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I'm not gay

"I'm not gay."  How many times did I say this to myself and to other people?  How many times did I wish it was true?  I don't know, but I can think of several examples.  In the diary that I kept as a Mormon missionary, one day I wrote about the son of a less active member that we went to visit.  These are my exact words "We met her son, who's 18 and HE LIKES MATH! I instantly fell in love with him when he told me that (now don't take that the wrong way--I'm a missionary and I'm not gay)."

Another occasion that sticks out in my mind involves my father-in-law.  When I was trying to overcome my addiction to pornography, I signed up for a net nanny service called Covenant Eyes, which I would suggest to anyone looking to overcome a porn addiction.  It would alert him any time that I looked at porn on my computer.  Well, one time I did look and the stuff I looked at was (obviously) gay porn.  I felt the need to email him and reassure him.  These were my exact words "I just wanted to make it clear that I'm not gay myself, I just find a variety of images intriguing and that's what happened to come up at the moment."  This one, of course, was a complete lie.  It wasn't "what just happened to come up", it was what I was looking for.  And that's the only kind of stuff I ever looked for.

Finally, on many occasions, I would say that I would never marry a man.  It would happen when people were discussing the topic of sexism.  I said that in some cases sexism is good.  Then, as an example, I would say "I will never marry a man.  That's sexist."  (Yes, it actually is discrimination, but not in the way the word is usually meant.)  Anyway, that ended up being false.  I haven't yet, simply because the law won't allow it, but I will one day marry a man.

What intrigues me is the level to which I was dishonest about myself.  I lied to myself and I lied to other people.  There are times when I even had myself convinced that I wasn't really gay.  But now I know I've been gay my whole life and I'm okay with that.  In fact, I'm proud of that.

But it makes me wonder.  What else am I being dishonest about?  The thing that triggered this post was a thread on my Facebook wall.  I posted a link to Fab.com and asked the question "Should I be more concerned about my appearance?"  And the truth is that I am concerned about my appearance.  I will say things like "I don't care how I look" and "Clothing is stupid anyway".  But the truth is that I want to look nice.  When I look in the mirror, I want to see a sexy man staring back at me (which I do see, when Conrad's in the bathroom with me :).  I want to wear cute clothes.  I want to have a sexy haircut.  I want to be attractive.  But I lie to myself and say it's not important.  I wear baggy t-shirts and gym shorts that say I don't care how I look.

What else am I lying about?  What else have I deceived even myself about?  How shall I go about detecting these lies and being more authentic?  How should I make myself more me?  Most importantly, what can I do to help people who come behind me (future generations, friends, family) to be able to show off their true selves rather than lie as I have done?  What can I do to engender an atmosphere more conducive to the authenticity of others?

Comments

  1. We all have lots of complex motivations, and some of them are not even conscious. The fact that you try to pretend that you don't care about your experience isn't really un-authentic. To me it would be more likely that you want to be the kind of person who doesn't really care what people think, or put importance on whether other guys check you out. Of course it feels good to be checked out, but if you are purposely downplaying that urge because of the type of person your are, then you are not being inauthentic. ie You can see yourself as wanting to be a moral or courageous person, and therefore you try suppress the part of you that is immoral or cowardly. I agree that you were deceiving yourself about your orientation, and we all deceive ourselves about a million things every day, and it it useful to try to recognize this as a way of improving our happiness and our relationships. This is universal. Even Mother Theresa did it.

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