Being different but fitting in!

I fell in love with rugby at the age of 6, when my Dad took me up to Chiltern Rugby Club, and the sport worked its magic straight away. At that age, it was all about the rugby and that connection was all that mattered. Of course we had fun as a team, but there was nothing really before or after the Sunday morning sessions. Once we were done playing, our parents took us home for a traditional Sunday roast; and that was it until the following Sunday.

Roll forward ten years, and I was still in love with rugby. As with any relationship, there had been some rough patches – primarily when I appeared to be the only person who hadn’t gone through puberty and was just getting squashed! However, as I grew, it was clear that the experiences from being the "small kid" had toughened me up and the love quickly returned. However, as a teenager, rugby starts to become a bit different with a fast developing social side and an exposure to the drinking culture that is so poignantly mentioned by Ugo Monye in his BBC article.

I also knew a lot more about the person I was becoming and rapidly realising that I was far removed from the rugby stereotype. Well…. at least I hadn’t met any other gay, non-drinking rugby players with a blood-clotting deficiency! At the time, my aversion to drinking was by far the most significant of the three, as it was so hard to hide in the post-match celebrations. Lacking the confidence in the face of peer pressure, I was drinking considerably less than those around me, but I was trying to be inconspicuous about that, which meant drinking just enough to pretend I wasn’t completely pathetic!

Now… it was very true that there was a lot of drinking at the rugby club, but this was not a rugby problem. Alcohol seemed to be part of “coming of age” and as a consequence, while everyone around me was going out partying and enjoying their rebellious freedom, I found any evening out to be a hellish minefield and I steadily became a social recluse. In many ways, despite the drinking, rugby was my salvation by continuing to draw a quiet introvert out of his bedroom, even if I tried to scoot away pretty quickly at the end of the match.

This tactic worked pretty well, until the long away trips started. It was easy to sneak away after a home match, but not so easy to hide on a 3-4 hour coach trip back from Yorkshire! Just like the hideous house parties that I endured to try and pretend to be a likeable sociable person, these trips were a horrible ordeal to be survived. But whilst this was unbearable for a short while, it actually brought things to a head and I decided to “come out” as a non-drinker.

Looking back nearly 30 years later, this was one of the most significant moments of my life. Coming out as gay was an important moment of personal self-acceptance, but coming out as a non-drinker completely changed my life. Why? Well for two key reasons:

1. A quiet, shy introvert who had always drifted with the crowd gained enormous confidence from standing up and saying “this is me”; and
2. Socialising actually started to become fun, as instead of trying to hide my non-drinking, I could actually just relax with soft drinks and enjoy myself!

Drinking is in our culture, so there was still pressure to drink from time-to-time, but I now had the confidence to stand my ground and the challenge was no longer a problem. And despite rugby’s infamous drinking culture, the pressure I experienced was always away from the rugby club. At the rugby club, we bonded through the rowdy singing, the funny stories and the crazy dancing, and the fact that I wasn’t drinking was irrelevant.

After formally stopping drinking at the age of 18, I was only ever challenged once from a rugby perspective. Unsurprisingly, it was on the coach back from an away match and one of the most “thuggish” enforcers chose to have a go! I didn’t even get the chance to respond, as the rest of the team leapt to my defence before I had even had the chance to process how I should react. My main challenge was trying not to smile too much as the biggest guy in the team retreated sheepishly into the corner!

So why am I writing this? I guess it’s because I started hating an environment where I didn’t think I belonged, and I wished that the drinking culture didn’t exist. However, when I accepted my differences and stood up for them proudly, then I realised that those differences didn’t matter to me or anyone else. And what’s more, suddenly I fell in love with the drinking culture and felt a sense of belonging that I never expected. I didn’t change and they didn’t change, and I remained a complete misfit, but I was a misfit that felt completely at home! And the lesson that I took from all of this was:

Don’t expect the world to change and don’t try to change yourself, just be proud of who you are and use that to find your happy place!

James Wyatt, CFO or Our Future Health and author of The Art of Discussion