Hello everyone, well, I am living with my father and it is getting harder and harder to hide my sexuality. I have a boyfriend and a lot of times I spend time with him, even travel and I have to lie to my father for him not to know with who I am. The thing is that, I want to come out but I have afraid of his reaction because he is a agressive person. I want to develop a serious relationship with my boyfriend with no lies and I feel I am being unfair with me and with him. So what should I do? I just want to be real with my life and be free but I feel like a lot of things are in risk..
I will say, that I personally thought my dad was going to be the worst person in my family to come out to. I thought he'd be the least understanding. However, once I came out to him- which happened kind of on accident- he was like that's okay! In fact, I think he was the one that knew. One day I was just talking about my future roommate up at college, and I said she was catholic, and he cracked some ignorant joke about catholic girls getting with all the guys or something, and I said, "I think she's a lesbian dad, so no." He said, "Oh, are you a lesbian?" My step mom yelled at him. I paused for a moment and said calmly, "No, I like guys and girls, dad." Ever since then, he's been the most sensitive and understanding, even though he's the family member I am the least close with. He has aggressively bashed gays and the like since I was a little girl, so I figured if he knew he'd hate me, or get mad and start slamming sh*t around and stuff... But he didn't. Sometimes, people can surprise you! Sometimes, the people you think will be the most supportive are the least supportive and vise versa. Regardless, I encourage you to do it in your own time, when you feel safe enough to do it. (*hug*)
Hey portfaz1990, welcome to EC! Your father may indeed, as sme suggested, surprise you, but then he may not. Only you can be the best judge of that. It may be wiser to wait until you are living on your own and do not depend on him before you come out. Although this is less than what you want, you may risk having even less if the outcome is worse than what you'd like. In this case, if there is a real chance that he will not accept you, it may be best to stay quiet until such time as it won't make a difference if you tell him or not.
Hi portfaz, I think that considering you say your father can be agressive sometimes, it might depend on your age, whether it is a good idea to come out to him right now. You would not want to be put into a situation where you might be subject to any kind of harm, not even just awful yelling or shouting, correct? I'm not saying don't come out, just that it might be worth carefully weighing the advantages against any possible consequences - even if those consequences would be unfair and something you should not have to endure.
Everyone else has pretty much covered what i would have said. But I will say he is your father and you are his son. Weather he will admit it he loves you, now weather his believing in your life style is good or not may be different, but people change (hopefully he will be accepting). He may be aggressive and may hide how he really feels about things, plenty of times when my dad has been that way but i know he does it to hide his feelings. Whatever happens we are all here rooting you on.
