Help with Letter to Roommates

I can't even bring myself to read that - I think it's too long. Surely you can convey what you need to convey to your room mates in a shorter version. If you can't, then perhaps a conversation rather than a letter is required.

 

Thanks for saying that Jim. I was going to, but didn't want to be too mean.

But yeah, to me it is far too long and rambly, and it takes forever for you to say what you're trying to. They don't need to know your life's story, and they'll probably come talk to you about it at some point, but I think the fact that you didn't even write the entire thing (you had a "to be continued" at the bottom essentially) means you need to trim it down a bit.

 

Please use the space bar to separate paragraphs.

 

You go through ten paragraphs (at least, I think it counted as ten.. hard to tell with no spacing) before actually telling them that you are gay/what the subject matter is. You might want to revise that. They are going to get impatient if seven or eight paragraphs into their reading they still don't know what point you're aiming for.

 

Let me be even more blunt.

Way.
Too.
Fucking.
Long.

You finally say you're gay in paragraph FOURTEEN. If I didn't know any better, I'd say you were hoping they'd give up reading it, so you could SAY you told them via letter even if they never actually got to that part.

If I've learned one thing with the whole "coming out" business, it's this - people take a cue from you. If you treat it like it's a horrible big secret, they'll react like it is. If you treat it like it's no big deal, they'll react like it isn't. Your letter indicates that it's a HUGE deal, despite your protestations in Paragraph One that you wish it weren't.

I'm reading between the lines here (which is odd in a letter this long), but it would appear a few of your roommates have been tossing around some homophobic comments. (That IS where the "given me reason for self-loathing" stuff comes into play, right?) If that is indeed an issue, make that your focus. Here's a substitute letter. Change it as you see fit.

Roomies -

Writing you this note to let you know I'm having some issues with you. I'm hearing some "he's a fag" talk and "that's so gay" comments from you all. As it happens, I'm gay, and that sort of thing pisses me off. Can I ask you to cut it down, at the very least while I'm around? Thanks. - Owly

ps Still not out to parents or other friends, so let me do that on my own time. Thanks.

Lex

 

Personally, I want to see how someone would react if you just gave them a full page printed sheet of paper with sparkles and giant rainbow lettering saying "I'm gay!". And then add the lolface, just for fun. Not how I did it, but I thought about it

Anyways, make sure they're sober too though. telling drunk people doesn't work out. I had to tell one of my friends 3 times before she remembered...

 

Well, it's long. Very long. You already knew that in advance, and others have told you as much.

The crime isn't necessarily in being long (my letters tend to be longish too), but in the facts that

- You repeat yourself a lot. It's a lot of paragraphs saying basically: when I was really young, I was troubled. In year one of middle school, I was troubled. In year two of middle school: still troubled. High school: drowned out my thought. Last year of high school: was still troubled etc... All of that can be conveyed in one paragraph easily

-You give a lot of details they don't know, and perhaps shouldn't know. It's a story like the Patrick and James story that you tell in response to their questions ("who did you tell first" is a common question people ask). A letter should be an invitation to talk further, not a biography after which they know everything about you.

- You're saying: "this is a big fucking deal". If you say it like that, it will be a big fucking deal. But it doesn't have to be. You're basically telling them that you don't like vanilla, you like chocolate. Simple as that. Keep it simple, and they will see that you're at ease with it.

And the main, capital crime in any coming out letter: you excuse yourself for being gay. You ask for forgiveness. NEVER do that! The message should be one of being atr ease with it, and wanting them to get to know all of you because you value them as friends and roommates. You never failed them. You're just opening up to them a bit more.

I'd consider trying to rewrite it in five paragraphs or less. This might take a complete rewrite, but I tried taking the scissors to the letter as it is now. I'm arriving at something like the following:

I'm not saying that you should send the above as is. It could be a template for a new letter, though. It conveys everything you want to say without hitting them with a wall of text. After that, they know. The ice is broken. The story of your life can be told if they ask for it.

I know that it's a bit harsh to shoot down such a heartfelt letter, but brevity really is better in this case!

 

I have to say as a student of marketing, there's more than a grain of truth in this. The best businesses know that short, sweet and blunt gets the message across much better than a long diatribe. Everything you wrote may be what you want (or even need) to say, but it's a whole lot more than they need (or want) to hear. Short and sweet will go a long way!

Plus another trick of marketing from the psychological side, you can very much influence how people react to news - any news - by how you present it. I love to joke around with my marketing partner that she's so good that she could turn the message "Your dog just died" into a happy occasion! It's all in the delivery. If you come across as anxious and uncomfortable before you get to what you're actually trying to tell them, you're likely to make them anxious and uncomfortable by the time they read what you're actually trying to tell them.

There you go - coming out is a marketing exercise! I wonder if gay MBA's have an easier time with it...

 

I wrote my parents and some friends letters. I havent given mine to my parents but I did give my friends the ones I wrote them. Looking back, it was stupid. I made a huge deal out of something that, in reality, wasnt all that huge of a deal.

A few times in reading this, it sounded like you were going to kill yourself or something. Like you were killing a part of who you are or something like that. I think you need to start with saying you're gay in the first or second paragraph and then explain SOME things. You dont need to explain everything. They'll probably want to talk to you when you give it to them, so leave something for that discussion.

Like Lex said, if you act like it's no big deal, neither will they.

Personally i'm at a stage right now where I cant decide if I should give my parents a letter like I planned or tell them in person. Sometimes I feel like I wanted to write them a letter because I wasnt read or willing to face the awkwardness of coming out in person. But the more I think about it, if I dont talk to my parents after I tell them, it could be just another thing brushed under the rug that we dont talk about, and I dont know about you, but i'd rather not have that happen. Nothing worse than being out of the closet to people then having to feel like you still need to censor yourself completely.

 

Oh yeah, and you don't need to apologize to them... You have nothing to apologize for. You were simply surviving in a time of inner confusion. If you apologize, it makes it seem like you've done something wrong, and that's not how you'll want people to see it.

 

You might want to push the issue but what's the issue? to me it seems like you're maybe a little bitter about having to hide it from them. It sounds almost like you're saying they made you feel really bad and you're trying to make them feel bad now for doing it... This isnt something anyone needs to feel bad about... Telling them that you had a hard time your whole life with this probably wont win any sympathy, or do anything beneficial for anyone, so dont talk about it. Just talk about yourself in a positive way. Say it was really hard for you to come to terms with and you've been pretending to be someone you're not for a long time but you'd like to turn a new leaf and be honest with people. Mention that you'd like to talk to them about it, and you're happy to answer any questions.

If your roommates are not going to accept you after saying that, NOTHING will win their acceptance (except for time and patience)

 

I still think you're going about it wrong.

There's nothing wrong with what you've written per se. It's well-written, and has dramatic arc and inner turmoil and whatnot. But that's not the point. You're not trying to provide a compelling story, and honestly, I don't think you need to get into your inner turmoil unless you really think they'll much more likely to respond to that part than to a simple declarative statement. You seem to be focusing far more in creating a well-written essay, and less on accomplishing what it's ostensibly meant to do - telling your roommates you're gay. It ends up reading like...well, it's like writing a laundry list by starting "Despite our belief that one's supplies can keep one going indefinitely, there comes a time when one must face up to the inevitable fact that they're called 'perishables' for a reason", followed by a bit about how hard it hit you when you found you were out of eggs, and how this issue has been haunting you since you were young when...

You see what I mean? I'm not saying you have to just scribble "I'M GAY" on a couple of Post-Its and place it on their foreheads. But I think you can still scale it way down. I can't picture somebody responding to your letter any better than to a simple thing like what I wrote above. Admittedly, I don't know your roommates, and maybe they DO respond much better to well-crafted pieces of prose. But I'm guessing that's not really the case.

Lex

 

It's definitely better than the beginning, but it still seems melodramatic to me. If you play it off as something huge, it is much more likely to be. If you act like it doesn't matter, it's less likely to. Also, don't call it an issue. It isn't an issue, it's just that they get to know a bit more about you. Issues are bad, and this is good. Read it through as if it were a letter from one of your friends, and I think you'll see that it's making a huge issue out of something that shouldn't be an issue at all. Also, ask them to come talk to you after they've read it, if you want, that way you know they got the message.

 

Give them a short note like what Lex suggested and tack on the end that if they'd like to talk more about it you'd love to tell them how this played out over a beer.

Nobody expects us to have come to this realization easily. All of us have struggled to come to terms with this aspect of our lives. And most people that we tell understand that without us having to spell it out for them. Never has there been a story here in EC about a friend saying "I'm totally cool with you being gay, but I'm never going to speak to you again because you didn't tell me sooner!"

They get that. They know that you're telling them because only now you feel comfortable doing so.

 

So, I'm in the same situation you are where my roommates may or may not know i'm gay, and i'm trying to find the right way to tell them. But giving them a long letter is out of the question. They live with you. It's been my experience that people you live with know more about you than most people do. They see you when you're at home and when you're most comfortable. Chances are they've already seen the turmoil, even if you think you've hid it well. These things show more clearly than you might think. There's probably a pretty good chance they already suspect you're gay, even if you've told them otherwise.

Gay people make such a big deal about being gay, but really, to the rest of your peers, it's no big deal. It's being sure that YOU'RE ready to come out that's difficult. I havent told my roommates but started just being myself around them (I'm not the type of person who talks about hot guys all the time or anything, but i do say things every now and then). I should tell them, and even though i'm not hiding anything anymore really, I'm still not ready to tell them.

If you really want them to know and NEED them to know, then you should make it plain and simple.

Say "For most of my life I have had this inner turmoil going on, where I tried to hide things that I am because I was scared of what other people might think. It hasnt been easy to deal with and it's taken me a while to accept it myself. The truth is, I am gay. You may have noticed, or not, I dont know. I hope you can accept this. Let's talk about it some time, I cant live a lie any longer though."

Something like that. You're not giving them your life's story, just letting them know what's up. You being gay is NOT a big deal. It's a big deal to you because you have to live with it, but to other people, it just means you like guys instead of girls. Only really homophobic people have a problem with it, and a lot of the time when they know someone who's gay, their eyes are opened.

 

Pretty much, yeah. If you want to say "It's taken me some time to work up the nerve to tell you this" before "I'm gay", fine, but that sentence will do the trick. Keep it casual. You're not ADMITTING you're gay. You're not CONFESSING you're gay. Admissions and confessions are for things you have a reason to be ashamed of. So don't take the attitude that this is something you should be ashamed of, even if you haven't gotten beyond that shame yet.

"Guys, it's taken some time for me to work up the nerve to tell you this, but I'm gay. I still haven't told X Y and Z yet, but they're next on my list, so please let me talk to them in my own time. Thanks."

Lex