Acknowledging Men’s Mental Health Part 1: Sexual Orientation (Brandon Alago)

In the past, I was terrified of trusting others with my true feelings and desires when it came to my sexual orientation. Today at 26 years old, I identify as heteroflexible (someone who is mostly heterosexual but sometimes may experience same-sex attraction) and I’m very open about that. That was not the case at all when I was younger and being raised Catholic while also attending Catholic school all my life until college didn’t make it any easier that’s for sure. When I was around 11/12 years old, I had a crush on my best friend at the time. He and I were always together at lunch, recess, and even after school when we would go home and play video games online. Uncharted 3’s multiplayer was one of our favorites. I had strong feelings for him for about 2 years before I told him I was interested in guys, and that I had a crush on him. He accepted me for who I was, but he didn’t feel the same way towards me (it happens). It also didn’t help that at the time, I thought there was something wrong with me for feeling those feelings toward him. We both did. He agreed to keep it a secret, but we would rarely ever talk about it, and whenever I tried, the response was mostly negative. I knew it wasn’t an ideal friendship, but at the time I didn’t really care because I had a crush on him. This continued until we went to different high schools. I wanted to continue being best friends with him, but he no longer was interested. It took me a year to get over that.

Mu struggling relationship with my sexual orientation intensified in high school. I had a crush on a guy from sophomore year all the way to the end of senior year, and I never even spoke a word to him. Now we all have had a crush on someone and I’m sure most of us during our teenage years were terrified to even talk to them, but the issue that I faced was that I had no friends that I could trust with my feelings. All I had was my therapist (who I am truly thankful for, and is one of the main reasons why I am the person that I am today) but it’s not the same as being able to talk to your friends about it. It felt like I wasn’t able to be my true self with the people I spent the most of my time with. They were openly conversing about the girls that they were attracted to, and there I was not being able to relate to them. My fear of how they would react to discovering that I liked guys prevented me from being able to truly connect with them. I was only sharing the details about myself that I wanted them to know, while hiding an entire other part of myself. I felt very along during most of high school, and my disinterest in talking about girls, and not having friends who were girls made me somewhat of an outcast.

Then one day in junior year, I decided to try and tell a friend about my sexual orientation struggles. He accepted me for who I was. Then I told another friend. And another, and then another. At this point, I finally realised that there were people in my life that would accept me for who I was. However, just because they accepted me, didn’t mean they wanted to hear my feelings and desires regarding it. It felt more like a big secret no one really spoke about.

I did have on friend though who did listen to me about both my feelings and desires when it came to my crush. He’s also a guy who doesn’t fit the male stereotype (I’ll talk more about that later). He was a very close friend of mine for years, and I will always appreciate him for being there for me during this difficult time in my life. We are unfortunately no longer friends, but I’ll talk about that in another blog that focuses on male friendships.

Now I wish I could say that everyone I thought I could trust with my feelings reacted in a positive way when I told them about my sexual orientation, but that didn’t happen. There was one person that I could remember who responded pretty negatively to it. He and I remained “friends” and he agreed to not tell anyone else, but our dynamic was never the same again after that. It was a real shame because he and I would talk a lot at school and we’d play video games together very often. Overtime we stopped talking entirely.

Freshman year of college was when my entire sexual orientation journey took a massive turn. For 7 years I had mainly been attracted to men, and have only ever had crushes on men. But then the first day of college came around, I saw a woman that I found attractive, developed a crush on here, and poof! Since then I found women more attractive than men, and have only ever had crushes on women. This wasn’t the only aspect of my life that changed though. Now that I had a crush on a woman for the first time, I was able to talk about her to most of my guy friends and feel what it was like to finally be in that position. It felt great! For the first time ever, I didn’t have to hide my attraction. For the first time ever I was able to appear more interesting to most of my guy friends because I was talking more about my attraction to women. I no longer had a part of myself that felt like it needed to be hidden. But why did it take so long for this to happen?

I didn’t realize it then, but the experiences with the male friend who accepted me and listened to me and the experiences with my crush taught me something. Those were the first moments that I was ever able to talk about my feelings and desires with people who ween’t my therapist. They were people who wanted to listen to me and people who liked me for being myself. The reason why it took me so long to find people who wanted to accept me was because I spent so much time and effort attempting to build relationships with the people who never would accept my authentic self.

There were, and are going to continue to be people who will not accept me for who I am. Even though I now have a better understanding of my sexual orientation, I still should have been able to talk about my struggles with my friends and family. I was completely terrified of my family finding out about any of it. I didn’t know what they would say to me or how they would view me. I should have been able to express myself freely and not have to worry about being shamed or rejected. So why couldn’t I? Well, a huge part that I blame is society’s expectations for what an “ideal male” looks like.

Society makes most men believe that in order to be seen as a “successful man” you need to be physically strong, not sensitive, heterosexual, dominant in all aspects of life, have sex with women often, enjoy sports, enjoy cars and have a good source of income. This harmful mindset has been constantly passed down for generations, and unfortunately is still being passed down by many. It’s a huge reason as to why many men are afraid to talk about their feelings, and why even more are afraid of being who they really are. They don’t want society to reject them. They don’t want to be seen negatively by their family and friends. It’s important to remember though, that if there are people who are not willing to accept your authentic self, then they are not worth building a close relationship with. It doesn’t matter how long you’ve known them or if they’re a family member. If you want to live a happy authentic life, then you need to focus your attention on building valuable friendships with the people who will accept you for being your true self. I was afraid of talking about my feelings for a long time. I actually still am when it comes to some things. But I am getting better and making progress every day. Thankfully though, after a lot of trial and error, I have met some truly amazing people who have accepted me for who I am.

LAD is one of those places that accept people with open arms. I’ve never met so many people who are truly dedicated to helping those who are struggling until I started volunteering here, I’m sure my teenage self would have loved to have received a letter from someone here. I wouldn’t have felt so alone that’s for sure. It’s important that men be reminded that society’s stereotypical expectations for them are incredibly flawed, It would honestly be a very dull world if everyone was expected to follow in the expectations that society has for them. I’ll talk moe about that in future blogs. The world is changing drastically thought, and LAD is doing their part in making the world a much more authentic place to live in!