Family therapy and homophobic parents

Hi all,
I've been lurking around for a bit and have finally decided to post after having a bit of an emotional day today.

Before beginning, I want to warn that this post has some descriptions of conversion therapy, sexual violence, and suicide. If any of these are difficult for you to read about, please don't. I know this sort of stuff is hard and don't want to cause unnecessary pain to survivors of any of these things.

I am having some really intense relationship problems with my parents. My parents are definitely not the most accepting people in the world (read fundamentalist Christian) and unfortunately I am still financially dependent on them so I have to be in contact with them fairly regularly.

To give some background, I came out when I was 14. My mother sat me down and asked me point blank if I was "struggling with homosexual desires". Being the honest Christian boy that I was at the time, I answered "yes". While I was not forced to go to conversion therapy, I was manipulated into going. I was struggling with a lot of depression at the time and my parents told me that I would never come out of my depression if I "chose to live a gay lifestyle", failing to acknowledge the fact that calling gay men "pedophiles" and "broken" and assuring me that LGBT people could never be happy was a more realistic cause of the problem. I ended up in conversion therapy for three months, one of the most destructive experiences in my life to date. There it was either said explicitly or implied that my broken relationship with my father made me gay, that being effeminate was wrong, that ultimately I would wind up with HIV if I had sex with men, and my personal favorite, that I would ultimately die by suicide from the weight of disobeying the Lord.

Obviously this did a number on me and I grew up with intense internalized homophobia. I attempted suicide a few times and was finally taken to see a real professional after I had to drop out of eighth grade. Things seemed to get slightly better but when I turned 15, I went to a pride parade. This was my first exposure to the LGBT community as a person who was out so I went with a friend to the parade. There she introduced me to a friend of hers who was 20 at the time. When she left, he took me home and raped me. I was so desperate to believe that the LGBT community was a safe place for me and that my parents were not right about how broken they perceived LGBT people to be that I continued to see him and he continued to sexually abuse me regularly for three months. I recognize that this is no one's fault but his, but I still carry a lot of hurt as they later told me they had an idea that this was happening and did nothing about it because they didn't know what to do. I spent most of the rest of high school and the beginning of college completely shut down, heavily medicated, and going in and out of psychiatric hospitals until I finally had to move home with my parents and drop out of college because I couldn't keep up with the course work with my frequent hospitalizations. I finally decided that this was all far too much and made a final suicide attempt that nearly killed me.

Things have gotten so much better for me since then with the help of my current therapist who I have been seeing for years. I am functional again, back in college finishing my degree, and rebuilding my life. However, the issue of my parents remain. Thankfully they are going to go to family therapy with me this week. I just feel intensely scared for this as they still go to and financially support a church that actively performs conversion therapy. They also avoid conversations about going to any kind of group like PFLAG or even a support group for parents that are struggling with accepting their child's orientation. I feel frustrated by their insistence that they do actually support me and my orientation because their actions seem to contradict that not just in the past but also in the present. While I recognize I am very lucky that they will still support me financially and were even willing to meet my boyfriend last year, I feel really suspicious that deep down they do not like or accept this at all. Since my last suicide attempt, they have walked around on eggshells in many areas of our relationship because they are constantly afraid that I will do it again and are afraid to express their actual opinions. Unfortunately, this makes me very wary of taking their word particularly given that some of their actions still indicate a dedication to the ideology that caused me so much pain. I am trying so hard to accept that they may never accept me and also be open to the fact that they might change. I am just intensely scared of what they will say when I confront them about the church they go to this week. Does anyone have any advice for how I can prepare emotionally going into this?

 

Aspen,
Thank you for the response and support. I will try out the letter writing. I've heard of that before but never think to do it.

As for you, iamdesperate, you just engaged in something commonly known as victim blaming. Thankfully I am doing well enough that this no longer upsets me. However you need to tread a lot more carefully if you decide to comment on another rape thread. I said nowhere that I did not try to resist him and consent can also be withdrawn. If someone continues and you tell them to stop, that is rape. I will chalk this up to your age as I've been around a lot longer than you have. Regardless, educate yourself about exactly what rape entails as your comments might be triggering for others. Given that people recovering from trauma can be fragile and hurt, they do not need to be told that they are the cause of the problem. Best wishes to you and let me know if you have trouble finding good rape education resources. I would be happy to send them to you.