{"id":399,"date":"2005-08-27T22:37:01","date_gmt":"2005-08-27T22:37:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.redeaglespirit.com\/blog\/?p=399"},"modified":"2005-08-27T22:37:01","modified_gmt":"2005-08-27T22:37:01","slug":"its_not_you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.redeaglespirit.com\/blog\/its_not_you\/","title":{"rendered":"it&#8217;s not you&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>no, seriously&#8230;it&#8217;s really not!<br \/>\nI had an interesting conversation yesterday&#8230;and it got me thinking (yes, it happens occasionally)<br \/>\nWho I was talking to really doesn&#8217;t matter&#8230;but we were talking about my ex, and certain things he had done in his lifetime&#8230;and my being gay.<br \/>\nI made the point to that person, that my ex had NOTHING to do with me being gay, how that brought me to this post is another matter&#8230;but since I&#8217;m sure someone will eventually share this with him, I&#8217;m going to expound on it a bit&#8230;<br \/>\nI&#8217;ve been asked, (alot) and as recently as 3 weeks ago, &#8220;how do you do that? how are you married, have kids, and then decide you are gay?&#8221;<br \/>\nLet me make this as clear as I can&#8230;<br \/>\n***this is ME, personally, it does not apply to every person that came out of the closet after marriage and children, (and trust me, there are alot of us!!) nor do I mean it to speak for anyone else EXCEPT MYSELF!***<br \/>\nI did not &#8216;decide&#8217; I was gay, I doubt anyone does!<br \/>\ndid I always know I was gay? not at first, to be honest, with the way I was raised that wasn&#8217;t a concept I understood until I was well into my teen years, and after I did understand the concept&#8230;how do I explain this? I knew several women that were gay, I was so drawn to them without really knowing why (yet) but&#8230;well, you know how when you&#8217;re a very shy person, and someone you  like comes around? and you tend to freeze up and are sure you&#8217;re acting like an idiot? well, that&#8217;s what I was like around these women. (even though I&#8217;m certain now they didn&#8217;t even know I was there :lol)<br \/>\nSo, I&#8217;m starting to come to these realizations&#8230;however&#8230;I was raised in the church&#8230;a church that doesn&#8217;t &#8216;believe&#8217; that you CAN be gay, and, of course, good girls are supposed to get married, and have babies, and all that good stuff&#8230;well, I wasn&#8217;t exactly a &#8216;good&#8217; girl when I was younger&#8230;I have seen worse though :wink<br \/>\nlets just say, in my efforts to suppress what I &#8216;couldn&#8217;t&#8217; possibly be&#8230;I made an effort to become the opposite&#8230;&#8217;sowed my wild oats&#8217; as it were&#8230;(probably why my dad thinks to this day I can&#8217;t be gay because according to him i was to &#8216;boy crazy&#8217; when I was younger&#8230;I&#8217;m still waiting for my damn emmy for that!)<br \/>\nso, moving forward a couple years&#8230;I meet my ex (blind date, don&#8217;t ask) etc&#8230;<br \/>\nnow&#8230;moving forward a few more years, I finally come to terms, with MYSELF, that yes, I am gay&#8230;or at least bisexual.<br \/>\ndo I share this revelation with anyone? oh hell no!! I was married, had 3 kids, not to mention he would have killed me (no, it&#8217;s not every straight male&#8217;s fantasy)<br \/>\nSo, do I leave him because of this? no<br \/>\nI did not leave him for another man, woman, or for any other reason than I could take no more emotional abuse, threats, rape, blackmail and I would have slit my own throat had I stayed there much longer.<br \/>\nwould things have been different if he had been different? well, there&#8217;s no way to know this, things happen the way they did for a reason (even though thats not always clear to me what it is at the time, or even now, years later) maybe if he had been different we could have had a rational disscussion like mature adults, instead of the threats of what he would do if I ever left him.<br \/>\ndoes he have anything to do with me being gay?<br \/>\nNO<br \/>\nnot &#8211; one &#8211; thing<br \/>\nthere&#8217;s nothing he did or didn&#8217;t do that has anything to do with me being gay&#8230;that might be hard for him to believe, but it&#8217;s NOT about him!!! it&#8217;s about me&#8230;maybe I should have dealt with it when I was younger, in retrospect, that probably would have been better for all parties involved&#8230;but I wouldn&#8217;t be who I am today if that had happened, and my children would also not be here if that were the case, and I firmly believe THAT, above all else, is NOT a mistake! no matter what transpired, before, durring, or afterward, they are here for a purpose. (and I&#8217;m just as certain that it&#8217;s not to fufill their fathers sick sense of justice against their mother)<br \/>\nso you see, sometimes, it&#8217;s not you&#8230;it is me&#8230;really, it is!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>no, seriously&#8230;it&#8217;s really not! I had an interesting conversation yesterday&#8230;and it got me thinking (yes, it happens occasionally) Who I was talking to really doesn&#8217;t [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-my-viewpoint"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.redeaglespirit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.redeaglespirit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.redeaglespirit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.redeaglespirit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.redeaglespirit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=399"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.redeaglespirit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.redeaglespirit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.redeaglespirit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.redeaglespirit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}