Atheist and ex-gay?

[Napoléon]

Didn't realise you were gay, Nap.

Meh, I've explained before on here about my own sexuality.

I consider myself hetero, but when I was younger I went through a period where I was more attracted to guys than girls. I chalk it down to puberty, call it what you like I don't care. But at the end of the day I know for a fact you cannot choose who you are attracted to and the point remains all the same.

[NoraBrimstone]

Sleep, you're clearly not coping with who you are. Instead of being angry with everyone and hating yourself you need to find a way to accept and love who you are. That way you will be much happier and less of a bitch all the time.

You will always be gay. That's who you are. Who you always have been. Who you always will be. You were born gay. You will die gay. Simple as that. You can't ever change it, so don't even try.

There is nothing at all wrong with being gay. Clearly, you were raised around a lot of bigotry which seems to have rubbed off on you. But that's not the end of the world. The best thing you can do is get some good counselling or join a support group to help you get over your feelings of hate towards a whole section of society to which you yourself belong. Do this, and you have a good chance of being happy.

I really do wish you the best of luck.

[DeistPaladin]

Didn't realise you were gay, Nap.

Meh, I've explained before on here about my own sexuality.

I consider myself hetero, but when I was younger I went through a period where I was more attracted to guys than girls. I chalk it down to puberty, call it what you like I don't care. But at the end of the day I know for a fact you cannot choose who you are attracted to and the point remains all the same.

Interesting. I've heard about shifting sexual orientation once before, by someone who said he was mostly straight in his younger years and shifted more to gay as he got older. It fits with my ideas that sexual orientation can be fluid for some, though it is still a matter of brain chemistry. The brain can change, I suppose.

[Napoléon]

Interesting. I've heard about shifting sexual orientation once before

My guess is a lot more people have, or have had, "bisexual tendencies" than they let on. I know I'm not the only one.

[frankiej]

Interesting. I've heard about shifting sexual orientation once before

My guess is a lot more people have, or have had, "bisexual tendencies" than they let on. I know I'm not the only one.

Yeah, I admit to it. I see no reason not to.

[Ryantology]

I've always wondered whether a gay person would leave the love of their life, their soul mate, the person they insist they would ''marry'' if the law permited...

...if that person changed gender.
...if they lost their visually distinctive masculine/feminine features.
...if that person discovered they were really bi-sexual or heterosexual rather than homosexual.

The insistence by some/many gay people that they simply cannot BE anything other than gay, seems to say that their homosexual relationships
are only skin-deep (genitalia) and are dependent upon their partner being sufficiently "same-sex". It seems to be a BARRIER to unconditional love.

I don't think there's such a thing as completely gay or straight. I think everyone falls somewhere in the middle. As I am definitely in the middle somewhere, if the person I loved changed gender or physical appearance, it would not make a difference to me unless her personality changed with it, which would prompt me to re-evaluate a relationship no matter what else is going on. But, I can also see how people view such things to be an important aspect of whomever they are dating. Hell, for some people, love itself isn't really a big deal.

But, as Shell B pointed out, everything you said about gay people applies just as much to people who think they are straight. If you fell in love with a woman who, one day, by inexplicable means, woke up a man in looks and physical build, how strong would your love be?

[Faith No More]

It still seems a hell of a lot easier to be straight, though. I always feel paranoid now. That I'm too feminine, that it's too obvious that I'm gay, that I'm hiding something, and I can't really help it. I don't even want to talk to anyone anymore or go out in public.

You need to listen to yourself. You are teeming with self-hatred, and all of the digust you have described is merely the projection of that self-hatred onto the gay community. Until you accept that you are gay and learn to love yourself regardless of your sexuality, you are awlays going to be a miserable misanthrope. You scapegoat the faults of others to hide the fact that you don't like yourself, because that allows you to believe they they are the ones with the prolbem.

See a counselor and learn to accept and love yourself.

[Lion IRC]

Ryantology's dilemma would make a good poll question.

...If you fell in love with a woman/man who, one day, by inexplicable means, woke up a man/woman in looks and physical build, how strong would your love be?

[Napoléon]

If you fell in love with a woman/man who, one day, by inexplicable means, woke up a man/woman in looks and physical build, how strong would your love be?

It's more a question of what attracts you physically. Many people will say that looks aren't important but in my opinion they are very important. If that person's looks are changed by waking up as a different gender (which they more than likely will be), then yeah, you're probably not going to have the same physical attraction as you did.

It's nothing really to do with gender or sexuality, but the fact that the person you love will have drastically changed. The same sort of question can be asked if you still love someone the same if they had 90% burns from an accident. Sadly I think many people probably wouldn't. Sure you will probably still love them personality wise, but will the physical attraction be there? I'm saying no.

Ofcourse, it also depends on your definitions of love.

[Lion IRC]

The love of my life - a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma - has been married to me since 1985.