I'm a British Royal Navy officer — and I'm gay. I feel like I've had to work twice as hard as my straight peers.

• I joined the Royal Navy three years ago and came out as gay to my fellow officers.
• Despite the Royal Navy's homophobic history, the other officers accepted me.

Editor's note: Insider has verified the identity of the writer, but they asked to remain anonymous to retain their privacy.

On my 25th birthday, I made a life-changing decision: I joined the Royal Navy as a warfare officer. Not long after, I made another bold decision: I came out as gay to my fellow officers.

After that, one thought repeated in my head: "Don't let them think gays are weak."

I repeated that thought as I crawled through the mud in the pouring rain and stumbled over hills in the snow. It became my driving force during training. As motivating as the thought was, I later realized I was putting myself in a box that no one else was.

Coming out as gay in the Royal Navy went surprisingly smoothly

When I joined the Navy three years ago, I already had a degree in social sciences and secured my dream job. But I was still lacking something. I wanted wider life experience, real-world skills, and more confidence. When I met up with an old friend who had joined the military, I saw how he improved himself. So I took his advice and joined the Navy — also following in my grandfather's footsteps.

A year later, I began training at Britannia Royal Naval College in Dartmouth, Devon. A 1977 documentary compares the experience of training at Dartmouth to a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp.

It has softened since then, but the start of training is too hectic to focus on anything but that. Those early days were filled with endless kit inspections, running around the hills of Dartmoor loaded with equipment, and log runs where we ran a series of logs around the base.

So it was several weeks into training when I came out to my division after a night out. I felt that we had grown so close as a group, they deserved to know the truth. I wanted them to know who I truly was. Some were surprised, and some tried to hide their surprise. Overall, my revelation was met with acceptance and little comment.

Of course, this wasn't the only time I had to come out — the process repeats each time I join a new ship or unit. On board a ship, word gets around fast; sailors love gossip. If one person knows, you best assume the whole ship knows. On one ship, I told a couple of officers in the wardroom. Barely an hour later, I was heading ashore when I overheard one sailor telling another about me being gay.

But there are benefits to this. When you come out, you will be promptly told (if you don't know already) about every other nonheterosexual on board. There's no divide, but it is useful to know in case you want to talk about something with other queer folks.

The UK only lifted the ban on LGBTQ people serving in the armed forces in 2000

Before then, around 60 servicemen were forced to leave military service every year because of their sexuality, the BBC reported. We'll probably never know the actual number of people who felt unable to reconcile their sexuality with their service and left the military because of it.

The issue was largely a consequence of the divide between public and military opinion. Despite 68% of the public opposing the ban in 1999, a survey of military personnel in the mid-'90s found that 95% of respondents said they would prefer not to serve alongside homosexuals, the BBC reported.

The military has become much more welcoming since then. Originally, it was feared that the arrival of gays into the military would create an "us versus them" mindset, disrupting the unity required for operational effectiveness. This never materialized. Instead, closeted personnel lost the stress of a Damoclean sword hanging over their heads. In 2006, personnel in the Royal Navy were allowed to wear uniforms at Pride events. Today, all personnel undertake diversity and inclusion training, and each unit has a designated diversity and inclusion team.

The final barrier came from within me

Willem Arondeus was a Dutch resistance fighter in World War II. After being betrayed, captured, and sentenced to death, his last words were: "Let it be known homosexuals are not cowards." This quote exposes a fear intrinsic to my gay experience — a fear that my sexuality makes me inferior.

I don't believe that it does. I don't think my colleagues believe it either, yet under stress, our brains play tricks on us. We look for enemies, and in a testosterone-filled, high-pressure environment, that fear cuts deeper.

Knowing that I wanted to come out in the future, I sought to prove myself from day one. During every daily physical-training session when my body was screaming at me to give up or slow down, Arondeus' quote would reverberate in my head, pushing me forward.

One time I was given a medical exemption from a training session after the medical staff found I had severe shin splints. I tore up the exemption and attended the session anyway. I constantly felt like I was under greater scrutiny and someone was waiting for me to screw up.

Coming out freed me from this mindset. Seeing my friends and colleagues accept me without judgment, I realized that the standard I had to meet was the same for everyone. I still gave my all, but without the self-inflicted pressure and stress. After all, I had proved to myself that I was good enough — that I could hold my own.