Coming True: Seeking Truth in Self Later in Life

Introduction:

Where Do I Begin?

I am married to someone I love . We have children we adore, and we built a life together that hums along with normal ups and downs. I have also come to realize a truth about myself that I have done everything I can think of to suppress and run away from. This secret that I’ve tried to banish to the recesses of my heart and mind will destroy everyone I love and the life we have if it is brought into the light of day. This secret may also destroy me from the inside out if I continue to hold it in. Deep down, I am overwhelmed with fear and cannot see any way out of this predicament.

How Common Is Coming Out Later in Life?

If this situation describes where you are at in life, you are not the first and will not be the last to find yourself in what seems to be a no-win situation. Statistics about the number of straight-identified people who are deeply in the closet about their true sexuality are very difficult for researchers to measure accurately. Being closeted and in a straight marriage or relationship is more common than most realize, and men and women all over the world and across all cultures deal with sexual identity issues every day. How and why people find themselves in such a struggle is complex and not quickly or easily explained. Some find comfort in at least knowing they are not alone in a situation that feels isolating and unique. The emotional and psychological toll of hiding their true sexual identity often becomes overwhelming for all involved. The consequences of maintaining the deception of self and others can have devastating outcomes. People are more courageous than they realize, however, and they have a bountiful ability to heal. Stepping into truth does not have to end in complete and utter destruction. This reality does not mean coming out is not hard or painful—it is both. There are ways to move into truth with grace, respect, and dignity for all, which can lead to a better, if not always easier, place in the end.

I am a licensed professional counselor in Atlanta, Georgia. I came out in 2008 after being married for eighteen years and having two children. At the time, it was difficult to find mental health professionals who had experience working with the unique nuances of someone coming out after identifying as straight for so long. I, fortunately, found a wonderful counselor who had also come out later. Along with this significant life change, I went to graduate school to pursue a degree in counseling. I had a great education with strong faculty and training opportunities. I discovered along the way that the phenomenon of coming out later in life lacked understanding and research in the field, so I combined my professional development with my personal experience to help charter these waters with others.

Who Benefits from This Book?

The general answer is anyone going through or supporting someone going through an identity transition related to sexuality. I started a therapy group called Out Late in 2012 to help people who were coming to acceptance of their sexual identity as gay or bisexual after having lived most of their adult life as straight. Most, but not all, married and had children along the way before reaching a point where they could no longer hide their truth from themselves and those they love. In the group’s initial iteration, men and women participated together, as coming to terms with sexual identity is a common experience regardless of gender. As membership shifted over time, the group transitioned to men only. I found that change to be helpful to more deeply explore all the facets related to the coming-out process and its impact on identity. A colleague in Atlanta began a separate group specifically for women coming out later. Many of the issues explored in my writing apply to men or women working to understand their sexual identity. However, my language and examination of being out socially will apply more to men and most often to men who have been or are married to women.

The experience I draw from for this book has been wholly with cisgender men. If the word cisgender is new or confusing to you, not to worry. I will walk through definitions of many of the terms related to the LGBTQ+ experience in the Important Definitions section of this introduction (page 9). There are also themes and experiences that anyone coming out at any time may find beneficial to their process. It is important to acknowledge, however, that the bulk of my focus is with this singular population and their family systems.

What about a spouse who is straight and often shocked by such a revelation? Their experience is also complicated as they end up feeling like they have their own version of a coming out process related to being part of a mixed-orientation marriage that they never wanted or asked for. They need support and understanding from professionals and the people in their lives to process their own shift in identity and circumstances. I am in no way trying to ignore or diminish the impact their spouse’s coming out has on them. Several resources exist to provide some answers and solace to a spouse’s myriad questions, which can be found in the appendix. This book may or may not be helpful to spouses, depending on where they are at in their own journey, but it may provide some context to understanding what could have driven the decisions a gay spouse made. Finding connections with other straight spouses first is initially more ideal for healing.

This book can help other counselors, professionals, family, and friends who support people facing the truth about their sexual identity. Many people in a supportive familial or friendship role have limited understanding of how to have a conversation about their loved one’s process, as they fear they will say the wrong thing and hurt rather than help. This book can provide some perspective about what a loved one is experiencing, which can be instructional in how to be most supportive. Additionally, professionals who work primarily with straight populations can use this book to understand some of the nuances related to coming out late from a clinical perspective. Hopefully, it can help those professionals also recognize when, despite their fervent support for the LGBTQ+ community, their lack of knowledge related to the lived experience of the gay community where they live can be a hindrance at best and damaging at worst to clients seeking guidance.

A few caveats as we move forward:

Some clients I worked with over the years first felt more comfortable identifying as bisexual, as it fit more closely with having been married or significantly attached to a woman. Through education and deeper self-exploration, some truly came to know themselves to be bisexual, while others more closely identified with being gay at their core. Attaching to the label of bisexuality was, for some, a bridge that felt less intimidating and more accurate from an outside perspective. After all, if one is capable of having pleasurable sexual experiences with multiple genders, wouldn’t that be called bisexuality? Until a person has the lived experience of pursuing relationships fully with others, it is impossible to know what label best fits. That understanding can take time and evolution.

Bisexuality is a real and true identity that can get pushback from both the straight and non-straight communities. Unique and often challenging barriers and stigma exist when coming out as bisexual and incorporating that into life and relationships. A bisexual person may be in a different-gender relationship, which many perceive as straight with all the privilege that affords. They may be in a same-gender relationship, which some people on the outside want to describe as gay. They may pursue sexual and/or affectional experiences with all genders simultaneously, which some may see as fickle at best and selfish at worst. The pressure to pick a side can be immense and leads to an extra layer of internal dissonance when discovering self and choosing to live authentically. Once again, my writing here is centered on gay men coming out, but many of the drivers and pitfalls are applicable to any non-straight sexual identity.

It is also important to note that sexual identity and gender identity are two separate and distinct aspects of self. For example, my gender identity is male, and my sexual identity is gay. When I came out, I was moving to authenticity in my sexual identity, and my work has been with others doing the same. Transitions to authenticity related to gender are a separate area of expertise for which I am not qualified to write authoritatively. Once again, there are some parallels to any path of transitioning identity with self and others that may be useful, but I want to be clear that the exploration and understanding of gender and its fluidity will not be addressed directly on these pages. A list of resources for those examining their gender identity is included in the appendix.

Important Definitions

Some of the language and symbols related to coming out, while intended to be inclusive and inviting, often serve as obstacles for those trying to come to terms with their sexuality. Pride, rainbow flags, and LGBTQ+ can feel like a call to some public organization or forced political beliefs that actually drive some deeper into the closet. It is not unusual for a client to say in a first visit that they have no intention of ever marching in a parade, though many often do for reasons they never expected.

In order to develop an understanding of the out-late phenomenon, we need to begin with some definitions of terms that may be new or confusing. These definitions are meant to simply give context, explanation, and a shared frame of reference. They are not some kind of required belief system that must be fully adopted. Some people may be familiar with many of these terms, but for others, there may be understandable confusion about a topic that they worked hard to avoid for a very long time. Some of these terms are also in a constant state of flux and expansion as people work to include the vast and varied lived experiences related to gender and sexual identity and expression. In my own work with clients, I first explain the definitions that I use to provide some framework. By no means are these meant to be the absolute and complete definitions that everyone working with the LGBTQ+ community would adhere to, but they help establish some parameters that I reference throughout my writing.

Let’s begin first with the term sexual identity. Many use this term and the phrase sexual orientation interchangeably. Identity and orientation are describing the same concept; however, I choose the term identity over orientation because orientation can sometimes imply that re-orientation is possible, which I believe to be untrue. Sexual identity is simply an internal setting that indicates what and whom a person finds sexually and affectionally attractive, generally meaning whom I want to have sex with, cuddle, and share romance and intimacy. I define gay as an internal setting that says a person finds themselves primarily, but not necessarily exclusively, sexually and affectionally attracted to someone of the same gender. Someone who identifies as straight would find someone of a different gender almost exclusively attractive, specifically, men attracted to women and women attracted to men. Bisexuality involves feeling sexually and affectionately attracted to more than one gender. Sexuality can also be conceived as fluid and not necessarily a fixed point on a spectrum. There are terms such as pansexual that describe not assigning one’s internal setting to any particular sexual or gender identity, which can be a freeing concept for some. Regardless of the preferred term a person may use, I believe their sexual identity is naturally written and encoded internally. What they do and how they pursue a relationship are all behavioral. It is also my belief that our sexual identity is something we are born with and not the result of external influences. Such a claim can be controversial in some arenas, which we explore in more depth when we examine various cultural and societal conflicts regarding sexual identity in chapter two.

Now, let’s look at all the letters used in acronyms to describe sexual and gender variations. What ties these various identifiers together is that they refer to anyone whose sexuality, gender, or relationship style lies outside of the male-female, heterosexual paradigm. Every letter, however, represents an identity that is unique and has its own distinct experience. The most common and familiar acronym in recent history is LGBT, which stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender. It sometimes has had a variation of GLBT, and over the years, it expanded to include other identities as well. The letters GE stand for gender expansive (those whose gender experience or expression is not captured by a binary male-female model). The letter Q was added to include questioning (those who are unsure of where they lie on any spectrum) and queer (anyone who does not identify with a binary or specific sex or gender identity). The term queer is often the most off-putting at first with clients I have seen. Despite the term being used inclusively for decades within the LGBTQ+ community, many initially perceive it as a unique form of insult on par with other derogatory terms to refer to gay people. Even some older activists who worked so hard and sacrificed so much to claim being gay or lesbian have expressed discomfort with being called queer. Ultimately, the term is designed to include all the variations in non-straight and non-cisgender identities.

Other letters one sees more commonly are I for intersex (those who are born with genitalia that cannot be described specifically as a penis or vagina), A for asexual, aromantic, and agender (denoting a person who feels little or no sexual attraction, little need for romantic connection, and/or no attachment to any gender definition), and the letter P for pansexual, pan/poly gender, or poly relationship system (pan and poly meaning all or many—such as attraction regardless of gender, identifying with multiple genders, or engaging in romantic relationships with multiple people in a system). Finally, a + symbol is often added to indicate inclusion and commitment to the evolution of understanding the many ways people experience their sexuality and gender. Put them all together, and you have LGBTGEQIAP+. That is a mouthful! Sometimes the mix of letters is humorously referred to as alphabet soup. In my writing and work, I use the acronym LGBTQ+ for the larger collection of sexual and gender variations. A reminder again that this explanation is merely informative and not meant to be a pool one must dive deeply into as they begin looking at themselves.

Although I am addressing most specifically the experience of men who are coming out as gay or bisexual later in life, it is also helpful to have some working knowledge related to gender, as it is often referenced in culture and readings on LGBTQ+ issues. Admittedly, this quick summary in itself is just the tip of the iceberg, but sometimes it is best to start with just the tip. Traditionally, gender was assigned as male or female at birth, determined by genitalia. Gender, however, is more than, and in many ways, outside of genitalia. When you close your eyes and picture yourself, do you see yourself as male or female, or maybe both or neither? If your gender assigned at birth seems accurate, that is commonly referred to as cisgender. If your gender identity is something different from what was assigned at birth, that is more generally referred to as transgender. If your gender identity is outside of the male/female binary, that is more generally referred to as nonbinary. We all choose to display our gender outwardly in ways that society identifies, which is our gender expression. For example, a high heel shoe culturally indicates femininity, even though it is just a shoe. In fact, high heels were first worn by men in the Persian cavalry of the tenth century to help them keep their shoes in their stirrups, and they have been worn by men for various reasons since that time. Wearing high heel shoes today more commonly expresses femininity regardless of one’s body parts, which is an example of gender expression. Much like sexual identity, gender is more and more understood and expressed in fluid terms. Ultimately, gender is how we see ourselves, and sexuality is related to how we see and feel about others.

How to Use This