Do you know any (or are you one yourself) gay or lesbian people who switched their sexual orientation late in life? I’m not referring to closeted people who never had a chance at same-sex encounters until late in life. I mean people who legitimately considered themselves fully heterosexual until well into adulthood. Have they ever mentioned why they changed? And what’s the oldest person you know who decided they are gay or bisexual?
Ask me again in a few years.
I have known a few men over the years who were basically asexual but not by choice. They eventually hooked up with another male who was more than likely their only friend. …
I know more women than I can count who identified as straight but later hooked up with other women they just really liked a lot. They were fed up with men. A lot of these women came back to men later on.
The mother of a good friend of mine came out after age 50 and is now happily re-married. Not only are they a fantastic couple, but theirs was the first SSM ceremony that I attended.
When I worked in a restaurant as a teen our pastry chef dated a man who was probably in his late 50s or early 60s and left his wife and kids when he came out.
He was a cool guy and I think he liked hanging out with me because I was his kids’ age but without the “stigma” of being his kids or their friends. My first time at a gay bar (I am a straight girl) was also his first time and it was pretty adorable.
That was about 18 or more years ago. The two men are still together, they moved out of Cleveland and opened a gourmet bakery.
I knew one in college. He was a career military guy who was always single and always alcoholic. When he finally got out of service he joined AA and discovered he was gay. Last I knew him he was about 60 years old and had never actually hooked up with a man–didn’t have any expectations of ever doing it. Very invested in being gay, though. Walked around wearing a pink triangle necklace.
My cousin’s aunt (on the other side, obviously) got divorced a few years back around age 55 and is now married to her wife. I’m not close enough to her to start hitting her up for information about her new life and whether she was “closeted” or had some epiphany but she was married for a good 25-30 years with a couple now-adult children.
My mother.
My mom and dad were married 27 years before they divorced…My dad “came out” and lived a tremendously flamboyant 10 more years. His new partner was the one that contacted me to inform me of my fathers death.
Dads partner was a small town doctor who also came out after more than 25 years of marriage . Dr Doug took my family, including my other out for dinner to celebrate my fathers life. It was a very special occasion and i will always remember it fondly.
In retrospect we should have seen dad was gay. He was a Hospital administrator who LOVE playing his piano (mostly vibrant show tunes) he also was a very snappy dresser, a GREAT cook and very active in local theater…to me he was Dad.
… there’s all these jokes about sex rates in the Basque Country being low because of our women refusing to put out unless they’re really, really, really in the mood. Now you’re telling me that the problem is that our men can cook?
Well, how are they with show tunes?
My mom married at 19, had 4 kids, divorced around 30, remarried after a few years. And then in her late fifties, ran off with a girlfriend. They’ve been together nearly 3 decades - so now longer than her combined heterosexual marriages.
Several. Not as many as I used too, though, because my circle of gay/lesbian friends has grown smaller. Mostly men and women in their 40-50’s who were divorced and had grown children. In fact I was surprised at how many gay men had been married to women before. This was in the 90’s for the most part, so I think the social expectations of getting married and starting a family young was more prevalent during their youth. I don’t know very many in my own age group (late 40’s/Gen-X) right now, though. A few, but not many.
I would suspect quite a few, since homosexuality only been legal for a few years now.
I keed, I keed!
I know many many people who lived het lives for decades, had kids, then either realized they were gay or knew all along but followed social norms.
So bloody happy I was a generation later than most of them and I decided to skip the straight wedding/family routine and just come out (1978)!
On the celebrity side, there’s Meredith Baxter, Jim McGreevy and Peter Marc Jacobson.
I can’t claim to know what other people “legitimately considered themselves”, but off the top of my head I can think of half a dozen women I’ve known who were adults and had been married to men and often had children before coming out as lesbians. Mostly these were women of my parents’ generation, born in the 1950s/60s, so I don’t know how their lives would have played out if homosexuality had been more accepted when they were young.
…or maybe we should just grok that a certain subset of people are open to a relationship with either gender?
In other words, I suspect some of these people were bisexual rather than homo- or heterosexual.
(And yes, some were probably closeted gays)
Did you feel that you were taking advantage of them at all?
First of…you don’t switch/change your sexuality, don’t confuse it with sex (this one you can change). According to scientists 10% of people are heterosexual, 10% is homosexual, and 80% is between. Are these 80% bi? Not necessarily, it depends to what end of the equasion you’re closer to.
And now answering your questions: I personally don’t know anyone who ended up with the same sex after years of acting heterosexual, but my sociology teacher was telling us about her childhood friend’s mom. It’s a funny story! So, my teacher had a friend who’s dad wanted a threesome. The wife agreed, and they had sex with another woman. After that night nothing was the sam because the guy’s wife found out she finds women attractive! (and I guess she enjoyed this threesome more than her hubby 
). She never told her husband but when he died couple years later she actually ended up in a relationship with woman. They didn’t get married but they’re with each other over 25 years now. So, was she a lesbian? No. She definitely wasn’t because she was married to her husband and felt perfectly happy and normal. Was she bi? Maybe, not necessarily though because she didn’t feel this way towards women before she actually ended up being physical with one. So this woman was probably in this 80% closer to being heterosexual but still taking women into consideration. I hope I helped!