, it always happens when I write about myself 

Conclusion: From my experience, telling people the truth about your feelings and sexual preferences (that never mind what others say - are a very important part in life, which affects your life style a lot) helps you to understand yourself better, see who are your real friends and who don't really care about you, or will turn their back on you when you'll need their help, and just to feel like you're not living in a lie, but that you're being honest with yourself and the world around you.
Though, you must always think about the consequences of coming out and know when you shouldn't do it, because there are too many stupid ppl in this world, who can hurt you if you'll tell them that you're gay... But if you know that the worst thing that will happen is that someone will just stop communicating with you - I don't think that you should hide it, especially when it becomes uncomfortable to you, when you can't say what you want or act as you want to...
But still, it's just my opinion... Every situation has it's own unique solution 

[thomas261989]

Well, I wish I could have parents like yours. Mines are homophobic, I hate 2 use dat word but it's true, and although I love them dearly and so do they to me, coming out to them is not an option.
I just made some new friends but his FB stated dat he hates some1 for just being gay and he's kinda conservative and a strict Christian.
He's nice but I don't wanna spoil a friendship so soon.

[jdallert]

I came out to my parents last night. They seemed to be very supportive, saying that as long as I'm happy, it's okay with them. My mom cried a little, but I don't think there was any way around that. I got kind of worried, though, because not long after I told her, she mentioned how disappointed she was when I told her I was atheist, and how she felt it was all her fault. I'm afraid she feels the same way about me being gay, and that she's going to try to change my mind about it the way she tried (badly) at trying to make me Christian.

[jdallert]

This is a followup. It doesn't seem to really bother my family. Actually, things feel pretty normal now. I came out to my sister on Sunday, but I really don't think she was surprised, not that she's ever seen me kissing other guys or anything. My family hasn't really talked to me about me being gay, except for a few times. Mom wouldn't refer to me as "being gay", she'd instead say "Remember what you told me the other night?" Duuuuuuuuh! She said that she doesn't really know many gay people, and she hopes that she can learn about it from me. She also asked if I know about protection, and we can ask the doctor if I have questions. This is like the most ackward thing to talk about with my mom, but it's very comforting to know that she's supportive.

I'm trying to figure out how I should come out to my friends. They were all really supportive when my friend in high school said she was bi. I wish I came out a long time ago. It would probably have been a lot more supportive to my friend if I had come out too. I wonder what would happen if I just set my Facebook "interested in" to men. It's been set on blank forever.

I live just south of Seattle and I happened to read the Wikipedia article the other night, and it says that Seattle has the second most GLBT percentage in the U.S.A. second to San Francisco. It's like 10%. That seems unbelievablly high. It's good to know I'm in good company. I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to find a boyfriend, but I just need to look.

[saryn]

@loveless992:

I'm not openly gay, because of my family. Although my sister is  a lesbian, an open one at that; I still haven't told her. I guess she knows, but won't say nor do anything until I'm ready to come out. It's weird how after 7 years of not having a girl friend people still think I'm straight. As a matter a fact today my friend mentioned something about 2 guys kissing publicly in college and how he thought it was wrong, I just laughed hysterically and he asked me why I was laughing. I replied: "oh nothing" and told him how it was also wrong to exhibit yourself in public no matter your sexual preference and he agreed. The biggest reason to still "be in the closet" is because of my grandmother, at her age if she knew Id probably kill her of a heart attack. As they say in Spanish: "Tu eres mi ojos - mi todo" (You are my eyes - You are my everything) as she refers to me.

I'm not out to anyone in my family except immediate family, although some know.
But my granddad still asks if I'm "meeting lots of hot girls" and winks. That just makes me laugh. A lot.

[notquiteme]

Not to revive an OOOOLD thread, but here's my take:

I've known I was gay, and interested in BIG guys since about… 12years old.  It was then that the wrestling and World's Strongest Man started to have a different kind of appeal to me.  Subsequently, I discovered sumo wrestling on an obscure channel on cable.

I couldn't really come out, and it was very interesting in an all boy's school, where half of the guys in my immediate vicinity were chubby/big guys.  It was a bit hard to concentrate when i had a crush on a few of them, but i guess i muddled through alright.  It was a mess for me because my mom worked at school with a pretty high position so i couldn't even leave the campus without some security guard radioing to the administration asking if i should be let out.

Sooooo while i didn't do any porn until after college (we had only one computer at home and heaven forbid anyone see me watching gay porn), i knew there must be some world out there.  I guess at the time you could consider me in the closet - with a combination lock.  Not easy in a family where three of us shared the same bedroom and the same computer.

When one of my best friends came out, I told my parents and brothers about it, and they all started cracking jokes about it.  That was the first hint that they were at least homophobic.  Then i started noticing that they always refer to the director of my dad's alma mater who was gay, in a disparaging tone.  You know the kind of tone THEY use.

It was that way until i got my own laptop a few years after college.  I turned on my computer at home and was able to hack into the internet of a neighbor.  That was my first foray into the gay world, when i created an account on biggercity.

One time, I was chatting with an old friend, and he started singing in a falsetto voice, and my dad heard it because i was unable to shut of my sound quickly enough.  Over lunch that day, he said in an angry voice "You want to be like him?!? You hang around with him and you will be like him!"

Had a few dates, (actually i was in further studies at the time) and my friends would wonder why I was disappearing at certain nights.  Hehehe

I finally came out to my best friend two years ago.  It was funny because we were both jobhunting and I had a date that afternoon.  So i was making excuses and she wasn't having any of it.  Finally i told her that i was gay, and i had a date with a chef.  So she goes "Is this some kind of joke?  It's not funny!  If you're joking i'll kill you!"  It took her twenty minutes to finally absorb what I just said, and then she says... "That's why I had difficulty in finding a girl who you'd be great with!"  I got the same reaction from a few of my college friends, who just accepted it.

My officemates were another matter.  They kept referring me to girls, and I had to keep saying no.  eventually when they cornered me (we were under training at the time) i told them that i had a perfectly good reason for not wanting to be set up, so I told them.  After that, they were happy because I was less quiet during mealtimes and more friendly.  Furthermore, the girls decided that I was a safe guy, who they can talk to about anything.

I can't come out to my family until i can move out.  so i want to buy/rent a flat somewhere that I can crash in case my whole life crumbles.  I'm scared that my dad will go ballistic, and then my dad and mom will fight, and my brothers will be upset that I "caused" my parents to fight.  They're not ready to accept that there are reasons why this sort of thing happens, and that sometimes, it's not a matter of choice.

[missionless]

That was a nice read notquiteme, really hope you can get through this nicely with your family.

My story is quite an easy one. My first signs of liking men was at the age of 10 I think, there was this summer camp I went to once and a boy there that was very fun and cute. I always wanted  to play with him and do everything with him, apparently I wasn't cool enough to join his little gang, but I always remember how I really wanted him to recognize me for some reason, and at this young age I didn't know what it was but now that I look back at it I see it as the first sign of my being gay. When I hit puberty all my friends were talking about girls, boobs and getting girlfriends, at the age of 12 hehe. I remember one friend of mine showed me a bunch of porn sites, and I dont know why he knew about this site but he showed me a gay pron site also. I remembered the URL for that site and when he had left the house I went back to the site to check it out, I was 12 and had no idea that viruses were all over these sites and the computer got infected. My mom asked what was going on when pictures of half naked men kept popping up and I made up some lie(i think it had to do with some chatsite that i used called Habbo), which she bought! Well I watched gay porn, along with straight porn. At the age of 14 it was all gay porn and I didnt want to accept that I was gay, because I didn't know of a single gay person in my family, friend group or that any of my friends knew, that's the thing that made me not come out at all, because I thought I was all alone. At 16 I was starting to stay at home all day and play computer games for as long as 12 hours! My mom was getting worried and asked if something was wrong and I just said "No"
At 17, in the summer of 2008, I had saved up courage for 6 months! to go to a youth GLBT meeting and that was the first time I saw gays at my age, it was awesome and 3 weeks after that I came out to my mom, I knew she would accept it cause she is very open minded. I told her and she hugged me for ages and said she was so happy because she knew there was something that was making me depressed. Then like 6 months later I told my dad, he also accepted it. And my granpa&grandma saw me in Gaypride 2008 and called me and asked what I was doing there, and I just told them. They were also cool with it. My friends were surprised but knew that I was still the same guy they had always known as. Being gay in Iceland is very nice, I have never been teased or looked down upon for being gay and all the workplaces I've worked at, the people there just say "Okay" and life goes on.

3 years ago I was a closed depressed teenager who had no life outside his computer and now im a Gay happy 19yo' with his whole life ahead of him! Loving life and I do what I can to make others smile :laugh:

[notquiteme]

In the Philippines, which is a predominantly Catholic country, they have the bad habit of mixing religion and sexuality.  It goes without saying that we're not exactly well tolerated here.

I'm still hopeful, but everytime my parents disparage someone who's gay, they have no idea that I'm getting hurt.  I know they don't mean to, but that's the way it is.  If they were more openminded, then I wouldn't have this problem, would I?

Here i'm just treading water until i'm able to move out.

[MrMazda]

When it comes to religion and coming out, I'm sure there are places far worse than mine for coming out… A Roman Catholic highschool ( hxxp://resurrection.wcdsb.ca/ in particular) isn't exactly the best place for coming out. All things considered, they finally saw things my way when I had my way with them with the courts. The short version is after coming out, I was continually getting jumped at my locker and on school property. After a few times of this happening, I finally stopped holding back and did some serious damage.

I sent one kid to the hospital with a concussion because he tried to jump me from behind at my locker, which resulted in him getting a face full of locker. The second kid that day didn't fare too well either. I managed to break one of their fingers, while at the same time fracturing a bone in the wrist. In my defense, I did not attack the gay bashers... When they attacked me, I merely just re-directed their swings towards the largest, most solid object I could find at the time.

The short version of how that ended was I had enough and got suspended three times for acts of violence in the school, while the bullies that were attacking me got off scott free. I had enough of this so I was daring enough to walk into the principle's office with a cell phone and tell her straight up how things were going to go down and that if she didn't like the way my rules work, she can answer to the police... The result: The Vice Principal that suspended me was hauled out of the office in cuffs, and the principal of that school magically never went back after the police investigation was complete.

The only one good thing about my coming out was that it resulted in the Safe & Secure Schools act, which on the most part (aside from a couple flat out stupid things) actually protects the students, leaving the administration accountable for the well being of all students. The difference is that now a school administration team can be held criminally responsible in the event that something happens to a student, regardless of whether or not the administration team had any knowledge of the subject. That was because in my case, one administrator claimed to have no knowledge, and the other failed to do anything about the situation before it resulted in a hospital trip.

[notquiteme]

It's sad how sometimes someone has to get hurt first (other times several someones) before people get off their asses.  I think officials/administrators have to take responsibility for the entire campus.

[MrMazda]

The sad truth is that a lot of people can't really be bothered with such things because they have a "more important" schedule to keep, or otherwise want things their way. In these cases, it's unfortunate that something has to happen before anyone will do anything about it.