Loren Olson wrote a book “Finally Out: Letting Go of Living Straight, A Psychiatrist’s Own Story.” It is a worth-while read for anybody, but especially for those of us which came out later in life. In my mind there are three possibilities why anybody would come out later in life.
Firstly, because you were too afraid to come out. In some countries coming out may cost you your life, but in other places it may cost you your inheritance, your job, or your friends and family. A. Few members of the gay community might criticize you for that, but it is easy to judge if you are not in another person’s shoes.
Secondly because you thought you would outgrow your “homosexual thoughts”. You weren’t sure that you were gay or you thought it will go away. You decided to marry someone of the opposite sex in the hope that he/she will rescue you from being gay. Maybe you believed that a straight marriage, having kids, and building a family life would be possible for you. Then, when you reach your thirties, you get to a stage in your life where you can’t fake it anymore – you have to live the life you were born with.
Thirdly, and I don’t know how many we are, you just didn’t know until you reached your thirties or forties. Somehow a lot of people think this is impossible, but believe me it happens. I don’t know why it happens, or how it can be possible, but some just do not realize it when they are younger. Many in the gay community criticize this group as well. They feel that this group was just too afraid to come out. The fact is that there are a lot of people who lived in denial for a long time. In their subconscious they might have known they were gay, but it took them years before they consciously realized it. In my case it really never occurred to me. I lived happily as a straight guy for many years and then it struck me like a bolt of lightning. I must admit that a lot of things from my past made sense to me when I first realize it, but before that day those things just didn’t trigger the truth.
Whether you believe that this third possibility exist or not isn’t really important. The fact is that a lot of us come out after we already married someone of the opposite sex and started a family. In our case the problem is not to come out to our parents – we have to come out to our spouse and children.
In answering the question “Can straight people become gay?” I would say no. You are born gay. Straight people will never become gay. What happens is that some people live a straight life because they are too afraid to come out, they think they might become straight, or they realize it later in life. Even those of us who realise it later in life for the first time will admit that there were things that should have told us earlier, but somehow it just didn’t.