One time I should have kept my mouth shut

I don't know what prompted this, but for some reason, when I was eight years old, I announced that I was never going to get married. That turned out to be one of the stupidest things I could have ever said.

At the time, I did not know that there were men who would become romantically involved with other men. The existence of the gay sub-culture was just beginning to become more well-known at the time and I guess my parents were aware of it. When I said I wasn't going to get married, it probably made them ultra-sensitive to the possibility that I was going to grow up gay and not provide them with any grandchildren.

I know all boys sort of go through a phase in which they don't want to have anything to do with girls, and vice versa. Parents need to expect this. I have a friend on Facebook who says he was aware that his son was possibly gay when he was eight years old. This friend of mine grew up in a culture in which he became familiar with gay people and was able to adapt with a progressive mindset. My parents did not know anyone who was gay and in the part of the country in which I lived, there was a major stigma attached to being gay that pretty much meant rejection by society at large.

At the time, I didn't consider that I would eventually become attracted to girls and want to marry one of them. I just didn't see the necessity of abiding by society's rules that require you to get married. I know that my uncle Ord was not married at this point and I decided to follow his example. (He was only 20 years old when I made the announcement, but in that era, if you weren't married by then, you were considered a confirmed bachelor. He would get married two years later.)

My father did not really try to "straighten" me out. I suppose he already considered that I had a host of other problems that he was not prepared to deal with and decided to just let things play out. My mother, on the other hand, took every opportunity to make sure I was interested in girls. AND she enlisted the help of Grandma Bend and Aunt Cind. They were constantly asking me if I had a girlfriend or making comments that I needed to get married. Yes, they even did this when I was eight years old. And it continued way into my adulthood, even beyond the point that it was obvious that I was not gay.

All that pressure made me want to get married even less. Even worse were the girls my mother wanted me to go out with when I was a teenager. Regardless of whether I would be interested, I knew there was no way I wanted to have anything to do with any girl hand-picked by my mother. I mean, what guy wants to give his mother credit for getting him laid?

Mom would always say, "There's nothing wrong with her" when telling me about these girls she thought I should be dating. I wish I knew enough to say, "Yes, Mom, but that also means there's nothing special about her, so let me figure out who I want to be with and if it's the wrong person, it will become very apparent sooner or later." There would be plenty of wrong persons showing up in my life through my years of dating.

Knowing that I was being expected to get married early into my adulthood put a strain on all my relationships. I was constantly afraid that I could wind up marrying any woman I started dating and this made for a lot of awkwardness. It would have been nice to just enjoy hanging out with someone without thinking that it was going to lead to a walk down the aisle and a run to the hospital.

So, yes, I believe if I had just kept my mouth shut this one time, I could have saved myself a lifetime of aggravation. But as a kid, I had no idea of the consequences or that they would be so hard to deal with.