How old were you
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The first time I told someone other than the men i had slept with was when I was 23. I'm 28 now and still only a small handful of people know
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I came out on my 26th B-day
lost my cherry on my 21st B-day -
20, but slept with some guys when I was 19
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I was 22, and I had just started my first gay relationship a month and half ago, talk me about burning bridges.
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I was 15. On a high school band outing, I had told someone (who I thought was a friend) in secret, and she proceeded to blab to other people in the band. So, I decided to be proactive and just tell the whole school myself, since it was gonna get out anyway. This way, I could control the narrative. 33 now.
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@gustin Please, let me know if you need any kind of support.
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28 still not out yet
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Hmmm... Coming Out... This gets complicated for me:
My first male/female sexual encounter happened in the 3rd Grade (yup, just 9 years old) when I was on my way home from school, walking through the woods that I did every day, and happened onto 2 5th-Grade girls comparing tits and pubic-hair. I got to see theirs, so they got to see mine... We kept our encounters very VERY SECRET. (NOTE: I DID have a "real" dick at that age - it was NEW to me - that's precisely when my own public hair started to come in! Awesome timing, eh?) My first male/male sexual encounter came shortly after I started the 6th Grade (11 y/o), and it was with my 15 y/o neighbor. Again, we kept the whole thing a COMPLETE SECRET! There were others throughout middle & early high school: both boys AND girls... and it always a HUGE SECRET!
While I liked playing "sex games" with guys, I also REALLY liked fucking girls & playing with their tits! (The guys I was fooling around with then didn't do anal sex (we were dumb kids!) - so the only FUCKING at the time was with girls!).
But it's important - in terms of coming out - that I didn't know you were "allowed" to do both boys and girls! And NO ONE I was having sex with was telling me about anyone else they were having sex with - so I thought I was TRULY breaking ALL the rules! I was a FREAK! I had no label for myself - I had learned about heterosexual and homosexual, but knew no other labels. I lied to the boys I was playing with (saying I was homosexual, like them), and I equally lied to the girls I was playing with (saying I was heterosexual, like them). I knew of NO ONE who was LIKE ME in that they liked boys and girls...
However, late in the 8th Grade, my SECRET was revealed: it turned out that one of the boys and one of the girls I was playing around with were brother & sister (I swear I didn't know!)... and they talked! I was TOTALLY OUTED to them. I was hugely embarrassed... and they were FURIOUS with me! But they came from a VERY unusual (nudist) family, and eventually they thought it was cool, so long as there was no deception - though they were ADAMANT that they would NOT play together! I vowed to NOT be in that position ever again! Truly from that day onward, no sexual partner of mine has NOT been aware that I've had sex with both men and women in my past!
But still, other than those 2, and relatively quickly thereafter, all of the others I was having sex with, I was a completely closeted - and unique person. Not one of them admitted to me that they were attracted to both boys and girls. I dared not tell anyone else about this - especially my parents. What kind of freak did they raise?
Let me reiterate here: I (like many teens) had LOTS of sex in high school - some with boys, some with girls - and all knew that I had-had sex with both boys and girls... and no one - not one other person - ever told me they were bisexual too!
Then I went to college...I didn't expect it to be the SAME as it was in High School, but I went to school in "a big city" - Atlanta, GA - and while it was the "Queer Capital of the South" in those days, that WAS NOT TRUE on our campus! I got "outed" my freshman year by a roommate who found my porn stash... and I was nearly thrown-out of my Fraternity as a result. They LITERALLY had a VOTE on whether to keep me in, or expel me - for the "offense" of being bi-sexual! Mind you: I never disclaimed being bi - I just asked them why they cared so much if they didn't want (themselves) to have sex with me? I "won" by just 2 votes! Funny tho: in my Jr year, I was elected VP of that frat!
That happened in the Spring, so I was freshly 18 - and out, although not of my own volition. Not only as I "out" to my frat, but I was basically "out" to everyone - my fraternity brothers couldn't keep a secret to save their ass!
It wouldn't be until my Sr year in college that I ever met someone ELSE who got off just as well with girls as boys (and wasn't looking for it as a way to cheat of their bf/gf)... He was in a different frat - and was totally out to them, and totally accepted by them. That was an awakening to me! He was "allowed" to be himself - he could bring girls OR guys to his room and no one batted an eye over it! (I had been asked to "be discrete" and never bring a "gay guy" to the frat - where I lived.) So, any way you look at it, I was OUT virtually all through college.
But here's where it gets weird: In my first job after graduation, I needed a military security clearance - and being gay (or bi) was considered, at the time, to be a legitimate cause for losing said clearance (and with it, my job and my career!)... so for that time of my life, while I was still "out" to the people I had sex with (or wanted to have sex with), I was TOTALLY closeted in the rest of my life! It is the ONLY time in my life I have ever LIED (publicly) about my sexuality: I declared myself "straight" on multiple occasions - including on my clearance applications.
That didn't stop me from having boyfriends and girlfriends... but it DID mean I never went to gay bars or gay pride events (though I DID attend the first ever Gay Days at Disney - and I wore the requisite RED! ... I truly considered even that small act to be a risky one, and feared for weeks afterward that I would lose my job over it!). I didn't.
I didn't get married until I was 35 - to a woman, and she knew my sexual past. I told her I would never cheat on her, and I never did - except for porn... which she would later claim ACTUALLY WAS cheating on her... but that's another story. While we were married we had, and adopted, a total of 9 children - and during this time the world's appreciation for LGBTQ+ changed immensely! I even helped write the new laws in my state that legalized gays & lesbians becoming foster parents, and later adoptive parents!
While my sexuality never changed, my sexual ACTIVITY while I was married remained STRICTLY monogamous and heterosexual. (Though my now-ex-wife claims vociferously otherwise... but, remember: she considered watching porn "cheating" - and I DID watch porn!) Anyway, as my children got older, and I taught each of them about the "birds and the bees", I came out to each of them (as pansexual) as well. That wasn't risky: they got their morals from me and their mother, so I knew it was SAFE to do so.
Still, especially after 15 years in a straight marriage, I was never "public" about my LGBTQ+ "alignment"... I never hid it, but I certainly never advertised it either.... at least not until I met the love-of-my-life: David. Once we became a couple, it became VERY CLEAR to EVERYONE that I was queer. And to this day (even though David passed 4 years ago), I wear a rainbow mask, gay pride t-shirts, and so forth. Today, I'm 57, out and proud, and some of my children attend gay pride events with me!
So, as you can see: mine has been a long, strange journey - probably VERY different from yours. But I do have suggestions:
- Come out for you, not them (whoever they may be).
- Come out when it is SAFE for you do so, and have a plan in place in case it doesn't go well - a place to stay the night, a way to separate from whoever in case it becomes a dangerous situation - JUST IN CASE!
- TRUST your family: assuming you were raised by them, you share (largely, at least) a common moral code. Clearly there are exceptions to this - some families ARE NOT SAFE for LGBTQ+ people... of any age! But trust yourself too - to make the right call!
It hasn't always been easy: I've missed out on some hot, sexy, men and women who were NOT OK with my pansexual nature and history, and flat-out rejected me because of it... c'est la vie! But, I've also had a LOT of incredible and interesting sex with men and women who were far more willing to be EXPERIMENTAL with me because they knew of my full sexuality!
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i was 15
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15
im 30 now, almost 31
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24 is when I came out to myself and others. I am almost 55 now.
I knew when I was about 5 that I liked boys instead of girls. -
- come out? what comeout?
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- Part of me felt like it was the right time but part me also wish I did it sooner
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I agree with the previous poster who indicated that it was a unique journey for each person... I share here in the hopes it helps someone out there who may find some similarities.
In my case, I had a really tough time when I was young... I knew I liked fucking girls, because I was fucking my neighbor... but then, I also started to fool around with some of the neighborhood GUYS! I mean, getting off was getting off! (And at that point, there was no anal sex! Just jerking and sucking and massaging...). I had heard the terms GAY and STRAIGHT (as well as many colorful, mostly derogatory, names for gays)... but none of those labels seemed to fit ME...
In HS, I was attacked once for being queer, but was "bailed out" when one of the girls I'd been fucking told the guy who was coming after me that I was a better lay than he was! (He was humiliated & beat the crap out of me anyway, but the queer "bashing" ended).
At the time (all thru HS), I was banging almost anyone who was willing to! Boy or girl, it all felt good! But I didn't "date" at all - it was all sex! (This was the 70's after all!)
To my parents, and anyone I wasn't having sex with, I was a model-geek! I got good grades, was in the Boy Scouts, sang in the church choir, you name it! I was a "good boy" - except to those "in the know" that I REALLY LIKED to FUCK!
In college, things changed: I had an actual GF as a freshman... but she cheated on me (broke my little heart!), and in "revenge" I fucked her brother... we kept fucking for over a year, but we never let her know.
I also joined a Frat - they didn't know anything, except I had been dating the one girl. However, I had also started a collection of gay porn magazines... and those got discovered... so I was force-ably "outed" to my fraternity - and they did NOT take it well: there was a vote on whether or not to allow me to remain a member... I barely won (though 2 years after, I was elected VP!)
Still, no one outside of the fraternity - ESPECIALLY my family - knew anything about my sexuality. Indeed, I had been "forced" to claim "bisexual" as a label by my Frat brothers, but it didn't feel right to me... I didn't "need" to be with both, it was more like I "could be" with EITHER!
When I graduated college and went to work in my first career job, I met a bartender at a hole-in-the-wall gay bar, and we became a couple - my first man-to-man love affair. We were in the process of breaking up - I was 25 by this time - when my younger brother got married in another state. I had originally planned to bring my BF as my guest to this thing, and come out to them then, but we were breaking up, so that fell through.... nonetheless, I was an emotional mess, so I wound up coming out to my mother... she could not understand how or why I couldn't just CHOOSE to be straight (I honestly think she STILL feels that today - and I'm 58 & she's 81!)
The rest of my family soon learned about me, and by the time I was 28 I was fully "out" - I made it a "requirement"(albeit, self-imposed) that I would never have sex with someone who wasn't aware that I had had sex with both men and women in my past.... I have kept that commitment to myself. I also finally found a label (I've been using since my late 20's) that I'm comfortable with: pansexual - defined (for me) as being physically attracted to either male or female bodies, and emotionally attracted to the person - irrespective of their body parts. (Or more succinctly: it's about the other person, not the toys they bring to the game!)
I have been accepted as "myself" by a huge majority of people who've learned about me... and rejected by a very few (which, I won't lie, hurt... sometimes, a lot)... my parents STILL keep hoping I'll "meet the right girl" - even when I'm dating (as I am now) a man. Some things will never change. But, how can I expect my parents to accept me "as-is" if I can't accept them "as-is" - even if all of us aren't fully comfortable with the others viewpoints!
Finally: my kids are all aware of my sexuality - it's come up when I have the "birds and the bees" discussion with them as teens.
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24 when I first came out to my (straight guy) best friend. That was the hardest one to do, I was literally crying the entire time because I was so scared. He turned out to be quite supportive, though I had to reassure him that being gay doesn't mean I'm gonna start wearing dresses or get a sex change. LOL I was still the same guy.
And it felt really good. Like a huge weight I didn't even know I was carrying had lifted. No joke, I felt like skipping and singing afterwards. All because finally, someone else knew I was gay. To this day, it still counts as one of the happiest days of my life. Which was good too, because I was spiraling into really deep and really dark depression by then. Joining internet forums helped me get the courage to come out.
Then I started coming out to the rest of my closest circle of friends (all straight guys, around 14 of them). All of them were either supportive or didn't care at all (which was great). Then I started coming out to female friends (three so far). I'm at the point where I don't really care if a random stranger knows I'm gay.
But here I am. I'm turning 36, and I still haven't come out to family. My dad died before I could tell him. Though I think he suspected and didn't particularly care. I haven't told my mom or any of my siblings. They're not conservative or anything. Not particularly liberal either. Just in the middle, like most Catholics. My parents and my older sisters don't make fun of gay people, they treat them with respect and all, but there's still a slight disapproval. And they still regularly ask me when I'm getting a girlfriend or getting married.
My brother probably suspects, but he's never confronted me about it. And he's a millennial like me, so he's alright. He's not homophobic in the slightest and has gay friends. Funnily enough, I'm pretty sure my younger sister is either lesbian or bisexual, and she hasn't come out either.
I think I'm still waiting for a partner. Like I'll only come out to people when I need to. I wish I could, but I'd rather not go through the inevitable family drama without someone close to support me through it.
At least that's what I tell myself. I'm still waiting for the day when I can fully be out though.
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To myself? 11. To others, 17. I'm now 54. God it's been great!
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18 ΠΈ Π΄ΠΎ ΡΠΈΡ ΠΏΠΎΡ
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20 years old and 1 day..
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I was around 18 y.o.
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I am 42 and my coming out was in my 20s
