Using religion to suppress some part of yourself is like using substance abuse to fix a mental health issue. I've slowly watched my little brother try harder and harder to increase his dose of religiosity til finally it's like he's banging Jesus through a needle.

I've watched him go from a quietly and piously religious gay person to "I think God's telling me not to be gay" to full blown 5 out of 7 days a week engaged in some sort of ministry. Then he had to dedicate 10/12 months out of the last 2 years to working at a christian camp for kids. Now he's talking about doing mission work in some dangerous third world country where they kill Christians.

At this point it's not a matter of if he will crash and burn and hit rock bottom, but a matter of will he survive long enough to finally reach that point.

He doesn't want to be gay. He wants to have a family. He's dreamed of that hetero-normative life for a while now and he thinks that if he just keeps acting in service to "God" that one day God will tell him that it's okay for him to go have a relationship with a woman and have a family and be normal. He tells himself and then sits there and tells you that he's "accepted" his homosexuality and knows that he can't change it but he just doesn't think he should ever act on it... but then makes a liar out of himself when he keeps trying to have relationships with women and each and every one of them burns out like a Seinfeld relationship (where he always comes up with some super silly quirk they have to end the relationship).

And I can't say a fucking thing to him about it. I've tried to before. Like any addict he's good at convincing you that he doesn't have a problem and by the end of every conversation he's got you thinking "You know, maybe he knows what he's doing. Maybe he has a handle on this?" I finally had to stop talking to him about it because every conversation was drawing a deeper and deeper rift between us. I want to be there to catch him when he finally crashes and I won't be if he pushes me away.

Your girlfriend... watch out for her. So you think the relationship is going to be okay now? If it's true that she's always had these feelings then you unashamedly being "out" is going to constantly confront her daily with those feelings. It will work one of two ways. Either she'll start trying to push the "god can fix this for you" angle but she'll do it in subliminal and passive-aggressive ways or your existence will begin to sow all kinds of doubts in herself which will create a mountain of dysfunction for her until she either self-destructs or comes to terms with herself. It's not necessarily going to be a total disaster but it is going to be difficult.