How Could You Not Know You Were Gay?
“You’re a fake and a hypocrite. You may fool others, but deep down you know the truth. You have no balls.” These were the messages I received from a younger gay man on Twitter after I had posted that I didn’t know I was gay until I was 40.
Although gay youth seem to be coming out at younger and younger ages, I had no adult sexual experience with another male until I was in my mid 30’s when I was married and had children. Although I had doubts about my success at being a real man, I knew I couldn’t talk about my curiosity about sex with another man with anyone. All of the explanations I gave myself had nothing to do with being gay. I had no idea there are so many other men who felt like I did.
When I came out, I was accused me of destroying the lives of my former wife and my two daughters. Although I was prepared for disapproval from the heterosexual community, I was not expecting the negative reaction from some in the LGBT community for having been a late arrival. I was particularly not pleased to be accused of “having no balls” since my coming out felt like one of the bravest things I’d ever done.
Meredith Baxter
Coming out as an older adult produces some unique challenges. Many of us took a life course similar to Meredith Baxter, star of the sit com “Family Ties,” who after three failed marriages and five children just came out at age 62. She reports having been asked many times, “Were you living a lie?” But she said it was only within the last few years that she came to understand and accept herself.
Having been a student of Freud’s defense mechanisms, I know that the explanation is much more complicated than just being “a hypocrite.” Although we may have lived with a “sense of difference” and felt some difficulty connecting with members of the opposite sex, when we were young very little information and no support network were available to us. Or perhaps we were all just too concerned about what others would think of us.
I didn’t even know anyone that was openly gay until I was in my early thirties. My Twitter friend didn’t buy that excuse either, telling me he had an uncle who’d come out in Puerto Rico in the 1920’s. I didn’t ask, “Come out to what?” No such thing as a “gay community” existed in the United States until the middle of the 20th Century. Although there were men referred to as “fairies,” there weren’t any in the small town in 
Nebraska where I grew up.
A lot of skeptics have also asked me, “How could you possibly not know you were gay until you were forty?” Some defense mechanisms are more adaptive than others, but all are designed as a way of dealing with psychologically stressful conflicts, or what has been called the “potency of psychic residues.” One defense mechanism is called “dissociation,” and in simple terms, it occurs when something is considered so bad it must be separated off from the rest of ones life. In other words, having same sex attraction was so awful to consider, I simply wouldn’t allow myself to consciously think about it.
I do believe there are some generational differences. Since I had no reference point for being gay, it was easier in my generation to separate from it. For example, no one I knew in the 1950’s openly questioned Liberace’s 
sexuality, although I did hear some giggles and a sense of disgust. Today, it is virtually impossible for anyone to be as homo-naïve as I was. Nothing like the Internet existed; the only thing I ever read in the small school and public libraries was about “hermaphrodites.” (This is the world of innocence to which some would like to have us all return.)
This naïveté made it easier for us to do what was expected, to hide our same sex attractions from ourselves and others, and to pass in the heterosexual world. We sought to change – however unsuccessfully — rather than accept whatever aspects of ourselves that didn’t fit with the norm.
By the time my defenses began to weaken in my 30’s, and I had a more conscious glimpse of my reality, I was married with children. It was no longer just my life, but the lives of my wife and children which I was afraid of up-ending.
I wish my Twitter friend had been more open to hearing about my experience rather than to just write me off as a hypocrite with no balls. Instead he just “un-followed” me and asked me to do the same. I am now better prepared to deal with the members of both the LGBT and straight communities who will judge me without knowing me, but that is the very definition of prejudice. Others may learn that what is true for some is only true for some, not all.
Some are predicting there will be fewer and fewer people who come out later in life as GLBT youth come out at younger ages, but I am not so sure. There remain many families and cultures where the prohibitions against homosexuality are so powerful and the threats of rejection are so strong that defense mechanism will continue to be employed to separate off same sex attractions from our conscious minds.
It’s sad but true that queer people can be just as petty and judgemental as anyone in the straight world. Goes to show I guess we aren’t all that different then heterosexuals… Though still quite sad.
I’ve often wondered, and you may have already touched on this in a previous post so direct me to it if that is the case, if individuals in similar situations such as yours and Meredith Baxter are bisexual. Of course folks know themselves best and so self-labeling is important. Yet, it does make me wonder if some folks who come out later in life might include some who are bisexual.
Any thoughts about that, off hand?
Enjoying your tweets and blog (I just found it – nice to add a few blogs to my reader by mid-life gays).
Joe,
I have addressed the subject of bisexuality briefly here , and I talked about it some in an essay called “Purgatory” that I wrote for Michael in Norfolk. (A link is posted on MagneticFire.)
As for myself, there was a time when I questioned if I might be “Bisexual,” simply because I was having sex with my wife and experiencing a significant attraction to having sex with men. In men I correspond with, there are many who self-label as bisexual because they are experiencing something similar. In some cases being “Bisexual” is a less threatening label they wish to use because the thought they might be gay is just too frightening.
Briefly, Bisexuality really means experiencing almost equal sexual attraction to the same sex as to the opposite sex. It does not refer to those who are living one life but would prefer the other. After I began the process of coming out, it was clear to me that my only sexual attraction was to men.
Some of the confusing issues in regard to labeling of sexual orientation relates to 1. Who is doing the labeling, and 2. Are you talking about behavior or self-identity? One might describe people who are having sex with both men and women as behaving in a bisexual way. However, if you are talking about the way you define yourself, that self-definition is something which permeates every aspect of your being.
In some cases, people call themselves “bisexual” while they are experiencing a state of confusion and curiosity, and perhaps even during a transition.
I am glad you brought up the question because it suggests I need to write about this in a more comprehensive way. Thanks for your contribution and support and I hope you will come back to MagneticFire and refer the site to your friends.
Loren Olson
I really believe the information age is a great deal to do with how young people are coming out, I was not aware of half the information kids are today !
Dr. Olson:
Thank you for writing this post. I am the ex-wife of a man who is living his life as a gay man. I am pretty rare in the sisterhood of women who’s husbands come out in mid-life. I don’t feel badly that he chose his real life over the fake one he was living. And it did not bother me to think that he was not attracted to me anymore. Maybe it was because I was not attracted to him anymore at that point.
To your Twitter friend, who undoubtedly has a limited concept of compartmentalizing homosexuality. My ex told me that he put his secret in a box and filed it away under “too scary to open.” His father was a gay man who had sexually abused him as a child, so the idea of becoming homosexual was abhorrent to him (due to the negative association).
During most of the time we were married, my ex and I had a good sex life. He seemed very interested in sex, took pride in satisfying me, just like many heterosexual males do. As he started the process of coming out, and I started to figure out what was happening, I lost my desire to have sex with him.
During his “transition” he told several people that he was bi-sexual, and even dated a couple of women for a few months. However, by the time we’d been divorced for a year, he moved in with a man and began living his life as a gay man.
The emotions I felt and continue to feel now are: relief and pity. I’m relieved that he finally came out and did not drag me through more years of marriage and trying to live a double life, and pity because I know how tormented he was and continues to be. He is not totally comfortable with his life style but I believe he is finding more confidence as the years go on.
I agree that there was almost no public awareness nor support in the mainstream for gay people who come out later in life. You would not believe the questions I get, including, “how could you not know he was gay?” “how could he not know he was gay?” Did you have a bad sex life, is that why he sought something else? It just shows the stunning lack of information and education on the subject.
Hey, Loren,
Thanks for your thoughtful response.
I didn’t mean to imply that everyone who comes out later in life was bisexual. I was thinking that, perhaps for some people, the reason why they come out later is because they have genuinely felt some attraction to the opposite sex, but later in life realize that there is more to their sexuality than what they first thought.
Interesting topic and look forward to more of our thoughts about this an other topics.
For most, the internet has changed access to information, although it is still not available in areas with limited access to the internet. Unfortunately, the internet has access to all information and some of it is pretty bad, and it is difficult to find good information in the middle of all the porn sites.
Loren Olson
Thank you for your participation in this discussion and for sharing these intimate details of your experience. It is really important to gain the perspective of spouses. Contrary to what many believe, many gay men love their wives and hate the idea that they might hurt them and their children.
There is an important resource which spouses should know about called the Straight Spouse Network. Here is that link:
http://www.straightspouse.org/home.php
Thanks again for your in-put.
Loren Olson
This follow-up comment came from Joe G. (I’m just learning how to do the comments and responses. Sorry
Hey Loren
Thanks for your thoughtful response.
I didn’t mean to imply that everyone who comes out later in life was bisexual. I was thinking that, perhaps for some people, the reason why they come out later is because they have genuinely felt some attraction to the opposite sex, but later in life realize that there is more to their sexuality than what they first thought.
Interesting topic and look forward to more of our thoughts about this an other topics.
Joe
Loren’s response to Joe’s post:
I don’t know about most men but I do know that many men have gone through a transition where they thought they were bisexual. As one person commented to me on Twitter, “There are more than just three options.”
When I was young, I could have had sexual arousal from a fence post or riding on the school bus. As I began to experience a greater sense of confusion, I knew only that there was straight, gay and bisexual. When someone said to me, “There’s no such thing as bisexual; only people in transition,” I went back to believing that I was heterosexual because I was not yet ready to accept the label of “gay.”
One man who took my survey was married over 50 years, loved his wife until she died, and only then began to consider the possibility that perhaps his sexual orientation was something other than what he believed. He now lives with a same sex partner.
BTW, I meant “Your thoughts about this topics”; I didn’t mean to include myself.
Your last story about the man who came out after 50 years of marriage is indeed interesting for me. A whole area of men who love men I have little awareness of.
This post really hits where I am. I’m a gay man still married at this point. I grew up in a small Minnesota farming town. I’m not aware of any out gays in my home town. For me growing up, I thought I was just different, but it wasn’t until college that I saw gays as something different than something that people poked fun at. Unfortunately that was the early 80’s and when the AIDS crisis hit and terrified me from even wanting to try sex with men. I guess I got scared into marriage. I’m like you in that I was unable to continue to resist the call to try sex with men. In the last two years I’ve finally faced facts that I’m gay. I’m now working on deciding how to deal with my marriage. My son is 14 and I don’t want totally disrupt his life at this time. Thank you deeply for your blog, it’s a great help for me.
Scott, It is important to know that you are not alone in this. Many of us have been through something similar. My own first steps in dealing with my sexuality were in a support group for gay fathers — There should be a lot more of them. That was almost 25 years ago, and many of those men remain my friends.
The biggest change in my life was moving from thinking, “I’m not like THOSE people” to recognizing that those people were in fact a very diverse group of men, many who were a great deal like me, and many who were not. The first step is often shaking free from all of those internal stereotypes we all have, growing up in a rather homosexually-hostile society.
Good luck with your continuing process. Thanks for your comment. Welcome, and come back.
Loren Olson