Does anyone enjoy that high you get when you come out?

[ccharles000]

I remember when I came out to my mom (she was the first) I was shaking and sweating with moments of dizziness. I thought that the next time I would not feel like this and it would be easier it was not. I came out to my 7th person a week or so ago and I had almost the same reaction (no dizziness). My question is does everyone like the high from coming out?

[MadMaddie]

1. It was more like a weight (maybe a boulder) lifted off of my

shoulders.....I hated lying.....

[DU9598]

2. It is so liberating

The best thing was the feeling I had when I told my father. I was crying and sweating and his response was, oh thank God I thought something bad had happened. He was totally fine with me being me - I always had been. Honesty is the best policy.

Congratulations on coming out. I hope your experience is as good as mine.

[Skittles]

3. I have a friend whose parents laughed when he "came out"

(when he was in college) - they tried to be serious but then broke up laughing - they said they'd known it since he was about five and they were fine with it. When he asked them why they never said anything they said it was up to him to talk, not them. Pretty cool I thought.

[sui generis]

4. It gets WAY better

After you get old and evil like many of us (well, I'm mostly just evil), you don't have to "come out" any more. You just be yourself with 1000% confidence, and when some dim bulb at work or the family reunion finally sees the light you pretend you don't notice so THEY look weird.

It's funny, in martial arts and physical competitions I've found that gay men are usually completely dedicated, completely ready to lock and tumble and sometimes even a little scary, and the big urgly machismo homophobe guys are the ones who are the biggest sissy-boy-bug-eating-manbitches about everything that might muss their hair. For the most part we have to take care of and mentor our delicate, insecure, easily offended and frightened heterosexual friends, because face it, most of them have never faced even the tiniest bit of real adversity and poor souls they shouldn't have to. They have odd notions about the world and the oddest one they have is thinking they have a lock on masculinity.

So coming out to anyone shouldn't "mean" anything, unless you're telling someone because you're announcing you want to get in their pants or you expect them to treat you differently in the future.

I recently went out with an Italian friend I've known for years (in Germany) to a nightclub and after I got a little tired of staring at boobages, I finally said I was going to go gaze upon some male bootay. He said "siete gaio?", "du bist gay???", I grinned and said so? I thought you knew.

So he puppy dogged around behind me the rest of the night in disbelief, first in denial, then fast forward to acceptance when he realized I had neither deceived him nor used him and that the being gay part was no more important than being blonde. You wouldn't "come out" to your friends to announce that you are actually blonde?

[TechBear_Seattle]

5. Not to crash your high, but...

Physiologically, it is the same experience you get from doing anything dangerous -- hang gliding, leaning over the edge of a cliff, telling a bully to piss off -- and living to tell the tale. The body reacts with the same rush of adrenaline and other "fight or flight" chemicals that it uses in other "fight or flight" situations.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

6. adrenaline rush from dangerous situations