Hi everyone, this is my first time posting on here. I've seen a few responses to other people's threads and this seems like a very supportive and helpful community, so I thought I'd give it a try. I'm a 21 year old college male and am gay. I've known that something was different about my sexuality since middle school from what I can remember, but I only came out to myself as gay sometime during my sophomore year of college. Before that, I went from trying to convince myself that I was straight for a few years, to thinking that maybe I'm bi, but I know now that I am for sure gay. It took a while, but I am now proud of who I am and am completely unashamed of being gay. The difficult part now is coming out to people. I spontaneously came out to a college friend last summer and telling someone was a huge weight off my shoulders. Since then, I've come out to a few of my friends and acquaintances when the situation called for it. Basically, my approach has been to just not make any effort to hide that I'm gay. For example, if my friends and I are having a conversation and someone brings up some guy I'm attracted to, I'll just that. Most of the time, my friends will pause and ask if I'm gay, they'll ask a few questions, then move on. So far all of the reactions I've received were pretty low key, as almost all of my friends are completely accepting of different sexualities. That said, there are two people in my life that I'm having a hard time coming out to. One of them was my best friend in middle school, and although we ended up going to different high schools and now different colleges, we've kept in contact regularly and he considers me one of his best friends. The problem is that he used to be very homophobic, and although he isn't as vocal about it now that he's older, I know that he's still pretty religious and not very comfortable with homosexuality. Knowing that I'd eventually come out, I started to distance myself from him over the past two years or so, and basically only talk to him when he reaches out to me first. I feel terrible for that, but based on what he's said about gays before, I don't know how I'll ever have the courage to come out to him. I have my own friends now and think that him and I have grown to be very different people, but wouldn't it be unfair to just let our friendship run its course without me telling him why I'm not putting more effort into reaching out to him? I have the opposite problem with a friend that I am actually close to and talk to on a regular basis. He's one of my very close friends, and he's gay. I know that he'd be accepting of my sexuality, but I'm afraid of hurting him for not coming out to him earlier. I've known he's gay since high school, and I have no idea how I would explain not telling him earlier. He knows that I knew that he'd be accepting. I've talked to him about a few guys that I've had crushes on, but he still doesn't seem to know that they were more than just "man crush monday" attractions. I've tried to drop a million hints, but none have worked so far. Any advice? I don't want him to think I didn't trust him since I have no justification for not having told him. Sorry for how long this was and thanks for any advice you guys may have!
