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What's your coming out story?
Not sure if this has been asked before, I vaguely remember seeing it but I'm not sure!
Personally, I'm still in the process of coming out - I've only come out to 1 person (a nurse), and I utterly dread the day that I need to tell friends and family.
Do you hold any animosity towards your parents considering their initial reaction? Have you talked about it since? As you said they've previously been socializing with homosexuals with no issues (God that's a weird sentence). I know that's not the same as having a son who's gay and I completely understand that after you went home after you lost your job you didn't want to destroy your newfound relationship with your parents. But taking your own son to the shrink repeatedly to "fix the problem" seems harsh and damaging to me.
Another thing is the important first thing your psychologist said. I mean even if you wanted to change (your sexuality) could you? I just think it's a weird thing to say when it comes to sexuality.
Last I just wanna say that it took courage to do what you did especially at 17 AND in the 80s (I remember). I can't for the life of me imagine what I would have done in your situation.
Hey man, thanks for elaborating. I know the 80s were bad in that sense. I had a friend of my family die from AIDS through drug use though but the scare was real so I can't blame your parents for being scared.
You might not think it was courageous but I think so. When I was 17 I don't think I would have had the guts to do it and I even know my parents would be fully supportive.
I was really miserable throughout middle school and the first half of high school. Middle school was particularly brutal because I was being bullied every day at school. I was in denial to the point of not being aware, and thankfully nobody ever called it out. I was too afraid to talk to the few people I suspected might have been gay in real life, so I did the next best thing and talked to gay people on various furry MUCKs. Although I don't really consider myself a furry anymore, I will always appreciate how welcoming the community was.
As the people around me started to mature, I got bullied less, and that's when the loneliness came to the forefront. Although I would rather not get into the details, my parents - a father and stepmother - were emotionally abusive and I had major depression. I was afraid that if I didn't come out of the closet and actively pursue my happiness, I would end up killing myself. So I did. Mostly. I told everyone at school I was gay. Surprisingly enough I was well accepted. It was the first time in years that I had felt like there was a future for me.
As for my parents, I told them I was bi. Sorry for the reinforcing the stereotype. They pretended to not care. But whenever I had drama, I was told that "Women are more likely to stick to a relationship". A while later I managed to cut all contact with them. Sadly, my stepmother passed away before we could make amends. Last year was the 10th anniversary of the last time I had contact with them, so I poured my soul into a hand-written eight-page letter and mailed it to him. Enclosed were the instructions to give me the same courtesy. Weeks later, my grandmother forwarded me a photo of a typed page with two sentences on it, one of which was him asking if he had grandchildren. That marked the last time I cared about him or what he had to say.
I came out to my best friend when I was fourteen. I remember it was the day after Valentine's Day, because I was going to do it on the day but realized my friend could get the wrong idea haha.
I'm in my early twenties now, and I told my parents just a few weeks ago. It went well enough, but I did it over the phone. My mother was blindsided, it seems, but I feel my father was a little more clued in, as it were.
Now I'm out to pretty much anyone that matters to me, and only a few were rude and called me mean slurs.
I was in the closet till my senior year of high school. For context, I was in school in the era of facebook, but before smart phones were really on the scene.
I probably "knew" at that point for about a year (private catholic high school, in a conservative area, means you're not exposed as much to this stuff), and I remember realizing I had to come out, and thinking about how to do it for months. I came out to a quite close friend (who I had met quite recently) on in a chat conversation Facebook, just because I figured that 1) I would be too awkward in person, and it would feel too personal, 2) he was enough of a free thinker compared to my other friends that I didn't expect it to go poorly, and 3) he was a new enough friend that the loss of his friendship wouldn't be the end of the world, but also close enough that I felt like I was coming out to the right person first. It went well!
From there, I came out to 18 friends at school (I still have the list, in order, in the notes app on my phone), and the reception was all positive.
This gave me the confidence to make it "Facebook official", and changed my "interested in" and posted a status about it on a friday night: "Let's get one thing straight, I'm not." You could say it went viral at my high school, and got ~70 likes, and a few dozen supportive comments.
This was the point where my family found out, where I expected it to go wrong. I got the "no son of ours is gay" response from my dad—with him pointing out that "no successful person is gay", etc. My mom was in tears, and forbade me from telling anyone else in the family—I later learned that she had gone and called many many family members to try to scandalize it, which took away my own ability to have that conversation with those people.
After an utterly miserable weekend (and being forced to cancel weekend plans with my friends, which was a frequent occurrence with my parents regardless of my closet-status), getting back to school on Monday was probably one of the best days of my life—I got such an outpouring of support from friends (and acquaintances I barely knew), and interestingly enough, it pole vaulted me into relevant popularity for the rest of my senior year—getting invited to all the "cool kids" parties. (Let me tell you, it was a trip feeling like an outsider for 3 years, and then suddenly getting included in all the exclusive stuff you only saw in photos on facebook).
That's, for the most part, how it went. Took about three years for family to become chill about it. I'm married now, it's all gotten good, and the coming out process is "done" (even though we all know you never stop coming out).
This reminds me of something. A few years back (more than 10 years ago?), I went to an LGBT community forum. I forget what it was about or why I was there. I remember just one story, told by a teenager who had just left high school. He said that coming out had made him more popular. I remember thinking how much things had changed since my day!
I only came out to... about half of my immediate relatives, before getting tired of the whole thing and going "fuck it, I'll do it if they will ask".
The first person I came out to was my mother. I spent days getting ready for it, and, when in the car with her, I went "Mom, I have something to tell you", before taking the most indirect approach to it.
"You know the Cartesian plane? I want to flatten my Y axis."
Luckily, she got what I meant, but I still spent the next week feeling... like reality was not real. I had spent years hiding it, being terrified of the most ridiculous things - like having to go in for surgery and outing myself while coming out from anesthesia - and yet there I was.
She might have got it, but I don't. I know about the Cartesian plane, and X-, Y-, and Z-axes, and graphs, and so on - but I don't see the connection to sexuality. Care to explain it for us slow ones? :)
I assume it's in reference to the Y chromosome.
I was using the axes to refer to the sex chromosomes, and using those to obliquely refer to gender. "Flattening" the Y axis would make it parallel to the X - a second X, in other words.
Ah. Thanks. Too clever for me! :)
Came out as bisexual to my friends about a year or so ago, I think. I was never the type to hide what I was feeling from my friends, even if I'm not always sure what that feeling is. It was made easier by the fact that another of my close friends at the time came out a short while before me, and (I didn't think it would be, but teenagers) the reaction wasn't negative but supportive. Although they still manage to 'forget' every once in a while. Probably because I've never been out with a guy haha..
The biggest coming out I did, though I'd come out to a few supportive friends before it happened, was after my suicide attempt. It was my third month in the hospital and my first in the rehab hospital where they were trying to get me figuratively speaking back on my feet.
I'd gotten my laptop set up, and I was finally well enough to sit up in a wheelchair, and some of my old friends from high school and grade school were tossing around loose plans for the summer. I wanted to drop in, let them know where I'd been, what had happened to me, and everything, and why I probably wouldn't be back this year, but the prospect of telling everyone one-by-one seemed daunting, and I'd finally gotten to a place where I'd accepted that I was trans myself.
So, instead, I pulled up facebook, and did one of those livestream videos. A lot of old friends of mine, even ones I hadn't heard from in a long time, popped up as I talked about my attempt, and that I was in a wheelchair, and that I'd probably be staying where I was for the time being, and that I was trans, and everything, and all of my friends were supportive, coming and offering their support.
My family, on the other hand, wasn't so supportive. They weren't awful or bigoted, don't get me wrong, but they were the sort of misinformed and ignorant that's pretty painful to deal with. From my parents especially, I got "Why don't you just try being gay for a while," and "We know you really don't think these things through," and "We're just worried about you," and at one point my dad yelled, "Why does this all have to be about you?" I feel like the aftermath of a suicide attempt is a great time to make it all about me, but what do I know, right?
Anyway, long story short is I've slowly been distancing myself from my family and leaning more on the support of my friends as I've transitioned, and I've never been happier.
I came out to my friends about a year ago and they have always been awesome and supportive, if maybe a bit surprised to find a homo in their midst (haha).
I came out to my mom a month after that. She didn't say anything bad, except that she said that I don't act gay and things a bit similar to that, so that hurt a bit. Her basically telling me that I might not be gay because I don't do stereotypical gay stuff. And that made me question myself even more, which is kind of shitty, because it took me a long long time already to realize I am gay. I still sometimes think about if I even am gay, like what are the chances that me and not someone else is? I wonder if you guys still think about stuff like that. But then I always tell myself: what else would I be if not gay? I guess I could be asexual, because I definitely am not attracted to woman romantically or sexually... But my mom is awesome and didn't mean no harm. It has still been a bit awkward talking about my gayness with her, mainly because my failure to find any meaningful relationship, so I feel no reason to talk with her about any gay stuff. That's also the reason why I didn't come out to basically everyone else except the few friends and mom since then. When (and if) I find a boyfriend I will come out to basically everyone I know.
So I still have a lot of coming out to do. I am really lucky that I have been born in such a accepting country and even though it's not perfect (no marriage equality here :( ) I am still really grateful I can safely come out.
Heyo everyone, bi cis-dude? here.
I came out as bi to my close friends sometime last year, during my sophomore year of college. All of my college friends, and hometown friends are/were supportive, though I wasn't too surprised that the hometown friends were, as much of that squad is also lgbtq+, but for now I have chosen not to come out to my parents yet, because their politics are hard to read, and even though I'm fairly certain my parents are fine, enough of my extended family has very conservative vibes to it, and I don't really want to alienate myself from them.
I think I've internally known, at least that I wasn't exclusively straight, since middle school. While I had a girl crush, and even a middle school girlfriend in about the 6-7th grade, after she moved out, I sort of had a crush on one of my dude friends in group of friends at school. I don't know why I was so in denial of how I was, but all throughout middle/high school, I remember trying to justify not being gay by thinking that "well, you like girls, so you should be fine" because I didn't really know it was possible to be bi at the time (no thanks to growing up in the rural-ass midwest). One of the key moments that, at least looking back, solidified that yeah I like dudes is that in the 8th grade, me, and the dude best friend I had a crush on had different homerooms at the end of the day, and I noticed that on a billboard in their homeroom room, the teacher made them do a "what are you excited about in the future" poster, and they explicitly mentioned having a wife and kids, which devastated me at the time.
Throughout highschool I went even further in the closet than middle school me was in it, and with that hiding who I am, kind of came with not truly being comfortable with who I was. It's hard to say if my shyness was related to this, or if I'm just also naturally shy, but this combo meant that I didn't really have that many friends starting out high school, and I kind of didn't start becoming more comfortable with myself until junior and senior year of high school. I also ended up getting a crush on, and even getting into a short relationship thingy with a girl that lasted from the end of senior year, to freshman year of college, which further put my mind off of accepting I was bi.
Which finally puts me at about last year into this one, when I finally decided to quit hiding that from the world, and come out to my friends and such. I'm not 100% sure if that'll be the last time I come out to people, as I'm kind of questioning my gender identity a little bit (or at least, I don't think fully cis dudes go to /r/egg_irl, /r/traans, etc. for their good memes, really enjoy having long hair, and really just question if they are trans or not) but I guess I'm not uncomfortable as a guy, so I guess it could go either way if this question was asked to future me if it'll have a part 2 where it'll talk about coming out trans, or if it just ends at "well, I questioned it a bit, but determined that nah, cis is fine". I suppose coming out as non-binary wouldn't be out of the question either.
I guess this more turned into a wall of text than a straight forward answer, but I hope that at least something there's helpful/insightful.
update: so, I'm not sure if when you edit a comment, it refreshes the thread, or if it just sits here, and I don't think my update warrants another comment, but I've done some internal soul searching and thinking, along with some of those (debatably incorrect "what gender are you" quizzes) and what they came up with is that while my body is masculine, internally my thought processes, and socialization are very androgynous, which I personally agree with. Likewise, I have done a little experimentation with body shaving and crossdressing, and while I enjoyed it, going back to my male clothing didn't make me wish I were a girl, but it still made me kind of comfortable, so I've ultimately decided that I'm going to come out as a non-binary male, as even though my body looks male, and due to how I was raised I probably unconsciously act "male", consciously I don't really feel that how I act fits one gender specifically, and I also am really comfortable with stuff that isn't traditionally masculine, like shaving my body hair, or having long hair. Depending on how you look at it, you could still say I'm technically cis, or a flamboyant cis, and I probably wouldn't fully disagree, but what I'm going with in my head is, again, non binary male.
Thanks for sharing your story!
Even if you aren't trans, you'll still be coming out to new people you meet for the rest of your life. But you're right, cis-people do not go to those subreddits and question their gender at all. I'd suggest you keep exploring, maybe buy some feminine clothes, shave your legs, etc. - just to see how it feels.
My own experience with questioning lasted for 4-5 years with long-ish periods of thinking that I might be transgender, to then denying it after those periods. I had a couple of them lasting for several months, and then a much longer time of not really thinking about it - but it was always there in the back of my mind. I finally did come out to myself a couple of months ago, and I am now 100% certain that I am transgender. I'm even starting hormones in 8-9 months (if appointments with doctors and specialists and whatnot goes well) :)
Keep in mind that the sooner you get on hormones, the better your results. You're around 20 I'm guessing? At that point, your body isn't finished developing, so if you hypothetically started hormones right now, you could have some feminine bone development - hips for example. Having said that, don't rush into things either! If there's anything I know, it's that these things take time and you have to just follow your own personal coming-out-timeline, if that makes sense.