You can listen to the latest episode of the Detoxicity podcast here (Apple) or here (Spotify) or just look for “Detoxicity” wherever you enjoy podcasts.
This episode features my conversation with Matt Kovatchis, who is a podcaster and aspiring coach (sound familiar?) based in Chicago. I believe Matt has just officially launched his coaching business, which he couldn’t talk about much during our conversation because he was still navigating his way out of a corporate gig. As someone who is trying to slowly, deliberately work a coaching business into a cadence where it can sit and be fruitful while still having a regular 9-5 (for now), I’m following that part of his story fairly intently. I certainly wish him the best.
The most interesting part of our conversation, for me, was listening to Matt talk about how he navigated his sexuality and the process of coming out. Without giving the whole chat away, Matt was in a fairly settled relationship with a woman. The relationship seemed to be headed towards marriage and then Matt had an epiphany/breakdown that forced him to come to terms with his bisexuality.
How we (particularly as men) navigate our sexualities is a constant point of interest for me. I pretty firmly believe that, for most of us, sexuality exists on a spectrum. The amount of people that are 100% straight or 100% gay is actually fairly small (based on my opinion and my sample set of community, which consists of a lot of folks who read/present straight but aren’t in reality) and we’re never gonna get an accurate read on that because there’s still so much shame and stigma wrapped around any sort of queerness (again, especially for men). There’s this modern-day cultural conversation around why so many people in Gen Z are identifying as “not-straight” and the reality is that there aren’t more queers in Gen Z than there have been in previous generation. It’s more safe to be openly queer than it’s ever been-there are governmental protections in place that prevent discrimination. The internet and social media exists, so that lonely queer people who would have felt like they would’ve had to fit in to a box with no community accessible at the swipe of a button can “find their tribe” so easily now. Let’s also remember that a) queerness was considered a psychological condition as recently as the early ‘70s and b) HIV and AIDS decimated the queer communities in the Boomer generation and Gen X. So many of my friends in their 40s and 50s are reckoning with latent same-sex attraction in their later years. I wonder how different their(our) worlds would’ve looked like if they(we)’d grown up in this era.
I can’t speak for anyone else’s experience, only my own. I was aware of being attracted to other boys (and in many cases, grown-ass men) before I was even able to articulate the idea of attraction. The fact that I grew up in an environment (and in an era) that was less than permissive towards male-male attraction certainly speaks to the “born this way” argument (that might not be the case for everyone). Internally, there was never really a point where I didn’t think I was queer. Externally, there was a whole lot of reckoning to do. Societal stigma, the idea of bringing shame to my family, fear of disease…all of that led to a sort of situational “out”-ness from the age of 19-20 (which is when I first came out to close friends) to my mid-thirties (when I finally came out to my relatives and my queerness became social media official).
That reckoning still exists today-especially for folks who grow up in communities that are repressive due to religion/socialization or geography/lack of proximity to IRL community. But more folks are coming to terms with who they are at a younger age (also with the knowledge that sexuality is fluid and that romantic and sexual attractions can be mutually exclusive—two things it took me way too damn long to learn). I hope that Matt’s story (and hell, my story) can be a nudge to some folks sitting on the fence to be their true selves. We only get one chance to be who we are. Why spend our lives pretending?