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You know, I know a guy that had to come out as straight.
Pretty fucking hilarious story.
Edit: decided to tell it here for ease of finding.
So, this story goes back to 1992. This was before the boom of awareness around gender and orientation, etc. That’s the key to the whole thing.
My buddy is this kinda goofy kid, never really fit in well, but ends up building a friend group in high school (including me). This group is unusually chill and inclusive for the era, and included three gay guys.
My buddy and one of the gay guys (also a buddy) fall in love. After we all graduate, they move in together, and live happily ever after. To appearances anyway.
Truth is, the guy really loves his partner. But he didn’t enjoy the sex. They try every combination they can think of, and it just doesn’t ever satisfy them both. However, the guy could orgasm from oral, and would do hand jobs, so they made it work, because love.
But, guy ends up meeting a woman at work. Ends up cheating, and the sex was fulfilling in a way sex with his partner wasn’t. He figures he’s actually bi, and once they move past the betrayal, it kinda helped.
But, the entire time, everyone not aware of the details just sees them as the perfect gay couple; and the guy was out as gay to everyone. And they really were a great couple. Finish each other’s sentences, silly in-jokes, outlasting every other relationship anyone in the friend group. It was only the sex that was bad. The guy’s partner is increasingly feeling undesired as the sex happens less and less.
Things come to a head around 2003. The partner cheated, and they decide to open the relationship. The guy starts seeing women for sex, the partner men. This works for a while, until the guy and the partner both fall in love with other people. Now, they kept all this private. It wasn’t until they broke up and started moving into their own places that anyone other than me and one other friend knew anything was wrong at all.
So, they’re apart, and people are surprised, extra so since they stayed friends. The guy, however, is fielding attempts to hook him up with other guys.
And that’s when he starts telling people he’s hetero. Which was not met with the kind of friendliness and open minded goodwill you might expect.
His parents were upset because, one, they felt they lost a son-in-law (despite the guys not having married); and two, that they had had a bumpy road to being parents of a gay son. They weren’t exactly overjoyed back when it all started. Some of the friend group were outright nasty about it, particularly one of the gay guys. His co-workers were largely unimpressed, but gossiped about it to the point that the guy quit and went elsewhere.
Hell, I was confused as all get out, and I was/am sort of the default “safe closet exit” person for my family. We had a conversation about it all, maybe three months after they split. I had known they had troubles, but the dude always said he was gay or bi, so it always seemed like things they were working on.
During that conversation, he talked about how much he loved his partner, and still did. But that it wasn’t fair to either of them to keep hurting each other by not being enough for each other, and expecting each other to keep trying anyway. He said that he’d never really liked men sexually, and had never had any sexual attraction to any other men than his now ex. He went into detail that I won’t share because he asked for me to never tell anyone, but suffice it to say that he tried really hard to be gay, and only gay.
So, some time passes, and he calls me out of the blue (which is rare because I’m known for not answering the phone, I check messages and call back, so ppl text me instead). He starts babbling joyous things about how he’s figured it all out.
He ran across the term “pan-romantic”. And it was a magic word that unlocked a lot of emotion for him, but it ended up being joyous. He is pan-romantic, but heterosexual. For him, it was proof that he wasn’t just weak, or didn’t love his partner enough, or a bad person, he just didn’t have fully matching romantic and sexual attractions. He could love anyone, under the right circumstances. It explained how he could have crushes on guys, and girls, but only ever sexually wanted women.
Seriously, he was on the phone with me for about three hours, just venting, and vacillating through emotions.
So, yeah, he found a label, an idea that finally gave him a way of thinking about himself that didn’t involve the shame and self hatred because he’s straight in almost every way except being able to love anyone. Love isn’t always enough, so he knows not to chase it with someone he won’t be sexually attracted to.
Now, I had to ask, “dude, how were you having sex with a guy if you weren’t sexually attracted to him?”
He thought that if he kept trying here and there, that maybe it would be enough. That it was his “duty” to do something, and it wasn’t so bad that he couldn’t do it at all, he’d just fantasize and get through it because he loved his partner.
But, yeah, dude had to fully come out, and he said it was just as nerve wracking as when he came out as gay back in the nineties, because “people thought I was joking, and then got mad because they thought I had betrayed gay people, or them by somehow changing. but I didn’t change, I just didn’t know.”
I sort of had that happen to me. In middle school, someone started a rumor that I was gay. This was early 90s, and I was young, so it bothered me. I was new to the district, and didn’t have many friends, and being called “gay” was something bad in my mind.
But then I suddenly had a bunch of friends who were being really supportive. Some were gay, some were straight, but everyone just encouraged each other to be who they are. I learned a lot from them about acceptance and being myself. Years passed.
But none of them ever asked me if I was gay. Anyone that asked, I would say “no, I’m straight.” Apparently people thought I was in denial.
But then I asked a girl out, and she was like, “Wait, but… Aren’t you gay?” The look on her face is seared into my subconscious. It was a mixture of confusion, betrayal, and contempt. Like I had been pretending to be gay to worm my way into her friendship, all the while being a lecherous creep waiting to strike.
Also it turns out, one of my gay friends was working up the courage to ask me out. It was the talk of the lunch table, except they had been keeping it from me because they didn’t want to embarrass our friend.
So I had to go to that friend and explain that I liked them as a friend, but I was not attracted to men. He then claimed that he wasn’t interested in me, which was really fucking confusing. And then I had to clarify to everyone at the lunch table that I was, and had always been, straight. Which is weird enough, but I had also now rejected one friend and creeped on another.
I honestly didn’t think anyone would be interested. If anything, I expected a blast of hate, since that’s what happened the last time I told the story.
But yeah, gimme a bit and I’ll come back. Kid’s sick, so we gotta do the doctor thing.
That’s funny that his parents were mad about it. I can just imagine them going, “Look, I know we talked about how sexuality isn’t a choice… but can’t you just choose to like dicks? It would make the conversations with the neighbors so much easier.”
Great story and well told. Beautiful really. Pan-romantic, I really like that. Wow there are so many gradations of sexuality and identity. I so wish we were talking about this shit when I was a kid.
So much time wasted trying to fit in the restrictive “straight” or “gay” buckets.
Still not as much as the guy in your story, but I can totally see how he could wind up in that situation given the cards dealt.
I know so many people that would have been better off with the range of definitions we have now, if only so they could self label and know what their feelings meant.
Like, demi-sexual. The folks I know that had a big aha! moment when they heard the term and its definition weren’t necessarily unable to find happiness, but they were always questioning what was “wrong” with them, when it’s something that’s common enough that there should have been a term for it all along.
Just that, the knowledge that a person isn’t alone or weird is such a powerful thing.
He extended it to “try anything once, twice to make sure I was right about not liking it the first time”.
He’s settled down and married now, but the stories he has because of his adventurousness are pretty fun to hear. He says he’s essentially hetero, but stuff with guys isn’t unpleasant, just not what he really likes for standard sex. He’ll top a guy bdsm wise, but doesn’t really enjoy sex with guys, in other words.
I’ve told him that he sure did a lot of it for something he isn’t into lol.
My friend decided he was bi, but preferared men for the sex and hangouts, women for deeper friendship and intellectual compatibilities. But we’re in the Bible Belt where “it’s only gay if you don’t flaunt toxic masculinity,” so I’m relatively a sure that’s a factor.
Ngl, there’s been a few times I’ve been a little jealous of bi folks. I’ve had guys flirt, and outright hit on me, that were objectively gorgeous, and great dudes too, but it just isn’t there for me.
But I’ve also been real lucky in finding male friends that are capable of really deep, emotionally supportive friendship, then being as good a friend as I know how to be. Gay and straight, even here in Appalachia, I’ve had amazing luck finding good guys that break out of toxic masculinity to be around. It’s a minority, unfortunately, but I’ll take it.
That’s so great, I’m happy you’ve had those experiences. I do so wish that for everyone. Deep emotional friendships are real blessings, and having one real friend is so much more than a lot of people seem to have, regardless of gender. I feel so lucky to have a few good friends. When sharing sorrow, the burden is lightened, when sharing not, it’s vastly multiplied. I would wish at least one really good friendship on every person in the world. How much happier a place the world would be, with the added bonus that really good friends encourage our better impulses and show us reasons not to act on our worst ones.
I had the opposite experience, pansexual but homoromantic, neraly married a woman I thought I loved, sex was amazing and I thought what I felt was love through the eyes of an autistic person, but after she broke up with me and I finally had my first boyfriend, everything clicked.
You can’t miss what you have never had, but once you discover your true self, there is no going back.
Makes total sense to me. He loved his husband and wanted him to be happy, but wasn’t sexually attracted to him. But not a homophobe, so willing to try to make husband happy.
A friend of mine came out as straight to his parents, because he understood that this is someone one does when becoming aware of one’s sexuality, and as a young teen, he had his first crush on a girl. A few years later, he came out as bi.
Edit: just finished reading your story properly and it’s really sweet, thanks for sharing. I find the split model of attraction (romantic/sexual) super useful because of situations like your friend’s; like many bisexuals, I had a period of being “am I ace tho? What even is attraction?” and even though I’m securely bi now so nothing has changed, I appreciate some of the terms and frameworks I’ve picked up from the ace community. Invisible members of the queer community solidarity!
You know, I know a guy that had to come out as straight.
Pretty fucking hilarious story.
Edit: decided to tell it here for ease of finding.
So, this story goes back to 1992. This was before the boom of awareness around gender and orientation, etc. That’s the key to the whole thing.
My buddy is this kinda goofy kid, never really fit in well, but ends up building a friend group in high school (including me). This group is unusually chill and inclusive for the era, and included three gay guys.
My buddy and one of the gay guys (also a buddy) fall in love. After we all graduate, they move in together, and live happily ever after. To appearances anyway.
Truth is, the guy really loves his partner. But he didn’t enjoy the sex. They try every combination they can think of, and it just doesn’t ever satisfy them both. However, the guy could orgasm from oral, and would do hand jobs, so they made it work, because love.
But, guy ends up meeting a woman at work. Ends up cheating, and the sex was fulfilling in a way sex with his partner wasn’t. He figures he’s actually bi, and once they move past the betrayal, it kinda helped.
But, the entire time, everyone not aware of the details just sees them as the perfect gay couple; and the guy was out as gay to everyone. And they really were a great couple. Finish each other’s sentences, silly in-jokes, outlasting every other relationship anyone in the friend group. It was only the sex that was bad. The guy’s partner is increasingly feeling undesired as the sex happens less and less.
Things come to a head around 2003. The partner cheated, and they decide to open the relationship. The guy starts seeing women for sex, the partner men. This works for a while, until the guy and the partner both fall in love with other people. Now, they kept all this private. It wasn’t until they broke up and started moving into their own places that anyone other than me and one other friend knew anything was wrong at all.
So, they’re apart, and people are surprised, extra so since they stayed friends. The guy, however, is fielding attempts to hook him up with other guys.
And that’s when he starts telling people he’s hetero. Which was not met with the kind of friendliness and open minded goodwill you might expect.
His parents were upset because, one, they felt they lost a son-in-law (despite the guys not having married); and two, that they had had a bumpy road to being parents of a gay son. They weren’t exactly overjoyed back when it all started. Some of the friend group were outright nasty about it, particularly one of the gay guys. His co-workers were largely unimpressed, but gossiped about it to the point that the guy quit and went elsewhere.
Hell, I was confused as all get out, and I was/am sort of the default “safe closet exit” person for my family. We had a conversation about it all, maybe three months after they split. I had known they had troubles, but the dude always said he was gay or bi, so it always seemed like things they were working on.
During that conversation, he talked about how much he loved his partner, and still did. But that it wasn’t fair to either of them to keep hurting each other by not being enough for each other, and expecting each other to keep trying anyway. He said that he’d never really liked men sexually, and had never had any sexual attraction to any other men than his now ex. He went into detail that I won’t share because he asked for me to never tell anyone, but suffice it to say that he tried really hard to be gay, and only gay.
So, some time passes, and he calls me out of the blue (which is rare because I’m known for not answering the phone, I check messages and call back, so ppl text me instead). He starts babbling joyous things about how he’s figured it all out.
He ran across the term “pan-romantic”. And it was a magic word that unlocked a lot of emotion for him, but it ended up being joyous. He is pan-romantic, but heterosexual. For him, it was proof that he wasn’t just weak, or didn’t love his partner enough, or a bad person, he just didn’t have fully matching romantic and sexual attractions. He could love anyone, under the right circumstances. It explained how he could have crushes on guys, and girls, but only ever sexually wanted women.
Seriously, he was on the phone with me for about three hours, just venting, and vacillating through emotions.
So, yeah, he found a label, an idea that finally gave him a way of thinking about himself that didn’t involve the shame and self hatred because he’s straight in almost every way except being able to love anyone. Love isn’t always enough, so he knows not to chase it with someone he won’t be sexually attracted to.
Now, I had to ask, “dude, how were you having sex with a guy if you weren’t sexually attracted to him?”
He thought that if he kept trying here and there, that maybe it would be enough. That it was his “duty” to do something, and it wasn’t so bad that he couldn’t do it at all, he’d just fantasize and get through it because he loved his partner.
But, yeah, dude had to fully come out, and he said it was just as nerve wracking as when he came out as gay back in the nineties, because “people thought I was joking, and then got mad because they thought I had betrayed gay people, or them by somehow changing. but I didn’t change, I just didn’t know.”
That’s the story
I sort of had that happen to me. In middle school, someone started a rumor that I was gay. This was early 90s, and I was young, so it bothered me. I was new to the district, and didn’t have many friends, and being called “gay” was something bad in my mind.
But then I suddenly had a bunch of friends who were being really supportive. Some were gay, some were straight, but everyone just encouraged each other to be who they are. I learned a lot from them about acceptance and being myself. Years passed.
But none of them ever asked me if I was gay. Anyone that asked, I would say “no, I’m straight.” Apparently people thought I was in denial.
But then I asked a girl out, and she was like, “Wait, but… Aren’t you gay?” The look on her face is seared into my subconscious. It was a mixture of confusion, betrayal, and contempt. Like I had been pretending to be gay to worm my way into her friendship, all the while being a lecherous creep waiting to strike.
Also it turns out, one of my gay friends was working up the courage to ask me out. It was the talk of the lunch table, except they had been keeping it from me because they didn’t want to embarrass our friend.
So I had to go to that friend and explain that I liked them as a friend, but I was not attracted to men. He then claimed that he wasn’t interested in me, which was really fucking confusing. And then I had to clarify to everyone at the lunch table that I was, and had always been, straight. Which is weird enough, but I had also now rejected one friend and creeped on another.
Wow that’s a crazy situation haha
Well, are you going to tell us the story?
I honestly didn’t think anyone would be interested. If anything, I expected a blast of hate, since that’s what happened the last time I told the story.
But yeah, gimme a bit and I’ll come back. Kid’s sick, so we gotta do the doctor thing.
Apparently not.
Edited it in
That’s funny that his parents were mad about it. I can just imagine them going, “Look, I know we talked about how sexuality isn’t a choice… but can’t you just choose to like dicks? It would make the conversations with the neighbors so much easier.”
His dad actually said “but we were so nice about it!”
Edited it in to the original comment
Wow, that was pretty wild. Thanks for taking the time to type that out, it was well worth the wait.
No worries :)
I mean, we all know a guy like this. He’s a major bogie on the gaydar and then you find out he bangs chicks and seems to enjoy it.
Great story and well told. Beautiful really. Pan-romantic, I really like that. Wow there are so many gradations of sexuality and identity. I so wish we were talking about this shit when I was a kid.
So much time wasted trying to fit in the restrictive “straight” or “gay” buckets.
Still not as much as the guy in your story, but I can totally see how he could wind up in that situation given the cards dealt.
I know so many people that would have been better off with the range of definitions we have now, if only so they could self label and know what their feelings meant.
Like, demi-sexual. The folks I know that had a big aha! moment when they heard the term and its definition weren’t necessarily unable to find happiness, but they were always questioning what was “wrong” with them, when it’s something that’s common enough that there should have been a term for it all along.
Just that, the knowledge that a person isn’t alone or weird is such a powerful thing.
Had a younger friend multiple decades ago who routinely defined himself as trisexual, in that he was open to try various sexualities.
Yah, I know a guy like that :)
He extended it to “try anything once, twice to make sure I was right about not liking it the first time”.
He’s settled down and married now, but the stories he has because of his adventurousness are pretty fun to hear. He says he’s essentially hetero, but stuff with guys isn’t unpleasant, just not what he really likes for standard sex. He’ll top a guy bdsm wise, but doesn’t really enjoy sex with guys, in other words.
I’ve told him that he sure did a lot of it for something he isn’t into lol.
My friend decided he was bi, but preferared men for the sex and hangouts, women for deeper friendship and intellectual compatibilities. But we’re in the Bible Belt where “it’s only gay if you don’t flaunt toxic masculinity,” so I’m relatively a sure that’s a factor.
Ngl, there’s been a few times I’ve been a little jealous of bi folks. I’ve had guys flirt, and outright hit on me, that were objectively gorgeous, and great dudes too, but it just isn’t there for me.
But I’ve also been real lucky in finding male friends that are capable of really deep, emotionally supportive friendship, then being as good a friend as I know how to be. Gay and straight, even here in Appalachia, I’ve had amazing luck finding good guys that break out of toxic masculinity to be around. It’s a minority, unfortunately, but I’ll take it.
That’s so great, I’m happy you’ve had those experiences. I do so wish that for everyone. Deep emotional friendships are real blessings, and having one real friend is so much more than a lot of people seem to have, regardless of gender. I feel so lucky to have a few good friends. When sharing sorrow, the burden is lightened, when sharing not, it’s vastly multiplied. I would wish at least one really good friendship on every person in the world. How much happier a place the world would be, with the added bonus that really good friends encourage our better impulses and show us reasons not to act on our worst ones.
Wow, labels can be so stupid. I’m glad he found something that works. 👍
Jocat
I had the opposite experience, pansexual but homoromantic, neraly married a woman I thought I loved, sex was amazing and I thought what I felt was love through the eyes of an autistic person, but after she broke up with me and I finally had my first boyfriend, everything clicked.
You can’t miss what you have never had, but once you discover your true self, there is no going back.
Makes total sense to me. He loved his husband and wanted him to be happy, but wasn’t sexually attracted to him. But not a homophobe, so willing to try to make husband happy.
Thanks for sharing this, it was nice to read.
A friend of mine came out as straight to his parents, because he understood that this is someone one does when becoming aware of one’s sexuality, and as a young teen, he had his first crush on a girl. A few years later, he came out as bi.
Edit: just finished reading your story properly and it’s really sweet, thanks for sharing. I find the split model of attraction (romantic/sexual) super useful because of situations like your friend’s; like many bisexuals, I had a period of being “am I ace tho? What even is attraction?” and even though I’m securely bi now so nothing has changed, I appreciate some of the terms and frameworks I’ve picked up from the ace community. Invisible members of the queer community solidarity!