Have you ever been outed?

Yes, by my best friend.

Apparently she was in love with me and never told me. I loved her too, but I didn’t think she liked me in that way (typical sapphic things). We were 12. If I remember correctly, she wasn’t even out as a lesbian yet so how could I have known?

Anyway on an overnight field trip I hooked up with another girl. I’m not even quite sure how she found out about it, I didn’t even have the chance to tell her.

The next day my best friend completely cut me off and wouldn’t tell me why. It ended up being the talk of the whole school because we were almost always inseparable and had a super codependent friendship. Such a dramatic split was very unexpected. Apparently everyone realized what happened except for me.. and I was seen as the bad guy. I was certainly clueless and am slightly embarrassed that I didn’t connect the two events at the time.

So I get home from the field trip and later that day my parents sit me down and ask if I’m gay. I’m like “no???? lol why would you ask that??”
I immediately got grounded after that… To which I asked, “how long am I grounded for?” The answer was until I was no longer gay.

It was months that I racked my brain to figure out how the hell my parents found out about me. I lived in a conservative town and had absolutely no intention on telling them anytime soon.

One day I borrowed my mom’s phone and saw on the call list that my best friend and my mom had a ~45 minute conversation that same day I got grounded. It dawned on me that it was her and that is a betrayal I’m still salty about 20 something years later. She snitched on me out of spite.

We literally could have had a relationship! Thank god it went that way though, she was a pretty abusive friend and I didn’t realize the reason I was so attracted to her was because my home life was abusive as well.

Not spending every free moment with her allowed me to make much better friends and foster a relationship with the women who became my now wife (my neopets gf lol).

My parents eventually got over it when my neopets gf drove all the way from California to meet me.

I was a total hoodlum at that time and she very much had her shit together and I think my parents realized I somehow happened to snag someone really, really good for me.

We just celebrated 15 years together this month :). As for my ex bestie, I don’t know exactly how her life turned out but from what I can tell by their Facebook posts they seem like a very unhappy person overall.

Sort of. I’m Demi-closeted at work. I’m a teacher and so I don’t want to cause drama with parents who think I will turn their kids gay. When I talk to people about my husband I generally use gender neutral terms like partner or spouse, and “they” as a pronoun.

I had one student who was extremely personable and pried into my private life a lot - probably as a distraction technique. He was an occasionally frustrating but generally likable kid. He asked if I was married and about my “wife”, and while I didn’t correct his term something - I don’t recall exactly what - finally gave it away. Honestly it was probably my phone lock screen, which has had his face on it forever.

It went perfectly fine. Honestly I think he might have been teasingly calling me gay (which sadly seems to have come back into fashion in my area in that age group) at first, because he seemed taken aback when I confirmed he was correct. Oh well. He took it well. We didn’t really talk about it after that class, and I hadn’t heard anything about it from his parents or my coworkers so as far as I’m aware he never told anyone else.

I will say he slacked off less after clocking me. As much as I’d like to think it was because he saw me as a real person and respected me more because of it, it was probably because it was a tutoring course for a completion and he was starting to gear into it.

I outed one of my best friends at work on accident years and years ago, I lacked social knowledge and I apologized profusely, I didn’t know that him having a boyfriend was a secret. Someone asked if he was single and I confirmed he was not using more information than I should have.

We’re still friends. He was salty about it for a whole week I think. I’m smarter now.

Not yet - I know I'm lucky to never have experienced this. Coming out to a particular person, or group of people, has always been my own choice.

Has led to some "interesting" situations to say the least. I worked in a factory one summer and regularly listened to my coworkers spouting slurs, how terrible it would be if one of "them" ever started working there, and so on. Maybe coming out on the last day would have been funny, but I was too young (19, first job of any form) to be confident enough to rock the boat.

Throwaway post.

A bit of time after I came out to my now-wife about being genderfluid she was talking to her parents. We'd floated living with them, so they were talking about it and she said that there was some stuff she'd have to talk wrt about me living with other people. She kept it vague. My father in law responded with something wildly on the nose like "what, does [moisterthananoyster] crossdress?", which put her in a weird place about dodging it, so she started crying and just told them.

I was mildly annoyed about it at the time, but I'm kind of glad it happened. My wife needed some support (outside our very queer friend circles), and I think it helped me let go a little bit about keeping it close to my chest. Things were completely unchanged between me and my MIL, for the better. I also saw a couple sides of my FIL... He (despite Trump-humping) was accepting of it and didn't treat me any differently, until he went into a medical tailspin where he started lashing out at everyone and called me a fag. Then, in an extremely rare moment before he died, he very genuinely apologized for it. Not sure it all needed to happen, or that it was good, but I'm glad I saw a glimpse of nuance and humility in him during a rough time.

Unfortunately it's also created a bit of a pain point, as I haven't told my own parents yet; I suspect they may be upset the other side of the family knew. Hence the throwaway. But also, perhaps they should have made more of an atmosphere to feel completely comfortable telling them these things...~

Pretty minor overall, but the only time I can recall: I was at a bar a couple of years ago with a big group of friends and friends of friends that were naturally breaking out into smaller groups. Some but not all of my friends know I’m bi; I’m monogamously married to someone of the opposite gender and I don’t really go out of my way to tell people unless it’s relevant. I was chatting with a few people and I heard my friend’s SO in the group behind me mention something about how straight I seem. Ironically I was wearing a rainbow shirt that night. Anyways, I turn around upon hearing it and she just sort of smiles like it’s a funny joke and she intended for me to hear it. I asked her to repeat it, which she does, and I just say “uh well I’m not”. Which clearly made her very flustered and she says she didn’t know. I just walk away because I didn’t know how else to continue it.

It made me feel very bad at the time because while I can understand why someone would assume it based on being in a long term relationship with a woman, I don’t really try to “present” my sexuality in any way. I also feel like if you painted a picture in your mind of what a stereotypically straight man looks like, I very likely don’t resemble him at all.

I also couldn’t figure out what the point of it was other than to be rude? Even If I was straight, her tone was implying it pejoratively. So no option really made sense to me. And as far as I’m aware she’s straight too, so the whole thing was bizarre. Her SO apologized to me but she never did, which hurt. I like her a lot though and it’s the sole negative memory I have of her so I’ve gotten over it, but it’s the only time I’ve felt outed.

Thankfully this was an extremely pro-LGBT group so there was no real concern.

My dating app accidentally outed me... so, my fault, really. But I thought it was funny.

I was single for the first time in a while, and had downloaded one of the dating apps. My (kinda new) friend from school asked to see the matches I was getting, so I gave them my phone. I told them they could swipe on anyone they wanted to. They start swiping, and I'm not looking, but suddenly they go "Ooop..." The app had showed them a same-sex profile. And that's when I remembered I had set the app to show both men and women. We looked at each other both with eyebrows raised for a hot second, then I said something like... "I guess I never mentioned that to you, eh?" And then literally nothing changed between us because that friend is amazing.

So I've got a relative who's undiagnosed/untreated ADHD, and that really came home to me when he outed me to my boss. Dude has no filter whatsoever between his thoughts and his mouth; he talks constantly and regrets later.

I've never been particularly concerned with what gender someone I like is wearing. My friends were well aware of my poly- prefix and the -fluid suffix. We were all reflexively discreet about personal lives versus public life because some of us had or cared for kids and consequences could be devastating when there was so much stigma around sexual "deviance". It was the 1980s - "Don't ask, don't tell", HIV panic, and all the rest. Relative wasn't particularly straight himself, and it seemed to go without saying that some things weren't open for discussion with strangers.

Relative and I were living in the same rental, and my boss called about something on my day off. Relative picked up the phone and told my boss, "Let me see if she and her girlfriend are out of bed yet." Just like that. He told me about it immediately afterwards, with so much shame and apology that I couldn't help but reassure him that maybe he should think before speaking about people's personal details in future, but everything would be okay.

I feel very lucky that all I got from my boss the next workday was a raised eyebrow, a knowing look, and a smirk (I had my own suspicions about them anyway). Relative's lack of discretion persisted, of course, so I moved out and became much more circumspect in what I revealed to him.

Kinda, my bestie sent me this one day.

"I she/her'd you in front of <friend I wasn't out to yet> and he asked me what pronouns you're using and I was like I dunno bc I didn't know what to say
Just figured I would flag that for you in case it comes up. I am sorry."

It was fine, I came out to that group a week or two later, I'd meant to much earlier and just kept forgetting to actually do it.

It was worse when they let my disability slip way long ago before people were more chill about it. It was gossipped behind my back for years, it would percolate to folks as they joined the group, my partner got inappropriate comments. I'm out of contact with most those folk now.