I’m curious as to what ages our LGBT members discovered that they were LGBT, and when (if at all) they came out.
So: Who are you? When did you discover yourself? When did you come out, to whom, and what was their reaction?
dunce hat
what’s LGBT?
/dunce hat
I can guess the L and the G, but I’m lost after that.
“Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender”
Google was my friend.
Well, I’m not all of those, but I started putting it together around puberty time and came out to my folks about a decade later. They were okay with it.
Okay enough that I wish I’d said something sooner; might have saved myself from jumping into a couple of relationships I shouldn’t have. Might not have, but you never know.
I was about 28 when I finally admitted to myself that those feelings I’d had since Junior High weren’t some demon trying to tempt me to sin*, but were innate and natural. I told my then wife when I was about 29. We separated and I started telling everyone else when I was 32.
*The fundamentalist Pentecostal church I grew up in taught that homosexuality was caused by a demon, or even Satan himself, tricking someone.
24 year old bi girl, but use the word queer because it’s easier, and more inclusive of who I am.
Discovered myself? I admitted to myself for the first time that I had feelings for both genders when I was in eighth grade, although I can remember feeling different since I was eight or nine.
The first person I came out to was my best friend, who was also gay, in high school, when I was fifteen. I didn’t come out to my parents until I was almost twenty. Still dealing with the parental reaction, five years later!
28-year-old gay guy. I came out at age 16 after trying to clamp down on the feelings for five years.
The first person I came out to was my best friend, which I did over the phone, and I couldn’t even say it – I had to hint. He was fairly okay with it, but most of my friends walked out on me a few months after I came out. I only kept two friends out of that mess.
My mother found out when I was 17 by listening in to my conversations and reading my journals. My sister told my father after I left in the middle of the night when I was 18.
Knew who and what I was in second grade (how old’s that?). Never really had to “come out,” it was pretty damn obvious from three states away.
I was 19 when I realized I was gay, and 20 when I first “came out”. How I first came out, and this is kind of a funny story in hindsight, even though it was stressful at the time, was like this:
I had just come to the realization that I was gay, and desperately needed to tell somebody. I don’t know if straight people can know how it feels to be closeted (and maybe other gay people can’t either…maybe it’s just me, but I don’t think so). You so desperately want to tell other people…to tell your friends and family, first because you love them and want to share who you are, and second, because, by telling them, you hope that maybe you won’t feel alone, because it gets really lonely having to put up emotional walls and having to censor yourself all the time, and you get really lonely and jealous when you see your straight friends having relationships and starting families, and you just want to have a piece of all that…just feel a part of it. At the same time, you’re scared out of your mind, and ashamed, and self-conscious. You walk around wondering if you seem gay to other people…if there’s some way other people can tell. Keeping this secret seems like one of the biggest things in the world to you, because you never know how other people will react if they find out, and the thoughts just go through your mind…“If I tell him, will he stop liking me? Will he treat me differently? Oh my god, what if I tell him and he thinks I’m hitting on him?” Stuff like that. Maybe it’s silly, but that’s just the way you feel.
Anyway, I finally decided to tell my best friend. I figured I had to tell somebody, and that I knew him better than any of my other friends. (Of course, at that point, telling my family was out of the question. All those fears you have that your friends will stop liking you, multiply 100 times when you’re dealing with your family. Plus, my family never really talks about “sex” anyway.) The thing is, though, my friend was, and still is, really conservative. I mean really conservative. The guy practically worships Reagan, loves Barry Goldwater, and thinks Rush Limbaugh is always right. So, I was maybe a little more nervous than usual. So, one night, we got together to have dinner , and I was really nervous, because I had decided to tell him. We have dinner, and I don’t tell him. We talk for a while, and I don’t tell him. He drives me back to my dorm, and I don’t tell him.
A little while later, he and I talk on the phone, and I figure, “Ok, now I’m going to tell him.” So, after we talk for a few minutes, I say,
“I have something to tell you. I’m gay.”
Absolute silence on the other end of the line. This goes on for about a minute, and all the time I’m thinking, “Oh shit, oh shit,ohshit,ohshit,ohshit. I’m a fucking idiot.” I wanted to sink down into the floor and stay there.
After about a minute, he says to me. “So am I”. After we both laugh hysterically for a little while, we talk about it. It turns out I was the first person he had told, also. So, I was lucky, and it worked out. Coming out does get easier as you do it. Right now, most of my friends know, my immediate family except for my grandmother, and now all of you guys.
I’m a 22 year old male bisexual. I first realized I liked guys sometime around the time when I was sixteen, admitted it to a few people over the next six years, and outed myself to everyon back in November.
As a direct consequence, I’m now living 2,500 miles from home.
I’ve always known I was gay. Ever since I can remember.
I came out on November 3, 1993 (I usually have a get together with close friends on that day as a minor celebration.) I went to the local LGBT youth center for the first time and someone asked if I was gay and I said yes.
The rest was pretty easy. I came out to my Aunt while she was doing my taxes in February. She was the first in my family and was so excited to hear the news that she asked if she could tell the rest of the family. My response? “Better you than me.” Sure, it was a bit of coward’s way out not to do it myself, but it gave them time to understand and react without me having to witness it. My mom said that although she had her suspicions, she was still surprised and was a bit sad at first but has completely been supportive ever since. As has the rest of the family.
What St.Pauler said: I’ve always known that I liked boys (particularly nekkid boys) in a way that other boys didn’t. I found out about my “special purpose*” it was (at risk of TMI) while watching the scene in Saturday Night Fever where Travolta stands in front of a mirror wearing bikini briefs- I was about 13. For years I had the “well, all boys sexually fantasize about other boys, particularly Chris M. who sits behind me in Geometry class and has those gorgeous lashes and that butt you could break a concrete block over… that’s just natural… I’m really attracted to girls… sorta kinda… well, not really… but it’ll come in time”. When I was about 19 I finally admitted to myself "I’m gay… there’s no bi or tri or anything else there… total Mo ([though, as I confessed in a recent MPSIMS post, I recently had “feelings” for a female co-worker]) and accepted- this was the very difficult part for me as it is for most gay males I would think- that marriage to a woman and 2.4 kids and backyard barbecues and PTA were just was not going to be an option for me.
At 21 I fell desperately in love with a co-worker who, though promiscuous as all hell, was closeted at work and he was the first person I told “my weetle secret” to. We had an incredibly passionate but sex-less affair (they are possible) for about two years (that was, I might add, quite effed up) during which time I was out to everybody but my family. After that relationship ended disastrously I was essentially asexual until I was 29 when I fell in love with a much younger co-worker (he had just turned 21) and we had a three year relationship and have remained very close friends ever since. A few months into the relationship my mother received a crash course in “Why it’s not a good idea not to read your son’s private e-mail” while using my computer and I was outted and, to put it mildly, it didn’t go well, though now years later it’s just the dead elephant in the room that we don’t talk about. I am completely out and have been for years.
(You’ve no idea how irritating it is to be a member of a demographic infamous for promiscuity and still not be able to get a date.)
Sorry- got off on an autobiography there- to answer your question more concisely- always knew on some level, acknowledged it as a teenager, became an active homo in my 20s.
*A euphemism borrowed from The Jerk
I had a similar experience in high-school. I had a major crush on my best friend (it was one of those “prison friendships”- we were both outsiders in a rural very small ultra-conservative school and formed a bond that pretty much evaporated upon graduation) but of course I could never admit to him that my feelings for him were more than just as a bud even though there were times I could swear he was flirting with me. A few years ago I learned that he is now one of the national leaders of the Log Cabin Republicans (and is on record ca. 2001 as saying “George Bush couldn’t care less what people do in their private life”).
Just as well really. I don’t know that I could really be emotionally healthy if I knew I had lost my virginity to a Republican. 
I recognized that I was bisexual when I was about 23, after I was already married. (Consequently, I’ve never done anything “with” it, so to speak. I call myself “uselessly bisexual.”) As for coming out, well, I’ll let you know when it happens. My husband knows, and the Dope knows. That’s about it. Friends and family are unawares. I don’t know when or if that’ll ever change, as the lack of openness about this currently causes no problems (and won’t unless something unspeakable happens to my husband and I’m suddenly in a position to consider having a relationship with a woman) and telling people, particularly my family, would cause problems which are simply unnecessary in my life.
I will admit that this does represent something of a dilemma for me. I’m an ardent supporter of GLBT rights, much to the chagrin of many in my life, but I don’t ever make it personal, and I’m sure that if I were to put my face into the equation, it might change some minds about some positions. But in other cases, it would create conflicts that I’m not prepared to deal with. Clearly, being quiet in my case, even given my situation, is in many respects flat out cowardly. I struggle with that. I struggle mightily. But right now external balance is winning in the fight against internal peace. Sad how that works.
25 year old lesbian. I’ve always kinda known. It really hit home when I was 11 or 12 and flipping through my mom’s “Our Bodies, Ourselves” section on lesbians. Sort of a Oh shit, that’s me reaction.
15 - Told my online best friend that I was “bi.” She didn’t take it well, and eventually it ended our friendship.
17 - I was out as bi at school, but not at home. My mother guessed (and unguessed, wee) off and on from about the time I was 16 until now. Since I was having girlfriends over, she probably knew more than she wanted to. She tries very hard, and has changed her political and religious leanings since gays are no longer “those people.”
18 - Lying in a man’s arms, I decided I was definitely gay. Poor guy.
25 - :eek: - Just came out to my dad. In the car. He took it very well. Since my parents are divorced, and I hardly see him, he doesn’t have to see it, but he had the typical Southern reaction, “Weylp, so long as you’re happy.”
Still not out to the extended family yet, which makes me feel like a coward. I felt my parents should know first. And then I hoped my parents would tell everyone else.
The worst part is having to constantly re-out myself when I change environments. I was out in high school, but had to start over in college. Then in grad school. Then at my job. I’m thinking about switching jobs now, and will have to out myself again. There’s always a cringing awkwardness, at least for me.
Good God, was that you?
So how you been? (And do you still have my Wham! T-shirt?)
:smack: So my rejection pushed you over the edge, eh?
45 yo. gay male here.
I noticed I had “weird feelings” about age 10 or 11. I couldn’t figure out why I thought the guys on the basketball team where so… alluring when I knew I was supposed to be attracted to girls.
By about 14 I had figured it out and kept it a secret, afraid that if someone did find out, I’d be beaten to a pulp. sigh
I officially came out on June 20th, 1980, my discharge date for the US navy. I’ve been happily homo (sapiens) ever since! 
If you count the first time you have sex, then I was fifteen. I knew it before then, though. That’s just the first time I acted on it. The coming out part was just gradual. First my younger brother and sister, then my next to oldest brother, a few friends and eventually my folks and my oldest brother caught on.
So, in high school I acted like everybody else most of the time. I “dated” this girl, as in went to dances, proms and such with her. I had sex with a few guys I came to know. In college it was easier even though it was a smaller school than my high school. Throughout my twenties I lived in my hometown which is about an hour south of Atlanta. On weekends I went to gay bars in Atlanta and slept around. Then, at 34, I fell in love. It was a relationship that lasted almost 14 years. We went our separate ways. He thought he found somebody else that was all better but turned out it wasn’t. His loss. 
Now, I’ve been seeing this guy who seems ok. Well, at least the police haven’t found any shallow graves in his back yard yet. It’s been interesting to “date” somebody steadily. Heck, we even went on a cruise with two other friends last week and shared a room together. I’m taking this one kinda slow and just seeing where it takes us.
Ok, now what was I talking about? Oh yeah. I count fifteen as the time I “knew” it and consider that to be when I came out. I’ve been out 35 years. I am so freakin’ old!