Overcoming white normative gender & sexuality programming
Hi everyone,
So, I sort of "came out" and I'm not even quite sure that is the proper terminology, to my cis-female spouse this past summer. I've also talked to a few of my gay and bi friends about it too, but I don't know if I'm looking for validation, vindication, or just some, I dunno, commonality with anyone else who has or is feeling like this.
We've been married for a little over 8 years now, and together for almost 10. During this time, I've loved my spouse with everything I have, and of course I've been attracted to other women, but I noticed something sort of changed a few years ago. I like to give some context first, so here it goes. I've been going through my own mental health journey for almost 6 years now. I was formally diagnosed with ADHD when I was 10. It was the late 90s, so my father was like, "Yeaaaa, that's not real; he'll grow out of it." I mean, my mom was the one who pushed for testing and also got us into gifted ed at the beginning of 1st grade, but then our lives blew up when my mom packed my fraternal twin brother and me on a plane, and we went to my grandmother's in Florida. For context, my parents separated when I was 6 and had split custody until 10, which is when I got testing and some services. Then my Dad got custody because he knew the fucking judge and used my mom's mental health against her. Fucking shitty, I know. He's a tool.
Soooooooo, annnnnnnyyyyywayyyyyyyy, I went through the rest of my human development, childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood, without the intellectual and emotional support a neurodivergent brain craves. Now, of course, I did all the things: clubs, sports, friends, hobbies, then college, then working adulthood, always masking, coping, and repeating over and over; the cycle went on without me knowing what it was. That was, of course, until COVID.
Since that time, I've been consistently in therapy, utilizing medication, and slowly growing. I'm almost 40, and I feel like I've just woken up from a dream and am starting to live. I don't want to miss out on any experience anymore. My first "butterflies in your stomach" moment was in 2021, when I walked into a coffee shop and saw this absolutely beautiful man behind the counter serving coffee.
My stomach fluttered, my heart tingled, and I legit blushed. I had no idea what this feeling was, and I'd never felt it toward another man before, but I felt it, fully and openly. As I approached the counter, we made eye contact, and, like, you know, when you make that initial connection with someone via eye contact, it can be a few different things. Sometimes it's awkward, a glance, a turn away, shyness, but this was different; it was that look you give and get when someone sees you and says, "Hey." I had butterflies in my stomach. I was legitimately nervous but also nervously flirty. I placed my order and stood by the waiting counter near the door, my mind racing. "What is this?" I wondered. I let the shame creep in. The guilt crept in. The fear crept in. The homophobic cis-white binary programming that was uploaded to my OS every Sunday at Catholic Mass and reinforced at CCD, and growing up in a deeply homophobic cultural norming of living in a lower-middle-class white society, only reinforced it. So I got my drink, didn't say goodbye, and shamefully power-walked to my car, wondering, "What the fuck was that? Like, am I gay? Or something? I'm really confused." I did what I learned to do almost every single time I was challenged emotionally or faced with a great emotional difficulty: I fucking buried that shit so far damn deep and locked it in the vault of my mind that you would need a god damn equivalent of a mental nuke to break that shit open.
I wasn't as strong then as I am now. I hadn't done the real work of unpacking trauma, revisiting it and sitting with the hurt, learning how to acknowledge my emotions and really feel through them, learning how to work through difficult emotional situations, how to use masking appropriately, when to advocate for myself, how to build and maintain healthy relationships, how to communicate my feelings more effectively with a partner, and of course, medication, glorious, glorious medication. Praise science!
I'm not sure what I'm really looking for here, honestly. However, I can now be honest with myself about this, which is that I don't really think about gender as a factor anymore when it comes to attraction. I let myself and my body feel what it feels toward anyone. I can still be a devoted husband and be pansexual, and I think I'm okay with that.