Former Westlife singer Markus Feehily says it’s dangerous to suppress your sexuality
Feehily says he knew he was gay from a young age, and immediately realised it would make his life more difficult.
"There a moment, I think, when your heart sinks and you're like: 'God, I'm in for a bit of a bumpy ride here'," he told Brendan O'Connor on the Saturday Night Show.
"Me and my friends would be going to teenage discos and they'd be getting the shift around the corner and all that stuff. Your heart kind of sinks, really. That's my experience."
He revealed that hiding his sexuality became second nature to him, both before and after he found fame with Westlife.
"I began to learn to almost just seem the same as everybody else, if that makes sense. I think a lot of people, especially a lot of guys that might be gay and not out of the closet, they become experts at fitting in and not seeming in any way to be gay.
"I remember literally thinking, you know what, I'm just going to forget about it. I just shut it away. Life was so exciting and crazy and everything anyway that, scarily, it was quite easy to do that."
It became more difficult when he was interviewed by magazines about his 'ideal woman' and what he would like in a relationship.
"Every single day I was getting asked questions like what type of girl do you like. It was just a bit weird but once again I just learned to pretend."
Feehily has strongly encouraged gay people to be self aware and open about their sexuality, saying that suppressing your true self can be dangerous.
“I genuinely believe that to suppress your sexuality in any way, not even just physically, but emotionally or whatever, I think it’s a very big part of us, it doesn’t define us and it’s not all we are but it is a very big part of us, so to suppress that is quite dangerous.
"For a lot of people it’s a ticking timebomb really and it is a dangerous place to be, especially if you become very comfortable with it. I just got used to it, it became the norm to me."
Over time, keeping his sexuality secret began to cause Feehily distress.
"Nature will aways come through, and the real me was just sitting there going: 'What the hell are you doing?'.
"The longer it went on, the more I realised that something's going to have to change.
"It got to the point where I thought what's the point in leaving my hotel room because I couldn’t be myself. I just didn’t do anything and I just went into myself.
"It got to the stage where my friends and people around me and the lads in the band were seeing it."
He says the help of a counsellor gave him the courage to tell his family and friends about his sexuality.
"I eventually decided to go and speak to a counsellor. To many people theres a taboo around it, but that's not what it is at all.
You're just talking to a neutral person that doesn't judge you. It's completely confidential so I finally felt safe enough to talk to somebody about it.
"I would advise anyone to not keep it inside, that's the dangerous thing. Just speak to somebody, don't keep it to yourself."
While Feehily was prepared to come out as gay, he revealed it was a threat from a tabloid newspaper that finally made him open up publicly about his sexuality.
"I hated the sound of being exposed, it sounds like you’re doing something wrong. I want this to be a positive story and the thing is, I was ready to do it."
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