(I put this in LGBT children but it was suggested I'd do better here.)
I hope it's ok to post this here, it's not about a child but I can't find a more appropriate place for it. I feel a bit out of order asking this as I don't know at all whether he is gay or not, but I am worried about my brother.
He has never had a girlfriend, and never brought a girl back to our mother's house (where he still lives at 26 but is shortly to move out from!).
He has fairly frequent one night stands-always at the other person's house.
He will not talk about his love life, relationship status etc with me, which is fine, it's his business, but is slightly odd as we're very close and talk about everything that could be considered at all controversial-religion, politics, etc.
Our mother is very homophobic.
He is very close to his best friend from school-close enough that there were always rumours about them when they were at school and a little bullying in a 'jokey' way about them being gay, that clearly wasn't a joke.
He is miserable at the moment and I don't know why.
The way he talks about women is very negative-we often argue because he talks about them in such a laddish, stereotypical way, despite the fact that he's actually a pretty sensitive, decent bloke and doesn't actually believe the crap he spouts. So for instance he'll say, 'phwoar, bet she's a goer' and then he'll blush and apologise and say that of course she doesn't deserve to be treated like that. It seems almost put on, like he thinks it's the sort of thing that he's supposed to say, rather than the way he genuinely sees women.
I've thought about it a lot and I can only see two potential reasons for his misery. Either a) he is gay, doesn't want to tell our family (see homophobic mother) and is miserably in the closet (and could be single or not) or b) he is straight but has some fucked up attitudes to women and is miserably single.
I have asked him outright if he's gay, which may have been the wrong thing to do, I don't know, but I wanted him to hear from me that although our mum is homophobic the rest of the family would be totally supportive, love him the same as ever, etc. He says he's not gay. He's the type of person who is so secretive that he will tell you about a date 6 months after it happened, and deny it furiously before then, and even when he does tell you it's literally 'I went on a date' and that's it! So if he is he might well not tell me for months, or years, or, my big worry, ever.
I think he is. And I think he's miserable. I don't know whether I WANT this to be the case because I think it's the 'fixable' one of the two scenarios. If b is correct and he's straight then he might just be really fucked up and miserable forever, which is terrible. If a is correct then it's fixable because he can come out and be happy! (Our mother notwithstanding )
He's so secretive and withdrawn at the moment and I just want him to be happy so if he IS gay, how should I handle it from here on? I don't want to bully him into coming out! And equally I don't want him to feel alone or sad. I don't think he has any gay friends (apart from possibly the one school friend I mentioned, but he's in the army and not around much). He's so 'stiff upper lip' with his friends, they are very public school in their attitudes and not very expressive of their emotions etc.
And then of course, if he's not gay, I don't want to give him a complex about his attitudes to women by banging on about him maybe being gay...!!
Argh. Should I just drop it and shut up? I really, really hate seeing him this sad.