I feel like I'm on a roll Last night I planned to attend a meeting at the LGBT center (at 8 pm), so I asked my business partner to meet for dinner earlier. He asked what kind of meeting I was going to -- haha -- I just said " a support meeting." The poor guy, as long as I've known him he's been completely unlucky in love with women. He's divorced, with kids, and for at least 15+ years, never any kind of relationship. In fact the first thing he said when we sat down is - everything good, but no dates (now, come on people, he lives in Manhattan -- probably one of the most concentrated group of singles on the planet! -- but I digress) We did have some "work" stuff to talk about for a while, which was good, it got the convo rolling well and naturally. Then, I started to steer the convo back to me. Being depressed, getting a shrink, beginning to accept myself/deal with things... "And one of the things I now know about myself is that I'm not straight, I'm gay." (whew -- I said it). His first words out were -- really? you sure? (yes, definitely). So I talked with him about being sure, what I was doing to support myself. He asked me kind of incredulously, you did have sex with women, right? (yes, I sure did. and I loved some of them, too). And then after some more verbal processing, he was able to get it. He was very affirming, how great it must be to know this and not have it hidden, and wished me well in dating and finding a great guy! Lots more talking about my kids, his kids, lots of stuff. The one thing I'm getting, is that being vulnerable and risky on my side to open up about myself -- it seems to allow them to also be open and vulnerable to me about things in their lives. So very cool. Another key person in my life where the secret is gone. Its freeing!
When I came out to my best friend, after 40 years of friendship, he started to open up about his own relatioship situation, this was an absolute taboo subject until just then...incredible really!
Hey Pete, congratulations! I've really enjoyed reading all your coming out posts. Glad it's been going so well for you. I can only imagine how liberating it must feel to finally be able to be your true self. Hope your future coming outs go just as well
It's really true, opening up to people makes it much more likely that they will open up to you, and then you can connect with people in much more meaningful ways. Congratulations, I'm glad your business partner was so accepting.
