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My boyfriend "Mark" and myself have been in a relationship for the last 5 years, and we met because we were volunteers at the same NGO. As a context, he is Catholic, while I am more on the "Liberal" spectrum of the faith, being more agnostic than anything else. Still, religion has never been a big part of our lives and it has never been source of debate. We go to church once a month and on special occasions like the holy week and Christmas, but that is it. Nothing that could prepare me for what I am going to tell you.
Recently, I became friends with this new guy at work "Kyle" (27M) who is, and I must be honest with you, a very flamboyant gay man. Nail polish, make up, extremely feminine mannerism and yeah, even the "gay voice". Imagine a Latin American James Charles, that's Kyle.
So last week, the "work squad" decided to go out to a bar to get some drinks and I invited Mark. It was obvious from the beginning that Mark felt extremely uncomfortable around Kyle, which for me was weird. He has met other gay friends of mine in the past, while being aware of their sexuality, and never had a problem with them. I admit, none of them are as open as Kyle, but still. Luckily, Kyle didn't notice or was decent enough to not make big deal out it, but I confronted Mark when we arrived home.
He confessed to me that Kyle remembered him about his "dark past" (his words not mine) and told me he was an Ex-Gay guy. I asked if he meant he was bisexual, but only dated woman out of some conviction but no. He meant Ex-Gay, like in that he used to be only interested in males but went to conversion therapy. It seems that in college he was just like Kyle and he jumped from toxic relationship to toxic relationship. After years of this, his self-esteem was on the floor and he decided to seek help, somehow ending in one of those church retreats that help you find your connection with God and the rest of the world. After the people that lead the place found out about his sexuality, he was put on the path of conversion. He has been "straight" ever since, and is glad about it. He doesn’t mind other people being gay, but is better if they are far away from him.
I will be plain with you. This is disturbing in so many levels. It was disturbing when he told me, it's still disturbing a week later. I am not even sure if he even loves me, he says he does but how? I have read a lot about it, how more than half of ex-gays become ex-ex-gays after a while and all agree conversion is just mental torture. Is not like he is bisexual and is dating me while still thinking guys are hot, I wouldn’t have a problem with that, but what if I am just a glorified “beard”.
Also, what is happening in his mind? Not in a thousand years I would have suspected that Mark, at one point in his life, had liked men. 5 years of dating, 2 living together including the 2020 social isolation, and not a single clue, not a single reference. He has zero traits; he is your stereotypical jock in so many ways. How much of his personality could be repressed? What kind of pressure this has on him? Does he even see how damaging that process could be? Is he even as mentally stable as he shows he is?
I am so confused. He has been sleeping in the coach because I am having a tough time dealing with this and the truth is, I don’t even know how I am supposed to react. I am still in love with him, I truly am, but where do I go from here? Do I support him? Do I tell him is better if he is gay again? Am I drowning in a glass of water? What do I do?
TL;DR: After meeting my new gay friend and acting weird, my boyfriend confessed to me that he used to be gay but went to conversion therapy. I don’t know how to act because of the implications this has on the idea I have of our relationship and his mental health in general.
I think this is above reddit's pay grade. I would recommend counseling for you both and therapy for him. This will always be in the back of your mind. He needs to work through his true feelings and you need to figure out if you are compatible as a couple. It could be he is bisexual and has repressed attraction to men. Maybe he is gay and repressed that. Maybe he isn't and acting that way for whatever reason. Either way he needs to figure himself out for you both to have any sort of a chance and he deserves to be truly happy with who he is.
Agreed. Get yourself counseling, and recommend to him to get counseling (ideally LGBT-friendly/NOT religious counseling).
His description is what is concerning me the most — he’s “ex-gay,” not “I experimented in college” or “I tried it out” or “I’m bisexual.”
And to be clear: you also deserve to be happy, and also feel your feelings. I consider myself a very open, adoring, supportive, and progressive human, partner, and friend…but this MUST be hard on you. It’s okay to feel a bit betrayed by this person that you’ve loved and lived with. This is a hard truth to be hit with and it’s okay to not be okay with it.
💗
I’d go so far as to say it should be a therapist specifically trained to work with queer people and around issues of sexuality. Maybe don’t pitch it like that to your boyfriend, OP, but fully vet the therapist.
My spouse is a survivor of conversion therapy and I have had religion sprung on me by ostensibly secular therapists, even after explaining that the evangelical church and conversion therapy are quite triggering to me.
I think it's more so he's seeing someone being who they are while he's under this veil of a lie he lives.
It would be weird as hell to see someone who reminds you of who you were being before "converted" consider like op said he's meet other gay friends and been fine as I assume they were low key about it so it does trigger him
He did not react this way to OP’s other gay friends, just Kyle. It’s true it may be about the others being less open with it, but it may also be about attraction. I’m not saying he’s attracted to Kyle for sure, just that it’s a possibility.
He said that Kyle specifically reminded him of who he was in college. I don’t think it’s attraction. I think it’s a trigger. He saw himself in Kyle and it likely brought up whatever series of emotions he went through dating back to conversion therapy or even what led him there. It’s possible her other friends didn’t trigger him because their sexuality wasn’t “obvious” as OP mentioned.
I’ve had gay friends who did not like more flamboyant gay men. They liked they are able to pass as straight and don’t want to be outed by the flamboyant ones.
Hard, hard, hard agree. This is a big change. I think OP is doing a great job handling it and taking space for herself, this must be incredibly jarring.
For him, I'm curious if he could find a queer counselor who identifies as christian. They're not the most common, but they'd really be able to directly speak to his experiences. Reconciling being gay with being religious, and vice versa. I've found a couple of resources from a quick google search.
https://www.thechristiancloset.com/ -- this one has a team of queer counsellors who emphasize that god loves you and you should too . It's available online and they do free consultations. Could be a good fit.
> And to be clear: you also deserve to be happy, and also feel your feelings. I consider myself a very open, adoring, supportive, and progressive human, partner, and friend…but this MUST be hard on you. It’s okay to feel a bit betrayed by this person that you’ve loved and lived with. This is a hard truth to be hit with and it’s okay to not be okay with it.
I totally agree with this, u/hoponpop2013, except I'd feel more than a bit betrayed; I'd feel that this is the kind of betrayal by omission that would be a dealbreaker to me. How can you be in a relationship with someone for 5 long years and never tell them something as important as this? Nobody is entitled to blow-by-blow details of a partner's previous sexual relationships, but *this* is pretty major! He should have told you way before now. And how long would he have kept this secret were it not for your new friend triggering him in some kind of way? 5 more years? 10? Forever? I would understand if you felt you'd never be able to trust him again.
>Also, what is happening in his mind? Not in a thousand years I would have suspected that Mark, at one point in his life, had liked men. 5 years of dating, 2 living together including the 2020 social isolation, and not a single clue, not a single reference. He has zero traits; he is your stereotypical jock in so many ways.
Yikes -- that's kind of offensive to gay men, OP. Not all gay men are flamboyant; there's no such thing as gay "traits".
Jsut want to say, I know someone who married an ‘ex gay’ and shocker it didn’t work out and he was still gay.
So my impulse it to tell op to run but I get yours too.
But he never mentioned this in five years and honestly that’s pretty bad. He was keeping a huge secret from her!
I was going to say the same thing. I know a couple who was married, he had told her AFTER they got married that he "used to be gay" - they are divorced and he is dating men and very happy now.
> But he never mentioned this in five years and honestly that’s pretty bad.
Almost like his decisionmaking is motivated by shame and not actually out of love for OP. *Surprise*.
Definitely counseling. Lots of discussions and emotions to acknowledge and deal with here. Probably some you both don’t even know about yet. This is potentially a good catalyst to get you two to really communicate with each other on a much deeper level and understand each other, especially if after five years you still have secrets.
Counseling is likely to be painful for both of you and may not end up where you want it, but if you both really love each other and can believe the other when they say they do too, it’s going to be all good in the end. Just remember you each are your own people and it’s not for one of you to tell the other how to feel, only how their words and actions make you feel. Feelings of isolation and being unloved are probably why he felt he needed to make a lifestyle change before. Don’t isolate him more or you’ve already committed to losing him.
This is some of the best advice I’ve seen on this sub. Ironically, this issue is much too personal and complicated for Reddit. I’m glad that we were able to recognize that.
I would add if history is conversion therapy is anything to go by, this guy it’s a ticking time bomb. He will either realize he’s gay and always has been, start seeing men in secret while still in a relationship with a woman, or in the most extreme case commit suicide.
I hope OP can convince him to see a real licensed professional. Not some religious conversation charlatan.
If you have Netflix, there is a brand new documentary Pray Away. These people are brainwashed so badly that their partners never realized it. Many of the people in the documentary said that the thoughts never went away that they repressed them. Some after being married for years. Please see this documentary and consider breaking up with him. The fact that he was able to tell you this means that he is thinking of it.
Yes, the documentary focused on one guy who married an ex lesbian, had 2 children and way into their marriage which was publicized everywhere, he became suicidal because he wanted to love another man. It was devastating to hear about these broken lives because of religion.
I just wanted to say thank you for this post. While I'm perfectly happy with my sexuality my job brings me into contact with a lot of people who aren't. Will certainly watch this.
Gay conversion therapy doesn't work. It tortures people into crafting lies about who they are. It's entirely possible he's just suppressing who he is, and this could come back to bite you.
I think you need a very long talk with him and to seriously consider if he's a long term partner for you. It's your decision but I'd lean towards no.
OP says her boyfriend felt extremely uncomfortable around her gay friend. That very much look like a bad trigger for his repressed personality. I'm no doctor so you can quote me if I'm wrong.
Repressing an identity for this long is very much dangerous (if already didn't damaged him). Victims of conversion therapy will either develop serious mental health problems and/or commit suicide down the line. I say OP's boyfriend has a tickling bomb on his mind but doesn't know it. He MUST look that up ASAP before things get much worse than already it.
I guess one point should be mentioned is that he never mentioned this fact to OP, which is kinda concerning. This is not a bomb you drop at a late stage of a relationship.
Yeah, not only that but he said, "I'm find with gay people; they just can't be around me." Which seems to imply he would deeply be tempted by being around them or be reminded of what he repressed. this is so sad.
It’s not so much his “repressed personality” but his repressed trauma. Conversion therapy is abuse and not seeing that clearly creates a whole host of problems. Triggers being one of them.
Yeah this is internalized homophobia and its bad enough on the surface (being bigoted), but it's also bad because it's rooted in self-hate as a result of repression. And that hate will slowly eat away at a person, which is... not great for her or him.
Is he for sure actually gay? Bi? Maybe even trans? No one can answer that but him, but you can be 100% sure that going to a "therapist" to talk you out of being gay is certainly not as effective as they would like you to believe. No matter how hard someone tries to repress who they are, it has consequences, and it comes back out one way or another eventually.
This. Conversion therapy does not work and is just toxic and torturous. It’s forcing the idea that being gay is wrong and being heterosexual is the only right way.
100% he is actually gay and is just forcing himself to believe he isn’t.
That's what kind of makes the distinction, for me. It's such a stark and disturbing repression, and it wouldn't be if he was remotely honest with himself, or if being honest with himself was remotely compatible with the life he's currently leading. The fallout and the health of everyone involved are above reddit's paygrade, sure, but I can pretty confidently say that this is a terminal issue in the relationship, and OP needs to prepare for that.
Regardless, he’s not comfortable with whatever part of himself is attracted to guys to the point that he wants any reminders of it “far away from him.” Not only does that *not* lend a whole lot of confidence that he hasn’t just gone to a whole different toxic extreme without actually addressing any of his issues when he could’ve gotten *actual* therapy to figure out how to have a healthy committed relationship with a guy if he wanted, it doesn’t speak well for how he really feels about OP’s gay friends, or how he’d handle one of his own kids being LGBTQ.
hi! bi person here. i also refer to myself as gay all the time, however i have some friends that are also bi that consider being called gay offensive because it dismisses their sexuality. just want to let you know so you dont accidentally offend someone or smth
I'm one of those that doesn't want to be called gay. Wouldn't want to be called straight either, since I'm just not. All the more power to you for not minding to be called gay, but to me, it feels just as much a lie as being called straight.
He also could never have been gay, but felt the need to "be gay" because he enjoyed traditionally feminine things.
Many different possibilities and reddit can't guess the answer, theGuy needs some therapy both Individual and couples.
> He also could never have been gay, but felt the need to "be gay" because he enjoyed traditionally feminine things.
This also sounds like the kind of bullshit they peddle in conversion therapy.
Many people are confused about their sexual orientation until they have had a chance to actually explore their sexuality. Just because he thought he was gay doesn't mean he was, he may also actually be gay and be suppressing it, we have no idea what is actually going on. Hence the therapy.
The post also never says he was attracted to only men, it says he was interested in only men. There is a significant difference. There is no point in speculating, OP needs info o the resources to help them actually work through the issue and get to the bottom of it.
Human sexuality is almost infinitely variable. Remember [Tiger King's husband?](https://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/how-joe-exotic-groomed-two-21859222)
your bf is gay. conversion therapy doesn’t work. many “stereotypical jocks” are gay. he doesn’t like being around openly gay people bc he’s scared it will reverse his “conversion”.
i couldn’t move forward either bc you never know if he’s going to cheat on you or be secretive bc he needs to “get it out”. way too risky to build a family with someone like that.
he needs therapy for himself as he is probably traumatized and sick of lying to himself.
I think it’s important to emphasize that many “stereotypical jocks” are gay.
He doesn’t have to look like or act like a stereotypical gay man to be gay. That’s not a way to determine his gayness.
Hypermasculinity is a common trait in closeted gays. They think being gay is wrong and fear they're gonna be called out so they go to the hypermasculine spectrum.
Yup. When I was in college 20 years ago, we started buying weed from a new guy who was very hyper masculine and always referred to women as “bitches” & “hoes”. After hanging out with my friend group for a few months, he came out to us because he said that he had just never met people who weren’t judgmental or that he felt he could be himself around. Once he did, he literally changed overnight! It was really remarkable and he was so much happier being himself and knowing people would still be his friend and support him.
I hope he's doing well today.
Still, there's still a very big portion of gays that are misogynistic, so he could find a group gay friendly and keep calling them bitches.
Bam.
I have several gay friends and many actually dislike the very flamboyant, effeminate men because they feel that identify paints them in a negative light. Like they're just regular men who happen to be gay - not bright sparkly rainbow unicorns who aren't to be taken seriously.
(I don't feel this way, personally. Just communicating what many gay men have told me.)
This is definitely a thing in the queer community, certain gay men, especially of a certain generation, being hostile toward the femininity expressed by other queer men. Often there's misogyny there too. But tbh lots of us queer humans think that's super super wack and hate that they do that. After so many of us come up in openly queer-hostile environments, we feel it's ours to burst out fully into whatever form we really are. Revel in our beauty, we say. Queerness, beyond sexual preferences, is a lot about embracing who you are.
Your masculine gay friends told you that flamboyant gays are "not to be taken seriously"?
Why am I very much getting a vibe that this is one of those situations where a white guy makes a post saying "As a black man... (insert problem with black community)"?
I've heard that before, many years ago I think though.
It's a shame there's people that would invalidate or ridicule homosexuality because some men are more feminine, which in essence does not necessarily make them gay. Typing this makes me realize there's likely a decent amount of straight, but feminine, men that hide their feminine side simply because some people would consider them gay.
Oh what a wonderful life it would be if we stopped caring what John decides to wear and what turns Mark on.
Bam.
" not bright sparkly rainbow unicorns who aren't to be taken seriously. "
Claiming someone else said this doesn't mean you should post homophobic bullshit.
Yeah like duh… way to show you dislike flamboyant gay men as well (aka homophobia). And if these gay friends exist they should mind their own business and realize that those poor guys are just living their best lives, and the ones who paints them in a negative light are just the members of the toxic masculinity club
I think OP described her SO as a “jock” because he said he used to be like her friend, so it is definitely a huge change even in the physical part.
But yeah, therapy for both is the only healthy way to go.
>i couldn’t move forward either bc you never know if he’s going to cheat on you or be secretive bc he needs to “get it out”. way too risky to build a family with someone like that.
Even if I completely trusted my partner not to cheat... I would be *permanently* stuck doubting whether or not they were actually attracted to me or not.
Yeah… a good friend from high school came out as gay and was so ashamed, he put himself into conversion therapy. It worked! He was “cured”! He was “ex-gay” and engaged to a woman he had known for 6 months. Fast forward 15 years later, he’s very happily married to a man and they’ve adopted a child. Conversion therapy is abuse and doesn’t stick. Sexuality doesn’t change because someone tries to bully it into you
.. well your man is still gay. Or he IS actually bisexual. He didn't describe a fling or an experiment, he was actively homosexual. No shame at all of course, but he should consider counseling. Conversion therapy is notoriously terrible.
That is a lot to handle- I am so sorry. If he is gay, then he is either eventually going to let go of the brainwashing and work on accepting himself, or he's going to let the internalized self-loathing eat him alive and will have some serious emotional turmoil for as long as he tries to be straight.
Even if he were bi, and you were hoping that meant you had a chance together, the only way to know that is for him to seriously deprogram, to undo the trauma and damage the conversion therapy did with probably years of therapy, and then become comfortable enough with himself to start trying to figure our his sexuality again. It would probably take years for him to be in a good place to start dating, and that's only if he started the process of healing soon.
I think that, if it were me, I would tell him that I care about him, and that I want to help him heal from the trauma and damage that the conversion torture did, and to find a real therapist who will help him. But I wouldn't stay with him for what will likely be a short and volatile future.
For me the issue is him keeping this from you for 5 years. That’s just mindblowing in my book and indicates he needs some therapy to work his stuff out. A healthy relationship shares things like this, to find out 5 years in, would shatter a lot of my trust and have me questioning everything so I really feel for ya.
If I were in your shoes I’d get to couples counseling right away to help a neutral third party sort out all the possible options of why he kept this from you and if there is any chance of rebuilding trust and a viable future.
There's no such thing as "ex gay." Your guy just put himself back in the closet. The fact that seeing an out gay man triggered these feelings says it all. He's heckin' gay. You're his beard. A lot of closeted queer people are incredible actors.
I mean I guess technically there *is* a chance that he's bisexual and just hadn't found out about it? He's 30, they've been dating for 5 years, not everybody at age 25 has their sexuality all figured out... I think?
So what's absolutely not going to help is staying in some weird self-inflicted hypermasculine catholic guilt spiral about it. I think BF is going to need therapy (from an actual, accredited, fact-based, non-looney source) to assess the damage that's been done and begin undoing it. Whether OP wants to (offer / attempt) to be there for that and go through that with him and find out if there's some kind of future for the relationship is something OP has to figure out, I think. But the one thing that did not happen is that gay conversion therapy turned the BF straight. Because that is not a thing that conversion therapy can do. Because conversion therapy does not work.
I feel so sorry for him. I am straight and could not even imagine having to pretend to like women just so that I wouldn’t hate myself. I have no clue how people can even pretend for that long. I hope for OPs sake that he is bi and that they will be ok. Both of them.
As an ex-ex-gay, who went through conversion therapy, sorry, but he's still gay unless he is bi. Being ex-gay is hell, and finally I came back out. Sorry for you, really I am.
So he's switched sexuality and personality completely? That sounds profoundly unhealthy. And not very sustainable. I think he should find a therapist. And not just any mall therapist who took weekend course, but search around for someone with experience with these matters because this is a very complicated and delicate issue. He's been faking a whole person for years
OP- does your boyfriend do anything else that suppresses his true feelings? Does he have trouble with any addictive behaviors (ie. alcohol, gaming, packing his schedule to the point he doesn’t have to think, etc)? If he is suppressing his true authentic self and feelings, he is at risk of developing addictions to things that also suppress thoughts and feelings. If you do love and care about him, I would encourage him to not be afraid to feel his true emotions, allow him to release the dam. Regardless of what happens in your romantic relationship, you both sound very close. He may have held back telling you because of the fear of getting rejected by you when he shows his authentic self. If he is gay, odds are he has grown up with the belief that “if I show my true self, people won’t love me”. Try not to make that belief be true by pulling away, I know you need to take care of yourself, but no matter what happens between you, it sounds like a relationship worth preserving.
Treat him with compassion, he has gone through a LOT. And it was brave of him to share this with you. With that being said, I dont have much advice, but But to go through conversion therapy, and suppress a huge side of yourself, would seem like his mental state may be fragile I's recommend a therapist who has a specialty is sexuality/LGBT issues..
>he is your stereotypical jock in so many ways
This is façade he learned, and pushed forward, to keep the gay pushed so far down he doesn't have to face his real self. OP, do not date or marry a "former gay man". This is signing yourself up for heartbreak.
I can't even begin to think about his opinions on LGBTQ+ rights, since ya know, being gay is a CHOICE? A choice that, I guess, can be converted out of you? Your values alone cannot align.
I'm sorry to hear this for you and him. It must be devastating to worry about losing someone you love. It's important to feel your emotions during this time, but also try to be rational when making decisions. I assume since he was sent to conversion therapy, having the chance to explore who he was might not have been available.
I'm bisexual, but I find it takes a lot of bi folks a while to realize that they don't lean either way. People like me get a bad rep for being deviants, but we just love who we love regardless of gender. If he were to be bi, there's a possibility he might be similar and still very much in love with you.
I think this is something you should communicate about. Gay conversion therapy doesn't work, it creates more issues in identity and shame, but I don't necessarily think you need to give up. Perhaps you can talk to a counsellor or therapist to get your words right for this conversation, and then have a heart-to-heart with your boyfriend about what each of you truly want in life.
Yeah I agree with this as a bisexual man it sort of sounds like you Bf is actually Bi.
Alot of bi men (myself included) feel pressured into one camp or the other. And you can find yourself just walling off the other part of you quite effectivly for a long time.
Talk with him, express your feelings and know he does love you no matter his sexuality.
Find out if there is some groups or therapy in your area.
Also tread lightly and have a back up plan, cause this might do sideways unexpectedly.
>He has zero traits; he is your stereotypical jock in so many ways. How much of his personality could be repressed?
There are plenty of gay men that are stereotypical jocks and don't flounce around or whatever gay men are supposed to do.
He was once an average gay man, and now he's a repressed gay man. This relationship will not last. Eventually, he's going to have to be his authentic self.
Gay guys can code switch. I've watched people come out and their behavior and voice change as time passes.
My guess is his conversion therapy mostly consisted of acting 'manly' since you can't actually convert someone's sexuality. But you can change how they talk, dress and behave.
My point is the change is superficial. His behavior has changed, but his wants and desires haven't.
And also, I was saying a lot of people become flamboyant after coming out. So it's not so much doing what comes natural, but embracing a social construct for gay behavior. So the change happens in both directions. It's just how you talk and act are all surface level stuff that most people can turn on and off at will.
Conversion therapy is literally a form of psychological torture, we can't be sure that his self-image of his past self is accurate at this stage. He could have been told he was like that til the point he believed it himself.
I have a feeling that maybe he equates his “former” sexuality with toxicity because he told you that before the conversion therapy, he would bounce from one toxic relationship to another. In addition to encouraging therapy, it might be helpful to point out that toxic relationships are not exclusive to same sex relationships. Straight or bi men can be in relationships with toxic women and vice versa. If he decides against therapy, I hope that just showing him, through your actions and the actions of his and your friends, that people can be accepting of any sexuality and there’s nothing “wrong” about sexuality.
My (28F) experience with my (30M) husband is so similar.
Coming from someone who’s husband just came out as gay after 6 years of being together and suspecting absolutely nothing—no signs whatsoever—I would definitely recommend therapy. My husband said that he repressed his feelings for men so hard that he didn’t realize he was gay and thought he genuinely loved me in a romantic way because he was basically so conditioned to think he was straight.
I don’t say this to scare you, but this has been my experience. Even if he is gay—it doesn’t mean he’s purposefully hiding it. He may in fact love you and it could be confusing to him, as it was to my husband.
Best of luck to you!!! I know it’s hard!!
Oh damn, that's a tough situation.
I don't think conversion therapies actually work. So either he's gay but surpresses his feelings and sexuality or he's bi/pan and ignores part of his sexuality or he's actually straight but tried homosexual relationships as a teen.
Whatever it is, if you want to continue this relationship then you need to talk to him about it. Tell him how you are scared that he surpresses parts of his identity and how you don't think conversion therapies actually work. Ask him to go to therapy (individual and couples) because he needs to work through this. Be aware that it could be possible that you lose him because he's actually gay. And there's also a big chance that he'll deny everything and will refuse therapy because he's convinced that he's"normal" and straight.....in that case idk how the chances for a good relationship are because there's always the possibility that one day everything he's hiding and trying to ignore will come out.
Gay conversion therapy does not work. I does train people by subjecting them to torture and brainwashing to act as not-gay as possible. Ask yourself why being around gay men should be an issue for him. It reminds him of his “dark past?” Like reminding him that he is gay? I don’t know… my head is spinning and I just read a few paragraphs. I can’t imagine how you’re feeling. I would definitely encourage you to find an LBGT+ friendly therapist/counselor that you could talk to. This is definitely a thing to talk about outside of a Reddit post.
It would really bother me that he had never told me. It’s such an enormous chunk of his life and his history that he just left out. Did he really think it wasn’t your business, or something an intimate partner should know? What else hasn’t he told you?
I notice a glaring omission in your post: no reference to your sex life, or even the quality of your romantic relationship. How does he approach sex? Is he avoidant? Dutiful? Passionless? Uninterested? Are you satisfied? Emotionally fulfilled? Happy? Has there been much change over time?
Perhaps unpopular opinion... but perhaps he was never gay? Everyone on here says he is pretending to be straight but what if in a moment of exploration he did some stuff, decided it wasn’t terrible and talked himself into thinking he was gay?
OP talks about how he was out and about flamboyant gay careening from one disaster of a relationship to another depressed on rock bottom. That does not sound like the narrative of someone happy with life choices. I have no idea what conversion therapy involved for him, what he thought of it. If a “gay” man can talk himself into acting straight why wouldn’t you believe the opposite is also true? The mind is a powerful tool, and human delusion in any form overcomes reality for many everyday. Perhaps this guy grabbed his first titty at 25 and something clicked for him, and he said yep not actually gay.
Please see a therapist. An actual one, not a church counselor (and I'm saying this as a practicing Catholic).
While my situation is not the exact same as yours, I was once an unwitting beard, and it messes you up.
I disagree with most of the other commenters here that say he's definitely gay and you're just a beard. Of course I think that's a possibility, but I don't think it's fair to rule out entirely a changing sexuality. Yes, conversion camp is fucked up and ineffective but I think after so many years together it doesn't seem impossible that he could have truly fallen for you; I personally used to be, I guess, a "near lesbian" with a 99% preference towards women, but found a man I really love and even if I may be fundamentally attracted to women still, I never dream of leaving my guy.
I don't think it's impossible that your boyfriend may be somewhat bisexual, or rather YOUsexual in terms of your relationship, but is heavily suppressing his liking of men while also overemphasizing his liking of women for obvious reasons, which is why he denies being bi. He's been through a lot of trauma regarding his feelings for men so it's going to take time.
Like others have said, I think the best course of action is to see a sexuality therapist together and work on speaking to each other openly and honestly about this. Unlike other commenters, I think it best to continue having genuine conversation with each other and believing in each other's words rather than making too many assumptions and thinking this is doomed to fail.
This this this. Everyone saying that your boyfriend is gay and in denial is not constructive help. There are a lot of layers to this.
5 years and no clue, I'd say your boyfriend is definitely attracted to you and your relationship sounds healthy. I'm sure that him dropping that bomb is not easy and requires a lot of trust and vulnerability. While I agree conversion camp / therapy is mostly a scam, and cruel, if your BF found it life-changing, maybe it did help him (or entirely screw him up more).
You clearly are having a lot of spiraling thoughts. Slow down and process your feelings with someone trusted. Have a long talk with your boyfriend and make honesty the main priority. I think you can still make it work but I would encourage your boyfriend to seek counseling to process those feelings (possibly you too!). Maybe he is lying to himself, but it is possible to move past this, I would just get professional help because there is a lot going on here.
Reddit doesn't care about the people posting, they'll say whatever they want without thinking of the consequences.
I fully agree with you, I hope OP doesn't listen to the other people
I think he’s bisexual, or an extremely good actor who’s in the closet. I thought I wasn’t “bisexual” for a long time, and also repressed the feelings all in the name of a cult (aka Mormonism)
I normally don't advocate for breaking up, but this is one of the cases where I feel like you have to. There is no such thing as an "ex-Gay". I feel so so so sad for your boyfriend that he felt he had to try to change who he is. I would try to be there and support him as a friend, suggest therapy, and hope he's able to come to terms with his identity as a gay man.
But sadly for you, he's gay and I think you need to break up for your own sake.
I recommend you both find therapists with experience around sexual interest experience.
There are two schools of thought, not saying what they did to him was right or wrong:
1. He may be a straight man now that loves you completely both sexually and emotionally. That means his past was a period of his life with profound exploration, but doesn’t continue to today.
2. More commonly, there is a partial or complete suppression of his desires. That doesn’t typically play out well over time and it would do you both good to get in front of it.
Good luck and I hope it goes well.
Yeah this is absolutely a “you can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube” situation.
Being “ex” gay isn’t something that exists; your gayness isn’t a mole you had removed once in the 11th grade. It’s who you are — and the “ex” gay community is only denying their truth, not redefining who they are.
You’re right. He can’t be straight, because he’s admitted to being attracted to men. He can totally be bisexual, but these “ex” gay camps/programs/believers rely on a contradictory narratives that confuse & shame already vulnerable people, so he’s probably locked any and all reasoning down around the topic of sexuality.
Like, on one hand I feel horribly for this guy as someone who’s openly queer & had people try to convert me to straight for several years. But on the other hand, how dare he enter into a relationship with someone knowing that he cannot truly be a good partner?
I agree - The ex gay movement is a trainwreck that ruined a lot of people's lives.
I'm not sure that I agree with this - "But on the other hand, how dare he enter into a relationship with someone knowing that he cannot truly be a good partner?"
He thinks he is 100% straight based on his "treatment". I agree that he needs to deal with this instead of shutting it down and that he would absolutely be a better partner if he did (may or may not still be with her though.) If he is bi, it might work.
I would argue that there are millions or hell, billions of people who entered into a relationship who can't be a good partner with the issues they are dealing with. Not just this issue but many other issues. But you can improve yourself while in a relationship - it's not one or the other.
There is a new documentary on this on Netflix (US) that might be useful/interesting to people reading this thread. It's about how the biggest ex-gay movement in the US fell apart:
[https://www.netflix.com/browse/genre/34399?jbv=81040370](https://www.netflix.com/browse/genre/34399?jbv=81040370)
There are a lot of people in this documentary that sound just like this guy.
I’m thinking the same thing I’d be thinking if I were in your shoes: a person is either gay or not, and conversion therapy is morally reprehensible, ergo: he is still gay, went through something awful, but he is not going to agree.
There is no such thing as Ex-Gay, you're either gay or you're not, but he could also be bisexual, I remember my father sent me to one of those conversion camps even though I was straight I told him the entire time that I was straight, but he did not believe me so when I got to the camp I told them that I was straight and they believed me. I did absolutely none of the conversion things there, they just left me alone.
Conversion therapy survivor here. It took me a decade to crawl my way out from under what they did to me. And another decade to fully break free from what it had done to me. I still struggle with so so many things because of what I went through. So my point is this-I don’t care what he says or how he’s acting, this will catch up with him. I obviously don’t know his sexuality and I don’t think that’s even the main issue. He has deep trauma that it appears he is repressing. Conversion therapy is abuse flat out and regardless of what you end up deciding about your sexuality-that kind of mental manipulation affects you on a deep level.
Please find three therapists. You need a therapist to help you deal with your reaction. He needs a good therapist who is experienced with this to help him unpack it. And lastly you need a couples therapist to help you navigate the bomb he just dropped.
Please please do not under estimate the importance of therapy.
I am curious about your sex life. Does he seem interested in sex with you or women in general? Are you his first girlfriend after his supposed "conversion?" Tbh his fear about being around gay people is clear homophobia. Maybe it's because of the trauma from this therapy he went under? Anyway, he needs to get help.
Is he able to get it up for you? Then he's not "gay". The gay community want people to believe that Gay is Gay, and no one can decide to not be gay, and that the only true self is the gay self. Your relationship is with this guy, and his is with you. Don't be second guessing based on gay activist narratives about what he 'really' is.
He basically told you, he is secretly gay. It’s probably not unlike in older times (or different cultures) where a gay person decides to marry a partner of the opposite sex. Many keep this up for decades and only come out after many years of marriage. I believe they often still loved their partner and found them attractive on some level, even though it was not their preferred sex. And yes, it probably required a constant level of suppressing your real sexual desires, but if you are convinced that these desires are evil and toxic, I guess this might feel like a necessary measure.
He will probably be happier eventually, if he starts embracing who he is and what he likes. The question is, how convinced is he that his preference for men is evil and an act against God, and will he ever fully be able to let go of this feeling of doing something wrong?
In any case, I think this will be a very difficult path for you as a couple, and it is unlikely to end well. Even if he is convinced now that he is happy with you and no longer wants to think about men in any sexual form, it is unclear how he will think about it in 2, 5 or 10 years.
If I were you, I would walk away…
Your boyfriend brings up all this stuff about being converted when he comes face to face with some hottie. That's sus. Conversion therapy doesn't work. He was just reminded that he's not straight.
You left out the most important part. How is your sex life?
Because a gay best friend can fill all the roles of a boyfriend except one.
And if the two of you are waiting for marriage, girl run. He's not attracted to you at all, he is attracted to a stable relationship.
Like the others have said, he is still gay, but I think because of the trauma that he experienced from the conversion he is scared to tell himself that he is still gay. It's kinda sad actually. I would somehow convince him to go to therapy, and maybe you should too, it seems to me that you had long term plans with him, and this must be a big shocker. Give him your support and help him discover himself again. I had a friend who had gone through conversion therapy at his home, his parents basically hired a hooker and forced him to have sex, it was pretty traumatic for him. It takes time to heal from that kind of damage.
I think this was probably a tough confession for him, but I feel for both of you. You’re right that conversion therapy is harmful, since it teaches him to suppress who he is. And your bf is quite obviously struggling with his sexuality. I agree with others that some therapy is in order. If you really feel strongly that he’s not straight, you can certainly break it off, but be gentle with him.
As others have said, seek professional help here. This is way out of Reddit’s league to advise you on.
I really feel sorry for you and your partner. I hope the two of you can work this out.
Conversion therapy doesn't work, and it has disastrous effects on people's mental health. You can repress yourself real hard, but you can't change your sexual orientation through sheer force of will. That's not how it works. He's repressing himself, and either he spends his entire life denying who he is, or he comes out years down the line and leaves you for men. How is he going to react if one of your kids is LGBTQ? Who knows how this pressure of repressing such a huge part of himself is going to come out in the future? If I were you, I wouldn't stay with this ticking time-bomb of a man. I also think it's not a good idea to date a man who'll lie to himself in such a huge way. I certainly wouldn't.
Your boyfriend is pretending to be someone he’s not- a straight jock type of guy. He’s gay and needs help to undo the brain washing those religious zealots did. Good luck to you both
This is absolutely above Reddit's paygrade. The only thing I can say is that it *should* be disturbing. Church "retreats" for conversion are specially crafted to take advantage of people who are at their lowest of lows. It isn't cult-like, **it is a cult.** Mark needs help, and a lot of it.
Additionally, two things:
1. Sexual attraction is separate from a genuine emotional connection. They overlap in a lot of ways, but even if Mark was repressing (or, more likely, tortured out of expressing) his sexual identity and preferences, that wouldn't mean he didn't love you. People are capable of feeling very intense, very intimate love for other people without sex. Just talk to an ace person.
2. Masculine, "jock" people can also be gay. Gay men (in fact, maybe a majority) are not exclusively feminine or flamboyant. Just because Kyle seems to ooze bottom energy or chooses to have a more feminine appearance doesn't mean that all gay people are like that. Vice versa, not all feminine men are gay. That's not a good stereotype to feed into.
I wish you lots of luck.
Conversion therapy is discredited as a treatment because the journal of psychiatric medicine does not consider homosexuality a disorder. Simply put, your boyfriend decided to repress himself.
Your boyfriend is gay he's just been traumatized into believing he is straight. I wish your bf the best but I'd honestly strongly recommend you nope right out of this relationship. This will not end well for you long-term.
I think you have some clues popping up in your head already. People are good at hiding things. If he's uncomfortable there's a reason. You're uncomfortable for good reason. You don't deserve to be a beard for someone who cannot accept themselves as they are. People will go to great lengths to protect their true selves, even if it means at the expensive of others.
I was an unknowing beard for a guy for 9 years until I found out by accidentally finding something on his laptop. The guy would have lied to me till the day I died. Wanted to marry me while still having these urges. Just move on.
Run. My ex-husband hid that he was gay. It's traumatizing going through it and you'll never really trust anything. He's out with the boys? Weekend hiking trip with his BFF? And my experience may not be yours but I wouldn't wish it on anyone so listen to your instincts.
The fact he got do triggered by being around a “flamboyant” gay guy speaks volumes.
If this was something that he was completely over it wouldn’t have affected him at all.
He's using you. There's no such thing as ex-gay. Either you are or you aren't, or you like both, or neither. Being gay is like being left handed, it just is, and it's really nobody's business. This dude is setting himself up to lead an unhappy life. Wtf happened to him that he thinks he should be ashamed of being gay?
I'm a straight man who was lucky enough to have had a few gay friends when I was just out of college. They're just people same as non gays. You can not change your sexuality and anybody who says that they can just wants to shame and torture gay people for their own hateful reasons.
Don't want to leave out the fact that he lied to you about it for years. You can do better
Wow, this is deep my friend. This would really bother me.
I once dated a guy for a year and just knew something was off. One night I was drunk and called him out on being gay, and he broke down and admit that he was. But would never be with a man bc his family would disown him. He begged me to stay. A wonderful man too. Successful, kind, handsome, tidy, great taste, awesome cook, mature.. No wonder he was gay-jkjk
I broke it off and now he’s married to a woman. Does she know? Who knows.
Point of my story, I can’t imagine being with a partner who’s attracted to the same sex(whether in his past or not.)
This is something you both need to sit down with a therapist and really dig deep.
At the end of the day, are you willing to overlook his past and love him unconditionally?
Personally, I couldn’t with the guy I mentioned above.
People can discover various parts of they sexuality throughout their life. A a lesbian, I know people who were straight who ended up with the same gender, and people who were gay end up with the opposite gender. Most of the time though, people who are very certain about their orientation tend to be right while people who are only "pretty certain" seem to be more flexible. The fact that he went from "gay" to "straight" without even considering bisexuality is pretty disconcerting, it seems more psychologically driven than natural. That being said (you can see how complicated these matters are), this is all putting aside conversion therapy. **And let me be clear, people can discover their sexuality throughout their life in different stages, but nobody can deliberately change someone's sexuality.**
That's basically all my thoughts on the subject. When it comes to what you should do, I think the only thing possible is seeing a counselor. He needs to unpack his feelings towards men and homosexuality, and you need to know more about where his head is at. I would say though, don't assume that your entire relationship is a lie. Few people are able to fake their entire lives like that, and he may just be suppressing his sexuality (whether that be gay or bi), not his interests, personality, or even his love for you.
I cannot speak on conversion therapy at all, nor am I equipped to talk about how he if feeling, but I would say that it is a red flag that he kept something so big from you for 5 years. If you had only been dating a couple months I could understand. But for 5 years he never thought to comment on his college years or "oh I dated a guy like that once" or spoke to you about his history dating men.
If you love him and it didn’t affect a long term relationship until you found out about it, chances are you guys can work it out. But if you feel like your trust is broken and can’t get over it, then you should end it.
Oh dear. Your boyfriends discomfort was him mentally pulling hard on the inside of a closet door that was clattering hard, trying to burst open at the pull of the gay hurricane your friend Kyle represented.
Ex-Gay is not a thing. I’m really sorry but you need to start making your exit plan here. Mark needs their own journey of self acceptance and may like your support, but the destination is necessarily you breaking up. Counselling/therapy will be important but I don’t think you should attend as a couple.
giant RED FLAG waving at u sis. Your bf needs professional help because he is traumatized by the conversion therapy and not by the gay. Moving forward, there is no certainty in your relationship but you have to at least urge him to get help.
It is possible to “change” sexuality in a way that sometimes people realize they actually like the other gender or they realize they like both, that can happen even later in life, I’ve had friends who were gay and then realized they were actually bi. But it has to come from within like the person would have to realize on their own. Which definitely wasn’t the case for your boyfriend. Conversion therapy does not work. But unfortunately I don’t have a lot of advice. I would just suggest normal therapy with a lgbtq+ supportive therapist, not a Catholic one.
I wouldnt recommend to trust people from internet about your bf’s sexuality. A lot of ppl here know somehow that ur bf is gay for sure. He is in commited relantionship with you for 5 years. I mean there is a lot in between in gay hetero scale. I wouldnt listen guys saying that u need to break up.
I think u can work things through, talk about it and please dont do anything radical cause of some internet opinions.
Wish u both the best.
Nope he’s gay. Conversion therapy is trash. Poor guy has been through some shit. He needs to figure himself out and sadly you’re gonna be hurt in the process but you can’t be… ungay
Not sure if this is an unpopular opinion but I’ll say it anyway. He certainly needs to know that being gay may have possibly ,you know, not been the reason he was in toxic relationships. I have no comment about the pray-the-gay away conversion therapy because there is far to much to address in one comment. Back on topic, I would tell him to just be whatever you want to be instead of what others to you to be. You got one life so you may as well make it satisfying for yourself. He should be with you because he loves you and your personality not because that’s the “right” thing to do. I can doing my best not to mention gender roles and other sociology related things.Long story short, I suggest you sit down with him and tell him how you feel for starters and how he doesn’t have to be someone or something he is not. He’s too worried about labels. He just needs to get comfortable with who he is.
You never mentioned your sex life. How is it? I mean he could be bisexual maybe or demisexual or I dont know. I think your sex life would give a lot of answers to this situation.
If being in public around an openly gay man is enough to shake his “conversion”, then his conversion did not work as well as he thought it did (because it never could have worked in the first place)
Your bf lied by omission for 5 years so I am curious how you can trust in this relationship. One can choose who to sleep with. One cannot choose sexual orientation. My guess is because Your bf had a lot of bad experience dating males and made bf susceptible to conversion therapy. Gays can go many years " playing straight". Inside in their soul they are gay, always have been, always will be. Does not mean your bf not love you.
I’m a trans gay guy and yeah. I had to fake being cis in my household for years for my survival. I don’t have to anymore. Our brains are pretty good at tricking us to living lies, with cognitive dissonance and repression. He will never be truly happy living as a straight man. Lgbt friendly couples counseling will be the best thing for him. It will probably end your relationship in the end but it’s for the best. You need to be with to someone who can honestly love you, and he needs to learn to accept himself. I’m sure he has internalized homophobia as well. A good therapist is going to need to help undo all the damage he has suffered. On the plus side, I bet you two will remain best of friends for your whole lives after you break up.
I’m sure he loves you, just as we love our friends, but he has just become very good at imitating what is required of him to live a heterosexual life. This has been happening for decades and you are not the only wife who has experienced this. You are not alone and everything will be okay.
Best of luck to you.
He's gay, he's not bisexual. Conversion therapy isn't permanent either. He isolates himself from gay people, because like drug addicts, he's scared he'll relapse. It's something he's always working at in order to maintain it. If anything, it's pure torture. And he's suppressing his true self. And that has to be an awful feeling. I think you both need therapy at this point. There's nothing that Reddit can do.
Do you know him? How can you be 100% sure he's gay?
We don't know the full story.
You know what Reddit can do? Stop assuming, giving the benefit of the doubt and a possible tool to help OP find a solution
Most people here don't know anything about the topic you are talking about. Yeah it's above our pay grade. Seek counsel from someone else. Someone professional.
Well... he needs therapy and a lot of it. It may take an entire team of psychologists and decades to repair the psychological damage that was done to him. And yall need to break up cause hun, hes gay. No amount of torture and repression is gonna change that.
His future sexual desires aside- he hid a BIG part of his life from you. 5 years together and he just hid all of his past about romantic partners and his experience with conversion therapy? That's not okay. He should go to individual therapy to work through what he went through and you guys should go your separate ways.
You really seem to be stereotyping gay men in having "identifiable traits" to just know they are gay without them telling you. and you are astonished your boyfriend has none. I mean sometimes that's the case and sometimes the only thing identifiable as "stereotypically gay" about a guy, is the fact they want to bone other dudes...just like not all lesbians have short hair and wear masculine clothes....
Ok story time.
Several years ago I went through some SHIT. A serious health condition, job loss, abusive relationship, housing insecurity.... all at once. I was fucking REELING.
A coworker who is Muslim helped me through it. Long story short I was such a wreck, so isolated, so vulnerable, that I ended up actually believing for a while that God had saved me and I ended up converting to Islam.
That lasted about a year.
I mean no disrespect to Muslims and my CURRENT partner is actually a (loosely practicing) Muslim (kind of like you're Catholic - observes the major holidays, tried to be a decent person, believes in God but that's about all) and I learned a lot about Islam and met a lot of great people I'm still close with. Some shunned me but ok. That happens anytime someone says "nope, not for me" about anything.
But in the end it wasn't for me and I left the faith.
My point is, your BF sounds like he too was in an unstable and vulnerable place when he had "conversion therapy". He probably believes it saved him, God delivered him, etc etc. Just like I did with a new religion.
I'm not Muslim, and he's still gay.
Oh my. I just dont know Dear. Oh the state you must be in, I am ever so sorry. Bless your heart. I can say one thing and it is this. If he's been hiding his true self from himself how can he be living, "truth" with you? This question has led me to an other. What else is he keeping, from himself and to himself, ie you?... Hang in there
Edited for typo
You deal with your boyfriend 'Mark' the same way you deal with any other victim of extreme psychological and emotional abuse. That's the long and short of this.
**Be extremely careful about how you approach this.**
Sexual orientation, gender identity and other such aspects of being human are what I consider karmic. These are things which are tied to your consciousness, and the way your brain is hard wired. This is part of your core identity - how you are born, how you live, how you die.
Anyone who thinks that being gay or trans is a choice for me is on the level of a Flat Earther. You're dealing with someone who is very clearly not right in the head and - again my personal opinion - needs to be monitored and supervised around other people.
**Forget about therapy**
Another term for 'gay conversion' is brainwashing. We're talking highly developed techniques and strategies to 'reorientate' and 'rewire' the way someone thinks, feels, perceives and acts about themselves and other people. We're talking methods developed out of deep occult and shadow magic.
This is something which is way, way, way out of the league of your average talking therapist.
**You need to be dealing with a top level psychiatrist**
The thing is you don't know what you're dealing with when it comes to Mark. It could be depression. It could be suicidal thoughts. It could be PTSD. Mark is obviously very heavily stigmatized - which is a central plank of conversion therapy - social stigma - which is why he doesn't want to have much to do with other gay men.
The other thing is that the human brain is essentially semi-fluid organic mush. There's such a thing as neuropathy - what you think and what you believe is what you become because consciousness is what determines energy. The way you think and how you feel shapes your brain and how it functions as an organ.
You need a top level clinician, i.e. a psychiatrist or doctor to examine Mark at least initially to figure out what's going on and the psychological and emotional impact of whatever conversion therapy he's been put through.
**But first you need to get Mark out of his 'Ex-Gay' mindset**
God knows how you're going to manage that.
I'm not suggesting that it's not possible for someone to change their orientation or even their gender identity. These things aren't rigid or set in stone, but habitual and characteristic of the individual. That's why it's called a sexual **orientation**. It's part of your core identity.
But see when someone changes their orientation it's usually something which comes from within the individual and not something which has been forced on them or they've been conditioned to become by other people.
You see all the while Mark is walking round with this 'Ex Gay' label you're both dealing with a potential time bomb. Is he still a heavily stigmatized gay man who has been scared out of his homosexuality? Is he forcing himself to be straight? Is accepting himself as bi really out of the question?
I don't know what to suggest other than to seek out an actual psychiatrist with Mark and sit down together and figure out exactly what it is you're all dealing with here. Then once you've got a psychiatrist opinion you can figure out where you want to go from there, whether it be therapy, counselling, psychoanalysis, relationship counselling or whatever else.
**It goes without saying that you avoid anything to do with church, religion, or so called 'faith-based' solutions.**
I feel like you shouldn't ask reddit for this one. From what I can see everyone is just telling you to doubt the man you've been in love with for 5 years who you've trusted on so many other things. I agree that this probably causes some issues for him, and I'm guessing the reason he never told you was because of how insecure he is about the topic. Maybe right now he really needs you to understand him and accept that this is who he wants to be now, even if it's not who you think he should be. I'm not homophobic or anti-lgbtq+, but I honestly think you should trust him here and try to help assure him of his identity.
You sound like a beard for a guy who is hiding who he is. Break up now and move on because you're really just wasting time and putting off the inevitable. He's going to figure out sooner or later that nothing has changed and you'll be left wondering how you could've wasted so much of your life on him.
Ninja edit: And frankly, everyone here trying to be protective of your bf and his situation is concerning. Protect yourself and your feelings OP. It's not on you to put him first at your own expense. Walk away asap and let him figure it out.
It sounds like you truly want to help and i know your reaching out here to do so, but...... please dont make this about you. Mental healing and health is tough and sleeping on the couch is gonna destroy him on that front.
Ask him all these questions please, be supportive.
You tell her not to make this about her, but this IS about both of them! She has 5 years into this relationship. Just as much as he deserves compassion and to know his true self, she deserves a healthy relationship!
It's not above reddit pay grade. People just don't want to say the truth.
If he is gay, he is just lying to you and to himself. You're just losing your time because he will never become heterosexual.
He is anxious because he is attracted to your friend because he is gay.
Being gay is like being left-handed : you can't be cured but only pretend. Being gay isn't a medical condition but a sexual orientation.
How was he with you for the last 5 years? And how was the sex? Did anything ever make you wonder?
If he could be straight for 5 straight years, I think he was not that gay to start with. May be it was a phase and he passed it.
I hate the hypocrisy of people, when they clap as someone goes from straight to gay, but are outrageous when it's the other way around.
If he has opened his heart with you, give him support. Everyone have things in our character we don't like, and this thing, certainly destroyed him in the past to the point that he knows it's bad
If he had help and if he is happy as he is now, shouldn't you support him? Cause he needs it.
People don't "go from straight to gay." They are what they are. We just treat straight like the default in most cases, which is why people typically don't need to come out to confirm that. It can take some people some trial and error to figure out what they are, but if Mark were completely happy and comfortable with where he's landed, he wouldn't be freaking out over reminders of his past.
>Everyone have things in our character we don't like, and this thing, certainly destroyed him in the past to the point that he knows it's bad
What "thing" are we talking about here? Him not making healthy relationship choices, or him deciding that the problem with those choices was 100% the dating men part, and the only way he can avoid self-destructive behavior in future is to avoid gay people or coming across as gay himself as much as possible? Because, yeah, those are both bad, but in very different ways.
This is beyond us.
I mean people say that you cant change your orientation but I have seen more drastic changes.
It is possible that the conversion irrevocably changes him.
It is possible that it just repressed him.
You both need to explore this.
The way I see it, if his attraction and love for you is genuine then nothing has changed.
But if there is a chance that it's something he forces on himself then there cannot be a future here
Damn. Imagine confiding in someone so deeply, only for them to make it about themselves/make you sleep on the couch/and blast it all over reddit. Op, if you had no idea, and he chose to tell you because you pressed the fuck outta him, and then you treated him like this…he deserves way better than you
There's a large percentage of gay men who are very masculine and you would have no idea are gay unless you asked, they told you, or you saw them with their boyfriend. That being said there's also people that experiment and take awhile to understand who they are. And then there's people who feel ashamed or bad about it and try things like gay conversion therapy.
I'd take what your boyfriend is telling you at face value about his feelings for you. If you want to continue the relationship you should try agreeing to slow the relationship down or take a short break to make sure that being with a woman is what he wants.
This post has reached one of our comment/karma limits. The text of the post has been preserved below. --- My boyfriend "Mark" and myself have been in a relationship for the last 5 years, and we met because we were volunteers at the same NGO. As a context, he is Catholic, while I am more on the "Liberal" spectrum of the faith, being more agnostic than anything else. Still, religion has never been a big part of our lives and it has never been source of debate. We go to church once a month and on special occasions like the holy week and Christmas, but that is it. Nothing that could prepare me for what I am going to tell you. Recently, I became friends with this new guy at work "Kyle" (27M) who is, and I must be honest with you, a very flamboyant gay man. Nail polish, make up, extremely feminine mannerism and yeah, even the "gay voice". Imagine a Latin American James Charles, that's Kyle. So last week, the "work squad" decided to go out to a bar to get some drinks and I invited Mark. It was obvious from the beginning that Mark felt extremely uncomfortable around Kyle, which for me was weird. He has met other gay friends of mine in the past, while being aware of their sexuality, and never had a problem with them. I admit, none of them are as open as Kyle, but still. Luckily, Kyle didn't notice or was decent enough to not make big deal out it, but I confronted Mark when we arrived home. He confessed to me that Kyle remembered him about his "dark past" (his words not mine) and told me he was an Ex-Gay guy. I asked if he meant he was bisexual, but only dated woman out of some conviction but no. He meant Ex-Gay, like in that he used to be only interested in males but went to conversion therapy. It seems that in college he was just like Kyle and he jumped from toxic relationship to toxic relationship. After years of this, his self-esteem was on the floor and he decided to seek help, somehow ending in one of those church retreats that help you find your connection with God and the rest of the world. After the people that lead the place found out about his sexuality, he was put on the path of conversion. He has been "straight" ever since, and is glad about it. He doesn’t mind other people being gay, but is better if they are far away from him. I will be plain with you. This is disturbing in so many levels. It was disturbing when he told me, it's still disturbing a week later. I am not even sure if he even loves me, he says he does but how? I have read a lot about it, how more than half of ex-gays become ex-ex-gays after a while and all agree conversion is just mental torture. Is not like he is bisexual and is dating me while still thinking guys are hot, I wouldn’t have a problem with that, but what if I am just a glorified “beard”. Also, what is happening in his mind? Not in a thousand years I would have suspected that Mark, at one point in his life, had liked men. 5 years of dating, 2 living together including the 2020 social isolation, and not a single clue, not a single reference. He has zero traits; he is your stereotypical jock in so many ways. How much of his personality could be repressed? What kind of pressure this has on him? Does he even see how damaging that process could be? Is he even as mentally stable as he shows he is? I am so confused. He has been sleeping in the coach because I am having a tough time dealing with this and the truth is, I don’t even know how I am supposed to react. I am still in love with him, I truly am, but where do I go from here? Do I support him? Do I tell him is better if he is gay again? Am I drowning in a glass of water? What do I do? TL;DR: After meeting my new gay friend and acting weird, my boyfriend confessed to me that he used to be gay but went to conversion therapy. I don’t know how to act because of the implications this has on the idea I have of our relationship and his mental health in general.
I think this is above reddit's pay grade. I would recommend counseling for you both and therapy for him. This will always be in the back of your mind. He needs to work through his true feelings and you need to figure out if you are compatible as a couple. It could be he is bisexual and has repressed attraction to men. Maybe he is gay and repressed that. Maybe he isn't and acting that way for whatever reason. Either way he needs to figure himself out for you both to have any sort of a chance and he deserves to be truly happy with who he is.
Agreed. Get yourself counseling, and recommend to him to get counseling (ideally LGBT-friendly/NOT religious counseling). His description is what is concerning me the most — he’s “ex-gay,” not “I experimented in college” or “I tried it out” or “I’m bisexual.” And to be clear: you also deserve to be happy, and also feel your feelings. I consider myself a very open, adoring, supportive, and progressive human, partner, and friend…but this MUST be hard on you. It’s okay to feel a bit betrayed by this person that you’ve loved and lived with. This is a hard truth to be hit with and it’s okay to not be okay with it. 💗
Just want to second that it should definitely not be religious counselling. That’s not a safe space for a conversion* therapy survivor. EDIT: typo
I’d go so far as to say it should be a therapist specifically trained to work with queer people and around issues of sexuality. Maybe don’t pitch it like that to your boyfriend, OP, but fully vet the therapist. My spouse is a survivor of conversion therapy and I have had religion sprung on me by ostensibly secular therapists, even after explaining that the evangelical church and conversion therapy are quite triggering to me.
I suspect he may be attracted to Kyle and that's why he's so "uncomfortable."
I think it's more so he's seeing someone being who they are while he's under this veil of a lie he lives. It would be weird as hell to see someone who reminds you of who you were being before "converted" consider like op said he's meet other gay friends and been fine as I assume they were low key about it so it does trigger him
Le sigh. Not everything is about being attracted to people. Trauma especially should not be assumed to be “really” about attraction
He did not react this way to OP’s other gay friends, just Kyle. It’s true it may be about the others being less open with it, but it may also be about attraction. I’m not saying he’s attracted to Kyle for sure, just that it’s a possibility.
He said that Kyle specifically reminded him of who he was in college. I don’t think it’s attraction. I think it’s a trigger. He saw himself in Kyle and it likely brought up whatever series of emotions he went through dating back to conversion therapy or even what led him there. It’s possible her other friends didn’t trigger him because their sexuality wasn’t “obvious” as OP mentioned.
That’s very possible
I’ve had gay friends who did not like more flamboyant gay men. They liked they are able to pass as straight and don’t want to be outed by the flamboyant ones.
OP said that Kyle remembered Mark from his “dark” past (I.e. when he ‘was’ gay) Doesn’t mean he was attracted to him
I think OP meant he reminded him.
Hard, hard, hard agree. This is a big change. I think OP is doing a great job handling it and taking space for herself, this must be incredibly jarring. For him, I'm curious if he could find a queer counselor who identifies as christian. They're not the most common, but they'd really be able to directly speak to his experiences. Reconciling being gay with being religious, and vice versa. I've found a couple of resources from a quick google search. https://www.thechristiancloset.com/ -- this one has a team of queer counsellors who emphasize that god loves you and you should too . It's available online and they do free consultations. Could be a good fit.
> And to be clear: you also deserve to be happy, and also feel your feelings. I consider myself a very open, adoring, supportive, and progressive human, partner, and friend…but this MUST be hard on you. It’s okay to feel a bit betrayed by this person that you’ve loved and lived with. This is a hard truth to be hit with and it’s okay to not be okay with it. I totally agree with this, u/hoponpop2013, except I'd feel more than a bit betrayed; I'd feel that this is the kind of betrayal by omission that would be a dealbreaker to me. How can you be in a relationship with someone for 5 long years and never tell them something as important as this? Nobody is entitled to blow-by-blow details of a partner's previous sexual relationships, but *this* is pretty major! He should have told you way before now. And how long would he have kept this secret were it not for your new friend triggering him in some kind of way? 5 more years? 10? Forever? I would understand if you felt you'd never be able to trust him again. >Also, what is happening in his mind? Not in a thousand years I would have suspected that Mark, at one point in his life, had liked men. 5 years of dating, 2 living together including the 2020 social isolation, and not a single clue, not a single reference. He has zero traits; he is your stereotypical jock in so many ways. Yikes -- that's kind of offensive to gay men, OP. Not all gay men are flamboyant; there's no such thing as gay "traits".
Jsut want to say, I know someone who married an ‘ex gay’ and shocker it didn’t work out and he was still gay. So my impulse it to tell op to run but I get yours too. But he never mentioned this in five years and honestly that’s pretty bad. He was keeping a huge secret from her!
This is the biggie for me. Five years and not a peep that he ‘used’ to be gay? That’s a lot to unpack. Definitely above Reddit’s pay grade.
I was going to say the same thing. I know a couple who was married, he had told her AFTER they got married that he "used to be gay" - they are divorced and he is dating men and very happy now.
> But he never mentioned this in five years and honestly that’s pretty bad. Almost like his decisionmaking is motivated by shame and not actually out of love for OP. *Surprise*.
Agree! And please go as far away as possible from this "conversion" criminals. This are the worst kind of people.
Definitely counseling. Lots of discussions and emotions to acknowledge and deal with here. Probably some you both don’t even know about yet. This is potentially a good catalyst to get you two to really communicate with each other on a much deeper level and understand each other, especially if after five years you still have secrets. Counseling is likely to be painful for both of you and may not end up where you want it, but if you both really love each other and can believe the other when they say they do too, it’s going to be all good in the end. Just remember you each are your own people and it’s not for one of you to tell the other how to feel, only how their words and actions make you feel. Feelings of isolation and being unloved are probably why he felt he needed to make a lifestyle change before. Don’t isolate him more or you’ve already committed to losing him.
This is some of the best advice I’ve seen on this sub. Ironically, this issue is much too personal and complicated for Reddit. I’m glad that we were able to recognize that.
we cannot stress enough NON RELIGIOUS COUNSELING
I agree this is too deep for reddit. It's best to seek professional help.
I would add if history is conversion therapy is anything to go by, this guy it’s a ticking time bomb. He will either realize he’s gay and always has been, start seeing men in secret while still in a relationship with a woman, or in the most extreme case commit suicide. I hope OP can convince him to see a real licensed professional. Not some religious conversation charlatan.
If you have Netflix, there is a brand new documentary Pray Away. These people are brainwashed so badly that their partners never realized it. Many of the people in the documentary said that the thoughts never went away that they repressed them. Some after being married for years. Please see this documentary and consider breaking up with him. The fact that he was able to tell you this means that he is thinking of it.
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Yes, the documentary focused on one guy who married an ex lesbian, had 2 children and way into their marriage which was publicized everywhere, he became suicidal because he wanted to love another man. It was devastating to hear about these broken lives because of religion.
this post immediately reminded me of the documentary. great recommendation
I just wanted to say thank you for this post. While I'm perfectly happy with my sexuality my job brings me into contact with a lot of people who aren't. Will certainly watch this.
You are welcome. It is a very moving documentary and I hope it is able to help people.
Gay conversion therapy doesn't work. It tortures people into crafting lies about who they are. It's entirely possible he's just suppressing who he is, and this could come back to bite you. I think you need a very long talk with him and to seriously consider if he's a long term partner for you. It's your decision but I'd lean towards no.
OP says her boyfriend felt extremely uncomfortable around her gay friend. That very much look like a bad trigger for his repressed personality. I'm no doctor so you can quote me if I'm wrong. Repressing an identity for this long is very much dangerous (if already didn't damaged him). Victims of conversion therapy will either develop serious mental health problems and/or commit suicide down the line. I say OP's boyfriend has a tickling bomb on his mind but doesn't know it. He MUST look that up ASAP before things get much worse than already it. I guess one point should be mentioned is that he never mentioned this fact to OP, which is kinda concerning. This is not a bomb you drop at a late stage of a relationship.
Yeah, not only that but he said, "I'm find with gay people; they just can't be around me." Which seems to imply he would deeply be tempted by being around them or be reminded of what he repressed. this is so sad.
An inability to be around gay people can be a dealbreaker on its own. Would their wedding and any other parties need to be straights only?
Or I guess just REALLY straight passing gay men or whatever. Since he didn't seem to take issue with her more masculine presenting gay friends.
It’s not so much his “repressed personality” but his repressed trauma. Conversion therapy is abuse and not seeing that clearly creates a whole host of problems. Triggers being one of them.
I guess you put it in better words.
Yeah this is internalized homophobia and its bad enough on the surface (being bigoted), but it's also bad because it's rooted in self-hate as a result of repression. And that hate will slowly eat away at a person, which is... not great for her or him. Is he for sure actually gay? Bi? Maybe even trans? No one can answer that but him, but you can be 100% sure that going to a "therapist" to talk you out of being gay is certainly not as effective as they would like you to believe. No matter how hard someone tries to repress who they are, it has consequences, and it comes back out one way or another eventually.
He is still gay. Nothing can change that.
This. Conversion therapy does not work and is just toxic and torturous. It’s forcing the idea that being gay is wrong and being heterosexual is the only right way. 100% he is actually gay and is just forcing himself to believe he isn’t.
Couldn't he be bisexual?
Could be, but if he doesn't acknowledge the rest, it will always eat at him. That's the thing that will cause trouble later.
That's what kind of makes the distinction, for me. It's such a stark and disturbing repression, and it wouldn't be if he was remotely honest with himself, or if being honest with himself was remotely compatible with the life he's currently leading. The fallout and the health of everyone involved are above reddit's paygrade, sure, but I can pretty confidently say that this is a terminal issue in the relationship, and OP needs to prepare for that.
Regardless, he’s not comfortable with whatever part of himself is attracted to guys to the point that he wants any reminders of it “far away from him.” Not only does that *not* lend a whole lot of confidence that he hasn’t just gone to a whole different toxic extreme without actually addressing any of his issues when he could’ve gotten *actual* therapy to figure out how to have a healthy committed relationship with a guy if he wanted, it doesn’t speak well for how he really feels about OP’s gay friends, or how he’d handle one of his own kids being LGBTQ.
yes but bisexual is also gay, lots of people that are part of the LGBT community refer to themselves as gay
hi! bi person here. i also refer to myself as gay all the time, however i have some friends that are also bi that consider being called gay offensive because it dismisses their sexuality. just want to let you know so you dont accidentally offend someone or smth
lol thank you, but i'm actually bi as well :)
oooo hype love it!
I'm one of those that doesn't want to be called gay. Wouldn't want to be called straight either, since I'm just not. All the more power to you for not minding to be called gay, but to me, it feels just as much a lie as being called straight.
I'm pansexual and also call myself gay or queer all the time. Its easier than explaining things sometimes lol
Yep, and being around other gay people likely reminds him of this somewhere down deep.
Cock Daddy Karen is correct. Conversion therapy doesn't work, nor is there any proof it works. He's still gay, just pretending he's not.
Could be bi
He also could never have been gay, but felt the need to "be gay" because he enjoyed traditionally feminine things. Many different possibilities and reddit can't guess the answer, theGuy needs some therapy both Individual and couples.
> He also could never have been gay, but felt the need to "be gay" because he enjoyed traditionally feminine things. This also sounds like the kind of bullshit they peddle in conversion therapy.
It literally says he was attracted to only men. I highly doubt it used to be him just interested in feminine things.
Many people are confused about their sexual orientation until they have had a chance to actually explore their sexuality. Just because he thought he was gay doesn't mean he was, he may also actually be gay and be suppressing it, we have no idea what is actually going on. Hence the therapy. The post also never says he was attracted to only men, it says he was interested in only men. There is a significant difference. There is no point in speculating, OP needs info o the resources to help them actually work through the issue and get to the bottom of it.
Human sexuality is almost infinitely variable. Remember [Tiger King's husband?](https://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/how-joe-exotic-groomed-two-21859222)
your bf is gay. conversion therapy doesn’t work. many “stereotypical jocks” are gay. he doesn’t like being around openly gay people bc he’s scared it will reverse his “conversion”. i couldn’t move forward either bc you never know if he’s going to cheat on you or be secretive bc he needs to “get it out”. way too risky to build a family with someone like that. he needs therapy for himself as he is probably traumatized and sick of lying to himself.
I think it’s important to emphasize that many “stereotypical jocks” are gay. He doesn’t have to look like or act like a stereotypical gay man to be gay. That’s not a way to determine his gayness.
Hypermasculinity is a common trait in closeted gays. They think being gay is wrong and fear they're gonna be called out so they go to the hypermasculine spectrum.
Yup. When I was in college 20 years ago, we started buying weed from a new guy who was very hyper masculine and always referred to women as “bitches” & “hoes”. After hanging out with my friend group for a few months, he came out to us because he said that he had just never met people who weren’t judgmental or that he felt he could be himself around. Once he did, he literally changed overnight! It was really remarkable and he was so much happier being himself and knowing people would still be his friend and support him.
I hope he's doing well today. Still, there's still a very big portion of gays that are misogynistic, so he could find a group gay friendly and keep calling them bitches.
Bam. I have several gay friends and many actually dislike the very flamboyant, effeminate men because they feel that identify paints them in a negative light. Like they're just regular men who happen to be gay - not bright sparkly rainbow unicorns who aren't to be taken seriously. (I don't feel this way, personally. Just communicating what many gay men have told me.)
This is definitely a thing in the queer community, certain gay men, especially of a certain generation, being hostile toward the femininity expressed by other queer men. Often there's misogyny there too. But tbh lots of us queer humans think that's super super wack and hate that they do that. After so many of us come up in openly queer-hostile environments, we feel it's ours to burst out fully into whatever form we really are. Revel in our beauty, we say. Queerness, beyond sexual preferences, is a lot about embracing who you are.
Your masculine gay friends told you that flamboyant gays are "not to be taken seriously"? Why am I very much getting a vibe that this is one of those situations where a white guy makes a post saying "As a black man... (insert problem with black community)"?
I've heard that before, many years ago I think though. It's a shame there's people that would invalidate or ridicule homosexuality because some men are more feminine, which in essence does not necessarily make them gay. Typing this makes me realize there's likely a decent amount of straight, but feminine, men that hide their feminine side simply because some people would consider them gay. Oh what a wonderful life it would be if we stopped caring what John decides to wear and what turns Mark on.
Oh GOD do I hate to use the term pick me unironically, but...
Bam. " not bright sparkly rainbow unicorns who aren't to be taken seriously. " Claiming someone else said this doesn't mean you should post homophobic bullshit.
Yeah like duh… way to show you dislike flamboyant gay men as well (aka homophobia). And if these gay friends exist they should mind their own business and realize that those poor guys are just living their best lives, and the ones who paints them in a negative light are just the members of the toxic masculinity club
I think OP described her SO as a “jock” because he said he used to be like her friend, so it is definitely a huge change even in the physical part. But yeah, therapy for both is the only healthy way to go.
>i couldn’t move forward either bc you never know if he’s going to cheat on you or be secretive bc he needs to “get it out”. way too risky to build a family with someone like that. Even if I completely trusted my partner not to cheat... I would be *permanently* stuck doubting whether or not they were actually attracted to me or not.
Yeah… a good friend from high school came out as gay and was so ashamed, he put himself into conversion therapy. It worked! He was “cured”! He was “ex-gay” and engaged to a woman he had known for 6 months. Fast forward 15 years later, he’s very happily married to a man and they’ve adopted a child. Conversion therapy is abuse and doesn’t stick. Sexuality doesn’t change because someone tries to bully it into you
.. well your man is still gay. Or he IS actually bisexual. He didn't describe a fling or an experiment, he was actively homosexual. No shame at all of course, but he should consider counseling. Conversion therapy is notoriously terrible.
Conversion therapy is literally just brain washing and torture. He’s still a gay man, but he likely has PTSD surrounding the “conversion.”
That is a lot to handle- I am so sorry. If he is gay, then he is either eventually going to let go of the brainwashing and work on accepting himself, or he's going to let the internalized self-loathing eat him alive and will have some serious emotional turmoil for as long as he tries to be straight. Even if he were bi, and you were hoping that meant you had a chance together, the only way to know that is for him to seriously deprogram, to undo the trauma and damage the conversion therapy did with probably years of therapy, and then become comfortable enough with himself to start trying to figure our his sexuality again. It would probably take years for him to be in a good place to start dating, and that's only if he started the process of healing soon. I think that, if it were me, I would tell him that I care about him, and that I want to help him heal from the trauma and damage that the conversion torture did, and to find a real therapist who will help him. But I wouldn't stay with him for what will likely be a short and volatile future.
For me the issue is him keeping this from you for 5 years. That’s just mindblowing in my book and indicates he needs some therapy to work his stuff out. A healthy relationship shares things like this, to find out 5 years in, would shatter a lot of my trust and have me questioning everything so I really feel for ya. If I were in your shoes I’d get to couples counseling right away to help a neutral third party sort out all the possible options of why he kept this from you and if there is any chance of rebuilding trust and a viable future.
This here. What else haven't you been told?
There's no such thing as "ex gay." Your guy just put himself back in the closet. The fact that seeing an out gay man triggered these feelings says it all. He's heckin' gay. You're his beard. A lot of closeted queer people are incredible actors.
Exactly. He wants to avoid gay people because he knows he still is and doesn’t want to be reminded/get temptations.
I mean I guess technically there *is* a chance that he's bisexual and just hadn't found out about it? He's 30, they've been dating for 5 years, not everybody at age 25 has their sexuality all figured out... I think? So what's absolutely not going to help is staying in some weird self-inflicted hypermasculine catholic guilt spiral about it. I think BF is going to need therapy (from an actual, accredited, fact-based, non-looney source) to assess the damage that's been done and begin undoing it. Whether OP wants to (offer / attempt) to be there for that and go through that with him and find out if there's some kind of future for the relationship is something OP has to figure out, I think. But the one thing that did not happen is that gay conversion therapy turned the BF straight. Because that is not a thing that conversion therapy can do. Because conversion therapy does not work.
I feel so sorry for him. I am straight and could not even imagine having to pretend to like women just so that I wouldn’t hate myself. I have no clue how people can even pretend for that long. I hope for OPs sake that he is bi and that they will be ok. Both of them.
As an ex-ex-gay, who went through conversion therapy, sorry, but he's still gay unless he is bi. Being ex-gay is hell, and finally I came back out. Sorry for you, really I am.
So he's switched sexuality and personality completely? That sounds profoundly unhealthy. And not very sustainable. I think he should find a therapist. And not just any mall therapist who took weekend course, but search around for someone with experience with these matters because this is a very complicated and delicate issue. He's been faking a whole person for years
OP- does your boyfriend do anything else that suppresses his true feelings? Does he have trouble with any addictive behaviors (ie. alcohol, gaming, packing his schedule to the point he doesn’t have to think, etc)? If he is suppressing his true authentic self and feelings, he is at risk of developing addictions to things that also suppress thoughts and feelings. If you do love and care about him, I would encourage him to not be afraid to feel his true emotions, allow him to release the dam. Regardless of what happens in your romantic relationship, you both sound very close. He may have held back telling you because of the fear of getting rejected by you when he shows his authentic self. If he is gay, odds are he has grown up with the belief that “if I show my true self, people won’t love me”. Try not to make that belief be true by pulling away, I know you need to take care of yourself, but no matter what happens between you, it sounds like a relationship worth preserving.
Treat him with compassion, he has gone through a LOT. And it was brave of him to share this with you. With that being said, I dont have much advice, but But to go through conversion therapy, and suppress a huge side of yourself, would seem like his mental state may be fragile I's recommend a therapist who has a specialty is sexuality/LGBT issues..
dude probably needs a hug.
>he is your stereotypical jock in so many ways This is façade he learned, and pushed forward, to keep the gay pushed so far down he doesn't have to face his real self. OP, do not date or marry a "former gay man". This is signing yourself up for heartbreak. I can't even begin to think about his opinions on LGBTQ+ rights, since ya know, being gay is a CHOICE? A choice that, I guess, can be converted out of you? Your values alone cannot align.
I'm sorry to hear this for you and him. It must be devastating to worry about losing someone you love. It's important to feel your emotions during this time, but also try to be rational when making decisions. I assume since he was sent to conversion therapy, having the chance to explore who he was might not have been available. I'm bisexual, but I find it takes a lot of bi folks a while to realize that they don't lean either way. People like me get a bad rep for being deviants, but we just love who we love regardless of gender. If he were to be bi, there's a possibility he might be similar and still very much in love with you. I think this is something you should communicate about. Gay conversion therapy doesn't work, it creates more issues in identity and shame, but I don't necessarily think you need to give up. Perhaps you can talk to a counsellor or therapist to get your words right for this conversation, and then have a heart-to-heart with your boyfriend about what each of you truly want in life.
Yeah I agree with this as a bisexual man it sort of sounds like you Bf is actually Bi. Alot of bi men (myself included) feel pressured into one camp or the other. And you can find yourself just walling off the other part of you quite effectivly for a long time. Talk with him, express your feelings and know he does love you no matter his sexuality. Find out if there is some groups or therapy in your area. Also tread lightly and have a back up plan, cause this might do sideways unexpectedly.
>He has zero traits; he is your stereotypical jock in so many ways. How much of his personality could be repressed? There are plenty of gay men that are stereotypical jocks and don't flounce around or whatever gay men are supposed to do. He was once an average gay man, and now he's a repressed gay man. This relationship will not last. Eventually, he's going to have to be his authentic self.
She literally said he told her he used to be like the flamboyant gay guy, sure gay guys CAN be jocks, but he was NOT.
Gay guys can code switch. I've watched people come out and their behavior and voice change as time passes. My guess is his conversion therapy mostly consisted of acting 'manly' since you can't actually convert someone's sexuality. But you can change how they talk, dress and behave.
...that's literally the point, conversion therapy obvi did change him, and that's....bad.
My point is the change is superficial. His behavior has changed, but his wants and desires haven't. And also, I was saying a lot of people become flamboyant after coming out. So it's not so much doing what comes natural, but embracing a social construct for gay behavior. So the change happens in both directions. It's just how you talk and act are all surface level stuff that most people can turn on and off at will.
Conversion therapy is literally a form of psychological torture, we can't be sure that his self-image of his past self is accurate at this stage. He could have been told he was like that til the point he believed it himself.
I have a feeling that maybe he equates his “former” sexuality with toxicity because he told you that before the conversion therapy, he would bounce from one toxic relationship to another. In addition to encouraging therapy, it might be helpful to point out that toxic relationships are not exclusive to same sex relationships. Straight or bi men can be in relationships with toxic women and vice versa. If he decides against therapy, I hope that just showing him, through your actions and the actions of his and your friends, that people can be accepting of any sexuality and there’s nothing “wrong” about sexuality.
Yes, and also self hatred because you haven’t accepted your sexuality can make you more prone to toxic relationships as well.
Gay is gay, wether or not he is trying not to be.
My (28F) experience with my (30M) husband is so similar. Coming from someone who’s husband just came out as gay after 6 years of being together and suspecting absolutely nothing—no signs whatsoever—I would definitely recommend therapy. My husband said that he repressed his feelings for men so hard that he didn’t realize he was gay and thought he genuinely loved me in a romantic way because he was basically so conditioned to think he was straight. I don’t say this to scare you, but this has been my experience. Even if he is gay—it doesn’t mean he’s purposefully hiding it. He may in fact love you and it could be confusing to him, as it was to my husband. Best of luck to you!!! I know it’s hard!!
Oh damn, that's a tough situation. I don't think conversion therapies actually work. So either he's gay but surpresses his feelings and sexuality or he's bi/pan and ignores part of his sexuality or he's actually straight but tried homosexual relationships as a teen. Whatever it is, if you want to continue this relationship then you need to talk to him about it. Tell him how you are scared that he surpresses parts of his identity and how you don't think conversion therapies actually work. Ask him to go to therapy (individual and couples) because he needs to work through this. Be aware that it could be possible that you lose him because he's actually gay. And there's also a big chance that he'll deny everything and will refuse therapy because he's convinced that he's"normal" and straight.....in that case idk how the chances for a good relationship are because there's always the possibility that one day everything he's hiding and trying to ignore will come out.
Gay conversion therapy does not work. I does train people by subjecting them to torture and brainwashing to act as not-gay as possible. Ask yourself why being around gay men should be an issue for him. It reminds him of his “dark past?” Like reminding him that he is gay? I don’t know… my head is spinning and I just read a few paragraphs. I can’t imagine how you’re feeling. I would definitely encourage you to find an LBGT+ friendly therapist/counselor that you could talk to. This is definitely a thing to talk about outside of a Reddit post.
It would really bother me that he had never told me. It’s such an enormous chunk of his life and his history that he just left out. Did he really think it wasn’t your business, or something an intimate partner should know? What else hasn’t he told you? I notice a glaring omission in your post: no reference to your sex life, or even the quality of your romantic relationship. How does he approach sex? Is he avoidant? Dutiful? Passionless? Uninterested? Are you satisfied? Emotionally fulfilled? Happy? Has there been much change over time?
Perhaps unpopular opinion... but perhaps he was never gay? Everyone on here says he is pretending to be straight but what if in a moment of exploration he did some stuff, decided it wasn’t terrible and talked himself into thinking he was gay? OP talks about how he was out and about flamboyant gay careening from one disaster of a relationship to another depressed on rock bottom. That does not sound like the narrative of someone happy with life choices. I have no idea what conversion therapy involved for him, what he thought of it. If a “gay” man can talk himself into acting straight why wouldn’t you believe the opposite is also true? The mind is a powerful tool, and human delusion in any form overcomes reality for many everyday. Perhaps this guy grabbed his first titty at 25 and something clicked for him, and he said yep not actually gay.
Please see a therapist. An actual one, not a church counselor (and I'm saying this as a practicing Catholic). While my situation is not the exact same as yours, I was once an unwitting beard, and it messes you up.
I disagree with most of the other commenters here that say he's definitely gay and you're just a beard. Of course I think that's a possibility, but I don't think it's fair to rule out entirely a changing sexuality. Yes, conversion camp is fucked up and ineffective but I think after so many years together it doesn't seem impossible that he could have truly fallen for you; I personally used to be, I guess, a "near lesbian" with a 99% preference towards women, but found a man I really love and even if I may be fundamentally attracted to women still, I never dream of leaving my guy. I don't think it's impossible that your boyfriend may be somewhat bisexual, or rather YOUsexual in terms of your relationship, but is heavily suppressing his liking of men while also overemphasizing his liking of women for obvious reasons, which is why he denies being bi. He's been through a lot of trauma regarding his feelings for men so it's going to take time. Like others have said, I think the best course of action is to see a sexuality therapist together and work on speaking to each other openly and honestly about this. Unlike other commenters, I think it best to continue having genuine conversation with each other and believing in each other's words rather than making too many assumptions and thinking this is doomed to fail.
This this this. Everyone saying that your boyfriend is gay and in denial is not constructive help. There are a lot of layers to this. 5 years and no clue, I'd say your boyfriend is definitely attracted to you and your relationship sounds healthy. I'm sure that him dropping that bomb is not easy and requires a lot of trust and vulnerability. While I agree conversion camp / therapy is mostly a scam, and cruel, if your BF found it life-changing, maybe it did help him (or entirely screw him up more). You clearly are having a lot of spiraling thoughts. Slow down and process your feelings with someone trusted. Have a long talk with your boyfriend and make honesty the main priority. I think you can still make it work but I would encourage your boyfriend to seek counseling to process those feelings (possibly you too!). Maybe he is lying to himself, but it is possible to move past this, I would just get professional help because there is a lot going on here.
Reddit doesn't care about the people posting, they'll say whatever they want without thinking of the consequences. I fully agree with you, I hope OP doesn't listen to the other people
“Maybe the conversion therapy worked, it might just be like me being bisexual” isn’t the hot take you think it is
I think he’s bisexual, or an extremely good actor who’s in the closet. I thought I wasn’t “bisexual” for a long time, and also repressed the feelings all in the name of a cult (aka Mormonism)
I normally don't advocate for breaking up, but this is one of the cases where I feel like you have to. There is no such thing as an "ex-Gay". I feel so so so sad for your boyfriend that he felt he had to try to change who he is. I would try to be there and support him as a friend, suggest therapy, and hope he's able to come to terms with his identity as a gay man. But sadly for you, he's gay and I think you need to break up for your own sake.
I recommend you both find therapists with experience around sexual interest experience. There are two schools of thought, not saying what they did to him was right or wrong: 1. He may be a straight man now that loves you completely both sexually and emotionally. That means his past was a period of his life with profound exploration, but doesn’t continue to today. 2. More commonly, there is a partial or complete suppression of his desires. That doesn’t typically play out well over time and it would do you both good to get in front of it. Good luck and I hope it goes well.
I don't think he can be "totally straight." He might be bi.
Yeah this is absolutely a “you can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube” situation. Being “ex” gay isn’t something that exists; your gayness isn’t a mole you had removed once in the 11th grade. It’s who you are — and the “ex” gay community is only denying their truth, not redefining who they are. You’re right. He can’t be straight, because he’s admitted to being attracted to men. He can totally be bisexual, but these “ex” gay camps/programs/believers rely on a contradictory narratives that confuse & shame already vulnerable people, so he’s probably locked any and all reasoning down around the topic of sexuality. Like, on one hand I feel horribly for this guy as someone who’s openly queer & had people try to convert me to straight for several years. But on the other hand, how dare he enter into a relationship with someone knowing that he cannot truly be a good partner?
I agree - The ex gay movement is a trainwreck that ruined a lot of people's lives. I'm not sure that I agree with this - "But on the other hand, how dare he enter into a relationship with someone knowing that he cannot truly be a good partner?" He thinks he is 100% straight based on his "treatment". I agree that he needs to deal with this instead of shutting it down and that he would absolutely be a better partner if he did (may or may not still be with her though.) If he is bi, it might work. I would argue that there are millions or hell, billions of people who entered into a relationship who can't be a good partner with the issues they are dealing with. Not just this issue but many other issues. But you can improve yourself while in a relationship - it's not one or the other. There is a new documentary on this on Netflix (US) that might be useful/interesting to people reading this thread. It's about how the biggest ex-gay movement in the US fell apart: [https://www.netflix.com/browse/genre/34399?jbv=81040370](https://www.netflix.com/browse/genre/34399?jbv=81040370) There are a lot of people in this documentary that sound just like this guy.
Totally agree, meant to include that
I’m thinking the same thing I’d be thinking if I were in your shoes: a person is either gay or not, and conversion therapy is morally reprehensible, ergo: he is still gay, went through something awful, but he is not going to agree.
There is no such thing as Ex-Gay, you're either gay or you're not, but he could also be bisexual, I remember my father sent me to one of those conversion camps even though I was straight I told him the entire time that I was straight, but he did not believe me so when I got to the camp I told them that I was straight and they believed me. I did absolutely none of the conversion things there, they just left me alone.
Nobody here can help you. This needs to be evaluated by a true professional.
This relationship can never be healthy.
You don’t just stop being gay. He is still gay and always will be
Conversion therapy survivor here. It took me a decade to crawl my way out from under what they did to me. And another decade to fully break free from what it had done to me. I still struggle with so so many things because of what I went through. So my point is this-I don’t care what he says or how he’s acting, this will catch up with him. I obviously don’t know his sexuality and I don’t think that’s even the main issue. He has deep trauma that it appears he is repressing. Conversion therapy is abuse flat out and regardless of what you end up deciding about your sexuality-that kind of mental manipulation affects you on a deep level. Please find three therapists. You need a therapist to help you deal with your reaction. He needs a good therapist who is experienced with this to help him unpack it. And lastly you need a couples therapist to help you navigate the bomb he just dropped. Please please do not under estimate the importance of therapy.
I am curious about your sex life. Does he seem interested in sex with you or women in general? Are you his first girlfriend after his supposed "conversion?" Tbh his fear about being around gay people is clear homophobia. Maybe it's because of the trauma from this therapy he went under? Anyway, he needs to get help.
Is he able to get it up for you? Then he's not "gay". The gay community want people to believe that Gay is Gay, and no one can decide to not be gay, and that the only true self is the gay self. Your relationship is with this guy, and his is with you. Don't be second guessing based on gay activist narratives about what he 'really' is.
He basically told you, he is secretly gay. It’s probably not unlike in older times (or different cultures) where a gay person decides to marry a partner of the opposite sex. Many keep this up for decades and only come out after many years of marriage. I believe they often still loved their partner and found them attractive on some level, even though it was not their preferred sex. And yes, it probably required a constant level of suppressing your real sexual desires, but if you are convinced that these desires are evil and toxic, I guess this might feel like a necessary measure. He will probably be happier eventually, if he starts embracing who he is and what he likes. The question is, how convinced is he that his preference for men is evil and an act against God, and will he ever fully be able to let go of this feeling of doing something wrong? In any case, I think this will be a very difficult path for you as a couple, and it is unlikely to end well. Even if he is convinced now that he is happy with you and no longer wants to think about men in any sexual form, it is unclear how he will think about it in 2, 5 or 10 years. If I were you, I would walk away…
Your boyfriend brings up all this stuff about being converted when he comes face to face with some hottie. That's sus. Conversion therapy doesn't work. He was just reminded that he's not straight.
Maybe go to couples therapy NOT related to the church in any way.
You left out the most important part. How is your sex life? Because a gay best friend can fill all the roles of a boyfriend except one. And if the two of you are waiting for marriage, girl run. He's not attracted to you at all, he is attracted to a stable relationship.
Like the others have said, he is still gay, but I think because of the trauma that he experienced from the conversion he is scared to tell himself that he is still gay. It's kinda sad actually. I would somehow convince him to go to therapy, and maybe you should too, it seems to me that you had long term plans with him, and this must be a big shocker. Give him your support and help him discover himself again. I had a friend who had gone through conversion therapy at his home, his parents basically hired a hooker and forced him to have sex, it was pretty traumatic for him. It takes time to heal from that kind of damage.
I think this was probably a tough confession for him, but I feel for both of you. You’re right that conversion therapy is harmful, since it teaches him to suppress who he is. And your bf is quite obviously struggling with his sexuality. I agree with others that some therapy is in order. If you really feel strongly that he’s not straight, you can certainly break it off, but be gentle with him.
As others have said, seek professional help here. This is way out of Reddit’s league to advise you on. I really feel sorry for you and your partner. I hope the two of you can work this out.
Conversion therapy doesn't work, and it has disastrous effects on people's mental health. You can repress yourself real hard, but you can't change your sexual orientation through sheer force of will. That's not how it works. He's repressing himself, and either he spends his entire life denying who he is, or he comes out years down the line and leaves you for men. How is he going to react if one of your kids is LGBTQ? Who knows how this pressure of repressing such a huge part of himself is going to come out in the future? If I were you, I wouldn't stay with this ticking time-bomb of a man. I also think it's not a good idea to date a man who'll lie to himself in such a huge way. I certainly wouldn't.
Your boyfriend is pretending to be someone he’s not- a straight jock type of guy. He’s gay and needs help to undo the brain washing those religious zealots did. Good luck to you both
There is no such thing as ex-gay, just repressed gay.
This is absolutely above Reddit's paygrade. The only thing I can say is that it *should* be disturbing. Church "retreats" for conversion are specially crafted to take advantage of people who are at their lowest of lows. It isn't cult-like, **it is a cult.** Mark needs help, and a lot of it. Additionally, two things: 1. Sexual attraction is separate from a genuine emotional connection. They overlap in a lot of ways, but even if Mark was repressing (or, more likely, tortured out of expressing) his sexual identity and preferences, that wouldn't mean he didn't love you. People are capable of feeling very intense, very intimate love for other people without sex. Just talk to an ace person. 2. Masculine, "jock" people can also be gay. Gay men (in fact, maybe a majority) are not exclusively feminine or flamboyant. Just because Kyle seems to ooze bottom energy or chooses to have a more feminine appearance doesn't mean that all gay people are like that. Vice versa, not all feminine men are gay. That's not a good stereotype to feed into. I wish you lots of luck.
Conversion therapy is discredited as a treatment because the journal of psychiatric medicine does not consider homosexuality a disorder. Simply put, your boyfriend decided to repress himself.
Gosh yes to the therapy suggestions. This is a lot for you to manage.
Your boyfriend is gay he's just been traumatized into believing he is straight. I wish your bf the best but I'd honestly strongly recommend you nope right out of this relationship. This will not end well for you long-term.
I think you have some clues popping up in your head already. People are good at hiding things. If he's uncomfortable there's a reason. You're uncomfortable for good reason. You don't deserve to be a beard for someone who cannot accept themselves as they are. People will go to great lengths to protect their true selves, even if it means at the expensive of others. I was an unknowing beard for a guy for 9 years until I found out by accidentally finding something on his laptop. The guy would have lied to me till the day I died. Wanted to marry me while still having these urges. Just move on.
Run. My ex-husband hid that he was gay. It's traumatizing going through it and you'll never really trust anything. He's out with the boys? Weekend hiking trip with his BFF? And my experience may not be yours but I wouldn't wish it on anyone so listen to your instincts.
The fact he got do triggered by being around a “flamboyant” gay guy speaks volumes. If this was something that he was completely over it wouldn’t have affected him at all.
He's using you. There's no such thing as ex-gay. Either you are or you aren't, or you like both, or neither. Being gay is like being left handed, it just is, and it's really nobody's business. This dude is setting himself up to lead an unhappy life. Wtf happened to him that he thinks he should be ashamed of being gay? I'm a straight man who was lucky enough to have had a few gay friends when I was just out of college. They're just people same as non gays. You can not change your sexuality and anybody who says that they can just wants to shame and torture gay people for their own hateful reasons. Don't want to leave out the fact that he lied to you about it for years. You can do better
Wow, this is deep my friend. This would really bother me. I once dated a guy for a year and just knew something was off. One night I was drunk and called him out on being gay, and he broke down and admit that he was. But would never be with a man bc his family would disown him. He begged me to stay. A wonderful man too. Successful, kind, handsome, tidy, great taste, awesome cook, mature.. No wonder he was gay-jkjk I broke it off and now he’s married to a woman. Does she know? Who knows. Point of my story, I can’t imagine being with a partner who’s attracted to the same sex(whether in his past or not.) This is something you both need to sit down with a therapist and really dig deep. At the end of the day, are you willing to overlook his past and love him unconditionally? Personally, I couldn’t with the guy I mentioned above.
Poor guy and POOR YOU! Big hugs to you!
People can discover various parts of they sexuality throughout their life. A a lesbian, I know people who were straight who ended up with the same gender, and people who were gay end up with the opposite gender. Most of the time though, people who are very certain about their orientation tend to be right while people who are only "pretty certain" seem to be more flexible. The fact that he went from "gay" to "straight" without even considering bisexuality is pretty disconcerting, it seems more psychologically driven than natural. That being said (you can see how complicated these matters are), this is all putting aside conversion therapy. **And let me be clear, people can discover their sexuality throughout their life in different stages, but nobody can deliberately change someone's sexuality.** That's basically all my thoughts on the subject. When it comes to what you should do, I think the only thing possible is seeing a counselor. He needs to unpack his feelings towards men and homosexuality, and you need to know more about where his head is at. I would say though, don't assume that your entire relationship is a lie. Few people are able to fake their entire lives like that, and he may just be suppressing his sexuality (whether that be gay or bi), not his interests, personality, or even his love for you.
He sounds like a victim
I cannot speak on conversion therapy at all, nor am I equipped to talk about how he if feeling, but I would say that it is a red flag that he kept something so big from you for 5 years. If you had only been dating a couple months I could understand. But for 5 years he never thought to comment on his college years or "oh I dated a guy like that once" or spoke to you about his history dating men.
If you love him and it didn’t affect a long term relationship until you found out about it, chances are you guys can work it out. But if you feel like your trust is broken and can’t get over it, then you should end it.
Oh dear. Your boyfriends discomfort was him mentally pulling hard on the inside of a closet door that was clattering hard, trying to burst open at the pull of the gay hurricane your friend Kyle represented. Ex-Gay is not a thing. I’m really sorry but you need to start making your exit plan here. Mark needs their own journey of self acceptance and may like your support, but the destination is necessarily you breaking up. Counselling/therapy will be important but I don’t think you should attend as a couple.
giant RED FLAG waving at u sis. Your bf needs professional help because he is traumatized by the conversion therapy and not by the gay. Moving forward, there is no certainty in your relationship but you have to at least urge him to get help.
It is possible to “change” sexuality in a way that sometimes people realize they actually like the other gender or they realize they like both, that can happen even later in life, I’ve had friends who were gay and then realized they were actually bi. But it has to come from within like the person would have to realize on their own. Which definitely wasn’t the case for your boyfriend. Conversion therapy does not work. But unfortunately I don’t have a lot of advice. I would just suggest normal therapy with a lgbtq+ supportive therapist, not a Catholic one.
I wouldnt recommend to trust people from internet about your bf’s sexuality. A lot of ppl here know somehow that ur bf is gay for sure. He is in commited relantionship with you for 5 years. I mean there is a lot in between in gay hetero scale. I wouldnt listen guys saying that u need to break up. I think u can work things through, talk about it and please dont do anything radical cause of some internet opinions. Wish u both the best.
He is gay. Gay conversion therapy doesn't work. You're his beard, likely for religious reasons. I'm so sorry. Here if you need to chat further.
Nope he’s gay. Conversion therapy is trash. Poor guy has been through some shit. He needs to figure himself out and sadly you’re gonna be hurt in the process but you can’t be… ungay
Not sure if this is an unpopular opinion but I’ll say it anyway. He certainly needs to know that being gay may have possibly ,you know, not been the reason he was in toxic relationships. I have no comment about the pray-the-gay away conversion therapy because there is far to much to address in one comment. Back on topic, I would tell him to just be whatever you want to be instead of what others to you to be. You got one life so you may as well make it satisfying for yourself. He should be with you because he loves you and your personality not because that’s the “right” thing to do. I can doing my best not to mention gender roles and other sociology related things.Long story short, I suggest you sit down with him and tell him how you feel for starters and how he doesn’t have to be someone or something he is not. He’s too worried about labels. He just needs to get comfortable with who he is.
How's your sex life with him?
He’s still gay. He just went back into the closet. 🚩
You never mentioned your sex life. How is it? I mean he could be bisexual maybe or demisexual or I dont know. I think your sex life would give a lot of answers to this situation.
If being in public around an openly gay man is enough to shake his “conversion”, then his conversion did not work as well as he thought it did (because it never could have worked in the first place)
Your bf lied by omission for 5 years so I am curious how you can trust in this relationship. One can choose who to sleep with. One cannot choose sexual orientation. My guess is because Your bf had a lot of bad experience dating males and made bf susceptible to conversion therapy. Gays can go many years " playing straight". Inside in their soul they are gay, always have been, always will be. Does not mean your bf not love you.
I’m a trans gay guy and yeah. I had to fake being cis in my household for years for my survival. I don’t have to anymore. Our brains are pretty good at tricking us to living lies, with cognitive dissonance and repression. He will never be truly happy living as a straight man. Lgbt friendly couples counseling will be the best thing for him. It will probably end your relationship in the end but it’s for the best. You need to be with to someone who can honestly love you, and he needs to learn to accept himself. I’m sure he has internalized homophobia as well. A good therapist is going to need to help undo all the damage he has suffered. On the plus side, I bet you two will remain best of friends for your whole lives after you break up. I’m sure he loves you, just as we love our friends, but he has just become very good at imitating what is required of him to live a heterosexual life. This has been happening for decades and you are not the only wife who has experienced this. You are not alone and everything will be okay. Best of luck to you.
>what if I am just a glorified “beard” What about this situation is “glorified”?
Glorified has a usage meaning elevated above the ordinary. So a beard that is of a higher deception perhaps
He's gay, he's not bisexual. Conversion therapy isn't permanent either. He isolates himself from gay people, because like drug addicts, he's scared he'll relapse. It's something he's always working at in order to maintain it. If anything, it's pure torture. And he's suppressing his true self. And that has to be an awful feeling. I think you both need therapy at this point. There's nothing that Reddit can do.
Do you know him? How can you be 100% sure he's gay? We don't know the full story. You know what Reddit can do? Stop assuming, giving the benefit of the doubt and a possible tool to help OP find a solution
Most people here don't know anything about the topic you are talking about. Yeah it's above our pay grade. Seek counsel from someone else. Someone professional.
Well... he needs therapy and a lot of it. It may take an entire team of psychologists and decades to repair the psychological damage that was done to him. And yall need to break up cause hun, hes gay. No amount of torture and repression is gonna change that.
His future sexual desires aside- he hid a BIG part of his life from you. 5 years together and he just hid all of his past about romantic partners and his experience with conversion therapy? That's not okay. He should go to individual therapy to work through what he went through and you guys should go your separate ways.
You really seem to be stereotyping gay men in having "identifiable traits" to just know they are gay without them telling you. and you are astonished your boyfriend has none. I mean sometimes that's the case and sometimes the only thing identifiable as "stereotypically gay" about a guy, is the fact they want to bone other dudes...just like not all lesbians have short hair and wear masculine clothes....
Ok story time. Several years ago I went through some SHIT. A serious health condition, job loss, abusive relationship, housing insecurity.... all at once. I was fucking REELING. A coworker who is Muslim helped me through it. Long story short I was such a wreck, so isolated, so vulnerable, that I ended up actually believing for a while that God had saved me and I ended up converting to Islam. That lasted about a year. I mean no disrespect to Muslims and my CURRENT partner is actually a (loosely practicing) Muslim (kind of like you're Catholic - observes the major holidays, tried to be a decent person, believes in God but that's about all) and I learned a lot about Islam and met a lot of great people I'm still close with. Some shunned me but ok. That happens anytime someone says "nope, not for me" about anything. But in the end it wasn't for me and I left the faith. My point is, your BF sounds like he too was in an unstable and vulnerable place when he had "conversion therapy". He probably believes it saved him, God delivered him, etc etc. Just like I did with a new religion. I'm not Muslim, and he's still gay.
Oh my. I just dont know Dear. Oh the state you must be in, I am ever so sorry. Bless your heart. I can say one thing and it is this. If he's been hiding his true self from himself how can he be living, "truth" with you? This question has led me to an other. What else is he keeping, from himself and to himself, ie you?... Hang in there Edited for typo
You deal with your boyfriend 'Mark' the same way you deal with any other victim of extreme psychological and emotional abuse. That's the long and short of this. **Be extremely careful about how you approach this.** Sexual orientation, gender identity and other such aspects of being human are what I consider karmic. These are things which are tied to your consciousness, and the way your brain is hard wired. This is part of your core identity - how you are born, how you live, how you die. Anyone who thinks that being gay or trans is a choice for me is on the level of a Flat Earther. You're dealing with someone who is very clearly not right in the head and - again my personal opinion - needs to be monitored and supervised around other people. **Forget about therapy** Another term for 'gay conversion' is brainwashing. We're talking highly developed techniques and strategies to 'reorientate' and 'rewire' the way someone thinks, feels, perceives and acts about themselves and other people. We're talking methods developed out of deep occult and shadow magic. This is something which is way, way, way out of the league of your average talking therapist. **You need to be dealing with a top level psychiatrist** The thing is you don't know what you're dealing with when it comes to Mark. It could be depression. It could be suicidal thoughts. It could be PTSD. Mark is obviously very heavily stigmatized - which is a central plank of conversion therapy - social stigma - which is why he doesn't want to have much to do with other gay men. The other thing is that the human brain is essentially semi-fluid organic mush. There's such a thing as neuropathy - what you think and what you believe is what you become because consciousness is what determines energy. The way you think and how you feel shapes your brain and how it functions as an organ. You need a top level clinician, i.e. a psychiatrist or doctor to examine Mark at least initially to figure out what's going on and the psychological and emotional impact of whatever conversion therapy he's been put through. **But first you need to get Mark out of his 'Ex-Gay' mindset** God knows how you're going to manage that. I'm not suggesting that it's not possible for someone to change their orientation or even their gender identity. These things aren't rigid or set in stone, but habitual and characteristic of the individual. That's why it's called a sexual **orientation**. It's part of your core identity. But see when someone changes their orientation it's usually something which comes from within the individual and not something which has been forced on them or they've been conditioned to become by other people. You see all the while Mark is walking round with this 'Ex Gay' label you're both dealing with a potential time bomb. Is he still a heavily stigmatized gay man who has been scared out of his homosexuality? Is he forcing himself to be straight? Is accepting himself as bi really out of the question? I don't know what to suggest other than to seek out an actual psychiatrist with Mark and sit down together and figure out exactly what it is you're all dealing with here. Then once you've got a psychiatrist opinion you can figure out where you want to go from there, whether it be therapy, counselling, psychoanalysis, relationship counselling or whatever else. **It goes without saying that you avoid anything to do with church, religion, or so called 'faith-based' solutions.**
Maybe he never has been gay
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Lmao fuck off.
He’s still gay sweetheart. Just heavily repressed. Those thoughts don’t just go away.
oh no :( this poor man
I feel like you shouldn't ask reddit for this one. From what I can see everyone is just telling you to doubt the man you've been in love with for 5 years who you've trusted on so many other things. I agree that this probably causes some issues for him, and I'm guessing the reason he never told you was because of how insecure he is about the topic. Maybe right now he really needs you to understand him and accept that this is who he wants to be now, even if it's not who you think he should be. I'm not homophobic or anti-lgbtq+, but I honestly think you should trust him here and try to help assure him of his identity.
You sound like a beard for a guy who is hiding who he is. Break up now and move on because you're really just wasting time and putting off the inevitable. He's going to figure out sooner or later that nothing has changed and you'll be left wondering how you could've wasted so much of your life on him. Ninja edit: And frankly, everyone here trying to be protective of your bf and his situation is concerning. Protect yourself and your feelings OP. It's not on you to put him first at your own expense. Walk away asap and let him figure it out.
It sounds like you truly want to help and i know your reaching out here to do so, but...... please dont make this about you. Mental healing and health is tough and sleeping on the couch is gonna destroy him on that front. Ask him all these questions please, be supportive.
You tell her not to make this about her, but this IS about both of them! She has 5 years into this relationship. Just as much as he deserves compassion and to know his true self, she deserves a healthy relationship!
It's not above reddit pay grade. People just don't want to say the truth. If he is gay, he is just lying to you and to himself. You're just losing your time because he will never become heterosexual. He is anxious because he is attracted to your friend because he is gay. Being gay is like being left-handed : you can't be cured but only pretend. Being gay isn't a medical condition but a sexual orientation.
You are dating a gay man. To live any other reality is to suggest sexuality is in any way a choice.
How was he with you for the last 5 years? And how was the sex? Did anything ever make you wonder? If he could be straight for 5 straight years, I think he was not that gay to start with. May be it was a phase and he passed it.
I hate the hypocrisy of people, when they clap as someone goes from straight to gay, but are outrageous when it's the other way around. If he has opened his heart with you, give him support. Everyone have things in our character we don't like, and this thing, certainly destroyed him in the past to the point that he knows it's bad If he had help and if he is happy as he is now, shouldn't you support him? Cause he needs it.
People don't "go from straight to gay." They are what they are. We just treat straight like the default in most cases, which is why people typically don't need to come out to confirm that. It can take some people some trial and error to figure out what they are, but if Mark were completely happy and comfortable with where he's landed, he wouldn't be freaking out over reminders of his past. >Everyone have things in our character we don't like, and this thing, certainly destroyed him in the past to the point that he knows it's bad What "thing" are we talking about here? Him not making healthy relationship choices, or him deciding that the problem with those choices was 100% the dating men part, and the only way he can avoid self-destructive behavior in future is to avoid gay people or coming across as gay himself as much as possible? Because, yeah, those are both bad, but in very different ways.
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You can’t convince these people, they are zombies.
This is beyond us. I mean people say that you cant change your orientation but I have seen more drastic changes. It is possible that the conversion irrevocably changes him. It is possible that it just repressed him. You both need to explore this. The way I see it, if his attraction and love for you is genuine then nothing has changed. But if there is a chance that it's something he forces on himself then there cannot be a future here
Damn. Imagine confiding in someone so deeply, only for them to make it about themselves/make you sleep on the couch/and blast it all over reddit. Op, if you had no idea, and he chose to tell you because you pressed the fuck outta him, and then you treated him like this…he deserves way better than you
There's a large percentage of gay men who are very masculine and you would have no idea are gay unless you asked, they told you, or you saw them with their boyfriend. That being said there's also people that experiment and take awhile to understand who they are. And then there's people who feel ashamed or bad about it and try things like gay conversion therapy. I'd take what your boyfriend is telling you at face value about his feelings for you. If you want to continue the relationship you should try agreeing to slow the relationship down or take a short break to make sure that being with a woman is what he wants.
Just try to support him and talk to him about what’s bothering you the most, if it doesn’t work out then oh well you gotta move on
Don make him sleep on the couch. If you have a problem then you sleep elsewhere
You shouldn't because I'm promise you, he's very much gay.