Hello, everyone, do you have any good idea to my problem, please?
For many years, at least 8 years, I was confused and disturbed by the uncertainty and worry about my sexual orientation. Maybe I am a gay, but maybe I am not. I know that I really have the sexual impulse when I see the handsome or nice boys, and I am just interested in those with very good-looking and I can not to develop the intimate relationship with the boys of general looking and body figures.
However, this is not the problem I am worried about most. The most worst thing that made me often in deep anxiety is that I have to date a girl exclusively although I have no very strong feeling to her. I found it was difficult for me get close to my girlfriend and I have no any sexual fancy to her body. Why I did like this is I have to inherit my family name and I am the only child of my family, because the descending tradition is very popular in China. To be frank, my girlfriend loves me very much, but I am afraid my feeling for her is not as strong as her feeling for me, and as I thinking of the comfortable and soft treatment to me from her and her parents, I did not feel as happy as the usual persons thought, reversely, I felt guilty very much, because I can not give the true love and affection to her. Furthermore, I let myself be seduced into visiting the homosexual websites, watching the porn homosexual videos and the heterosexual videos are unable to interest me any. I have to keep the lover relationship with my girlfriend because I have to make the false phenomenon in front of my parents and make them know that I have fallen in love with a girl and I would marry her in a near future and they would have the grandson/grand-daughter in a near future. Another reason I like to make hetero-marriage is that it would make me feel comfortable in the public, such as in the working environment. You see, if you dont have any partner when your age is above 30, you will be considered as a strange or eccentric person in China and that would put you into a very unfavorable position of your occupational promoting and developing relation with your colleagues.
I know that what I am doing is very cruel to my girlfriend and I am even a person with the worst ethic, but what should I do? I often put myself into deep self-accusation. I want to tell the truth to my girlfriend, but when I hear my parents appealing and a complete eagerness to be grandparents, I hesitate. My parents, my working environment need me to be married, this long-term pressure attacked me frequently and I have to lose myself as if I am no longer to be a man belonging to myself. I could not be true to myself. I am sorry, I can not be true to myself.
Now, let me continue to write my traumatic experiences of my recent life. Actually the equally serious or stressful things similar to the events I described in the above is my strong video addiction that also usually puts me into very deep depression.
I am a student from China and making study in UK, and this opportunity is really uneasy for me to get. I did overcome many troubles and difficulties to get this opportunity. But now I have not cherished the opportunity and I have been not satisfied with my performance in UK. I mean, when I was in China, I thought and imagined that I should be very hard-working when I am at UK. But this is not the case now, and I am really depressed of it. The reasons are that I still have been disturbed by the trouble of my sexual orientation and still have been bothered by the idea that whether I would make a break with my girlfriend, you see, I dont love her from the bottom of my heart, because I am a gay, or at least I am a bi-sexuality.
Most seriously, I indulged myself with the porn videos of homosexuality and masturbated frequently so that my body and health was damaged seriously. I know I should overcome it, but I can not stop watching those videos when nobody is near to me. Actually, I have been infected by the strong addiction of watching this kind of videos. Another reason that I can not give them up is that I watch them excessively and purposely when I find I have broken the high behavior rule I made for myself, such as I required that I should spend all of the whole day on study. When the behavior rule of the high standard is broken, I feel very depressed, and I am very unsatisfied with my behavior performed just now. Then I simply go on watching those videos and waste more study time by indulging in them much more. Although it seems that watching adult videos is quite normal, I have done these without limit and made it play an very unfavorable effect to my body. Not only this, I felt very worried and depressed when I remember that I still have a lot of work to be finished and I should stop watching these videos at once and return to work now, but no, I do not do what I should do, and I keep masturbating and let them do more harm to my body. In fact, my health is no longer very well due to the excessive sexual activities.
The requirements I make for myself is usually very high and strict, but often I can not make myself to meet them, so I feel depressed. When I feel depressed, my behavior become more unfavorable and I go into the opposite extreme of my behavior requirements I planned formerly. When I become numb to my current disappointment and depression after behaviouring in the bad style of activities for several days, I depressed less because I am used to being like this. But for another, I would not submit to defeat, I find that what I am doing is not what I really want to do, so I begin to make a new plan and make up my mind to accomplish it. However, I could not meet the new plans high requirements again and after 1~2 days, I break the behavior rule. In fact, I feel very nervous and sensitive to the success and failure and confine myself to my-own circles when I am in the style of the high behavior rule, and I do not like to perform the high standard, but I force myself to do it, or else, I will feel depressed and short of the safety sense.
This is a typical vicious circle, you see, but I can not break it up and I continue repeating this behavior style and indulge myself in harmful addiction day by day. On the one hand, I feel I should be an excellent and hard-working student and keep myself far away from those harmful addictions. On the other hand I am quite unsatisfied with my current performance and I can not give up the addictions. I often caution myself against indulging in those meaningless or harmful activities, but I am unable to do like what I think.
This morning, I did not get up until 12 oclock, when all the workers had been on work. So, suddenly, I became the most lazy boy in our laboratory, but just 2 days before, I was the earliest person coming in the lab, because two days before, I was in the top emotion and would be the most excellent student, but now I am in the opposite extreme, and now I become the worst student in the lab. Many people feel strange to this, but I know why, because I am worried, depressed and sensitive to what happens around myself very much.
Your situation sounds like a bad one, but you are not alone. Many men go through such feelings, some "come out" and accept their gay side totally, others do not and stay with the women they are all ready with.
I personally think that this repression is very unhealthy for you, as in my experience it leads to feelings of depression and then guilt and then more depression. This is a bad cycle and seems for you to be tied in with your addiction to pornography.
If you had been a British citizen then I would have suggested that you just told your girl friend if you are being made to feel so depressed about not loving her.
The fact that being attracted to men to the extent that you are is damaging your work and life is not a good one at all and so coming out would not only stop her from being in a loveless relationship, but also it would allow you to start to build a happy life where you accept yourself as who you are, and not have to do it in secret via pornography.
BUT......I cannot comment on homosexuality in china, is it a very bad thing to be homosexual in china? and would your family have a big problem about it?
You see, it is really a problem to be a gay or lesbian in China. The parents often can not accept it and often encourage or promote their son or daughter to be married as if their children's sexual orientation doesn't exit or not be different from general persons. So many gay or lesbian people have to go into marriage at last due to the pressure from their families, the society and community, and this is the case expecially for those from one-child family, because they have to inherit their family name via hetero-marriage and giving a birth to a baby. There are few people who dare to "come out" and to say their true sexual orientation to the public and even their parents. As in the eyes of the most people in China, homosexuality seems abnormal and indecent, at least it seems eccentric and can be cured or changed to the straight person by some means or measures.
It sounds rediculous, but this is true in China. I hope the bad situation would change in a near future.
I really don't know what I should do, maybe ignore it? or let it be. But I really don't feel comfortable when the circular obstacles of the bad emotion come frequently.
The conditions in China now are similar to the west 50/60 years ago. So you have to think, what did the lgbt people do since then to gain all the ground that we have? Many lgbt Chinese I talked to say they are waiting for conditions to change, perhaps that its someone else's job to enact the change. But really, it starts with individuals, brave people who come out to their parents and friends, who are open about who they are. They faced really bad conditions, of course, many families disowned their gay kids, there was massive discrimination, but that is the spark that set the fire, a fire that took a long time to really get going.
I think one strength China has for LGBT-issues is the lack of a powerful anti-gay religious establishment. The anti-gay sentiments are largely of a "it's-our-tradition" nature and there's no Chinese Pope telling people what to think. Chinese culture and society now have been going through massive changes; if people can accept that having only 1 or 2 children, instead of as many as possible, in just 25 years, then I don't see how it would be so different for LGBT issues. But since the government won't be involved, and there are not that many civil institutions to help, it will be up to individuals to start changing things themselves. I can even see in big cities in China a change more towards the west in 1960's/1970's, were being gay and living a homosexual lifestyle is a fad for teens and uni students, a change that is not widely reported out of those scenes, however.
It seems to me you have basically three choices, 1) be honest and open with your family (brothers/sisters/cousins first, parents later, grandparents never) and friends, maybe face rejection or maybe just many uncomfortable conversations and then cold emotions for several years followed by a thaw, 2) be dishonest about it, marry a woman, have a child to satisfy the family and be quite miserable for the rest of your life (not to mention ruining the wife's life) and have illicit sex with men on the side, or 3) run away, stay abroad and live a more honest life away from your family.
I know many chinese gay men who came out to their families, and none of them ended up being cast out of the family (it helps if you have a brother/sister), but I also know many who got married and cannot stand their life, instead spending their free time in gay bars and neglecting their family.
If there's a 4th or 5th option then that'd be good to know, but otherwise in my experience this is it!
Hi, this friend, thank you for your good three choices.
I really agree with you that a lot of Chinese gay or lesbian people dont change the living condition by themselves, but just wait. As you said, it seems as if it was others duty or the governments business to improve the condition. So the legalization of homosexuality in China is becoming slow or this problem can even be ignored.
Another issue I want to say is that how could I understand myself completely? I mean, whether could I get a little change via my marriage with a woman? The reason is that I still feel an impulse or excited when I see the hetero-videos, but I feel more to the host rather than hostress. Furthermore, to be frank, I am not confident in the love between gays. I think most of the love activities between gays are from the first impulse, not durable. I also think most of them are so easy to make the physical relationships with others that the risk to be infected by the social diseases is very high. I heard that most of the gay people have the sexual partners more than 10, and even the condoms cant prevent the viruses from penetrating, which I really can not accept. I am really scared to being infected by the HIV viruses. So, I think being true to myself also costs many, to be a gay itself is also uneasy and the comfort of living like what I really like from the bottom of my heart will be balanced by a lot of problem or gains in the gay lifestyle.
I have to choose to give up being true to myself and pretend to like girls just like those normal/general men. Maybe I am craven.
Yes, condoms are not 100% safe, but they're 99.999% safe. If you have sex with people you trust who have had a negative AIDS test then you won't get AIDS, it's quite simple, and even if they did and you use a condom properly and it doesn't break, the chances of getting it are very very small. Don't believe the religious propaganda, they have other motives, but condom companies and doctors have no motives to spread diseases, I would trust them more than a church or rumours.
One solution to not knowing your self is to discover that by making new friends, having new experiences, etc, it won't happen looking at porn all day long. And if you do get out to the gay community you might find many people also don't believe in love or aren't comfortable with their sexuality as well, but there are many who do believe and are comfortable, but that is something you have to discover. If you get out and test your sexuality you may find it isn't that deep, and then you can find a woman and etc. But if you don't and then marry a woman, etc, then you will never know for sure, or will end up having a secret gay life outside your "straight" life, which is a lot more unhealthy, like everyone says. True love between men and women or men and men or women and women is always difficult to find, I think equally as difficult, but you will never find it if you don't look or if you don't know what you're looking for!
I cant agree with you more that it won't happen looking at porn all day long. and But if you don't and then marry a woman, etc, then you will never know for sure. I think you are really a very reasonable and sensible man, and there are a lot of places indeed valuable to be referenced in your thoughts. Thank you, anyway, I should stop the bad situation with the new plan.
I am terribly sorry to hear about your problem, it is sad to see another bright young individual feel confused and depressed by a natural part of themselves, something that makes you who you are. It is nothing to be ashamed of, there is nothing wrong with being gay/not being straight. Unfortunately, more traditionally minded people still associate being gay, or anything other than straight, as being something bad. With time, I am hopeful that this situation will change in China, as it has gradually done over here in the UK.
I know how it feels to receive a bad reaction from parents, and to feel that your family is disappointed in you. Maybe your parents will react badly, maybe they won't; all that can be said is that you will never know how they feel until you try. I would suggest that you do not get pressured into telling anyone you are gay; do it when it feels right for you. It takes a lot of courage to tell anyone big secrets, i think it is a process that should not be rushed.
However, I certainly believe that continuing to go out with your girlfriend is not fair on you, or your girlfriend. It is not fair on you to be made to feel uncomfortable; i am sure that if you were not with her anymore, feeling like you were lying to here, then you would feel much better.
A definate answer of what should be done, and how something will turn out can never be given, as no one situation is ever the same as another. I suggest that you come along to LGBT coffee hour- it is a good place for you to meet and talk to other LGBT students, and a place where you can feel comfortable with your sexuality; I think that firstly you need to see that there is nothing wrong with the way you are. If you would like more confidential advice, the University has a counselling service available, you can go to drop in sessions or make an appointment, to get another persons opinion on the situation: http://www.leeds.ac.uk/studentcounselling/
Thank you for your detailed advices. They are very nice. You see, it is true that there are still quite a lot of something in my mind on the homosexuality needed to be changed. Being a gay or les is quite normal, as you said. Being those, however, means that you have to lose sth at the same time, such as the children born by yourself and nobody to look after you when you become very old.
Everything has its two edges. We often prefer the one depending on its more natural, important or comfortable aspect. I mean, we often take more weight on the love and sexuality in the lives rather than children, inheritance of surname of the family or being supported, etc.
Anyway, thanks for your information of droping in of LGBT organization at a coffee break time and the university's conselling services. I will take it when I have a free time. Thx again.
Hi, guy, thank you for your Chinese and your considerate help. The problem I gave before is becoming less serious. Your Chinese is quite good, and there are a little places I think it would be better if they are described like these(if you are a student in the east-asia department and take the Chinese as your major, the revisions in the following might be useful, :) )
Hi, guy, thank you for your Chinese and your considerate help. The problem I gave before is becoming less serious. Your Chinese is quite good, and there are a little places I think it would be better if they are described like these(if you are a student in the east-asia department and take the Chinese as your major, the revisions in the following might be useful, :) )