Dear Sugar,
I’m twenty-six years old and finally in a relationship I cherish and feel proud of. I want so much for it to thrive.
My girlfriend is thirty and a delight, the whole package of sweetness and spice and intelligence with a dash of Thoreau-loving mixed in. We think well together and respect each other. Last month I moved five hundred miles to be closer to her after a year of long-distance dating and monthly angst-filled goodbyes. I’m very much in love with her.
The only problem: I sometimes feel she is cheating on me, weighing out my love unconsciously against her parents’ love to see which one is worth more. You see, they don’t know she is gay. Well, it would be more accurate to say that they don’t know she is in a relationship. This is only her second time dating. Her father asked her if she was gay several years ago because he and her mother suspected she was involved with the woman who is now her ex-girlfriend. She denied it. She says she didn’t feel ready to tell them the truth.
Whenever her parents come to town or call I feel like we’re having a secret affair. When I talk to her about this, she says it will get better and change, but she never shows me that she’s working on it. She doesn’t take proactive steps or reach out for resources that might help her figure out how to tell her parents the truth. She grew up in a small town with a great deal of conservative church influence that her family is a part of. They aren’t a very emotional family and it seems they don’t have long, deep conversations about who they are in the world or who they’d like to be. But I’m not sure it’s those things. My girlfriend has difficulty articulating what exactly makes it hard to tell her parents that she’s gay. If I understood it was religious fears I could figure out how to be supportive with spiritual resources, if it was losing them then I could encourage her to look to role models. I imagine she’s afraid of the emotional fallout and I suspect she also fears losing her parents’ financial support—they helped her purchase a home a few months ago. It feels like the house is a third person in our relationship because it ties her parents into everything.
I’ve been out for ten years and I make it a priority not to lie. I’m from and currently live in a large LGBT-friendly city. I don’t want to live a life of lying. I want to feel my partner is brave and living from a place of love and truth, too. I admire her kindness and humor and spirit. I suppose I want to admire her bravery and truth, too.
I struggle with abandonment issues and have a history of getting involved with emotionally unavailable people. I know I sometimes pick tiny arguments because I’m feeling alone and like I don’t truly matter to her, even when she does a ton of sweetheart things and tells me she loves me all the time. I feel like our relationship is insecure because the two people who love her dearly don’t realize I’m wildly in love with her and that I’d do anything to make her happy. I don’t think she realizes how limiting this feels, even when we talk about it. She is upset that I’m sad about this, but she can’t bring herself to tell her parents that she’s gay.
Am I being silly putting up with this? Will she ever tell them? Will she ever care more deeply, truly, about us than she cares what her parents think? She is so used to transitioning worlds between her spaces her parents are and queer friend spaces that it’s become routine. I hate to think splitting myself in pieces will become routine too.
I don’t believe in ultimatums. I hate that idea. But I’m wondering, when you know you want to probably settle down with someone how long you wait for her to grow the strength to truly love. Should I wait until next summer? Two and a half years? And then what? I sometimes fantasize about writing her mother a letter, explaining what an amazing woman she raised, how kind and smart she is and what a gift she is to my life. I thought maybe that would help her parents, when she is ready. I’m so scared of that, too. What if they reject me and then my girlfriend does? I want to support her, I do. But if I support her by waiting patiently, I could be setting myself up for a broken heart if I wait another year and she ends up not being able to do it. Or if she does and it goes badly. And I think an ultimatum with make her resent me.
I suppose is my question to you, Sugar: How do you trust your love will be enough to ride out a gathering storm? What should I know? What would you do? How can I swim to the life we deserve? How can I save us both?
Thank you!
Lifeboat Love
Dear Lifeboat Love,
You can’t save both of you, sweet pea. You can only save yourself and hope that your dear love decides to save herself too. Your girlfriend didn’t write to me to ask what I think she should do, but I’m going to tell you anyway. She should come out. She’s gay. She’s in a committed relationship with you. I doubt this will be a surprise to her parents. When her father asked her about the nature of her relationship with her ex years ago, it seems apparent that he already knew—that in fact he was doing some of the work for her. He was opening a door that she slammed shut and hasn’t dared open since.
This is understandable to some degree. We’ve made great progress as a society when it comes to not being ugly homophobic jackasses, but we aren’t all the way there yet. Some people hate people for being gay. Some parents disown their gay kids. Perhaps your girlfriend’s parents would do that if she comes out to them, though your description of them doesn’t convince me of that. We don’t know exactly what sort of parents-of-a-lesbian they are because your girlfriend hasn’t given anyone a chance to see. She doesn’t know if they’d hate the real her or love the real her or be initially upset over the revelation of the real her and then settle into acceptance.
We know only that when it comes to her parents—“the two people who love her dearly”—your girlfriend refuses to be anything but the fake her. The one who believes her parents’ love hinges entirely on the false premise that she doesn’t sleep with women. I’ll guess she believes that because she hasn’t yet managed to shake all the crappy messages she’s carrying around inside her about what love is and what family is and what normal is and who gets to be okay and validated and congratulated for their romantic unions and sexual desires and who gets to feel like a perverted, shameful, skanky freak based solely on who they want to fuck.
This is no small thing, I’m sure I don’t need to tell you, LL. And it might be especially difficult for your girlfriend to muster the guts that coming out requires given the fact that she was raised in a community with conservative beliefs and in a family that opts for emotional reserve rather than expression. The entire culture she was steeped in as a child told her it’s not okay to be gay and that if she is she’d best well hide it.
But she’s a grown up now. She’s a thirty-year-old woman living in a large LGBT-friendly city in an age where people who are LGBT generally get to say and be who they are without being murdered and fired and run out of town for it and if she doesn’t owe it to the zillions of LGBT people from decades past who did not have that reality to come out, well then she owes it to herself. She deserves to have a good life. A good life is not presenting a false front to two of one’s closest intimates for years on end.
There are sound reasons to stay in the closet for temporary periods of time—when one is a teenager, for example, and coming out would put one in harm’s way by compelling one’s parents to send her off to a psychopathic conversion camp or beat the shit out of her or otherwise make her life sheer hell. In that case, I say: bide your time, grow up, get the hell out at the very first opportunity, then swim hard and fast in the direction of real life and when you get there shout really loud I’M GAY!
Your girlfriend did everything but the last thing. She needs to shout I’m gay, or least whisper it in a clear and audible voice. She doesn’t have to invite her parents to ride in a suped up Corvette with her at the Pride Parade while waving a rainbow flag. She doesn’t have to sit on your lap and stroke your hair lovingly when her parents come to visit. But she does have to say I’m gay. If she doesn’t do this she will never become the person she needs to be if she intends to live a life that’s not stunted by self-loathing, for this is what’s really going on here. Your girlfriend has “difficulty articulating what exactly makes it hard to tell her parents that she’s gay” because her parents are not entirely to blame.
Last week I was in a hotel room flipping through the channels on the TV when I stopped on one long enough to hear a scientist say that a basic truth about human nature that’s found in just about every study and body of research is that people do what they want to do. The drive to do what we want to do is so strong that we will usually do it, even if there’s a price to pay. Your girlfriend can’t tell her parents that she’s gay because she doesn’t want to tell them that she’s gay, even if this makes you miserable. She wants to be in a loving lesbian relationship with you without allowing the other people who love her most deeply to know she’s a lesbian. This dual life allows her to have sexual and romantic relationships with women, while never having to announce to her parents that indeed she is the perverted, shameful, skanky freak that on some level she believes herself to be.
The question you need to answer for yourself, darling, is how long are you willing to stay in the perverted, shameful, skanky freak closet with her. It seems clear to me—and exceedingly healthy—that forever is not an option for you, so I suggest you have a serious talk with your partner about why this is so important to you and then together come up with a reasonable, loving, fair-to-both-of-you date by which you will leave her if she refuses to come out.
Doing so is indeed an ultimatum, but it’s the best sort of ultimatum—one that has everything to do with a positive change in your own life, rather than your wish to control another. It’s an ultimatum that honors a boundary that’s key to your happiness, your psychological well-being, and your integrity. You won’t stop loving your partner if she chooses to stay in the closet. You won’t stop cherishing the wonderful person she is and treasuring the times you’ve shared. You may not even stop being her lover.
But you will profoundly revise the terms of your relationship. You will stop building a long-term romantic partnership with her under conditions that are patently untenable to you. You will stop having a stake in her lie.
This is the hard part, of course. The part where you don’t get to simply float along in the la-la land of your true love while hoping what’s really not good at all will get magically better. This is the part that numerous others have confronted with their own beloved partners who must change in order for their relationships to survive—people who have said you must stop abusing alcohol to be with me, or you must stop snorting cocaine, or you must learn to manage your anger, or you must not belittle my ambitions, or you must be honest or this just isn’t going to work.
These ultimatums require us to ask for something we need from another, yes, but ultimately they demand the most from us. They require us to acknowledge that the worse case scenario—the end of a cherished relationship—is better than the alternative—a lifetime of living with sorrow and humiliation and rage. It demands that we look ourselves squarely and hard in the eye and ask: What do I want? What do I deserve? What will I sacrifice to get it? And then it requires that we do it. In fear and in pain and in faith, we swim there, to wherever that is, in the direction of real life.
Yours,
Sugar
30 responses
There is another side of this too. she’s a couple of months into an in-person relationship, from a much longer time of long distance. Moving closer (possibly “in with”) changes everything. The terms that the relationship hinged on – which were possibly tolerable on an occasional basis, like monthly – are suddenly in her face every day. the relationship may reveal itself to be wonderful long distance, but crumble under the pressure. the face we present to our lovers long distance isn’t as careful in person. so it’s likely that she will need to rethink the whole kit and kaboodle, on an ongoing basis, since everything has changed – and her girlfriend not being out is part of that.
Sugar’s infallible compass leads us in direction of truth yet again. Thank you, Sugar, for urging us toward our best selves.
As a queer from a conservative small town with conservative parents who don’t talk about their feelings, I say bravo, Sugar! We can’t make people do anything, all we can do is get clear with our own needs. And staying with someone who is closeted about your relationship can ultimately kill your soul and your self-esteem.
I was once with someone who had come out to her parents but not to people at work, in a large gay-friendly city. (She had been out to friends and dating women for ~7 years). I told her I respected that coming out to co-workers was her decision. My boundary was that she never ask me to pretend to not be in a relationship with her. One day she asked me to a co-worker’s party. I assumed that meant she was finally ok with being out and I was glad. As we got ready to go she asked me if I would be ok with acting like we were just friends.
I was so angry and insulted I couldn’t see straight. For that and other reasons I broke up with her a few weeks later. I was disappointed but never regretted the decision.
As Sugar notes the girlfriend has enough invested in staying closeted that she has been unwilling to change. If the letter-writer follows Sugar’s advice the needs and repercussions will have been laid out clearly well ahead of time and it will be up to the girlfriend to decide what to do. It can be terrifying to wait for someone’s else’s choice when your relationship hangs in the balance. But taking care of yourself is top priority and if your current girlfriend can’t do this basic thing then you deserve the time to heal and to find someone who can.
Yes. It all comes down to being who we are, being able to say who we are, and then, being able to be the best version of that person that we can be. We cannot be our best without the truth of us, can we?
I think it’s Dan Savage who says that if you’re not ready to be out, you shouldn’t date. I think that is most likely true. If you can’t deal with the consequences that come from dating– like having a partner who wants to be out, proud, and honest– then you can’t handle dating.
I do hate to point out something painfully, painfully obvious to me, mostly because I’ve been in this exact situation — but on the side of the woman who won’t come out. There is the possibility that Lifeboat Love’s partner isn’t a actually lesbian, or doesn’t feel like she identifies with what identifying as a lesbian currently entails. She may not feel ashamed or dirty or any of those things — she may just not feel like even after finding out that after leaving a repressive religious environment and having lovers of the same sex — that she can’t say to the world, “Yep, I’m gay!”
I was in a relationship with a woman for several years in my twenties. I loved her dearly, but I was confused and miserable because I knew, deep in my heart of hearts, that I wasn’t a lesbian and that I wasn’t comfortable being labeled the troublesome “bisexual”. I loved this woman, but eventually, as you might imagine, things didn’t work out because I just wasn’t sure of my own wants and needs. I knew I liked sex with men and women, and I just couldn’t, for the foreseeable future, stop having sex with men forever and ever to be with this woman I loved a whole lot. The relationship ended badly — we both cheated to get out of it, but we were young and unexperienced and from troubled backgrounds, so we sucked at emotional stuff — but we are, happily, still very good friends. Without any sexual tension. It took many years to come back around to this place, and many tearful conversations, but I am happy we did.
Anyway, what this situation says to me — and I know that I’m probably projecting, but hey! — is that LL’s lover is possibly similarly conflicted, way deep down. She may not be convinced, herself, that she’s really gay — or she may be afraid that coming out means she’ll be be stuck in one identity forever, unable to change. She could be afraid of a whole lot of things that I’m not even able to think of — but she’s probably not really afraid that her parents will abandon her and hate her forever, it’s just a handy crutch to avoid looking inward and answering the questions that weigh heavily on her heart.
I’m honestly surprised, Sugar, that you didn’t recommend therapy here. I think that both LL and her partner could benefit, separately and together. I do so hate to be the broken record of “Have you considered therapy?”, I do — but it took me so long to get myself into therapy and start talking about these things that I want everyone to try it, too. This might help her, a lot. And you, too, LL.
Sending you both of you lots of love — this is a hard, hard thing to deal with, but I know you do it, LL. Be kind to your lover. Understand that she’s probably very very scared and confused. The ultimatum is good, yes, but don’t leave her stranded with feelings of helplessness and confusion either.
Thank you Sugar, for publishing and answering this one. I think this is an issue that is going to become more common, and there’s not a whole lot of precedent for dealing with it. I wish you’d been around when I was struggling; your words would have been of great comfort then — as they are now.
Dan Savage – a gay advice columnist who launched the “It Gets Better” project targeted at LBGT youth – gives good advice on this, too. Just google videos of him. For example: “Dan Savage on how to come out to your Evangelical Family” or his “Bit Think” interview where he talks about being raised by Evangelical Catholics and how a Priest helped him come out, it’s part of Big Think’s “Coming Out” series.
Stunning answer to an important question. Bravo, Sugar! And Lifeboat Love, my heart goes out to you. I identify much more with your lover (also from a conservative background, also semi-closeted) but I can definitely understand how painful this must be for you. I hope Sugar’s words have helped you. They are always a balm for me.
Sugar, I’m not even gay and this makes me want to come out.
Mountains of love.
M
Someone dear to me asked me this question, in essence, about his girlfriend. (religious and race motivations in that case) I’ll say here what I said to him: never consent to being someone’s dirty secret.
Extraordinary. Exquisite. As always. Thank you.
Sugar and Lifeboat – c’mon now how about some patience. Let your girlfriend have her own experience and timeline. Coming out is a lifelong process. It keeps happening over and over again – to yourself, to family, friend, to yourself again and again. Sugar, I know that coming out is important and crucial for a relationship and personal health (and society) but this girl has to decide for herself when/where/who. I’m very out now even work for an LGBT nonprofit and my process was (and can still be) painful at times. I’m so grateful to my first girlfriend for her unrelenting patience and support. She never made me feel bad or ‘skanky’ or a ‘freak’. The conservative family and community is a tough hill to climb and don’t give her an ultimatum or she’ll feel like she’s climbing it alone! You have lived together for one month, jeez, give her some breathing room. I mean – what of she was a terrible house-cleaner – would you give her an ultimatum? Never. We don’t try to change our partners. We don’t write their families, bosses, and friends letters. We love and accept who they are – in this moment – not who they will become. We worry about ourselves and how we respond to their actions. And Sugar, I find it awful that you call the girlfriend’s closet ‘skanky’ and ‘perverted’. We all have our own way of coming out and it sounds like this woman is well on her way – it’s not like she’s miserable and creeping in a bar or a park looking for anonymous sex – she’s living in a committed relationship with a woman – she could probably use some love and support and if she doesn’t get it from you – I trust she will find it from someone else.
I have to say, I agree with KP and disagree with Sugar’s response.
If LL’s girlfriend had written in asking for encouragement to come out, I would be cheering along with this post but I can’t help feeling uncomfortable. You acknowledge that coming out could have severe negative consequences for LL’s girlfriend but then it feels like you dismiss her reservations are a silly hang-up she needs to get over. We don’t know her motivation for staying in the closet to her family and we can only judge them on the description from Lifeboat Love, who has presumably never met them.
I am a queer woman who is out to my parents about a lot of my life (including being queer) but not all of it. I find it frustrating that “Thou shalt be out, unless you are in immediate physical danger” is now an absolute rule for queer people. Being in the closet is a difficult place emotionally but that’s her choice and her judgement, based on knowing her parents and her family. It seems unfair to put pressure on her to come out (a difficult, scary, life-changing thing) by suggesting that unless she does, she’s self-hating (“perverted, shameful, skanky freak”), a liar and possibly not even really a lesbian (as M.D. suggests).
That’s not to say that LL doesn’t have the right to set boundaries for herself or that it wouldn’t be a good thing in the long run for her girlfriend to come out to her family. However, it has to be her choice.
To KP: LL is not trying to change her partner. She is stating what she needs for herself to have integrity in this relationship. If her partner can’t deliver, then LL owes it to herself to end the relationship as it currently exists. She is offering her partner the opportunity to change. Obviously she can’t make her change. No one can. LL is modeling clear communication of her needs and expectations; being able to articulate what you need in a relationship is essential for it to be a strong and healthy one.
I am 33 years old in a straight relationship experiencing the very same things with my male partner, with regards to him not being “out” to his parents about our relationship. We have been together 3.5 years and his parents strongly reject me (to the point of them not wanting anything to do with me on any social level) and they have been demanding that their son break up with me for the past three years. He has done it, twice, because the pressure was so great.
We are back together and he won’t come clean with his parents because he cannot stand up to them. They don’t like me for this reason: I am not of their same social/financial “class”. I don’t make enough money. I am from Louisiana, they are from a wealthy small town in Northern California. They have told their son again and again that I am not “good enough” for him or his family. I think my boyfriend has become brainwashed to the point of listening to them. He tells me I just don’t understand his mother and father and that I need to accept the fact that this will continue as long as we are together.
It is tearing me apart inside. I am at the point where I am about to walk away. Thank you, Sugar, for your thoughts. I know I have to swim away from this awful family and their judgments, but leaving my boyfriend and our almost four-year relationship behind breaks my heart.
When I moved from City to Other City for all of these really good reasons (but really deep down to be with the love of my life), it was the scariest thing I have ever done ever, and also the best and the bravest.
The most painful and wonderful things were learning all of these things about one another. I learned that (surprise! I actually was, truly, because I was never really a commitment sort of person and had never lived with a partner) I can’t move 3000 miles away from everything I know and love to be with someone who doesn’t want to tell me they will be with me forever.
So I laid it out on the table. I told him that I wasn’t going to break up with him, that it wasn’t an ultimatum, that I loved him very much and in many many ways it made me happy, but that his refusal to commit to me was a sadfaced cloud hanging over my life and he needed to tell me. Could he give me what I wanted? If not, I told him calmly, then I needed to maybe look for a new place and get some space and then we could see where we were.
And the thing was, once I laid it out and said “this is what I need. It is not a threat, it is a fact. I don’t want it if you don’t want it to. I don’t want you to GIVE me anything. I want you to want me, etc,” once I was honest, he was honest, too. He told me he was scared, but he wanted to be with me. And now, three years later, we are married.
My wife is out to her parents and yet she has not told her father that we are married. At first this bothered me a great deal. I have a father-in-law who I have never met, never talked to and who doesn’t know he became my father-in-law over 3 years ago.
It took me some time, but I realized that this is her journey and her decision and her family. It helps that we are much older and live far away from him so this doesn’t really impact our lives. It also helps that he knows she’s gay and that we are living together.
That being said, I have been with someone in the recent past who was closeted at work and where we both volunteered. I thought it was fine, until people started asking me if we were together and I felt forced, in the moment, to lie to protect her position. That was very uncomfortable and helped me decide that I did not want to be with someone who was living that kind of dual life. I do not like to lie and being put in a position to choose between compromising my values by either lying or revealing her secret was not good for me. It was definitely lose-lose.
Asking for what you need and for what you want in a relationship comes with no guarantees. You might get it. You might get something else that could be better or worse in your eyes. You might get nothing. Deciding to be true to yourself and deciding whch of your needs and wants are non-negotiable is not easy when emotions are involved. Love can be blind, but we don’t have to remain in the dark.
And KP – Sugar is not saying the closet is skanky and perverted. She’s talking about how this woman might be perceving that closet she’s hiding in. She’s talking about the internalized homophobia that a lot of us deal with/have dealt with given where and how we were raised.
Sugar – thank you so much for such amazing questions and answers. You are wonderful.
For people who don’t live their lives in fear, it’s difficult to understand when others do. And many of us do for a very long time. Sometimes we don’t even know why we are afraid. I needed to stand up to my father for a long time with regard to his treatment of my son, and just couldn’t for years.
Most of us reach a point where the fear isn’t working for them any longer.
I don’t necessarily disagree with Sugar, LL – I believe we should set our own boundaries. But it might be worthwhile to talk to your girlfriend about fear, and how it can own you until you decide to not let it.
Sugar – do you opine this advice could ne similar to a married man 3 yrs into to relationship – passed baby and
all? Essentially you are in or you are our, what do you think?
It all boils down to being honest with yourself and those around you. Thank you for sharing Sugar.
I agree with those above who say it may not have anything to do with self-loathing.
When I came out as bisexual to my liberal, not too religious, open-minded family, they had difficulty handling it. Regardless of their personal acceptance of the existence of queer people, they had trouble hearing it from their own daughter. It’s tough as a parent, I imagine, to re-invent the story of your child’s past and future life.
The process drove a wedge between my parents and me that lasted for years. They’ve come round to real acceptance now, though I think they’ll never really “get it.” Retrospectively, I think my coming out to them was the first step of a kind of separation that marked my adulthood.
Here’s the thing, though: that separation really sucked to make at the time. And this is in a liberal and accepting environment. LL’s girlfriend is 30 and certainly ready to be an autonomous adult. Still, I bet she perceives that her really truly coming out to her parents will shatter certain expectations of theirs that will change their relationship forever.
And it’s a scary thing, to change your relationship forever with anyone. Most particularly with people you love the most, who you literally owe your life to. Sure, it’s about honesty. But it’s not what I expected – that after I came out it’d be sunshine and roses and finally being able to breathe. A lot of it is awkwardness and distance and change.
I’d stick it out, LL, if you can. I do like the deadline-setting idea, because it is really shitty to live as somebody’s secret. Just saying – it may not be a particular, solvable problem. It may be the time needed to gather nerve to throw a wrench in one of the most fundamental relationships of your love’s life.
Agree with KS, Aya and others. Not to be all “you don’t know us, so you can’t give us advice,” but yeah, there is definitely a nuance of this that the wonderful Sugar may have a blind spot to. And that is exactly what Aya is articulating. It is so supremely scary to tell the people you are closest to a secret that society has (and still does) shame you for. Like, really scary. Like, so scary that just telling yourself that you need to tell everyone and be proud, and it’s going to be OK — all that is not enough sometimes. It does take time, and bravery that comes with being in a relationship for a while and being around people like you for a while. Even in a liberal environment, city, culture, etc., it is still normal to be straight and everyone else is different, is “other.” I guess I would say wait for her, but also you can do what a bunch of us do: Bring her over to things. Have her meet everyone — a lot. Don’t make a big pronouncement. Don’t say you’re gay, you’re this — that’s too abstract. If you’re having trouble with it, don’t even say she’s your girlfriend. Just have people meet her, over and over. They will get it. And then later, when you get married, have kids, etc., it will not be a big thing. It won’t be “oh she’s gay, that’s so (insert whatever here),” it will be “oh, that’s so-and-so, she’s really nice, I’ve met her a bunch of times, remember when she told that hilarious story at the Xmas brunch?”
I get that it can be hard to change your relationship with your family forever. But when that relationship is built on erroneous assumptions of who you are then what are you really gaining by maintaining the mask?
Consider, too, that by being honest with your family you are giving them something awesome–an opportunity to know the real you. They may reject it and that hurts like hell. But they may be able to meet you there, at some point or partially, and that can be worth the risk.
The fact that the right thing is hard, or scary – even really really really hard or scary – never changes the fact that it’s the right thing.
I’m a bisexual who was raised by conservative religious parents. I didn’t have to come to terms with my bisexuality – or admit it to anyone – until, at age 30, I met a girl who was worth reexamining everything. I wanted to date her, but I knew I couldn’t do it unless I was willing to talk about her to my friends and family (including the conservative religious parents) the same way I talked about anyone else I dated. Period. No hiding, no lies.
Here’s the thing: if you feel like you have to lie about something you’re doing, you have two choices. One: decide that you believe in the thing enough to come clean; or two: stop it.
We’re not wired to feel good about hiding and lying. Hiding and lying make us feel like shit. They make everything else harder. Living life with integrity, even when it feels scary and hard and awful at first, always feels better in the end.*
When and how to come out is a personal choice, and hooray for it being a personal choice. But I feel that it’s not ok ask someone to be complicit in hiding and lying on your behalf. If you care about someone, you must respect her integrity.
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*Obviously with the exception of people who are actually in physical danger, etc. There are always extenuating circumstances. I’m specifically talking about first-world adults who are able to get a new job, move away, choose the people with whom they associate.
I struggle with an opposing issue- being out in my personal life but closeted in my professional life. Despite living in a gay friendly city and working for a large employer, there are no legal protections where I live for my job and my supervisors are openly very religious in the workplace and also feel comfortable in national-level meetings using gay slurs in a “joking” manner. My girlfriend has been understanding, but eventually (even though it means giving up a paycheck double what this market pays in my field), I’m going to have to give it up to feel safe at work and be me. I need to remember that will mean swimming in the direction of real life, even if it means poverty, fiscally.
@KP: You’re right, patience is necessary, but it has to have its limits. My ex didn’t come out to her parents for the nine years we lived together. They weren’t even especially conservative, but I never pressured her, I didn’t feel I had the right — I came from a very different family, from a different country, her parents were older than mine and nominally Catholic, everyone has their own path of self-acceptance, etc. We figured that her mom knew anyway and just didn’t want to bring it up directly, in part because she was squeamish about all sexually-related topics, in part because then she would have to deal with the issue of whether to tell the aunts and uncles or not. Don’t worry, my ex said, I’ll tell her some day, it’s just not the right time yet. Her parents adored me; they certainly treated me like a daughter-in-law, even helping me get my papers to stay here. Her sister knew, and all her cousins. We only saw her folks about once a month. So what difference did it really make?
A shitload of difference. All the little humiliations — always having to find an apartment with an extra room, being asked to move my books and glasses off the nightstand when her parents were coming over (when did they ever come in our bedroom anyway?) Having to lie about why we needed them to take the dog for the weekend when we were going to the Pride parade. Having to be careful about coming out at work, not because it made much of a difference there but because word might get back to her workplace – or worse, by some very roundabout path, her family. Having to say “well, her parents don’t really know†when asked by people in the States, and getting unwelcome sympathy for having to deal with such a backward, homophobic culture (actually, our area was much better in that regard than most of the US). Feeling like at some level, she was ashamed of me. Feeling like she was ashamed of me.
She came out to her mother about a year after we split up, when she was devastated over a breakup with someone else and couldn’t hide it. Her mom wasn’t thrilled, but didn’t take it too badly — she’d already figured out, over the course of the previous year, that her daughter might be gay. But she’d never suspected, and was shocked to be told, that the two of us had been a couple. And boy, did that hurt. I’d never really believed our lies and omissions were being taken at face value. I never thought that a deeply important relationship could be so invisible to the people who know you well. I still don’t, actually. That’s what hurts.
Ordinarily I’d agree with the advice that one should be open about who one is with everyone. I’m usually that way in most aspects of my life. However, I’ve had the experience of staying in the closet for years (politically – as a conservative in liberal circles). I did it to preserve professional positions in environments where I knew I would be stereotyped or rejected (academia) and remained in the ‘closet’ in the mostly liberal neighborhoods that I lived in and loved. As the years passed, I became more able to gracefully state my identity (if it came up in conversation, or if people casually condemned my group without ever knowing that I belonged to it). My comfort level about being open about my (political in this case) identity increased. However, about a year and a half ago, I moved to a city where I knew no one and felt rather isolated. Luckily a pretty close family member (my adult niece) lived in that city, and I reached out to her to become friends. Not realizing that I should have my guard up, I casually mentioned during one of our get-togethers that I had attended an event that identified me as a conservative. Kind of like casually mentioning having gone to a Pride parade. The change that came over her was unexpected and startling. I suddenly went from being her ‘cool aunt’ and new friend, to being the hated ‘other’, about which she had so many preconcieved notions that no manner of explaining or protests on my part could change… The hostility, resentment and tension emanating from her was palpable. It was too late – I couldn’t ‘unring the bell’ and roll back my naive openness. I openly said to her that I hoped our relationship could be stronger than her discomfort with my identity… She said it would, but I can tell you that from that point on, she was never the warm person that I had reached out to. I hurt from that experience for months afterwards – exacerbated by the fact that (as mentioned), I was in a city where having people that I felt connected to was a precious thing.
So, while in theory I definitely believe in being ‘out of the closet’ as to one’s identity (for example, I had a close friend during that same time who went from being a pre-op to a post-op trans-female and had to come out as such to her very uptight family, but bravely chose to do so)…
Nonetheless – based on my own and others experience (whatever closet one is in), sometimes it is safer to check out the lay of the land and who might or might not reject and isolate you personally or professionally for who you are. It may well be that in the case of the letter-writer her parents may be aware of her identity and more accepting than she gives them credit for – but in general, I do think that sometimes one has to be a bit careful revealing one’s whole self to others… there might be prices to be paid that one does not see coming until it is too late.
What happened to #88?
This is the first of Sugar’s columns I’ve disagreed with.
How easy it is for Jennifer to climb on a high horse and quote Dan Savage saying that if you’re not ready to be out, you shouldn’t date! That argument would apply equally to being out to any acquaintance about any kind of romantic partnership. Would it really be essential for your partner not to hide from her boss or her conservative daughter or her depressive evangelical brother that you two are involved in a committed, loving threesome with a 20 year old Chippendale?
Who are you to decide whether such information as the fact of being gay might be damaging enough to an important relationship to merit being hidden?
I’m not saying this is black and white. Certainly if a partner wanted to keep the relationship entirely secret from everyone, that would be untenable, not to mention impossible. But it’s not like she lives with her partner’s parents. It’s not clear whether she’s even met them. Of course it is ultimately up to the letter writer whether she values the relationship enough to be worth living with this limitation as long as it persists, and to leave if it doesn’t work for her. But to make the partner wrong for not being ready for what she’s not ready for seems way too formulaic and judgmental.
The partner might have lots of important emotionally charged issues she hopes to process with her parents as she feels ready, and some of them might be more important to her than this one. Or maybe she just needs another 10 years to mature and learn to feel comfortable and settled enough about who she is before she’ll be ready to come out to her parents.
The place of a partner is to love her and accept her as she is, and support her in making the changes she wants to make for herself. If her partner wants to figure out how she can feel safe enough to come out to her parents, great, she can help her work out how to do that.
If she doesn’t want that, even after you tell her how her stance affects you, it’s your choice to love her as she is and stay, or to cut loose and leave, but please don’t try to shame her by construing your discomfort with her neuroses as anyone’s problem but your own.
This situation happened to me. I was in a 3-year long-distance relationship with a closeted woman (and by closeted, I mean closeted to *everyone*). The relationship was wonderful save for the secrecy, but the situation became untenable when I realized things weren’t going to change. I gave her a clear ultimatum with a deadline, and she decided to remain in the closet, so I broke things off. We remain good friends, but I’m still sad about how our good relationship had to fail over something like that.
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