Strained sibling ties: how can I fix them?

My older brother was the first one in my immediate family I came out to. He was incredibly nice about it; I was talking to him online and asked him if he'd be mad at me if I said I was going to take up snowboarding (we are all avid skiers) and he said "absolutely". i then asked him "what about if i said i wanted to date girls?" and he said "of course not, whoever you date guy or girl will be lucky to have you." I was ecstatic, my brother was awesome!

But he might not be as accepting as he claims. I get little hints from him that things I do are too "queer" for him. He was never too keen on my ex while we were dating, for no good reason. He kept asking me when I'd grow my hair out again. One day we were driving up to go skiing and he asked me all these questions about how I could have kids with a woman and if I wanted kids and I kept saying "I don't know I like just came out! I have no idea, there are a lot of options and that would be a question for me and my future potential wife to discuss." He gets awkward when I try to talk about online dating women. Before he met my ex he asked me what kind of lesbian she was. He continually says and does things like this that makes me think that he might not actually be okay with it; he just wants our weird-ass family to be "normal" and I don't fit into that. I'm the weirdest of our weird-ass family and we're just never gonna be normal-ass and I just want that to be okay.

I know he loves me, and I love him. I'm closest to him out of my immediate family. But I want to address this and I don't know how.

He is having a baby soon, and I live close by and cannot WAIT to be an aunt. I am so excited to be part of his child's life; I want to be there to babysit and take him/her/ze to the zoo and to the beach and to amusement parks and to the park and to daycare. But I want my brother to accept me and not just tolerate me. I find it really hard to broach the subject and I don't even know what to ask him because he has been externally accepting. What do I ask? How do I ask it? What do I do with people who are "accepting" but not accepting? Why must I feel like it's weird to be LGBT?

I'm worried about this in particular considering my recent questioning and conclusion that I'm probably more gay than bi. This isn't going to go away, and maybe I was trying to be bi so that I could appease him and others.

Anyways, advice?

 

I don't have any other LGBT family. I have a few that would embrace it, but none that know about it really so I could be overlooking someone who is bi. I'm much younger than my cousins, who all married straight, but it's possible that in my youth I missed out on hearing about someone's exploration of their sexual orientation.

My brother does have one friend who is gay who when he first came out my brother said it was awkward. Not because they didn't accept him, but because things were different when they hung out. I don't know why. But it seems like my brother's friend group has a strong heterosexual sense of identity. Which is different from being conservative, but nevertheless makes things weird sometimes.

I came out to him about a year and a half ago, so.

---------- Post added 26th May 2014 at 09:40 AM ----------

Thank you for reminding me I'm lucky to be close with him, I needed to be reminded. On the other hand it is for this reason that his words can be hurtful, because we're close and yet he's not just saying "whatever you are, that's totally fine."

I understand that it's awkward, and now I finally see it and it sucks. Sometimes peoples' faces rearrange themselves when I come out, and not like it's a real problem for most people but you're right, it's fairly common to be like "so... you're gay/bi... well I certainly can't talk about the economy now can I? Are you people even interested in that?" I do tolerate a good amount of well-meaning awkwardness, but when it comes from my brother, it blows.

Thanks for the complement on my writing! It's something I don't get enough feedback on generally.

---------- Post added 26th May 2014 at 09:49 AM ----------

Yep. It's the old "shoving it in my face" thing. People don't realize how harmful that is. I guess they want you to blend in so that when you're talking to someone new fact to face they'll assume you're totally "one of them" until you drop a hint about being gay. Unfortunately for these people, being LGBT is something that does bleed into other areas of one's life, and that's just more than they can handle for some reason.

I'm sorry your brother inadvertently pushed you to stay in the closet. It sounds like he's just never been around many LGBT people, and wouldn't know how to treat you if you were GAY instead of just gay. The answer, uniqueusername3's brother, is exactly like you treated him before.

I think people who have never hung out with any gay people have no idea what to do or say because they're aware that some things can be offensive and a joke can easily cross the line but can also lighten the mood, so they're torn between awkward statements and keeping their mouth zipped.

 

I think I'm going to ask him outright if it makes him feel uncomfortable. We can be so indirect with each other, maybe it's time to come forward and just ask if he feels weird that I'm not straight. I just don't know how to broach the subject... I'll have to see.