No Different From Heterosexuals but You Wouldnt Know That Being Homosexual Yourself?
Dearest Therapist: I Will Probably Take the Secret of My Sexuality to the Grave
I've gone through life pretending, and my heart aches.
Editor's Note: Every Monday, Lori Gottlieb answers questions from readers about their problems, big and small. Take a question? Email her at dear.therapist@theatlantic.com.
Dear Therapist,
I'k a 65-yr-quondam man. I am gay but have never admitted this to anyone. I have gone through life pretending. My friends probably suspect I am gay, but we have never discussed it. I ever joke well-nigh never meeting the right girl, and how I love traveling so I could never settle down.
I have secretly fallen in love with male friends over the years, but never told them, equally they are heterosexual and normally in a relationship. Somewhen I get over these crushes, and we remain expert friends without my ever saying anything.
Now I am again infatuated, this fourth dimension with my male person boss. I love his intelligence, wit, and involvement in life. He is separated from his female partner. I think well-nigh him constantly, fifty-fifty when I try to go along myself busy with hobbies and friends.
I don't want to talk over my feelings with him, because I don't desire to put him in a difficult position or jeopardize our friendship. If I say aught, this feeling will eventually subside and he will never know and nosotros will remain friends. I volition probably take the secret of my sexuality to the grave and everyone will just think I was a squeamish guy. Just my heart aches. I've pretended for so long.
And so once more, what do good would information technology be to my dominate, my elderly mother, or my friends to know the truth?
Anonymous
Love Bearding,
I can but imagine the depth of your pain after more than than six decades of pretending to be someone you're not. Subsequently all, it'due south a bones human need to be who we really are—and for others to know the states every bit nosotros really are—and the anguish you're experiencing is the anguish of an incarcerated self, a self that's been held in solitary solitude.
Now, at age 65, you're asking how sharing the truth might affect your dominate, your mother, and your friends, but I want to suggest that we look at your question from some other angle: how information technology might affect you. Because that, it seems, is what yous're essentially asking.
Allow me put it similar this. When people sit on my couch during a outset therapy session, I want to know non simply why they've come in, but why now. Why, on this particular calendar week, did they choice up the phone and telephone call me, when their problem may have been going on for months or years or decades? I ask considering generally when people accept the step of reaching out, it means they're ready—consciously or not—for change.
That's what I hear in your letter. On the ane mitt, you want to practice what you've always done—keep things to yourself. On the other, the emotional toll of keeping this secret is so disturbing that you feel like you might burst—to the betoken where you're finally coming out and sharing your secret with me.
This is a meaning departure from how you managed your dilemma in the past. Some people deal with an inconvenient truth about who they are by forming a 2nd self to protect their original self, and then distinguishing between the two becomes difficult. Other people do what you've done, which is to deny the true cocky by creating conditions in which it would be impossible for it to flourish.
For instance, your crushes have e'er been on heterosexual men, which means that even if y'all were to share your romantic interest, it wouldn't be reciprocated. And merely to make sure that it tin't be reciprocated—that your truthful self stays in bank check—you often choose men who aren't only heterosexual, merely besides in a relationship and therefore unavailable. Conveniently, the likelihood of any real-life relationship nether these circumstances is almost nil. (And in your boss's case, sharing your romantic interest at work, regardless of sexual orientation, is always fraught in all kinds of ways.)
I think you wrote to me considering what's worked in the by—stifling your desires—is no longer working. As you approach old age, perchance you're realizing that instead of keeping you rubber, your cocky-imposed lonely solitude might be causing more harm than coming out would.
And then how would living your truth benefit you? Well, once y'all footstep out of your jail, you'll be costless to pursue relationships with available men. Your friends, who might already suspect that you're gay, will go to know yous on a deeper level and likely feel much closer to you. (It's hard to have meaningful friendships when an of import aspect of your identity remains hidden.) Your mom, who, similar yous, grew up in an era rife with intolerance, might accept complicated feelings about this but might also experience slap-up relief and satisfaction from knowing that she'll go out y'all on this planet as a whole, happy homo. And you will develop networks of friends and—hopefully—fall in love with available partners who embrace you, and not the facade you've been hiding backside.
In other words, the do good of sharing the truth is elementary: Yous won't be and then excruciatingly lonely. So many people hide the truth of who they are out of fright that information technology will plough people away, but with the people who matter, the verbal opposite happens. If y'all let people see the truth of who you are, people volition exist drawn to yous.
Another benefit is that yous'll apace discover who matters in your life, who is worth your time. The people who intendance about you volition desire to know y'all, not an edited version of you. Those who care about yous will want you to be happy. You can learn who these people are by telling the person yous trust the most, and and then using the confidence gained from that experience to slowly branch out to others. Or y'all can tell a number of people at once.
Either fashion, I think you'll find that it doesn't really matter what whatsoever closed-minded people do with the information. Y'all've endured worse in jail, in your decades-long state of extreme deprivation. The good news is that this letter of the alphabet is the key you've been belongings. Utilize it to set yourself complimentary.
Dear Therapist is for informational purposes just, does not constitute medical advice, and is not a substitute for professional person medical advice, diagnosis, or handling. Always seek the advice of your md, mental-health professional, or other qualified wellness provider with whatever questions yous may have regarding a medical condition. Past submitting a letter of the alphabet, you are like-minded to let The Atlantic use it—in part or in total—and we may edit it for length and/or clarity.
No Different From Heterosexuals but You Wouldnt Know That Being Homosexual Yourself?
Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2019/11/no-one-knows-im-gay-should-i-tell-people-now/602500/
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