Anderson Cooper Talks About When He Accepted Being Gay

Anderson Cooper has been openly gay for years, but he’s now opening up about when he finally accepted to himself that he was gay.

The 53-year-old CNN anchor spoke to viewers during the Full Circle event that aired on Monday night (January 11).

Anderson said that he knew “something was up” when he was only seven-years-old.

“I mean, I was probably, I don’t know, 7, when I kind of realized — I’m not sure I knew the word ‘gay’ at the time, but I realized something was up. Something was different,” Anderson said (via People).

Anderson came out to some people while in high school, but it wasn’t until college that he fully embraced his sexuality.

“I think I really, truly accepted it — and not just accepted it, but fully embraced it and you know, came around to really loving the fact that I was gay — would probably be right after college,” he said. “You know, I kind of struggled in my teenage years, certainly, but even a little in college… a lot of the things I wanted to do at the time, you couldn’t be gay.”

Click inside to read more about what Anderson said…

Anderson, who is now the father of a nine-month-old son named Wyatt, had interests of joining the military when he was younger.

“It felt like there were a lot of limitations on it, and it wasn’t what I envisioned for my life. Or, I imagined a family and getting married. All those things which weren’t possible at the time,” Anderson said. “So it took me a while to kind of fully embrace it. But then at a certain point, I think about a year out of college, I thought, I don’t want to waste any more time worrying about this and sort of wishing I was some other way.”

“And I wanna embrace who I am, and as I’ve said before, I think being gay is one of the great blessings of my life,” Anderson continued. “Especially when you grow up, kind of feeling like you’re on the outside of things, and you’re kind of an observer of things or not necessarily in the mainstream, you see society from a slightly different view. And I think that can be very valuable, and can impact how you treat other people, and how you see things. So yeah, it’s enabled me to love the people that I’ve loved and have the life that I’ve had, so I’m very blessed.”